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Walt Disney & the Brothers Grimm: A Comparative Analysis of Snow White

Snow White became a part of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales in 1812 and was made into a classic, feature length film by the Walt Disney company in 1937. Exactly 200 years later, Mirror, Mirror comes out this weekend (starring Julia Roberts) and Snow White and the Huntsman comes out June 1; as audiences watch the new adaptations (one a comedy, one a drama) the 1937 Walt Disney version is the one most will mentally reference as the film progresses to spot changes and similarities, inwardly considering Walt Disney's to be the original; what might seem to be changes to the story could, in fact, be citations of the original story which Disney himself changed to create his world that we all know so well.
Little Snow White, the original Grimm Brothers' tale, can be read here for free; it's only a couple of pages and quite interesting. As we review Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, I will be referencing significant changes Disney made to the story (I had originally intended to also post on the 1997 film Snow White: A Tale Of Terror which has some interesting aspects to it, and I will mention it from time to time, but not specifically post on it; it is available for instant viewing on Netflix).
In 1937, when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released, who was poor and dressed in rags?
The Great Depression was in full-swing, and there was unprecedented unemployment and food lines; like Snow White, most Americans were hoping for that thrill of true love that would get the heartbeat going again and lead the country out of the dark times. But an economic and historical analysis doesn't explain why the film is so timeless; we might argue it's the great artistry of the illustrations, but with advances in computer animation nearly every day, wouldn't that make Snow White seem old and worthless? (Not that I would ever argue that).
When there is a story that achieves the timeless quality, it's because it's about something that is timeless, and that is the soul. (I know there are readers who will say I am reading into this story what I want to; regardless, Snow White does say a prayer when she's spending the night at the seven dwarfs' house, and that verbal verification of Snow White "being in communion with God," allows us to understand God answering her prayers in the tradition by which God works).
The opening shot of the castle isn't to let us know that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a fairy tale, it's to let us know that we are about to be given a royal lesson on what life is and what each of us should know about living. Fairy tales are the secular parables often validating the Biblical parables taught by Christ, just employing a different method of decoding (with two editions of Snow White coming out this year, two versions of Hansel and Gretel and Jack and the Giant Killer, not to mention the plethora of fairy tales on TV this year, the entertainment industry obviously thinks we need to be taught some lessons again).
"Slave in the magic mirror, come from the farthest space, through wind and darkness I summon thee. Speak! Let me see thy face." The first word of this film is "slave," and who is the slave but the one saying the word? In theory, structuralism is an approach which communicates to the audience through the way it structures opposites and opposing forces throughout the story. For example, Snow White is dressed as a slave, a scullery maid, but is royal in blood and beauty; the queen, dressed as royalty, is not royal by right of blood or inner beauty and she is the slave to her own appetites (these are devices we will see again in both Snow White tales this year). As we have discussed before, mirrors and glass symbolize reflection and inner-meditation; the queen literally perverts (turns upside-down) what mirrors are used for: instead of looking at herself, she uses the mirror to look at others and judge whether or not they are as fair as she.
In the Grimm Brothers' version, the stepmother/queen asks the Mirror, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who in this land is fairest of all?" and the queen always believes the mirror and knows the mirror tells the truth. This brings us to a fascinating aspect of the spiritual life: the devil will tell us "the truth" if he can use it to lead us further away from God, and this is exactly what happens. The mirror knows the queen cannot bear to not be the fairest in the land, and she will do anything to stay fairest in the land, so he tells her the terrible truth, knowing that she will eat it up and be eaten up by it; the same happens in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the Grimm Brothers' tale, there are a few more details making the story on a more obvious spiritual plane, such as Snow White being only seven when she becomes "a thousand times fairer" than the queen. Seven is the number of the sacraments (wait on the dwarfs!) and so at her young age, she was all ready to be fully receptive to the sacraments because of her inner "snow white" beauty.
In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Magic Mirror doesn't even need to name the girl fairer than the queen, the queen knows by her traits listed by the Magic Mirror; to be fairer than the queen is to be the enemy of the queen and hence to be sentenced to death. We then see Snow White for the first time, and this simple pose and circumstance (a favorite of Disney artists) tells us everything we need to know about why she is as white as snow."Rags cannot hide her simple grace" the Magic Mirror tells the queen, and it's that grace which makes her fairer than the queen and evil which the queen will employ to destroy Snow White.
The setting and tasks of Snow White are exactly the opposite of the queen's (structure again): The queen is removed from nature (nothing living is inside the queen's chamber), Snow White is outside (flowers are growing and there are birds). The queen consults a "magic mirror" to survey how others look (to see the face in the Magic Mirror, not her own heart), while Snow White looks into water (the wishing well) to see her heart's inmost desire. The queen, in conversing with the Magic Mirror, converses with the devil (Grumpy says so when he mentions her practicing black magic) whereas Snow White converses with the Holy Spirit in the guise of the doves, the embodiment He took at Christ's Baptism. These two elements, the stone and water (her cleaning the stone staircase), present in this shot, can be juxtaposed against the shot when the queen will die (the rain will be hitting against the stone entrapment where she will "fall" to her death, "fall" being the spiritual death she will experience).
Knowing that about the queen, we can say that this is the moment (scrubbing the stone steps with water) that Snow White "comes to life" even as the queen has set herself on the path of death. The stones refers to the staircase to heaven" and the firmness of purpose with which Snow White's "simple grace" has resolved her to set her course and path in light to attain; the water she uses on the steps is te grace she needs to continue and keep herself clean from temptations. Both women are at a staircase; the queen goes up the steps to the Magic Mirror, Snow White stays at the bottom and cleans them, because of Snow White's humility, she doesn't ascend, but because of the queen['s pride, she does ascend, even into the heavens themselves as we can tell by her decorations of astrology where the Magic Mirror is kept.
What is Snow White doing at the wishing well?
Her night she spends at the cottage of the seven dwarfs she prays at her bedside, and then she prays again (making her wish known to God) before biting into the poisoned apple (which is what saves her from the poison of the apple). When we pray, it's important that we don't think we are dropping our prayers into an empty well, rather, that the Spirit who is Holy not only hears our prayers, but was the one who prompted us to make the prayer to begin with. Perhaps the strangest line in this song, "I'm hoping, and I'm dreaming of, the nice things, he'll say," is also the most damning, literally, because the Magic Mirror tells the queen nice things, i.e., the things she wants to hear, but Snow White is longing for the nice things that are the truth.
To say the wish is to utter the prayer, and to utter the prayer is for the prayer to be answered. When the heart sings its prayer, that is the most powerful prayer there is, because it is the unification of your heart and your mind making your petition to God. It doesn't seem as if her prayer is answered, because as soon as they find each other, the loose each other, but that's the way God works: He tells you what He is going to do, then leads you of into the Wilderness for ever, then brings you back out of exile and fulfills His Promise to you, because you weren't really praying for what you wanted, you were praying for what God all ready wanted to give you, and in uniting your will to His, you put your heart and soul upon the path of life He created for you. That's just the way it works, there's no getting around it.
The Prince, then, is God, the True Lover of our soul because He is the creator of it. When we finally get deep enough within ourselves, we see God there, too. Then He leaves us, and there's darkness and we don't see Him again until after the long sleep has ended (but that's further on). We can know that Snow White is truly in a state of Grace with her Creator because, after she has run away from Him (this is the typical fear that prophets and Biblical figures show when approached by God, remember, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God,") is that instead of running to change her clothes, like most women would do, she straightens her dress, but she is not afraid of being seen in the humble clothes of the scullery maid; it's because of her humility that she is attractive to the prince, to her God and Creator, unlike the queen.
When the prince serenades Snow White, she comes out from behind the curtain revealing herself to Him as Eve did not reveal herself to God after she partook of the Forbidden Fruit (more on that later). Whereas Eve's appetites were such that she had a greedy streak in her to taste the Forbidden fruit, the kiss which Snow White sends to the prince on the dove (symbolic of the Holy Spirit) gives the kiss to the prince on the teeth; not on the lips, but on the teeth. This is an important aspect because, as a part of the mouth, the teeth symbolize the appetites, and teeth are important to the characters of this story (both Dopey and the queen as the Peddler woman have only one tooth) but the cleanness and whiteness of the prince's teeth mean that his appetites are purged and true, not self-serving as the queen's are.
And now enters the Huntsman.
Taker her into the forest where she can pick wild flowers, the queen tells him, and there you will kill her! The picking of ht wild flowers symbolizes of course the pleasures of the world, the appetites, because the forest and what happens there, is the fall from grace. The reason it's a "huntsman" doing it is because of the way the devil "hunts for our souls" (as the Lenten entreaty says, "The Lord will save us from the hunter's snare"). The queen is fully enslaved to the Magic Mirror, and the queen believes the Huntsman to be as enslaved to her, so it''s not that she trusts him (because that would be a virtue) it's that she trusts in her power to frighten him into doing her bidding.
This is the text of the original Little Snow White from the Brothers Grimm: Then she summoned a huntsman and said to him, "Take Snow-White out into the woods. I never want to see her again. Kill her, and as proof that she is dead bring her lungs and her liver back to me." The huntsman obeyed and took Snow-White into the woods. He took out his hunting knife and was about to stab it into her innocent heart when she began to cry, saying, "Oh, dear huntsman, let me live. I will run into the wild woods and never come back." Because she was so beautiful the huntsman took pity on her, and he said, "Run away, you poor child." He thought, "The wild animals will soon devour you anyway," but still it was as if a stone had fallen from his heart, for he would not have to kill her. Just then a young boar came running by. He killed it, cut out its lungs and liver, and took them back to the queen as proof of Snow-White's death. The cook had to boil them with salt, and the wicked woman ate them, supposing that she had eaten Snow-White's lungs and liver.
Why her lungs and liver?
I think for two reasons. One, it shows the real bestiality of the queen, because back then, the lungs and liver of an animal were regularly eaten as food so it displays what the queen thought of Snow White (and all people in general, animals, not people); but of course, in thinking of others as animals, it shows what an animal she is. Secondly, the spiritual significance: the lungs permit us to take in "the breath of life" (the kiss the prince will give to Snow White at the end of Disney's version) and the liver is vital for detoxification and cleansing, as well as metabolism, so we can get rid of toxins within us (sin and our appetites to sin) nor can we digest food, that is, the Food of God, the Bread of Life and the Word of God by which we are called to live. So, the queen is not only wanting to kill Snow White physically, but kill her spiritually as well.   ﻿﻿
As Snow White goes about gathering her "wild flowers," she sings the song the prince sang to her, "I have but one love," and this reveals the reason the queen wants Snow White's heart: by removing the love for the prince (for God) by removing the heart, Snow White will no longer be Snow White and pure, because she will loser her spiritual capabilities. The queen doesn't have to do that though, just the temptation of the world is enough to lure Snow White off the path and for her to get lost. But I'm jumping ahead. First, Snow White stops gathering flowers to see to a little blue bird; is this just hokey or what? No, because this demonstrates how compassionate it is to everything living, even a little bird, and because of her own hardships (having lost her mother and father) she is therefore able to exercise more compassion. Later, we will see how little compassion the queen has, when she goes off to deliver the poisoned apple to Snow White and the queen (as the peddler woman) stops and kicks a drink pitcher at a skeleton). We can be confident that this scene illustrates Snow White's compassion because, to those who have compassion, compassion will be shown, and the huntsman shows Snow White compassion in letting her live and telling her what the evil queen intends for her. As the huntsman comes to kill Snow White, his eyes turn green, meaning, in carrying out his orders to execute Snow White, he sees her as the queen sees her ("green with envy"). When Snow White realizes the huntsman is going to kill her, she screams but doesn't beg for her life the way she does in the Brothers Grimm version; Snow White is resigned to her fate, but this also provides a chance to humanize the huntsman and his penance shows he is still human even while the queen is not.
Snow White is not playing dumb, and this can get a bit annoying for people watching the film today (we are so wise in our cynicsism) but because she couldn't imagine wanting to kill anyone, she can't imagine anyone wanting to kill her. As the Magic Mirror named off traits of Snow White when the queen asked who was fairer than she, so Snow White asks the huntsman who is so bad that they would want to kill her and even after naming all the terrible traits, Snow White (unlike the queen) still doesn't know who it is, because her purity is purer than the queen's evil is evil.
Why does Snow White getting lost in the woods happen this way? Are the woods really that bad? The illustration lets us know where we are on the spiritual map, in the natural progression of the spiritual life. The earlier encounter with the prince is the romance stage, the seduction spoken of in the Song of Songs written by Solomon. After the Lord is certain that we have fallen in love with Him, He leaves us, but we forever have the image of His Face and Love upon our hearts; He wants us to prove that we love Him more than anything else, and He wants to prove to us that He Loves us more than all of our sins. Snow White, working as the scullery maid at the castle, was pure there, pure enough to see the Face of God within her own heart, but she's released into the world so that the Dark Night of the Soul can begin and she can be even further purged.
There is an additional purpose to Snow White getting lost in the woods: to show how, at this point in her life, when she's "following the way of nature" (leading a life of the appetites) she's actually at odds with nature, in a state of rebellion against nature. Our true nature is to be at one with God and everything God has created; when we revolt against God, we are in revolt against God and everything God created, just like Satan. That everything has become dark, evil and threatening to Snow White in the woods is accurate: she's in a state of sin and so be cleansed of that sin.
I'm sure you're saying, but what did she do? It's the queen who's at fault!
The queen is allowed to exist up to this point because--unwittingly--she is the means of Snow White's perfection. Snow White hasn't done anything wrong, she has tried to become spiritually perfect, and the more a soul tries to become spiritually perfect the more God wants to help them along their way. What Snow White is being healed of are the wounds from Original Sin and the senses (St. John of the Cross calls it the "purification of the senses") and how they can lead the soul astray from God (Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz will also have to go through "the dark forest" before she can conquer the Wicked Witch).
After Snow White has come out of the nightmare of the purgation, there is a time of respite, and her sobbing shows a state of penanace and how she now understands the dark things that have lurked within her (but are now gone; the animals coming out to be with her indicates her reunification with nature and hence, with God for successfully enduring this trial). This brings us to what promises to be a popular topic this year: the cult of the warrior princess. As a princess, Snow White represents all women who are the crowning achievement of God's creation; because of the Fall and Original Sin, we have to work at fighting spiritual battles to regain our status as the spiritual royalty God intends us to be, not only for ourselves, but for our fathers, husbands, brothers, children and other women. Snow White's battle is interiorly fought, and this battle has been translated today (to some degree) as actual battles.
To some degree, it elevates the struggle women fight interiorly to overcome temptations and purify themselves so as to fulfill their destinies; but who thinks that's what is really meant when women today put on armor and lead the charge against the foe? This brings us to the conflict, between the interior world women are meant to conquer first, and the political world that is the temptation to conquer. Women cannot achieve any good in the world anywhere, unless they have first achieved good within themselves. There is a dramatic difference between the "battle cry" of the Feminists and the war of suffering of femininity; Snow White represents the later. (This is a topic we will be referring back to all year). This part of the story offers an interesting difference between the Grimm Brothers' version and Walt Disney's version. The Grimm Brothers' version reads that, as Snow White ran through the forest, She ran as far as her feet could carry her, and just as evening was about to fall she saw a little house and went inside in order to rest.  Inside the house everything was small, but so neat and clean that no one could say otherwise. There was a little table with a white tablecloth and seven little plates, and each plate had a spoon, and there were seven knives and forks and seven mugs as well. Against the wall there were seven little beds, all standing in a row and covered with snow-white sheets.
Because she was so hungry and thirsty Snow-White ate a few vegetables and a little bread from each little plate, and from each mug she drank a drop of wine. Afterward, because she was so tired, she lay down on a bed, but none of them felt right -- one was too long, the other too short -- until finally the seventh one was just right. She remained lying in it, entrusted herself to God, and fell asleep.  After dark the masters of the house returned home. They were the seven dwarfs who picked and dug for ore in the mountains. They lit their seven candles, and as soon as it was light in their house they saw that someone had been there, for not everything was in the same order as they had left it.
The key to understanding the original version is in the phrase, "the masters of the house,": the dwarfs in the original version are the spiritual masters to Snow White (who, in this version, is only seven years old) and so she finds her way to a retreat where she will be able to work on the spiritual life (it's the dwarfs who tell her she can stay if she will tend house for them, meaning, if she will become one of them, a spiritual master, she may remain with them but not if she won't "tend to the house," i.e., her own house, the soul).
In Walt Disney's version, Snow White is older and Disney decided to make her the spiritual master to the dwarfs; so what do the dwarfs represent? They are spiritual projections of Snow White herself, the "childish" or venial sin and imperfections. She exhibits the traits of each of the dwarfs at some point (she's bashful with the prince; she stutters like Doc with the huntsman, she's sleepy at the cottage; she's happy without realizing the sadness of the world [more on this below] and then she's pessimistic [Grumpy] without remembering the happiness of the world [so there's a lack of balance to her moods, she lacks the serenity and peace the saints possess]).  This part of Snow White's spiritual progression is what St. John of the Cross refers to as the purgation of the spirit and is intended to bring the soul into perfect, loving union with God Himself. How does Snow White accomplish this with the dwarfs?
So who are the dwarfs?
As we said, they are projections of Snow White and the traits she must overcome within herself so she can battle the queen and enter into the final stage of spiritual perfection. That the dwarfs are miners seals the deal because the mine is another representation of the contemplative life, inner-reflection, the jewels we find when we "mine our selves and identities" instead of seeking after passing treasure in the world (like the queen).
Just like Snow White earlier singing into the well, now, through the dwarfs, she sings into the mine, the deepest part of her soul, where the greatest dirt is, but also the greatest treasure. Each of the dwarfs have a job to do in the work fo the mine andin the work of the soul. Doc, in taking the jewels to closely exmaines them, employs the gift of discernment (distinguishing between good and bad) and Dopey, in sweeping up the jewels of no value, perhaps (in spiritual terms) does the greatest service because in our real life, how often do we cling to what we think is a jewel, but is really worthless? Even harmful to us? Dopey-the-child-like has the simple faith that throwing out the bad just leaves more room for more good.
When Snow White "goes upstairs," as always, she enters into a higher state of consciousness; reading the
names on the beds, she laughs at what funny names they are, but the name is the identity, and as we know, the dwarfs fulfill those names perfectly; since they are projections of Snow White, she's getting at good look at who she herself really is (but is not intended to be by God). "I'm a little sleepy myself," she says, admitting her own resemblance, and she falls asleep.  This isn't being sleepy over doing housework, this is being sleepy "of the spiritual life," and because beds are likened to coffins (the temporary coffin we go to each night before the eternal coffin) this sleep foreshadows the deeper sleep in the glass coffin towards the end.
When the dwarfs arrive home, they find that someone has been there (not unlike the Story of the Three Bears and Goldilocks, in the Grimm Brothers' Little Snow White version also) and the methods of their deductions reveal their spiritual state: someone hid all our dishes, our cobwebs are missing, someone cleaned my cup--the sugar''s all gone; "Why, the hole place is clean," Doc exclaims, to which Grumpy replies, "There's dirty work afoot!" This is exactly how we treat God when He has freed us of the dirt of sin and worldly desires, "my cobwebs are missing!" because we want our cobwebs back.
How does Snow White resemble Sneezy?
Bashful holds up the goldenrod to Sneezy and Sneezy sneezes all over the place; this indicates the dwarfs, turning upside-down everything that has been done for us by God and how we "sneeze" it all out. We aren't looking at the freedom we now have as a result of whatever it was being taken out of our lives, or cleaned, we look at what we have lost, as Lot's Wife looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. When they discuss Snow White staying with them, it's the gooseberry pie that wins them over (their appetites) not that she needs help. This is how we know they are children: absent from them are the serious mortal sins of adulthood (like the queen's) but absent from them, too, is the advanced holiness to which we are all called.
Again, when Doc says, realizing "it" is upstairs, he tells the dwarfs, "One of us has to go down and chase it up"; meaning, spiritually, that they know there are "monsters" down in the lower passions which have to be brought to the light of the reason so it can be expunged; them locking out and attacking Dopey refers to our inability to discern because we do exactly the same thing when we get rid of the good things within us and hold onto the bad things. The idea of getting "it" when "it's sleeping" doesn't always work because (whatever "it" is within us that has to be gotten rid of, we never know what "it" is until it's awake and showing itself).
There is of course the sanitary reason for washing, but there is the spiritual reason as well. We wash (repent of our sins and cleanse our hearts of evil desires) so we can be of an open-heart to enjoy the feast of virtue and joy the Lord wants to serve us; the more cleansed we are, the greater our enjoyment of the feast; when the Lord promises us a feast (such as the feast out in the wilderness the Lord promised the Children of Israel leaving Egypt) they thought it would be the feast of the senses, instead of being purged of the senses. The problem with this can be seen in both Grumpy's behavior and Dopey's: Dopey swallowing the soap is accidentally "taking in too much" cleaning and get carried away, but Grumpy is not doing any at all (like many of us).
Dopey eating the soap in Disney's version makes an interesting juxtaposition against the Grimm Brothers' version and Snow White: A Tale of Terror. In both those editions, the queen eats what the huntsman brings her in place of Snow White's organs. In Disney's version, the same case of illustrating the queen's insatiable appetites is apparent when she's given the heart of a pig and yet she doesn't know the difference because that's what her own heart looks like: pigs symbolize the appetites, and uncontrollable appetites, that she's given the heart of a pig right at this point, indicates that her appetites for being fairest in the land are fueled and beyond satisfaction (killing Snow White won't be enough for her at this point).
The evil queen descends (going down means going into the lower passions and appetites, so the pig heart was an accurate indication of her continuing fall from grace) and knowing she can't trust anyone, she goes herself which means that she won't listen to those trying to stop her for her own good, she is bent on her ion destruction as much as Snow White's destruction. Whereas the dwarfs go down into the mine to cleanse themselves of their sins and imperfections (or try to) the queen goes down into her chamber to mine "her knowledge" of witchery and black magic to attain what she wants, worldly pursuits.
"I'll go in a disguise so complete, no one will ever suspect," but the truth is, no one ever doubts it's the queen because the old hag she turns into is exactly the way everyone thinks she really looks and everyone can recognize the type of evil deed she does as her being the only one capable of doing something so awful. It's one more proof of the queen's arrogance and vanity that she believes she can outsmart everyone.
Each of these ingredients to "changing the queen," as said, doesn't change the queen at all, rather, she's reciting what she has all ready become but because she abused the Magic Mirror by using knowledge for worldly pursuits instead of for spiritual gain, she doesn't recognize herself, she's as blind to herself as Dopey when he has all that soap in his eyes. The mummy dust to make her old, is the going back to pagan tradition, before Christ, when man was not "reborn" by the coming of the Messiah, but still old in the old Original Sin. The queen has to "age" her voice with an old hag's cackle because anyone that would laugh at someone's death instead of mourning them is a hag, which means witch, a woman married to the devil. The reason is it the "scream of fright used to whiten her hair is because the white hair has no color in it, color being indicative of some virtue, but white hair is hair that is dead, and hair symbolizes the thoughts, so the queen's ability to think is as dead and decomposed as a white corpse because the queen cannot scream with fright over the crime she is about to commit. The blast of wind, to fan her hair: wind can be associated with the Holy Spirit because it is pure and clean, blowing away toxic vapors, for instance; however, when the queen calls upon it, it's the destructive powers from hell that can make her hair crazy, i.e., her thoughts, so she will be bent on destruction (the wind will be blowing when she falls to her death).
Next, as mentioned earlier, the queen calls upon a thunderbolt to mix the evil brew; lightening and thunder are traditionally pagan symbols for the justice of the gods (Zeus and Jupiter were often depicted with lightening bolts) and so the queen--who herself, as royalty, should be a symbol of justice for all, instead of executing crimes by executing an innocent person--will feel the full wrath of the pagans she uses for her own ends. The queen seeing her reflection in the chalice of the potion (not the chalice of Christ) is the first time she has looked at herself throughout the film despite having a mirror. The queen taking the cup in both hands symbolizes that she is fully willing to do the deed and has no hesitations about drinking the potion and carrying on her plan; Snow White will take the poisoned apple in both her hands before she takes the bite. (An interesting comparison in the Grimm Brothers' version, the queen only puts on make-up to become a beggar woman, but Disney wanted to show how thoroughly rotten the queen was by bringing out all her hidden traits. The shattering of the glass of the cup as she drops it imitates the shattering of the inner mirror and our ability to reflect and turn back (Snow White: A Tale of Terror and Snow White and the Huntsman show the queens looking into the mirrors as the glass shatters and goes all over the place). Her hair turns from black to white, that is, one stage of death (black) to a deeper stage of death (white like a corpse). Her hands shriveling show what she has done with her hands, her deeds, have withered her because they have drained her of life. Her voice changes because, unlike Snow White who uses her voices to sing (pray to God) the queen uses her voice to command people to praise her (the Magic Mirror and the Huntsman).
The queen choosing to make a poisoned apple for Snow White, "one so fair," repeats the devil bringing down the fair Eve through the forbidden fruit because stories repeat themselves and because we do according to what our masters do (a disciple of Christ lays down their life, a disciple of Satan takes life).
The "sleeping death," like so many aspects of the spiritual life, is a dual symbol: it can mean the death from not being able to be awakened from your appetites to hear the Call of Christ, but it also means, as we shall see, that it's the final stage of spiritual perfection, the sleep of the soul before Christ calls it to awaken (the first 30 years of His life on earth was like the "sleep of death," death to the senses and appetites, but above all, death to your own will).
When we cut back to Snow White, they are doing as people should be doing: rejoicing in each other and taking a break from their labors, instead of nurturing wounds and fear like the queen does. When Happy sings, "I washed my feet today and I can't do nothing with them!" that's a reference to Happy's death of the will (his feet) because they have been cleansed of his own will to do God's will (that's why he can't do anything).
It's funny to see how each of them sleep, because it's a spiritual state associated with aridity of the soul, when God lets everything the chosen soul tries to do fail so that their own will will fall asleep and they will slowly become separated from the world.; the dwarfs crazy sleeping arrangements once again shows how they are not able to partake of the sleep that Snow White has been prepared for (that part of the video was lost so it goes right back to the queen preparing the apple).
In the original Grimm Brothers version, the queen does present an apple to Snow White, but only after two previous attempts have failed. She first sells Snow White a body lace and straps her so tightly she cannot breathe; the dwarfs come home, unbind her and she can breathe again; then the queen tries a poisoned comb that the dwarfs find and remove so Snow White revives again. She presents Snow White an apple on the third time, half of the apple red, the other half white, but only the red part is poisoned. The queen eats some of the apple herself so Snow White also partakes and the piece of apple is lodged in her throat. The bodice laces symbolize the attempt at killing Snow white through her vanity, making her so conscientious about her beauty and appearance that she stops being natural (being able to breathe) and worries only about how she will look (this device was used in Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl with Elizabeth Swan). But Snow White not only recovers from this trial, she is stronger for it, as with all spiritual trials. Secondly, because a woman's crowning beauty is her hair, the queen tempts Snow White into vanity again with the poison of primping her hair; why does the queen chose to employ these devices? Being vain herself, these are traps that would work on the queen, so she thinks they will work on Snow White. This apple is only half-poisoned, half being white, the other half being red, and the queen gives Snow White the red half and eating the white part herself. What is poison for one person isn't necessarily poison for another (for example, sleep can be a sin for some people if they willingly take too much to avoid doing other things, but avoiding sleeping can become a sin because not taking rest can become an act of pride). The queen's sins are so serious and numerous that eating the white apple (white as a corpse) is not deadly to her, but eating the red part (the appetites) is deadly to Snow White. Why? It blocks her windpipes so she can't breathe (this was used in Snow White: A Tale of Terror) and not being able to take in the breath of life (God created Adam by breathing Life into him) means you cannot receive life from God, you become a vegetable. The queen's cackling about Snow White being buried alive is because, the queen herself is "buried alive" under all her sins. Not knowing anything about love (especially not Love) the queen has no idea how easy it will be for her plan to fail. When the queen is leaving the castle, there is a thick fog, and it looks like just in the day or so since Snow White has been gone from the castle, decay has all ready started to set in; this could be my imagination, but it certainly seems possible because fog is a great sign of confusion and not being able to "see" through fog indicates a lack of spiritual sight.
As Snow White gives the dwarfs kisses on their way to work, and Dopey keeps coming back, that reveals for us the child's appetites "If a little is good, a lot is better!" Grumpy, on the other hand, isn't able to take even a little of what he wants because he's so pessimistic; with Grumpy, however, a little goes a long ways and that one sweet kiss of good intention is sufficient to win his complete loyalty (the part of Snow White praying for Grumpy to like her didn't make it into the video I posted; sorry! Obviously, there are quite a few parts that I am skipping; they all have meaning but some parts are more important than others).
As Snow White sings (a sign of her Hope that protects her) she is doing something for others: making the pie for the dwarfs and for their happiness is an act of love, countered against the queen being there to harm someone for her own "happiness." When the queen stands before Snow White, this is the first time we have seen them together. It could be said, why is Snow White so dumb? and that's not the right question (tempting as it is) it's because she herself is so innocent that she can only see others in the same innocent light as herself; this is the idea of the "lamb being led to slaughter," because she's so innocent, that's why she's so pure, but if she were any less so, she wouldn't be able to progress (to be slaughtered like a lamb) so she can be "resurrected."
Is it wrong for Snow White to show compassion to "the old woman?"
This is the kind of question long nights of philosophy society meetings are made of, but my own answer is no; Snow White can only be accountable for her own actions and she cannot presume to know and thereby judge what is in someone else's heart, thereby, even though it brings harm to her, God brings a greater good from it than the evil that was done. We all have free will, to bring glory to God and eternal salvation to ourselves, or to take us along the path of damnation, and given that every single word, thought and act we made will be judged and either benefit us or condemn us, it's best to always uphold every virtue in every circumstance.
As Snow White has taken the bite of the apple, the lightening immediately strikes and rain begins to pour as the queen then has to run from the little men who come to bring her to justice. In the Grimm Brothers' version, the queen gets back home safely and the Magic Mirror verifies that she is, again, the fairest in the land; the dwarfs put her in the glass coffin and the prince sees her for the first time in the coffin and wants to buy it from the dwarfs who refuse, until the prince promises that he will cherish her. When the servants of the prince are carrying the coffin back upon their shoulders, one of the servants stumbles, and that dislodges the apple from Snow White's throat so she can breathe again (after a couple of days).
In this version from the Grimm Brothers, the servants carrying the coffin of Snow White probably refers to the Body of Christ, all the faithful, who--by their prayers and good deeds--"carry sinners" and the saints in the making by the work of their prayers; the servant who stumbled is the servant who grumbled about carrying another and didn't want to contribute to anyone else's salvation only his own. The apple coming dislodged at that moment means that was the moment that God chose to reveal the great beauty and work of His Divine Providence that had been at work in Snow White and not only finally reward Snow White for her faithfulness and loyalty, but chastise that grumbling servant as well.
In the Grim Brothers' tale, Snow White and the prince get married, and invite the stepmother to the wedding: After putting on her beautiful clothes she (the queen) stepped before her mirror and said: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who in this land is fairest of all? The mirror answered:You, my queen, are fair; it is true. But the young queen is a thousand times fairer than you. The wicked woman uttered a curse, and she became so frightened, that she did not know what to do. At first she did not want to go to the wedding, but she found no peace. She had to go and see the young queen. When she arrived she recognized Snow-White, and terrorized, she could only stand there without moving. Then they put a pair of iron shoes into burning coals. They were brought forth with tongs and placed before her. She was forced to step into the red-hot shoes and dance until she fell down dead.
The differences in ending shows how, with the iron shoes put in burning coals, and being forced to dance, the queen's will (her feet) had to be corrected, and that was the debt of justice to be paid for what she did to Snow White. In Disney's version, there is no paying of the debt for the queen, there is the poetic justice of "What goes around, comes around."
In both versions, the dwarfs cannot bury her, so she is put in a glass and gold coffin with her name on it. This is the final stage of the spiritual journey, the last accomplishment which must be achieved by the soul destined for spiritual perfection: pure contemplation. The coffin, of course, is death, and that is the inner-most death of the soul, the complete death of the will which is laboriously arrived at by continual contemplation (the glass as an image of reflection) and her sleep is the sing of the working of the soul rather than the working of the physical body. That her name is upon the coffin assures us that this is the final stage of Snow White's individuation for the fulfillment of her destiny, the purification of her being that she and she alone can achieve.
Earlier, when Snow White had been singing to the dwarfs about her love for the prince, she said, "Someday, when spring is here." It must be at least spring/summer when the story is taking place (when she meets the dwarfs and bites into the apple, then there is the passing of time), so it really refers to the season of resurrection, spring, when all things are resurrected, and Snow White knows this is the time when she herself will finally be with her prince, although she doesn't realize the path she will have to take to get there, but she is lead by the spirit, unlike the queen.
The scene of the prince kissing Snow White is the purpose of every kiss: to instill the breath of life in them. Only the soul who  has progressed through the trails and fire of the Spirit is pure enough to receive the breath of life and Snow White has proven that she is (it's also like Mark 5:40-41, when Jesus says, "Talitha, cumi," or "Little girl, rise," because she is now completely healed). We can be confident this is accurate because where is the castle the prince carries her off to? In the clouds, in the sky, where God alone reigns. In conclusion, Walt Disney's 1937 version gave audiences a choice regarding how to understand the Great Depression and their own place within it: the United States had become an old hag, no longer the fairest government and country in all the world, but poor and dying, or the Depression could be understood as the time of sleep and rejuvenation, like Snow White's contemplation in the glass coffin, and America was a young country, it just needed some time to advance in virtues, and then the kiss of life would restore us to the destiny to which we have been called. Without a doubt, both Mirror, Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman  (June 1 release date) will encode commentary about the government and economy today; what they will say exactly, we can't know until we've seen them, but knowing what has been said before, will deepen our participation in the conversation and help us to decide who is the fairest in all the land. Labels: Snow White and the Seven 7 Dwarfs dwarves brothers grimm original free text meaning walt disney 1937 images stills pictures prince dwarfs evil queen wicked stepmother meaning symbols thefineartdiner
