Snow Whites many faces

[Grimmsister]

I’m not sure if this thread should be here or in the of topic section. Oh well her goes-

I’ve been looking in to where the fairytale Snow white might have originated or how it could be linked to other stories and myths. Look at the similarities there is between Snow white and the greek myth of
Psyche and Cupid–
Envious and jealous of the beauty of a mortal girl named Psyche, Venus asks her son Cupid to use his golden arrows while Psyche sleeps, so that when she awakens, Venus (Aphrodite in the Greek tradition) would place a vile creature for her to fall in love with. Cupid finally agrees (in snow white he would be both the huntsman and prince charming) to her commands after a long debate. He flies to Psyche’s room at night but he takes pity on her, for she was born too beautiful and he falls deeply in love with her. These news enrages Venus. She places a curse on Psyche. Cupid is greatly upset, and decides that, as long as Psyche remains cursed, he will no longer shoot arrows, which will cause the temple of Venus to fall.
Psyche is abandoned by her family on some mountain (send to the woods) and put through some tests by Venus and the final test is that Psyche most go to the underworld and retrieve Venus’s lost beauty. This is a trick though and once Psyche has left the Underworld, she decides to open the box and take a little bit of the beauty for herself. Inside, she can see no beauty; instead an infernal sleep arises from the box and overcomes her. Cupid (Eros), who had forgiven Psyche, flies to her, wipes the sleep from her face.

In the myth of the abduction of Persephone.
Persephone, the young beautiful daughter of Demeter (harvest godees) is abducted by Hades who is inlove with her and taken to the underworld.
Demeter, when she found her daughter had disappeared, searched for her all over the earth. In most versions she forbids the earth to produce, or she neglects the earth and in the depth of her despair she causes nothing to grow. Finally, Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, forced Hades to return Persephone.Hades first tricks her giving her a kernel of a pomegranate to eat (the apple) When Demeter and her daughter were reunited, the Earth flourished with vegetation and color, but for some months each year, when Persephone was forced to return to the underworld, because she had eaten the pomegranate, the earth once again became a barren realm. This is an origin story to explain the seasons. Persephone is spring, the crops come again, resurrected from sleep/death.

In greek mythologie there is the aspect of the triple goddees. The Maiden, the Mother and the Crone (spring, summer and fall/winter)- I think we can compare them to Emma, Snow and Evil Queen.

This is a summary of the fairytale Gold-tree and Silver-tree.
I like that their names have to do with trees again linking them to the mythologie of spring and harvest Gods.
Also, think of Reginas appletree.

A king had a beautiful wife, Silver-Tree, and an even more beautiful daughter, named Gold-Tree. One day the couple walked by a pond, and Silver-Tree asked a trout (in the water/The mirror) if she was the most beautiful queen in the world, whereupon the trout said that although Silver-Tree was fair in her own right, Gold-Tree was still a hundred times more beautiful. Enraged and jealous, Silver-Tree took to her bed and declared she would never be content unless she had Gold-Tree killed and consumed her heart and liver. Horrified, the King contacted a neighboring king’s son who had asked to marry Gold-Tree. Desperate to protect his beloved daughter, her father agreed and sent them off; then he gave his wife the heart and liver of a he-goat, at which she believed her daughter to be dead and her jealously was laid to rest for some time.

Silver-Tree went back to the trout, which told her Gold-Tree was still more beautiful, and living abroad with a handsome prince. The scheming Silver-Tree begged a ship of her husband to visit her daughter. The prince was away hunting; Gold-Tree was terrified at the sight of the ship, as she recognized the ship’s flag and knew it was her jealous mother. The servants locked her away in a room so she could tell her mother she could not come out. Silver-Tree persuaded her to put her little finger through the keyhole, so she could kiss it, and when Gold-Tree did, Silver-Tree stuck a poisoned thorn into it.

When the prince returned, he was grief-stricken and could not persuade himself to bury Gold-Tree, because she was so beautiful, even in death. He kept her body in a secret room. Having married for a second time, he would not let his new wife into the room. His new bride was puzzled at why her husband was constantly morose and despond ant. She knew it had something to do with the secret he kept locked in the bedchamber in the tallest tower of the palace. One day, he forgot to hide the key as he usually did, and the new wife went in. There she found the body of Gold-Tree, who surpassed the second queen greatly in beauty, although she was not jealous. She tried to wake Gold-Tree, and found the thorn in her finger. Pulling it out, she revived Gold-Tree. Because of the wakened ones identity, she offered to leave; but their husband refused to allow it.

Silver-Tree went back to the trout, who told her what had happened. Furious, Silver-Tree took the ship again. The prince was hunting again, but the second wife said that the two of them must meet her. Silver-Tree offered a poisoned drink. The second wife said that it was the custom in their land that the person who offered the drink drank of it first. Silver-Tree put the drink to her mouth, and the second wife struck her arm so that some went into her throat. She fell down dead.

The prince, Gold-Tree, and the second wife lived happily thereafter.

I found all of this extremely interesting, hope you did to 😀

[dreamer u.k.]

Found this on a link of origins

Aside from these traditional folktale stories of old, there is another possible explanation for the origin of the Snow White story. In 1994, the German scholar, Eckhard Sander, published Schneewittchen: Marchen oder Wahrheit? (Snow White: Is It a Fairy Tale?). In his book, Sander alleges that many of the traditional components to the Snow White tale can be found in the real life story of Margarete von Waldeck (1553-1554), who was a countess and the alleged lover of Philip II of Spain. As was the case with almost all royal marriages, political aspirations were more important than love. And as was the case with Philip II (who was destined at the time to inherit the kingdom from Charles V) almost everyone of royal blood had a vested interest in his love life. And though Margarete was a countess, the relationship held no real political clout. Nothing could have been gained politically from their union and as a result, many have argued that Margarete was poisoned to get her out of the way. Her death at a young age, coupled with the fact that many of her contemporaries believed she had been poisoned (there is an obvious tremor in the handwriting of Margarete’s final will) have convinced many that her death was in fact from poisoning. And as was the case with Snow White, Margarete allegedly had a terrible relationship with her stepmother.

In addition, it is worth noting that Margarete was forced to leave her home and live in Brussels at the age of 16 (allegedly due to problems with her stepmother). Also, the town in which she grew up (Wildungen) employed a countless number of young children to work in the copper mines as quasi-slaves. The poor conditions there caused most to die before age 20 and the malnutrition attributed to a severe stunt in their growth during puberty. As a result, these workers were often ridiculed for being “poor dwarfs” who were only good for human chattel in the mines. Margarete would have certainly been aware of them since it was primarily members of her family that “employed” the “dwarfs.”

[obisgirl]

I remember studying some Greek mythology in HS but wow, I never realized that some of those elements and how they might relate to Snow White’s story 😮

[Myril]

One of the magic of fairy tales is, that they haven’t been protected by copyright laws, at least not those we know as classics today in their basic forms (it’s something different with the disney movies though, those are protected by copyright). Or no one cared some decades, centuries ago. They were told and retold, writen and rewriten, adapted, changed, embbeded into local and regional context, changed, mixed up, and again retold and writen down. Good luck with finding origins. 😉

You will find elements of Snow White in a number of tales and myths, or elements of other tales and myths in Snow White, and sometimes impossible to tell which of the tale copied the other. Just take Snow White and Sleeping Beauty – in both tales you have magically caused states of deathlike and long lasting sleep – and princes, heros coming along falling in love with the sleeping beautiful woman. Deathlike long lasting sleeps caused by magic is a rather common motif. Or take the beginning, which reminds of another Grimm fairy tale, The Juniper Tree, (there a woman wishes for a child as red as blood and as white as snow), and then there is the tale of The Glass Coffin, think I mentioned these two somewhere else already.

There is folklore classification known as Aarne-Thompson classification system (abbr. AT) and an updated version the Aarne-Thompson-Uther sytem (abbr. ATU). Snow White is classified there as 709, as is Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree and a couple of other tales. I found this text version of Snow White with links to compare with other versions and other tales of the same type. :geek:

Shakespeare wrote a piece, Cymbeline, in which a princess named Imogen falls into a deathlike sleep induced by a potion – her stepmother wants her out of the way, trying to kill her, but someone changes the potion into a sleeping potion. And there is a man from her father’s court the princess is in love with and marries secretly, name of that “prince” charming is Posthumus Leonatus (what a name). Posthumus has to leave court and land, doubts the faithfulness of Imogen, meanwhile Imogen’s father has to deal with war. There is a lot of drama happening before Imogen and Posthumus have their happy ending of course, true love and marriage blessed by the father. Go figure. That drama is from maybe 1611 (date is not certain, might be even older).

The Brothers Grimm noted the daughter of a high ranking state offical as their first source for the tale, Marie Hassenpflug. Her mother had Huguenot ancestry and so probably she heard or has read tales of Charles Perrault, a french writer known for Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. Hassenpflugs were well educated and not common folk, so can assume, they knew some classic tales from books. That the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm are based on common German folk tales is a legend.

That doesen’t mean, that there haven’t been stories alike around before and for along time, folk tales, fairy tales, myths. Doesn’t rule out either, that people’s imagination was fired by real story like that of Margaret von Waldeck, mixed with already known myths or tales. Just look at how fiction is created today, writers very sure get inspired by other fiction, by myths, legends as much as real life stories. Guess wasn’t that much different in history.

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[Grimmsister]

Myril

I liked your post a lot Myril.Very informative. You seem to know alot about fairytales have you been studying them somewhere?

But I don’t agree with this point “That the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm are based on common German folk tales is a legend.” They collected folk tales. That they might have changed them a bit to fit their reality and possibly throw in some true story of their time- Yes! But the folk tales exicted before them.

I think all stories have already been told numerous times in different ways. There really are no stories left not already told.

[Myril]

Thanks for finding it informative, Medchen.

Nope, haven’t studied fairy tales, but a) was as kid crazy for fairy and folk tales and myths and fantasy, b) had good teachers in German and English literature and in history at school, c) studied social science although my focus at university was more on industrial relations, labor and educational studies but since d) have developed an interest in cultural studies. Have a bit of time at hand at the moment and so the muse and fun to dig into fairy tales. Oh, and there is a number of works about fairy tales in German (we take that seriously here), knowing the language might be an advantage in this case.

What brings me to my statement, that it’s a legend, that the fairy tales of Brothers Grimm are German common folk tales. Even they didn’t claim them as German folk tales anymore when publishing their collection, although their interest when they started collecting was quite sure focused on finding German tales – as many other authors of German Romanticism they were looking for a cultural foundation of a united German nation and identity (you have to look at the historical context of a political fragmented region, divided into a number of principalities, and an aspiring, mostly urban, middle class during and after the Napoleonic Wars). Nevertheless the idea lingers, that they are particular German, but they are if anything of European story telling tradition and it’s safe to guess, inspired by tales from other regions in the world as well.

But it’s disputable if these tales could be even called common and folk tales. The sources of the Brothers Grimm were not common folk, they were well educated, literate middle and upper middle class. With the term folk tales comes often the assumption, those tales are of long oral story telling tradition – but that is something very hard to prove, because what we have is all written “tradition”, claiming to document eventually oral tradition. Some of the motifs and images of pressumed fairy folk tales remind of mediaval heroic epics (Parcival, Arthurian Legend, Nibelungen) and minnesang – literature but not folk tales. As you have noticed, you can find for example motifs of Greek mythology in them, and much of that is based on the works of Homer and other writers of Greek and Roman literatur. German Romanticists by the way glorifyed an image of medieval times that still lingers (look at any fairy tale movie) but is mostly imagination and fiction.

If you’re looking for folk tales would look more at songs, although there too the problem is, we have mostly written documentation claiming to document oral tradition, seldom recorded examples. But something like the Finnish Kalevala might come closer to what common folks were telling than the Grimms’ fairy tales, despite that its history of origins has a similar background (looking for cultural identity of a nation). J.R.R. Tolkien said, the Kalevala was one of his sources for The Silmarillion, a collection of stories giving background to the tale of the Ring and Middle-Earth. And I wouldn’t be too surprised if in some hundred years people would start to believe, that the Lords of the Ring is a literarily refined mirror of folk tales, in a way they wouldn’t be even wrong about it.

But it’s sometimes a matter of definition and use of terms. And of point of view.

There is a book available as online reading (English): Fairy Tales A New History It’s informative and a refreshing view – but I am biased, it supports some of my views.

And agree, there are no stories left untold. We just never will get tired to (re-) tell them in new variations.

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