Snow White - And Other Examples of Jealousy Unrewarded

Origins of Fairy Tales from Around the World #5

by Amelia Carruthers, Various (Illustrator)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - Origins of the Fairy Tale from around the World' contains seven different versions of the 'Snow White' story. It includes an in-depth introduction to the fairy tale genre itself, as well as the provenance of 'Snow White'. It encompasses 'Schneewittchen' by the Brothers Grimm, 'The Young Slave' by Giambattista Basile, the Malay legend of 'Bidasari' the Swiss story of the 'Death of the Seven Dwarfs' and the Portuguese narrative of 'The Vain Queen.' What is a fairy tale? The 'Origins of Fairy Tales from around the World' series helps to answer this question, by showcasing the amazing breath and diversity involved in classic fairy tales. It focuses on the unusual phenomenon that the same tales, with only minor variations, appear again and again in different cultures - across time and geographical space. Traditionally told as short stories for children, and for adults too, these popular fairy tales will be sure to delight both young and old. Beautifully illustrated, these story books combine the best story-telling, with the best art-work, in order that the two may be fully appreciated.

Genres: Fairy Tales

104 pages, Hardcover

Published November 30, 2016

Reviews

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for the introductory essay. Snow White has often been a fairy tale whose relevance I grapple with, because Snow is the ultimate Mary Sue, the damsel in distress, a passive victim in her own narrative. Everyone who is good is drawn to protect her and who is evil is drawn to harm her. To modern readers, this is eye-roll inducing, but it must’ve held some greater significance in its time. I was fascinated by mention of the Albanian version, in which Snow White lives with 40 dragons instead of 7 dwarves.

[Nathan Dehoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read several other books from this series, but not in a while. Each one gives several different versions of a fairy tale, with an introduction discussing similarities and differences. The first printed tale of this sort is Giambattista Bastile's The Young Slave, in which the character Lisa dies due to a fairy's curse at seven years old, and is buried in seven separate glass coffins before being accidentally restored by her jealous aunt. The account of the curse is similar to the one in Sleeping Beauty, except even more petty as the fairy is reacting to a twisted foot that isn't anyone's fault but her own. In the Malay poem Bidasari, which is summarized in parts, the evil queen enchants the young girl by stealing the goldfish that held her soul. I was already familiar with the version by the Brothers Grimm, which also makes Snow White only seven during the events of the story. When the queen asks her magic mirror who the hottest person in the kingdom is and it says that it's her prepubescent stepdaughter, you'd think she'd have some questions about the mirror's opinions, but apparently not. I've also noted that both the poisoned comb (which was also in The Young Slave) and apple, when removed, apparently remove all the poison from her body, which isn't usually how such things work. But then, they ARE magical. In the Celtic Gold Tree and Silver Tree, the evil queen seems more resourceful than her Grimm counterpart, as she only needs her daughter's finger to poison her. In this one, the girl is already married to a king at this point. He marries someone else after she's enchanted, but then when she's restored, he keeps both wives. And it's the second wife who saves Gold Tree from the queen's next attempt. Silver Tree also gets magical advice from a trout instead of a mirror. The last selection is a very brief Swiss story where a puritanical woman has the dwarves killed because she thinks they're having a sexual relationship with Snow White.

[Literary Ames]

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