From Snow White to Snow Night, by Nichola Scholes, 4/6
The Queen’s wish is a vain one: she does not wish for any child, but a beautiful one. This wish aligns her with the second Queen’s vanity, and shows that, in each, vanity causes death. The Queen gets her wish but at the expense of her life, meaning that Snow White is born of a blood sacrifice. Similarly, in a discussion of Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” Patricia Hannon states that “Bluebeard’s fantasy of power is sustained at the high price of female blood.”[20] Accordingly, patriarchy in “Snow-White” is maintained by the spillage of female blood. The entire tale pivots on women competing for the male gaze, male attention and approval. The competition is explicit between Snow White and her stepmother, but it is also implicit in the way that Snow White’s life competes with her mother’s, and her life and beauty wins. Snow White’s very existence kills both her mother and her stepmother. Women cannot live harmoniously in relation to one another in this fairy tale, as that would subvert patriarchy.
Walker avoids this opening symbolism in her “Snow Night.” Instead, readers are told simply that Snow Night’s “mother died when she was a baby, and her father remarried.”[21] As it is not clear on whether or not Snow Night’s mother died giving birth to her, Snow Night’s life is not necessarily at her mother’s expense. The only blood shed in “Snow Night” is male, drawn by a female, when Snow Night strikes Lord Hunter’s “face with her fingernails, drawing blood.”[22] Color symbolism is evoked through the name change of White to Night. “Night” is black, a time of sexual activity and secrets, and is the antithesis of white daylight. Together, Snow Night unites innocence with experience, beauty with self-awareness of beauty, or beauty that can defend itself.
In “Snow Night” the representation of the wicked stepmother is overthrown, while it is heavily used in “Snow-White.” In the latter, the King’s new wife “was a handsome woman but proud and haughty” (my emphasis) [23]. This description approves the new wife’s beauty, but not her vanity, as demonstrated by her reliance on the magic mirror. Her jealousy of Snow White grows “in her heart even higher like a weed” [24]—in other words, like a nuisance and unattractive plant that destroys others. Once again, beauty can only be approved within patriarchy if it is combined with innocence, or lack of awareness of one’s beauty. Otherwise external beauty dies through inner ugliness. By contrast, “Snow Night’s stepmother was a noted sorceress, and also famous for her beauty, of a more mature type than that of the young princess” (my emphasis) [25]. Warner states that “women’s arts within fairy tales are very marked… riddling, casting spells, conjuring.”[26] Despite this, such skills are hardly ever cast in a positive light. Sorcery connotes witches and other “social deviates who were associated with the devil,”[27] as exemplified by the Disney film’s stepmother. By contrast, Snow Night’s stepmother is powerful and good, challenging the usual fairy tale maxim that “authentic power lies with the bad women.”[28] Her beauty is considered secondary to her talents, which are valued as prestigious skills, instead of as “women’s wiles,” as condemned by the misogynistic Grumpy in the Disney film [29]. The fact that Snow Night’s stepmother is acknowledged as “a more mature type” also overthrows the fairy tale’s (not to mention Western societies’) unhealthy obsession with youth. Lord Hunter asks the Queen:
“I wonder if Your Majesty has ever asked the mirror who is the fairest in the land?”
The queen smiled. “I know the answer that it would give, huntsman. Snow Night is the fairest.”
“Doesn’t that anger you?”
“No, why should it?”
“Surely Your Majesty’s great beauty has always been fairest in the land. Wouldn’t that make the princess a usurper and an upstart?”
The queen laughed. “We all go through our cycles, huntsman. The wise expect it. Younger life takes the place of the elder; it’s the way of nature. Every mother of children feels it in her bones. To challenge nature is folly.”
“But don’t stepmothers always hate their stepdaughters?”“That must be one of the ridiculous traditions about women invented by men. A stepmother has every reason to get along with her stepdaughter. Why cause unnecessary strife? In any case, I’m quite fond of Snow Night. She’s a good-hearted little thing, if a bit slow in her wit. Why should I be so foolish as to mistreat her?”[30]
