Snow White (part one) Discussion Questions:
1. In Giambattista Basile, “The Young Slave,” consider this quote on p . 81: “…impelled by jealousy and consumed by curiosity, which is a woman’s first attribute.” How does this perspective color this version (perhaps all versions) of Snow White?
2. How do you interpret the last line of Basile’s version, “Heaven rains favors on us when we least expect it”? Is this “the moral to the story”?
3. What happens in the Brothers Grimm version, “Snow White”? How are the birds symbolic to the story?
4. Compare Anne Sexton’s poem to the versions by Basile and Grimm. How does she work with these themes throughout the poem? Does she come to different conclusions? Be prepared to read the poem aloud for us.
5. Do you think any of the versions we read today communicate a moral or message? Or do the characters function in a world without morality or divine intervention?
6. How do Gilbert and Gubar interpret the relationship between Snow White and the Stepmother? Point to several passages in the article to support your answer.
7. What happens "Snow, Glass, Apples”? How does it compare with the other versions you read for today?
Snow White (part two) discussion questions:
1. What happens in Lydia Millet's "Snow White, Rose Red"? Do you think the narrative perspective (first person) makes a difference in the reader's empathy for the narrator?
2. How does Millet's version work with the classic versions you read from Basile and Grimm? Were you surprised by the role the narrator plays in the end?
3. How might the poems by Mary Coleridge retell the Snow White story? Do they make a larger point about women in fairy tales?
4. Angela Carter's "The Snow Child" is a short, disturbing retelling of Snow White. What are the major symbols? How does it reinterpret the classic tale type?
5. In "Ever After," how does the story deal with the idea of religion, myth, fantasy, and fairy tale?
6. Do you think the dwarves in "Ever After" get a happy ending? Why or why not?
7. All of the stories today deal both with the Snow White tale type and also this larger question--what is the purpose of fairy tales? Why do we need them or fantasies or myths to make us happy or fulfilled? Do you think we do need them? Draw on at least one of the stories you read today to answer this question.
SNOW WHITE NOTES:
Bettelheim's Interpretation from The Uses of Enchantment
Week Three Notes (Part TWO) "Snow White"
Grimm Brother's Snow White. (You will find the annotation of interest)
Anne Sexton's Snow White.
Giambattista Basile's The Young Slave.
The narrative comes in a rich number of variations around a central core, as Steven Swann Jones argues: "The most plausible explanation for the form that the overall plot structure of "Snow White" assumes, he declares, "is that it is a reflection of a young woman's development" (74). As you will see when Tatar moves to Bettelheim, the Freudian interpretation takes on this task by claiming that the real center of the story--how to get along with dad (the female oedipal complex)--does not enter the story.
"For Bettelheim," Tatar points out, "the malice of the stepmother is, in the end, nothing more than a projection of the heroine's imagination. Fairy tales, he argues, do not stage scenarios that correspond to psychological realities of family life; rather, they dramatize projections of trouble brewing in the young child's mind" (75). I admit that the Freudian analysis generally makes my eyes glaze over after a short time; however, Bettelheim, because still taught a great deal, continues to exert a significant influence. He also offers interesting insights and should therefore not be dismissed..
The feminist perspective is bought to bear by Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert in their now famous book, The Madwoman in the Attic; I supply at another link some note about this famous study. Following the Disney version, they make sweeping generalizations about the stepmother and the daughter, "the one a sort of angel, the other an undeniable witch" (75). As Tatar notes, "For both Bettelheim and for Gilbert and Gubar, the absent father occupies a central, if invisible, position in this domestic drama" (76).
Maria Tatar tries to put the various versions into perspective. As she notes, many of the attacks on the tale concern versions that change the original quite dramatically to fit historical and social contexts and requirements. Discussing Basiel's version, for example, she notes that "Basile's tale, one of the earliest recorded versions of "Snow White," suggests that the complex psychosexual motivations shaping the plots of fairy tales underwent a process of repressions once the social venue for the stories shifted from the household to the nursery" (76). Indeed, we see this pattern repeated often--and the switch from the "household to the nursery" also points to changed definitions of "childhood" and of "children."
Thus, when Sexton writes her version of "Snow White" that suggests that the beautiful girl eventually becomes just like her mother, staring into a mirror, Sexton writes against a specific version; Tatar is at pains to argue that these tales come in multiple versions that emphasize different themes that grow from the plot--again, the protean capacity of these stories to adapt; in the main, Sexton writes against the Disney version.
And the version that continues to exert the most influence is, of course, Walt Disney's beautifully animated version of the story. Tatar points out that the Evil Stepmother about whom Gubar and Gilbert write comes from Disney's animators, who strive to create "a mixture of Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf" (78), and they did their job well, a point worth remembering for the quiz.
In older versions, Snow White "earns" the prince through her good looks and her labor--Disney turned her into a house cleaner, for as you will note in the Grimm version, the dwarfs are without names and very tidy, thank you. They do, however, take pity on the girl who subsequently cannot take their warnings to heart, letting in the stepmother three times! Thus of Gubar and Gilbert, Tatar writes, "In a sense, Gilbert and Gubar have become the professors who tell us what Disney did, for their critical intervention is above all a response to Disney's film, to a motion picture that positions the evil queen as the figure of cinematic fascination and that makes Snow White so dull that she requires a supporting cast of seven to enliven her senses" (79). But Tatar does not dismiss the two critics' argument as wrongheaded--and, indeed, the article and the book from which it comes have much more to offer about the contrast between the angel in the house and the wicked stepmother.
The stepmother in this story and the tension between her and her stepdaughter give this domestic narrative its energy, for the battle does indeed find reflection in actual life, which is another reason the "Cinderella" story also enjoys considerable popularity.
"The Young Slave" provides a nice and short introduction to the "Snow White" tale. Among other things, this Snow White takes an active role in her reintroduction to society and her escape from the nasty wife--who does not obey her husband.
Instead of making a wish about snow and blood, in this version Lilla eats a rose-leaf and becomes pregnant. These fairies are not always nice, for one blames Lisa for a twisted ankle--the girl gets a comb stuck in her hair and "dies" when she is seven: she gets encased in seven crystal caskets.
And Lisa lies in a very special set of caskets, for they grow along with her, as the uncle's wife discovers when she breaks the rules--disobedience can have conflicting results in fairy tales: either the Pig King emerges or something terrible can happen.
Well, Lisa's rebirth will take some doing, for the Baroness does not want competition! "I'll give you mother, and father too!" cried the Baroness, who was as bitter as a slave and angry as a bitch with a litter of pups, and as venomous as a snake" (81). In other words, she is not a very nice person.
The Baroness attempts to keep Lisa from her rightful place in society, one that allows her, among other things, to use the urinal. Note, as well, that Lisa takes a very active role in affirming her identity and winning back her rightful place, for she asks her uncle for the doll, knife, and pumice-stone that will eventually secure her release.
The Baron hears her story and takes necessary action--and she eventually gets a "husband of her own choice" (83). Lisa is not, then, passive in her quest.
The same cannot really be said for Grimm's Snow White, though she is hardly without evident charm. Reading the story, consider ways in which this take contrasts with the familiar Disney version.
The envious queen certainly resembles Disney's nasty woman, who, however, never strikes us as beautiful. But pride in her beauty and envy compel her to strike out against this youthful upstart: "Envy and pride grew like weeds in her heart" (84); Grimm's tale contains some wonderful lines.
Not content just to have the girl murdered, she demands "her lungs and liver as proof of your deed" (84). She plans to eat the organs of her rival.
As noted previously, the unnamed dwarfs do not need a housekeeper, for they run a tidy place. They are also good at heart, affected by both the girl's story and her beauty. Unfortunately, she fails to heed their advice about the step mother: "Beware of your stepmother. She'll know soon enough that you're here. Don't let anyone in the house" (85). The girl's repeated failure to obey leads Annie Sexton to describe her as "the dumb bunny" (99), a reference to Playboy Bunnies. In other words, beautiful but not all that bright.
Grimm provides a touching picture of the poor girl's death, for the dwarfs fashion her a glass coffin, and "Animals also came to mourn Snow White" (89). Eventually the necessary king's son breaks the spell, but not with a kiss, an embrace necessary for the romantic Disney version of love and marriage.
Instead, an accident dislodges the bit of apple, leading both to Snow White's marriage and the stepmother's punishment, a horrible and brutal death: "She had to put on the red hot iron shoes and dance in them until she dropped by the ground dead" (89), not a fitting image for a Disney film, to be sure.
But Grimm's tales often conclude in this brutal fashion, especially where evil is concerned, to drive home a lesson or moral. In their version of Cinderella, for example, birds pluck out the eyes of the wicked sisters.
The Irish version is also not averse to brutality, what with the cutting off of fingers and various killings, in which the stepmother uses various strategies to enrage her husband against his beautiful daughter, who never knows anything about these attempts, until the queen makes her final demand: "Give me the heart and liver of Lasair Ghueng, the King of Ireland's daughter" (91). This act sets in motion a long series of events that leads eventually to the king's getting a new wife. (I did not find this story on the internet, but you might find this PDF essay of some interest.)
This story features many and strange narratives intertwined, including a king disguised as a cat, strange wild boars running through church, and other bizarre and amusing twists and turns.
Like Lisa, she will tell her story, but in a most odd fashion that eventually works its "magic" after Lasair Ghueng survives her stepmother's attempts to murder her: "She got the wild boar; she got on to the boar's back, went in at one door of the church and out at the other door. She called her three unchristened children to her side" (95). Well, the story has interesting twists, including an extra wife, that give the narrative its very special charm.
And the stepmother meets a painful end, as she does in Sexton's version: "And so she danced until she was dead" (100).
The opening of the Sexton poem is wonderful: "No matter what life you lead/ the virgin is a lovely number." Think of Carter's version of "Beauty and the Beast" here.
As you read the poem, try to appreciate the ironic language used, the wonderful figural language: metaphor, simile, etc. Thus, she is "white as a bonefish" (96) and, as noted previously, a "dumb bunny" (99). Sexton's version also contains some wonderful and ironic humor. The mirror, for example, is "something like the weather forecast" (97), and the dwarfs become "those little hot dogs" (98).
In line with the accent on beauty alone, when she "fell down for the final time" (99), she "lay as still as a gold piece" (99)--and her reward, in Sexton's terms, equals the worth of beauty and little more. Indeed, she becomes a bride a line after she "woke up miraculously" (99).
The image of the stepmother's death--"her tongue flicking in and out/ like a gas jet"-- forecasts Snow White's future, for the poem ends pretty much where the story begins, with the woman asking questions of the mirror.
You can see why Tatar suggests that Gubar and Gilbert read "Snow White" through Disney and with Sexton's bitter attack against patriarchy in mind. In other words, to maintain the man's interest, to ensure the continued affection of the king, they must remain beautiful, the physical "capital" that attracted the man in the first place.
In this way, Sexton, like Bettelheim in a fashion, gives great power to the seldom-mentioned husband.
Source: Peru State College