I’ve just had a full week of school, and I’m really tired.
Do I really have the energy to do a fairy fails right now? We’ll see.
So Snow White starts out as a fairly normal fairytale. A
king and nice queen have a baby whose hair is as black as ebony, whose skin is
as white as snow, and lips as red as blood. The nice queen dies, and a year
later the king marries an arrogant woman who’s obsessed with being ‘the fairest
of them all’. This woman basically just wants the ‘miss world’ title, and then
she’ll be happy.
So she’s got this magic mirror that she asks every day, ‘mirror
mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ And every day the mirror
replies ‘you are’. I don’t think she’s genuinely asking, I think she’s like
that one annoying friend that we all have, that always looks completely and
utterly gorgeous no matter what they have on, but always asks ‘do I look ok?’
Knowing full well that they look unbelievable, just so we all go ‘Oh Shut up,
you look so pretty!’ It’s not a genuine question which is why it’s such a slap
in the face when one day the mirror replies ‘actually, you’re not the fairest
in the land anymore, you’ve been overtaken by a seven year old.’ Snow White is
now seven years old, and hotter than the evil queen.
So the queen hires a huntsman to have Snow White killed. It’s
so over dramatic! All she needs to do is wait a few years until Snow White’s a
teenager and acne will solve all of her problems! Also what sort of a mirror is
that? If all you want is to be told that you’re more gorgeous than anybody else
in the land, just enchant your mirror to tell you that whether it’s true or
not. Now, looking at this story, it doesn’t seem like there is any passing of
time at all, so Snow White is still seven when the queen hires the huntsman to
kill her. But not only kill her, he needs to bring back her heart, lungs, and
liver as proof that she’s been killed. Why doesn’t the queen just ask the
mirror? If you ask the mirror ‘who’s the fairest of them all’ and the mirror
says ‘you are’, you know that Snow White’s been killed. If the mirror says ‘nope, still snow white’,
then you know that she’s still alive.
The huntsman doesn’t kill her; otherwise there would be no
story. He kills a boar, and then takes the heart, lungs, and liver from there
and gives them to the queen, who then eats them. Bear in mind that she still
thinks that that’s Snow White. She’s eating Snow White. Cannibalism. You can
see why they cut that out of the Disney version, right?
So this is where she meets the seven dwarves. The dwarves
are about to have a massive go at her for breaking and entering into their
house, (which is a pretty big deal,) but then they see her, and see how pretty
she is, and swoon over her, and immediately just forgive her. SHE’S SEVEN. She’s
lived for as many years as there are creepy old men standing around her bed
watching her sleep. Now the queen goes
to her mirror and asks ‘who’s the fairest of them all?’ to which the mirror
replies ‘well Snow White is still alive, so her…’ The queen then devises a plan
to where she’s going to kill Snow White herself. She dresses up as an old woman
selling corsets. Not apples, corsets. And basically the queen makes her try on
this corset, (sidenote: she’s seven. Wearing a corset.) And then the queen does
it up so tight that Snow can’t breathe and leaves her there to suffocate. But
the dwarves come home in time, see her passed out and save her.
The queen is quite proud of herself as she thinks that she’s
killed her, and asks the mirror the question again, and I can imagine the
mirror being like one of those chocolate bar wrapper competitions, where it
just says ‘better luck next time, try again’.
So the queen disguises herself as a different old woman
selling poisoned combs. So combs this time, not apples. And hair combs, like to
brush your hair combs. You’d think that Snow White would remember what happened
last time she let a stranger into the house, but nope, she lets this old woman
in too, no problems. She lets the old woman put the comb in her hair, and immediately
she passes out. Now luckily, the dwarves come home in time again, and they take
the comb out of her hair, and she immediately wakes up. That’s not how poison
works. The queen gets the better luck next time speech from the mirror, and
decides that this time she’s going to do it properly and poison apples. There we
go. We know this works.
This time, the dwarves have forbidden Snow White from
letting anyone into the house, but she still accepts an apple through the
window. It’s like she’s just being snarky now. ‘Well technically I didn’t let
anyone in the house’. So Snow White takes a bite of the apple and immediately dies,
she’s dead. Definitely dead. But for some odd reason, her body doesn’t decay. The
dwarves put her in this coffin and they strangely don’t bury her. Convenient.
And no fairy tale is complete without a prince. He’s a little bit late, but
better late than never.
This prince sees Snow White, and falls in love with her upon
site. Of course. And wants to buy her and the coffin from the dwarves. What he
wants from a dead girl, I don’t know, but what he does on his own time is his
business I guess. The dwarves actually just give him the coffin, and sort of
provide a removal van service where they all pick up the coffin and put it on
their shoulders and start to carry it off to the prince’s castle. But one of
the dwarves stumbles and jolts the coffin. And the bit of apple that was stuck
in Snow White’s throat dislodges and she wakes up again. She didn’t choke to
death on an apple! It was a poisoned apple, that’s why she died! She dies of
poison not choking, so this story makes no sense. The author clearly cannot
grasp what poison actually is. And there’s no kiss either! Where’s the fairy tale
kiss that we know and love? It’s just so frustrating.
The prince, having not even spoken to her yet tells her that
they’re getting married, and the evil queen gets an invite. Firstly, why?
Secondly, why does she go? She actually turns up thinking it’s not going to be
a trap, which obviously it is, and she’s made to wear hot iron shoes and she’s
forced to dance until she drops down
dead. So yeah, not a lot of that in the Disney version.
Also, since Snow White’s body didn’t decay when she was
dead, presumably she didn’t age either, So She’s still seven. And she’s married
now. How old is the prince?!
