, The Universal Genre Savvy GuideOnce upon a time, a queen wishes for a child with lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony, and skin as white as snow. She gets her wish and names the child Snow White, but promptly dies and is replaced by a Wicked Stepmother who prides herself on her great beauty. Every day the stepmother asks her magic mirror:
Who's the Fairest of Them All?"
And every day the mirror assures the queen that she was the most beautiful.
Snow White is a beautiful child, however, and when she turns seven, the mirror replies that she, and not the queen, is the fairest. The queen isn't having any of that, so she orders her faithful huntsman to cut out Snow White's heart and give it to her to eat. The huntsman has some trouble with this, so he lets Snow White go and gives the queen the heart of a boar instead.
After some time wandering in the woods, Snow White falls in with a bunch of dwarfs, who let her stay with them in exchange for doing the housework. The mirror tips the queen off to Snow White's continued existence, however, so she disguises herself as a peddler and makes three assassination attempts; firstly by pulling Snow White's corset-laces too tight, secondly by selling her a poisoned comb, and thirdly with a poisoned apple. After each attempt, the dwarfs come home to find Snow White unconscious. While they succeed in reviving her the first two times, the third has more sticking power, and they have to admit that she's dead for good.
She is too beautiful for them to bury her in good conscience, though, so they build a glass coffin and take turns keeping guard. Fortunately for everyone involved, she does not decay, but remains so fresh and beautiful that a passing prince falls in love with her and refuses to leave her. The dwarfs are reluctant at first, but eventually let him take the glass coffin. Thanks to a clumsy servant, the coffin is jolted, dislodging the piece of apple and reviving Snow White. Apparently the prince likes her almost as much when she's awake, and they marry. Hopefully, she's a bit older than seven by now, but you never know.
The evil queen comes to their wedding and is forced to dance to death in red-hot iron shoes. Everyone else lives Happily Ever After.
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (or simply "Snow White") is one of the best known of the Grimms' stories, although it existed in numerous countries before being compiled into their Children's and Household Tales. It was one of the early victims of their bowdlerising edits; they changed the antagonist from Snow White's biological mother to a Wicked Stepmother.
Because of Snow White's unusual appearance and the disturbing psychological issues in the story, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is frequently subject to Grimmification or Darker and Edgier treatment. One such example is a 1997 horror version with Sigourney Weaver as the queen. There's also a 2001 version subtitled Fairest of Them All with Miranda Richardson as the queen and Kristin Kreuk as Snow White, and rainbow dwarves, named after the days of the week. Finally, let's not forget Neil Gaiman's short story "Snow, Glass, Apples", where we have a perspective flip that takes some of the more eerie parts of the story, and makes them much much worse.
By far the most well-known adaptation of this story is Disney's first full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Other adaptations have varied from Snow White and the Three Stooges to Prétear, which rewrites it as a Magical Girl Warrior show, the very loose Betty Boop adaptation entitled only as Snow White (1933) and then there's Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, which would be a side-splitter had not excessive Uncle Tomfoolery ruined it. It was also one of the tales adapted in Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics.
Not related to "Snow-White-Fire-Red" or "Snow-White and Rose-Red".
Note that this specifically refers to the Brothers Grimm version and adaptations thereof, rather than any of the other fairytales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale type ATU 709, "Snow White" (such as "Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree," in which the Snow White character is married off by her father to get her away from her insane mother, or the memorable version in which Snow White stays with FORTY DRAGONS).
Author Joseph Jacobs offered a reconstruction of Snow White tales in his book European Folk and Fairy Tales, with the story Snowwhite.
"Snow White" and variations contain the following tropes:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Many versions based on the Grimm tale introduce the prince earlier, in order to make the ending a bit less weird.
- Adaptational Villainy: Almost everyone gets this many different adaptions:
- In one musical adaption called Genealogy of Red, White and Black Snow White's birth mother abuses her, which starts Snow White's Sanity Slippage, but she completely snaps after Prince "Charming" rapes her, causing her to shed her All-Loving Heroine persona and go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- An adaption by the band Sound Horizon, has another interesting spin on the girl. Snow White is accidentally awoken by the Necrophiliac Prince who becomes absolutely distraught at the sight of the beautiful "corpse" coming back to life. She then forces him to marry her and tortures the Queen, who's implied to be her real mother turned abusive, the role of "step-mother" being an imposed image by Snow White, to death while cackling like a mad woman.
- In "Snow, Glass, Apples" by Neil Gaiman, Snow White is a vampire, and the stepmother tries to save the kingdom from her, being mistaken for an Evil Stepmother.
- Age Lift: In the 1812 version of Snow White, Snow White is seven years old when the Queen tries to kill her, and she remains that age for the entire story. In 1819, the second edition of the story had the Grimm Brothers age her up to 14.
- Bringing Back Proof: The Grimm Brothers version depicts the evil queen demanding that the huntsman bring her Snow White's heart. Which the queen then proceeds to eat. (Except that the huntsman actually substituted a pig's heart and let Snow White go.)
- Canon Foreigner: Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics gives Snow a younger childhood friend named Klaus and a nanny.
- Composite Character: This Snow White is clearly not the same one from "Snow-White and Rose-Red" (they marry different people and the latter's Snow White is described as being fair-haired), but some expanded adaptations give this one a sibling named Rose Red to tie the two stories together.
- Death Faked for You: The hunter used the heart of a pig to fool the queen into believing that Snow White was dead.
- Decomposite Character: In the first Grimm edition, Snow White's birth mother who wishes for her to have all the traits she is known for (white skin, black hair and red lips) and wicked stepmother were one and the same. When the Grimm brothers decided that the idea of a mom attempting to murder her child was too disturbing, they split the character into these two personas.
- Disappeared Dad: Where was the king while the queen was off finding creative ways to kill his daughter? He must have stepped out of the fairytale for a bit. Most versions either have him die early on or just don't address the question.
- Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: Don't touch it! It might be poison!
- Evil Matriarch: The queen is an evil stepmother in most versions, sometimes an evil birth mother.
- Evil Is Petty: The Queen wants to get rid of Snow White for one simple reason. She is more beautiful than her.
- Extremely Dusty Home: The dwarves' home, before Snow cleans it up, is so dusty, they are shocked when they come home and don't see any dust.
- Fairest of Them All: The queen used to be the fairest in the land, and her jealousy over it when Snow White becomes the new fairest and desire to get rid of the competition is her motivation for killing her off.
- Fairy Tale: A short fantasy story featuring folkloric creatures that has been told and retold for generations.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: The evil stepmother is forced to dance in red-hot shoes until she dies.
- Faux Death: Snow White falls into a deathlike slumber. She gets better.
- Four Is Death: The evil queen attempts to kill Snow White four separate times: using a huntsman to assassinate her, tightening her stomach with a thread, poisoning her with a comb, and feeding her a poisoned apple. The second and third attempts are removed in the Disney adaptation.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics portrays Snow as this. She's a very feminine-looking girl who is the Team Mom for the dwarves and has very long black hair with a red hairbow, but is first seen happily getting up trees with her Canon Foreigner best friend Klaus to get her beloved apples and being scolded by her nanny for doing such "not-ladylike" things.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: The queen is entirely evil.
- Good Is Not Soft: Guess who ordered to execute the Evil Queen? The Prince.
- Good Princess, Evil Queen: In the fairy tale and vast majority of adaptations the kind and virtuous princess Snow White is pitted against her Wicked Stepmother, the evil queen.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Envy of Snow White spurs the Queen on.
- Happily Ever After: Snow White and the Prince get married at the end and live together happily.
- Historical Fiction: Gregory Maguire's version called Mirror Mirror takes place in Italy, with Lucrezia Borgia as the wicked witch.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The queen eats what she thinks is Snow White's heart. Not her fault it was a cheap knockoff.
- Irony: The animated adaptation by Jetlag had it be the mirror who finally disposes of the queen. Fed up with her petty grudge, it sucks her into itself and traps her. Throughout the cartoon it's pretty clear that the mirror dislikes the queen for going after Snow White, but why it didn't stop her sooner is never answered.
- Jerkass: The queen in some versions, including the 2001 television production Snow White: The Fairest of Them All. She thinks the whole world revolves around her and has little regard for others, which helps to stand her out from Snow White, whose personality is the polar opposite.
- Killer Outfit: In the version recorded by The Brothers Grimm, the wicked queen first tries to kill her beautiful step-daughter with a corset laced tightly enough to suffocate. When that fails, she tries a poisonous hair comb.
- Lighter and Softer: Russian version by Alexander Pushkin removes the most gruesome and squicky aspects of the story. The Queen doesn't want to eat her step-daughter's heart - "just" have her left in the forest to die; the prince doesn't fall in love with a corpse - he was engaged to her even before the kidnapping and when he finds her, he breaks the coffin in grief, and she's revived by the Power of Love; and they don't make the Queen dance in red-hot iron shoes (because people don't do such sick stuff in Russia!) and she just dies of spite and envy (or maybe kills herself) after learning that the princess is alive and recovered.
- Love at First Sight: The prince falls in love with Snow White as soon as he sees her. If only she weren't comatose at the time.
- Merciful Minion: The huntsman who refuses to kill Snow White and instead brings back the heart of a deer.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: The dwarfs can't bear to bury Snow White, so they put her in a glass coffin (in some versions) or simply leave her lying on the bier (in others).
- Named by the Adaptation: The nameless dwarfs tend to get this:
- Most famously, the Disney animated film named them as Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey.
- The anime series Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics and a live-action film starring Kristin Kreuk and Miranda Richardson named them after the days of the week from Monday to Sunday.
- Snow White & the Huntsman named them after letters of the Old Irish medieval alphabet: Beith, Coll, Duir, Gort, Muir, Nion, and Quert. An eighth dwarf is named Gus.
- In the 2001 television film, the queen (played by Miranda Richardson) is named Elspeth, while some material relating to the Disney version give her the name Grimhilde.
- No Ontological Inertia: Everything the queen does to Snow White works this way. Stabbed by a poisoned comb? No problem! Just remove the comb and you'll be fine! Justified in the case of the first attempt, which was a corset. It was tied so tight that she couldn't breathe, thus cutting it off in time saved her.
- Offing the Offspring: In early versions, the Queen was Snow White's biological mother, yet she was still jealous of her daughter and tried to kill her.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The seven dwarfs are short and mine for ore, otherwise there are no other explicitly mentioned traits they seem have in common with dwarfs/dwarves in modern (read: post-Tolkien) fantasy literature.
- Parental Abandonment: Snow White's father is often written as dead while her biological mother is consistently deceased.
- Papa Wolf: In some Scottish versions, the Huntsman is Snow White's father. While he can't oppose his lover, he can still send their child away.
- Perspective Flip:
- The 2009 novel Fairest of All: A Tale of... the Wicked Queen makes the Queen the protagonist, and in the process of giving her a backstory addresses such issues as what happened to Snow White's dad, the origin of the Magic Mirror, etc. The Queen becomes evil due to a combination of parental abuse that continues from beyond the grave and the death of the King, the only man who ever truly loved her, and it warps her view of Snow's beauty, innocence, and good nature.
- There is also a short story ("Red as Blood" by Tanith Lee) that gives a different view on the matter: the Queen is actually a heroine who recognizes that the King's first wife (Snow White's mother) was a vampire. After trying several tests (seeing if Snow will go near a rose bush, look in a mirror, or take communion), the Queen determines that the princess is a vampire as well and sends a hunter with a cross to kill her before she reaches adulthood and goes off to kill people as her mother did. This does not go too well so the Queen disguises herself as a hag and gives Snow the apple (actually from the flesh of Jesus) which puts her into a coma. The "prince" (implied to be Jesus) wakes her up and turns her into a human girl. Oh, and the dwarves are stunted tree spirits in it.
- "Snow, Glass, Apples", by Neil Gaiman, is also told from the perspective of the Queen, who came to realize that Snow White's father died because the little girl was sucking his blood. The queen eventually succeeds in poisoning Snow White with the apple, but the prince who finds her is explicitly stated to be a necrophiliac who wants her because she's dead. The two marry and shut the stepmother up in an oven. The queen is narrating the story while being roasted alive.
- The Twisted Fairy Tales collection starts with a take on Snow White. Like the above, it's told mostly from the perspective of the Queen. Unlike the other others here, she is her mother, like in the first version and is still definitely the villain. However, she remains somewhat pitiful, if only because one sees she was once a good person, before she started to lose her sanity and became an evil Vain Sorceress.
- "Richilda" retells the story from the stepmother's perspective. The fun part is that it predates Grimms' by decades.
- Princess Protagonist: Take a guess. Princess Snow White is the lead character.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Snow White has "skin as white as snow" and "hair as black as ebony".
- Related Differently in the Adaptation: In some early versions of "Snow White", the evil queen is actually Snow White's biological mother, though later versions had her as Snow White's stepmother, which is by far the most popular iteration.
- Rule of Three:
- The queen makes three assassination attempts in person before they pay off.
- In the Grimm fairy tale, after Snow White's "death" her coffin is visited by three birds: an owl, a raven and a dove. It's an odd little detail, but scholars think they symbolize death and rebirth.
- Self-Poisoning Gambit: In some versions of the tale, only one side of the apple is poisoned, and the queen takes a bite out of the other, unpoisoned side to "prove" the apple was safe and get Snow White to eat it.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Quite possibly the most famous example in fiction, a young girl sentenced to death for the crime of being beautiful.
- Spared by the Adaptation: At least one incarnation ends in the queen just giving up on killing Snow White after she marries her Prince Charming. She realizes the mirror speaks the truth and just never asks it "Who's fairest?" ever again.
- Tempting Apple: The queen disguises herself as a peddler in order to kill Snow White, and the third and successful attempt involves a delicious-looking, but poisoned apple.
- Textile Work Is Feminine: The first queen was sewing when she pricked herself, producing the blood and the famous wish.
- Vain Sorceress: The queen, who doesn't seem to makes any use for her magic for any reason other than make sure she is the fairest in the land no matter what.
- Wicked Stepmother: In first editions of the Grimm version, it was averted since the evil queen in those versions was actually Snow White's birth mother, but later editions changed her into a stepmother, and most adaptations followed.
- World's Most Beautiful Woman: The queen is the "fairest of them all" at first, and then Snow White gains the title.
