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The real Disney princess, Kristen Bell, has some problems with the Disney princess, Snow White. In an interview with Parents magazine, Bell revealed that when she was reading White as snow to her children, she makes sure to explain to them some of the most frightening elements in history, especially the kiss of true love that wakes Snow White from her poisoned sleep.
"Do not you think it's strange that the prince is kissing Snow White without his permission?" Bell says that she asked her daughters. "Because you can not kiss someone while he's sleeping!"
But for some observers, Bell's criticism seemed absurd. "Oh well if Kristen Bell is uncomfortable, we should probably give up the age-old fairy tales," conservative writer tweeted Ben Shapiro.
Leaving aside the fact that Bell did not suggest that anyone should discard White as snow from the cannon, taking Shapiro is worth digging. Shapiro is right to point out that White as snow has existed for hundreds of years – but it is wrong to claim that it has existed in its current form for hundreds of years. White as snow has changed and developed over time. In fact, the true love kiss that bothers Bell is a very late addition to the story.
This is because fairy tales do not have a stable form. Every era rewrites its fairy tales to fit a specific program, because that's what fairy tales are all about. When Bell criticizes our current White as snowit has a tradition of several centuries safeguarding it.
The idea of waking Snow White with the real love kiss is a historical aberration
There is not a single true original White as snow, but the White as snow what most American audiences consider canonical was collected by the Grimm brothers in 1812, and then progressively revised in its most widely circulated form in 17 editions, until 1864.
But the Grimm brothers did not revise White as snow try to bring it as close as possible to the version of the story that was being exchanged between households all over Europe. They were revising White as snow make it a more moral story for children, so that it adheres better to the standards of education of the children of their time.
I have already written about the Grimm brothers and their review process for Vox. As I explained in 2016:
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm originally wanted their collection of stories to be scholarly, a patriotic attempt to study and recover German folk culture. They recorded folk tales that they heard with minimal changes. But after the first edition was greeted with a lukewarm reception, they decided to revise. And revise again.
Between 1812 and 1864, they published 17 editions of The fairy tales of Grimm, work diligently to make stories ever more appropriate for children. This meant that the book had to reflect the particular values of the 19th century German bourgeois family of Grimms. And so, the wicked parents became wicked mothers acting by themselves, then wicked mothers; fathers have been rewritten to be either virtuous but ineffective or absent; the trickster's children have been completely erased. And virtuous women, very slowly and gradually, have lost their voices.
In 1812, the evil queen who threatened Snow White was her own biological mother. But in later editions, the Grimmms decided that a naughty mother was too immoral for the kids. They replaced her with a mother-in-law.
And between 1812 and 1864, Snow White's awakening changed – but she was never awakened by the true love kiss when the Grimms tell the story.
In 1812, Snow White wakes up when a vexed servant strikes his corpse. Here, the prince falls on Snow White's glass coffin and, falling in love with his seemingly dead body, asks the seven dwarves to give it to him, so that he can "honor it as his own thing." more expensive in the world. This is what happens. then, as translated by DL Ashliman:
The prince had it [the glass coffin] taken to his castle and put him in a room where he sat all day without taking his eyes off him. Whenever he had to go out and was unable to see Snow White, he was getting sad. And he could not eat a mouthful, unless the coffin was next to him. Now the servants who still had to carry the casket became angry about it. Once, one of them opened the coffin, lifted Snow White vertically and said, "We are prey all day because of such a dead girl," and he struck her on the back with her hand. Then the terrible piece of apple that she bit had just left her throat and Snow White came back to life.
From 1819, the Grimms greatly alleviated the fetishistic obsession of the prince with the corpse of Snow White. In later editions, he always falls in love with her when he sees her lying in the glass coffin and he always asks the dwarves to give it to her – but now, Snow White wakes up before arriving at the castle. This is how Ashliman translates the 1819 version:
The prince has carried his servants [the glass coffin] far off their shoulders. But it was then that one of them stumbled on a paintbrush, which dislodged the piece of poisoned apple she had bitten from Snow-White's throat. Shortly after, she opened her eyes, lifted the lid of her coffin, sat up and was alive.
The Prince of the Grimms does not exercise a great deal of consent here (what does he intend to do with the corpse of this poor girl?), but there is no element of kissing. That comes later, at Disney – as well as the idea that the Prince and Snow White might have had to meet early in the story, when Snow White is awake, in order to really sell the idea that they are in love at the end.
In 2018, we tend to accept Disney additions to history as the status quo, without thinking, as if the story unfolded as planned. But the idea that the prince embraces a sleeping Snow White without his consent is not fundamental in the fairy tale. It is a historical aberration.
The awakening of Snow White has already changed several times because White as snow, like all fairy tales, is a reflection of the time that tells it. If, in our time, people decide to start telling a version of White as snow reflecting the sexual politics and morality of our time, they will follow a secular tradition.
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