I never liked Snow White. I know, I said that about Little Red Riding Hood too, but it's true. As far as Disney goes, I always preferred the movies from the late 80s-90s, which I recently discovered is called the "Disney Renaissance." But, I digress.
My biggest problem with Snow White is that she's stupid. She's the fairest in all the land but she repeatedly lets strangers into her house. In my mind, it's a survival-of-the-fittest scenario and she is miraculously saved again and again despite her own naivety. In most version, Snow White "dies" multiple times! A high school teacher once told me that the definition of crazy is trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. According to that teacher, Snow White is crazy because she expects to let strangers in and have it end without her dying. I also dislike that Snow White, in every version, relies on other people to save her. She just lies there helplessly. Even Maria Tartar says, "Snow White [is] so dull that she requires a supporting cast of seven to enliven her scenes." I think she is a terrible role model for girls. Beauty isn't everything.
I'll have to go watch the intro to Disney's Snow White on YouTube, because I have no recollection that the evil queen was Snow White's stepmother, as the introduction to Snow White in The Classic Fairy Tales discusses. I will say that I have always thought the queen was an excellent villain, but she's better in some versions than in others. I also never realized how violent the story of Snow White really is until I read all of the versions in The Classic Fairy Tales. Snow White gets beaten in The Young Slave, killed several times in the Brothers Grimm version (lace, comb, apple), gets her fingers cut off and is killed in Lasair Gheug, and again dies several times (lace, comb, apple) in Anne Sexton's poem. And yet things always end happily for Snow White, through no actions of her own. At least the hunter is always a virtuous character in each version, refusing to kill an innocent girl, and lying to cover for her. (Okay, so lying is particularly virtuous, but we'll forgive it in this case.)
Last note: Did it seem funny to anyone else that Snow White's name in Giambattista Basile's The Young Slave is Lisa?
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