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Study 069 - Snow White (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-07 14:00:04
Edited:
2023-12-09 12:48:49
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

We're celebrating the holidays with a month on Grimm's Fairy Tales. First up: Snow White, featuring 100% more torture than we anticipated!

Special thanks to our reader, Michelle Sawyer!

We are reading this month's selections in The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated and annotated by Jack Zipes.

Non-Fifer musical selections: Carnival of the Animals: VII. Aquarium by Camille Saint-Saëns | Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor by Frédéric Chopin.

And don't forget to check out Greig Johnson's Etsy shop!

Next up: The Juniper Tree

Comments

Cole Caron

Anyone else feel like the mirror is kind of a dick here? Sure, the queen’s jealousy isn’t justification for murder, but the mirror’s mean spirited taunting certainly wasn’t helping.

Jason Thompson

Wow, good episode. I suppose you can really see the casual cruelty of premodern society in the way the villains get iced in these and other fairytales. Some villain was evil? F***** torture them to death in a public execution! Now that’s justice! A straight line from this to Arnold Schwarzenegger sticking a steam pipe into the guy in “Commando” to… am I wrong in thinking this doesn’t happen as much in modern popular movies? (I haven’t seen any John Wicks so maybe it’s still there.) I am impressed by how the original story doesn’t have the objectionable kiss, tho.

Jeremey Guttilla

Seems like the moral of the story is always check your murder victims for a pulse.

Erik Jordan Phillips

I loved reading Grimm tales as a kid, mostly because we’re so far removed morally from the people in them, that it becomes almost alien. The Juniper tree was a go to campfire story for me when the time to tell a ghost story came. Excited for your coverage!

Erik Jordan Phillips

Death by corset seems ridiculous considering that almost everyone in know that wears one swears it’s the most comfortable thing they wear. Maybe we should introduce them to a Snuggie or a pair of red hot Uggs.

Exanimus

Does fair not basically mean pale? Her name iS Snow White, after all. So maybe the evil queen just wanted to be the palest in the land. If that's the case, her actions are totally justified! Would like to know what the original German was. (If I spoke it...)

Michelle

I personally was struck by how the evil queen tried to kill Snow White by using stereotypical symbols of beauty/feminine ideals. A corset? A comb? The only thing which finally “worked” was something beautiful on the outside, but poisoned on the inside, just like the evil queen herself. Proof the inner is more important than the outer, one might say. Hope I get the chance to read more fairy/other tales for the podcast. Thanks for having me on again!

Corey Wittig

Hey, guys -- so happy you are doing the month on Grimm's tales. I have the same edition translated and edited by Zipes and I was really happy to hear you reading from that intro, Chad, because I found it so enlightening when I read it a couple of years ago. I picked this up so I could learn the earliest versions of these tales and then adapt them to tell as oral stories to my students during their library period (mostly K - 2nd graders, but would often tell the same tale with more gruesome details to my middle school students with similarly positive results). Now that I've left the job, it's kind of easy to see I was pushing it telling some of these scary stories to little ones, but I must say they were always enthralled. Several times, kids who had experienced death in their lives would speak to me after a story about a personal loss and I always took it as a positive thing that the telling of the story (and all its gory details) helped a kid feel safe in sharing their own run-in with death and despair. Which reminds me of something I often think about when hearing about how the brothers Grimm collected these stories and published for a learned adult audience rather than kids. While it's true that the book wasn't meant for children, it was full of stories that had been told to kids. The friends of Jacob and Willhelm who shared the stories were sharing stories they heard as children, right? So, it's still important to think of the purpose these scary details had for the kids who heard them. One thing is the cautionary element that is often mentioned (don't talk to strangers or sneak into homes that don't belong to you, etc.), but I have to wonder if the bigger purpose wasn't just to share about some real heavy truths of the world through story. Maybe in hearing about Snow White's trials a kid who'd already experienced trauma could feel seen or understood in a way they hadn't been before. And some adult storyteller saying it to them shows the kid that the adult also knows how the world can be, so the kid listening and maybe relating doesn't feel so alone. Thanks, guys. I've left teaching and librarianship to open a book store here in Pittsburgh, so please come by and we'll have a Strange Studies event some time. : )

Mark Simmons

Well, if nothing else, this story demonstrates why the first thing you should check when someone stops breathing is that their airway is clear! Very excited that you're doing a whole series of these, and as ever, the reading is fab and the analysis is super fun. Imagining the previous queen as Snow White's mother really does open up a whole range of implications... As for the story symbolism, is it just me, or does this fable incorporate a bunch of elements of the traditional "look into a mirror on Halloween night and see your future husband" ritual? (See https://weirdchristmas.com/2016/10/07/halloween-mirror-of-love/) There are versions of this where you're supposed to eat an apple or comb your hair, and I'm pretty sure I've heard of one where you tighten your dress stays, too. It's possible that people lifted those elements *from* the Grimm story to embellish a goofy party game, but the idea of ancient spells embedded in fairytales is kinda neat, especially when they eventually morph into "Bloody Mary."

REO Jackwagon

I happen to know a bit about this story and the Grimm Brothers and the period, and I have to say that your coverage of it is just SO GOOOD in the Chris and Chad way that makes me glad I subscribe. So is this Grimmcember? Or De-Grimm-Ber? No, that's terrible. What?! Mummy for the Tummy!?

Carter Stepper

Man do I love Grimm stories. When I was a kid I read the real stories and immediately became enamored with these over the Disney versions. So much more mysterious, dark, violent, and fun. On the dear casket: this was a common practice for corpses of people who were especially holy and whose bodies were “incorrupted,” ie didn’t decay. I assume the story is drawing on that tradition. Also, while we may see Snow White as treating her stepmom evilly, in those days I figure it was seen as appropriately and ironically just. One last thing: have either of you read Fable? It’s a comic series that puts the fairy tale characters in the modern world. Snow White plays a significant part, and it somehow is even darker than the original, but a highly engaging take on dairy tale characters (go team big bad wolf)

Darth Pseudonym

I wanted to make a comment about marriage age. You said that at 7, Snow White was potentially getting close to marriage age in medieval europe, but that's not really accurate. The minimum marriage age for girls was generally reckoned as 12 (not remotely close to 7), but historically even that was rarely done. Royalty tended to marry significantly younger than average because of the political impact of such connections, while at the same time being more heavily reported on, so young royal marriages tend to skew our view. People were very much aware that young pregnancies are way, way more risky, and didn't encourage them.

The Spider Incident

I've always pronounced the Grimm brothers' names as Jacob and Wilhelm, instead of as Jacob and Wilhelm.

Corey Wittig

Listening to this again cuz I love you guys, the quad city Grimms, and was thinking and wondering more about the governesses and servants who told these stories to the upper crust girls. Reminds me of “Old Nan” from Winterfell in GoT/ASOIAF, passing on the old tales full of hard won wisdom to the future of the ruling classes. A dialogue between the castes is happening here—maybe a bit of an attempt from the servants to appeal to the hearts of these kids while they’re young and impressionable.

Jim Cannon

It sounded to me like you guys were switching between "dwarfs" and "dwarves." The original would have used "dwarfs," because "dwarves" really only becomes a thing with Tolkien. There's probably a linguistic reason he preferred it that way, but I think he was also trying to emphasize the mythological nature, rather than just a common term for a smaller-sized version of a living organism, whether that be a person, a fir, or a mammoth.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

Loved these stories when I discovered them as an elementary schooler. They and the Jack tales were read again and again. I don't know that the torture taught me any lessons, but they certainly entertained my macabre little heart.

Robby H.

Embarrassing story time: For the longest time, I though the Queen (Step)Mom from the 1937 Disney Snow White and Maleficent From the 1956 Disney Sleeping Beauty were the same person because they looked similar. Granted most of my Disney knowledge comes from the Kingdom Hearts series

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

I keep meaning to get the graphic novel of Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples"; I have students in my monster-lit class read the original short story to round out our vampire unit. Anyway, the original Grimm version(s) made Snow White seem even more vampire-y: The failure of every one of those murder attempts is like when someone removes the stake from the heart of the fiend in the sequel. (So maybe other people's suggestion to check for breathing wouldn't work after all...) Here's a free and legal link to the text of Gaiman's short story: https://thedreaming.moteofdust.com/1999/10/10/snow-glass-apples/

It's a Ghost.

I agree, comparing the beauty of a child with an adult is pretty weird, which is to say the mirror is pretty creepy to be comparing the beauty of adults and children! But also the stepmother has to be incredibly insecure to feel threatened by the beauty of a child.

Jourik De Vetter

I wholeheartedly recommend the somewhat cringy but otherwise quite excellent 10th Kingdom miniseries

Pam Winkler

So, if the place is clean initially, keeping it clean won’t be as hard of work

Pam Winkler

One of the versions I read had the evil queen questioned about the appropriate response to actions, which are a vague description of her own actions. She ends up saying the red hot shoes.

Moonflight Dancer

I can't help but wonder if this story is a bit of stealth satire on the part of the peasantry. The queen so obsessed with her own beauty (the whiteness of her skin no doubt) she is willing to murder her own daughter and Smow White who is so guileless from her palace upbringing she can be tricked into being assassinated thrice. And then the creepy prince who shows up to buy a sleeping woman-child and make her his wife. I'm not surprised that "clumsy" servants are ultimately the heroes. The story doesn't exactly portray royals as very competent...or merciful.