{"id":303446,"date":"2020-07-16T15:29:21","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T19:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=303446"},"modified":"2023-11-08T20:16:34","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T01:16:34","slug":"the-tale-of-snow-white-and-what-the-various-versions-mean-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2020\/07\/the-tale-of-snow-white-and-what-the-various-versions-mean-to-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow White and the darkness within us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tArts & Culture\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tSnow White and the darkness within us\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tMaria Tatar collects versions of the tale from around the world and explains how they give us a way to think about what we prefer not to\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\n\t

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\n\t\tManisha Aggarwal-Schifellite\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\"A

A 1923 illustration of Snow White resting in a glass coffin by Gustaf Tenggren, a Swedish American illustrator who worked as an animator for The Walt Disney Co. in the 1930s.<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n

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Walt Disney\u2019s \u201cSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs\u201d was released as the first feature-length animated film in 1937, and decades later, the musical fantasy based on a Grimm Brothers fairy tale about the complications and conflicts in the mother-daughter relationship is still a cultural touchstone. The story has virtually eclipsed every version of the many told the world over about beautiful girls and their older rivals, often a cruel biological mother or stepmother, but sometimes an aunt or a mother-in-law. In her new book, \u201cThe Fairest of Them All: Snow White and 21 Tales of Mothers and Daughters<\/a>,\u201d Maria Tatar<\/a>, the John L. Loeb Research Professor of Folklore and Mythology and Germanic Languages and Literatures and a senior fellow in Harvard\u2019s Society of Fellows, collected tales from a variety of nations, including Egypt, Japan, Switzerland, Armenia, and India. She spoke to the Gazette about her lifelong fascination with the saga and how we can look to fairy tales to navigate uncertain times.<\/p>\n

Q&A<\/h2>\n

Maria Tatar<\/h3>\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong><\/strong> Why did you decide to take up the Snow White story?<\/p>\n

TATAR:\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>While working on my previous book with Henry Louis \u201cSkip\u201d Gates Jr., \u201cThe Annotated African American Folktales<\/a>,\u201d I came across a South African story called \u201cThe Unnatural Mother and the Girl with a Star on Her Forehead.\u201d It was basically what we call the Snow White story, but in it the \u201cbeautiful girl\u201d falls into a catatonic trance after putting on slippers given to her by her jealous mother. That\u2019s when I fell down the rabbit hole of wonder tales and discovered stories from all over the world in which a stunningly attractive young woman arouses the jealousy of a woman who is usually her biological mother. The Brothers Grimm, whose 1812 story inspired Walt Disney to create the animated film, had many vernacular tales available to them, but they chose to publish the one in which the rival is the stepmother, in part because they did not want to violate the sanctity of motherhood. Now, decades later, it is still our cultural story about the many complications and conflicts in the mother-daughter relationship. It has eradicated almost every trace of the many tales told all over the world about beautiful girls and their rivals.<\/p>\n

GAZETTE:\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>Why does this particular story remain so resonant?<\/p>\n

TATAR:\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>All of the tales in this collection are cliffhangers. They begin with the counterfactual \u201cWhat if?\u201d then leave us asking \u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u201d and finally challenge us to ask \u201cWhy?\u201d These stories were originally told in communal settings, and they got people talking about all the conflicts, pressures, and injustices in real life. How do you create an ending that is not just happily ever after, but also \u201cthe fairest of them all\u201d? What do you do when faced with worst-case possible scenarios? What do you need to survive cruelty, abandonment, and assault? In fairy tales, the answer often comes in the form of wits, intelligence, and resourcefulness on the one hand, and courage on the other. With their melodramatic mysteries, they arouse our curiosity and make us care about the characters. They tell us something about the value of seeking knowledge and feeling compassion under the worst of circumstances, and that\u2019s a lesson that makes us pay attention today.<\/p>\n\r\n

\u201cAll of the tales in this collection are cliffhangers. They begin with the counterfactual ‘What if?’ then leave us asking ‘What\u2019s next?’ and finally challenge us to ask ‘Why?’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong><\/strong> Can you explain the connection between Snow White\u2019s skin color and her innocence and goodness?<\/p>\n

TATAR:<\/strong><\/strong> The red, white, and black color coding in many European versions of this story reminds me of how the Grimms believed that those were the colors of poetry. Their beautiful girl is \u201cwhite as snow, red as blood, and black as the wood on this window frame.\u201d It was Disney who changed that to \u201clips red as the rose, hair black as ebony, and skin white as snow.\u201d When you look at other versions of the story, you realize that, generally, the daughter\u2019s skin color is not an issue, though, curiously, there is a Samoan version of the tale with a girl with albinism who is an outcast. The fact that the beautiful girl in a global repertoire of stories about mothers and daughters is stereotyped as having skin white as snow because of the influence of the Grimm and Disney versions limits the global cultural resonance of the story. There\u2019s nothing sacred about the Grimms\u2019 version of that fairy tale or about Disney\u2019s reimagining of it, but we tend to think of Grimm and Disney as the \u201coriginals,\u201d and, unfortunately, they have become the \u201cauthoritative\u201d versions.<\/p>\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong><\/strong> What are some of the themes or morals that you found across the tales you collected for this volume?<\/p>\n

TATAR:<\/strong><\/strong> Tales about beautiful girls circulated in adult storytelling cultures, in communal settings. They gave parents a way to talk about, think about, and address their own complicated feelings and unacknowledged resentment about raising children only to have them grow up and exceed you in one way or another. Myths and fairy tales enact all the fantasies, fears, anxieties, and terrors stored up in our imaginations that we are ordinarily afraid to talk about. By amplifying and exaggerating real-life conflicts, folktales animated our ancestors, getting them to sit up, listen, and think. In the safe space of \u201conce upon a time,\u201d they could explore taboo subjects and talk about the dark side of human nature. They are the symbolic stories that help us talk about and navigate the real. That\u2019s why a psychologist like Bruno Bettelheim saw in the telling of the stories a form of therapeutic value.<\/p>\n

But there is more to these stories than cathartic release. Fairy tales are also a great contact zone for all generations, enabling us to think more and think harder about crisis, resources, and recovery in a whole range of situations: famine, expulsion, abduction, loss, dispossession, enslavement, and so on, all the terrible things that can happen to us.<\/p>\n\r\n\t\n\n\t

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A 1923 illustration of Snow White and the hunter by Gustaf Tenggren.\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\n\t\r\n\n\r\n
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