5 Fascinating Interpretations of “Snow White”

You know how it goes: the beautiful princess and the wicked queen; the magic mirror and the poisoned apple; “love’s first kiss” and “the fairest of them all.” But is that really the whole story? Where does it come from? And what does it mean? To help shed some light, here are five different interpretations of the fairy tale “Snow White.” 

1. It’s a tale with no fixed form.
2. It’s (partly) inspired by historic fact.
3. It represents childhood jealousies.
4. It shows the tyranny of patriarchy.
5. It’s about the pain of motherhood.

It’s a tale with no fixed form.

Disney’s 1937 animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has become the dominant version of the “Snow White” tale, but it’s by no means the only version, or the original. Like all fairy tales, “Snow White” has its roots in oral storytelling. It was passed down by word-of-mouth and adapted with each retelling, eventually recorded—and altered—by folklorists like Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. There are variants of “Snow White” found in folklore from across the globe; Disney’s iteration is based on the tale first published by the Grimms in 1812, in which the titular heroine does encounter a group of seven dwarfs, but elsewhere she takes refuge with robbers (Belgium and Italy), dragons (France), fairies (Italy), and even a gang of magical talking cats (Scotland). Similarly, the vehicle of poisoning varies across cultures, including by enchanted ring (Spain), grapes (Greece), slippers (South Africa), and a red dress (France). In one Scottish variation, the wicked queen converses not with a magic mirror, but a talking trout. 

It’s (partly) inspired by historic fact.

Some scholars now believe that one of the many stories that influenced the Grimms’ version of “Snow White” may have been taken from actual history: Margaretha von Waldeck was a German countess born in 1533, whose mother passed away when she was 4 years old. Margaretha’s father subsequently remarried, and, when she was 16, he sent his daughter away to the court of Queen Maria von Ungarn in Brussels. The young countess was a renowned beauty who attracted many romantic admirers, including the future Philip II of Spain, but tragically died at 21 from suspected arsenic poisoning. It’s thought she was murdered, though by arsenic rather than enchanted apple. There’s another curious (and sad) fairy tale resonance in Margaretha’s story: her family owned several copper, ore, and gold mines, which used child labor. Grueling underground working conditions meant these children’s faces aged prematurely while their growth remained stunted, meaning they looked like miniature elderly adults. It’s been suggested they may have inspired the mining dwarfs featured in the Grimms’ tale.

It represents childhood jealousies.

Many have argued that similar stories reappear throughout different cultures because they contain universal truths that speak to the heart of the human experience. This was the view of renowned psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim [PDF], for whom “Snow White” is best understood as an expression of childhood resentment and desire: “the story deals essentially with the oedipal conflicts between mother and daughter,” he writes in his seminal 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. According to Bettelheim, Snow White and her step-mother are in competition for the affection of the king, whose significance to the tale’s underlying meaning is implied by his conspicuous absence. In an act of psychological transference, the queen’s murderous jealousy of her step-daughter in fact represents the child’s unconscious jealousy of her mother, whose position she wishes to usurp [PDF]. 

It shows the tyranny of patriarchy.

In their groundbreaking work of feminist literary criticism The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that the Grimms’ “Little Snow White” enacts the splitting of self that occurs in women under patriarchy: “while the queen struggles to free herself from the passive Snow White in herself, Snow White must struggle to repress the assertive queen in herself.” Gilbert and Gubar characterize the queen as an artist—“a woman of almost infinite creative energy”—whereas Snow White, inert in her glass coffin, is art, “an object to be displayed and desired.” The magic mirror, meanwhile, represents the internalized voice of the patriarchy, who judges the value of each. The choice presented to women is bleak: conform, like Snow White, and relinquish all agency, or rebel, like the queen, and risk dancing to death in red-hot iron shoes.

It’s about the pain of motherhood.

In her 1990 essay “Reading ‘Snow White’: The Mother’s Story,” first published in the journal Signs, Shuli Barzilai argues that “Snow White” reflects “the alterations that occur within a woman as a result of her own experiences in the maternal role.” For Barzilai, the passing of Snow White’s birth mother in the Grimms’ version of the tale represents not a literal demise, but rather the symbolic death of her pre-motherhood self. During her daughter’s infancy, the queen and Snow White are as one, but she is “re-born” as the wicked queen when Snow White reaches the age of 7, and begins to pull away from her. The mirror’s assertion that Snow White has superseded her attractiveness reinforces this separation; as Barzilai explains, the queen “loses control over the beauty, the creation that seemed an extension of herself.” The queen’s desire to eat Snow White’s organs can thus be understood as a desire to return to that state of physical unity.

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