From Snow White to Snow Night, by Nichola Scholes, 2/6
The Grimms contributed to this end. By way of omission and alteration through numerous drafts, revisions and editions, they imprinted their own indelible Christian conservatism on the tales, with its accompanying bourgeois patriarchal ethos. Therefore, the household tales originally spoken largely by women to women became literary tales written by men (and women) to children in a spirit often against women. Yet even this picture is too simplistic. As Warner reminds her readers, “it would be very simple-minded to pin the picture of female hatred and cruelty in the Cinderella cycle and fairy tales like ‘Rapunzel,’ ‘Snow White’ and ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ on male authors and interpreters alone [11].” Rather, the tales are products of patriarchal societies in general, and women exist within the patriarchy. The competition and rivalry between women as portrayed in the above-named tales also existed outside of the tales in the societies that produced them. In other words, when social structures are in place, which make it difficult for women to support and encourage each other, women are not likely to tell stories that contradict their experience of reality:
The most obvious reason for such strife is the competition imposed upon women by their powerlessness. Where status, conflict and security, perhaps survival itself, depend upon being chosen and valued by men, women’s natural enemies are each other [12].
It is also important to add that male fairy tale authors such as the Grimm Brothers, Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen were by no means the most prolific. On the contrary, women authors comprised a much larger group. Unfortunately, few of their versions have survived. Baronne d’Aulnoy, Mme de Villeneuve and Mme Leprince de Beaumont are three whose work has survived. It is therefore a sign of optimism – of “heroic optimism” as Warner puts it [13], that both new fairy tales and reversions of traditional tales which seek to challenge and subvert patriarchal ideologies are being written by men and women within patriarchal societies. Such writers are aware of the potency and allure of the genre, but circumspect of its disempowering discourses.
“Snow Night” Versus “Snow-White”Barbara Walker’s “Snow Night” is an obvious reversion of “Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs” by the Grimm Brothers. As a reversion it requires an acquaintance with, and an understanding of its source, so that its changes in representation may have the desired effect on what one would imagine a largely adult audience. In Don’t Bet on the Prince, Jack Zipes states that,
the feminist fairy tale conceives a different view of the world and speaks in a voice that has been customarily silenced. It draws attention to the illusions of the traditional fairy tales by demonstrating that they have been structured according to the subordination of women, and in speaking out for women the feminist fairy tale also speaks out for other oppressed groups and for an other world…[14]
