Dawson Shannon
English 575
Dr. Rufleth
4/16/17
An
History of Christian Thought in Snow White
Snow White is one of the most beloved and well-known
stories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although Disney is
responsible for this modern resurgence in fame, Snow White has endured and
survived for centuries. This story, with its many iterations and
reinterpretations, serves to inspire and awe audiences of all ages; this is
true regardless of the reader’s age. When analyzing the effect and power of a
story like Snow White, one must always look to its conception. By tracing an
historical line through major works and iterations based on the Snow-White
tale, one can see how trends and beliefs evolve over time. By comparing
Giambattista Basile’s “The Young Slave” (1634), the Brothers Grimm “Snow White”
(1812), Anne Sexton’s Snow “White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1928), and Neil
Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples” (1994) one can see how perceptions of Snow White
and her trials evolve and, arguably, devolve from iteration to reiteration.
Those editions of Snow White that were written before the
mid-twentieth century serve similar purposes. Basile, Brothers Grimm, and
Sexton all retell a story wherein Snow White is a representative Christ figure.
This young, innocent girl experiences, as Steve Swann Jones acknowledges, “birth,
jealousy, expulsion, adoption, renewed jealousy, death, exhibition,
resuscitation, and resolution” (85). Much like Christ, Snow White stands as a
rod by which readers of all ages may measure themselves. One such area of
reflection these stories allow for is the role of a fatherless birth. How does
the shifting view of immaculate conception in Snow White allow for an
understanding of shifting views of religiosity and morality?
Consider Basile’s 1634 “The Young Slave Girl” wherein
the young woman, named Lisa, is pure and wholly innocent. Much like Christ,
Lisa is a product of immaculate conception after her mother “picked [a leaf] up
from the ground … and swallowed it” (92). This reference to the natural, yet
supernatural conception of Lisa is a clear comparison to Christ. Lisa, much
like Jesus, is a product of the will of God and must be, according to the minds
of the readers, an innocent creation. By the utilization of plant metaphors,
Basile allows for Lisa to exist as a simple, yet necessary creation in the
world. She is not, as is the rest of humanity, a creation of mutual effort
between two human beings. Instead, Lisa is a simple seedling. This plant
imagery invokes biblical thoughts of agriculture; the Apostle Paul, when
addressing the Church at Corinth reminds his parishioners that “so then neither
is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth
the increase” (King James Bible, 1 Cor. 3.7). The use of plant imagery serves
to remind the readers that the growth of plants, both in the ground and in
Lilla’s womb, is God’s will, and that God works “all things together for good”
(King James Bible, Rom. 8.28). The rest of Lisa’s life serves as a story of perseverance,
patience, and godliness for those reading. Basile’s story is one of moral hope;
a hope that begins with an immaculate conception.
Like
Basile’s rendition, the later Brothers Grimm 1812 story, “Snow White,” details
the conception of Snow White through a gentle prick of a thorn. The Brothers
Grimm note that “a queen was sitting and sewing by a window … [and] while she
was sewing … she pricked her finger with a needle … [and] soon thereafter she
gave birth to a child” (95). While it is true that more modern feminist
readings of this exchange see the prick of the finger, and subsequent blood, as
a metaphorical allusion to sexual penetration, the prick of the needle serves
spiritual significance. For the queen, Snow White is a blessing that originates
from pain. This idea of suffering to bear fruit is common and known to those of
the Christian faith. Consider the words of the Apostle Paul when he tells the
Church at Corinth that “there was given to me a thorn in the flesh …
[and] I am become a fool in glorying” (King James Bible, 2 Cor. 12.7, 11).
Paul notes that although he is pricked by a thorn and suffers, he is glad to
bear fruit and glorify God in doing so.
As
a break, both in time and in literary style, from the previous two
interpretations of the Snow-White fairy tale, Anna Sexton, in her 1928 poem “Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs”, poetically reminds the readers of Snow Whites
immaculate conception. Sexton attributes the supernatural creation of Snow
White to the thrust of a unicorn. Again, feminist interpretations may assert
the sexualized and phallic nature of a unicorn thrust, but the following lines
serve to disprove such notions. Sexton notes that the queen’s eyes are “shut
for the thrust / of the unicorn. / She is unsoiled / She is as white as a
bonefish” (102). By acknowledging the supernatural pick necessary to conceive
Snow White and the following assertion that the queen remains pure, Sexton
proves to the readers the divine, immaculate conception of Snow White. Much
like Christ’s conception through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the unicorn
serves as a divine being who, through the puncture of his horn, impregnates the
queen. While further parallels between punctures and Paul’s thorn are easily
drawn, the comparison between the divine nature of conception by divine beings
evidences the supernatural nature of Snow White conception.
Marianne Stoke’s Snow White, 1900
Whereas Basile, Brothers Grimm, and Anne Sexton all
portray the conception of Snow White as small supernatural or divine acts, Neil
Gaiman, in his 1994 story “Snow, Glass, Apples,” creates, in Snow White, a
damnable beast. Gaiman, when describing the birth of Snow White and beginning
his short story, notes, through the eyes of Snow White’s step-mother, or evil
witch, that “I do not know what manner of thing she is. None of us do. She
killed her mother in the birthing, but that’s never enough to account for it”
(106). Gaiman, in a seeming departure from classical understandings of Snow
White’s birth as being positively divine, notes that Snow White is the cause of
her mother’s death. Unlike the usual description of death in childbirth, Gaiman
utilizes the active verb “killed.” The birth of Snow White is not what kills
her mother; she does. This breaks from the God-given and ordained birth of Snow
White in earlier stories. By observing the transition from ancestor to modern,
readers see the shift from religiously moral, to modern secular amoralism.
When observing the shift in Snow-White type tales, one
may not notice a shift in moral religiosity between Basile’s seventeenth
century work and Sexton’s early twentieth century work; the true shift between
classical and modern fairy tales, regarding Snow White, is seen in the years
between Sexton (1928) and Gaiman (1994). This shift marks a rise in secularist
literature and a departure from religiously inspired morality within the
literature. Whereas Snow White, being a type of Christ, as is seen in her
virgin birth, stands as a measuring rod of patient morality in the earlier
works, Gaiman’s modern rendition serves as a shift and break from tradition.
Through this break, one sees that history is not always as it seems; perhaps
Gaiman’s interpretation also serves to set a foundation for future editions to
classical fairy tales.
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