Snow White: Brothers Grimm v Disney

Maybe I’ve been desensitized by all of our slightly disgusting and gory versions of Disney fairy tales, but this weeks reading of Snow White did not surprise me very much. I mostly found similarities to Disney’s adaptation of Snow White, especially at a very base level.

One part that did throw me off was the very end. The evil queen takes the punishment of her wrongdoings to Snow White when Snow White tortures the Queen by forcing her to dance in the hot iron shoes. In Disney’s version, the Queen is falls off a cliff that is struck by lightening, afterward she is eaten by buzzards. I think Disney preferred an ending that shows that fate has taken care of the Queen, as opposed to Snow White torturing the Queen. In Disney’s version, the Queen is still evil when she dies, whereas in Grimms we see a slight character change because Grimms describes the fear the Queen feels when she sees Snow White. Snow White remains innocent at the end of the Disney version, but in Grimm’s she is also a punisher.

I think the theme of Snow White is about the negative effects of naïveté. Snow White is incredibly naive in her trusting of the Queen’s trick, despite warnings from the dwarves