Time to ruin your childhood!

The true story of snow white

I don't own these

In the tale of snow white that we are all familiar with, the Queen asks a huntsman to kill her and bring her heart back as proof. Instead, the huntsman can’t bring himself to do it and returns with the heart of a boar. Now, fortunately Disney hasn’t done too much damage to this tale, but they did leave out one important original element: in the original tale, the Queen actually asks for Snow White’s liver and lungs – which are to be served for dinner that night! Also in the original, Snow White wakes up when she is jostled by the prince’s horse as he carries her back to his castle – not from a magical kiss. What the prince wanted to do with a dead girl’s body I will leave to your imagination. Oh – in the Grimm version, the tale ends with the Queen being forced to dance to death in red hot iron shoes!

Another version __________________________________________________________________

At least, the real, 1857 version. But already, Jacob and Wilhelm had made many revisions to the tale. Perhaps the most interesting is this: in the first published edition of the story, in 1812, there is no step-mother. In the 1812 version, the evil queen is HER MOM. How much scarier and more vivid is her jealous rage at the little girl’s beauty when that little girl is her daughter? Instead of merely telling the huntsman to kill Snow White and bring back her organs, this wonderful mother says, “Take her out into the woods to a remote spot, and stab her to death.” And then she eats her organs. (Or thinks she does.)

The ending is different, too. Not the iron-hot shoes—that happens in every edition (if it ain’t broke…!). In the 1812 edition of the story, the prince manages to get the coffin home without dropping it. He makes his servants carry it with him from room to room, so that he might gaze on his beloved. One of the servants eventually gets fed up having to lug this enormous glass box around, so he opens it and smacks the comatose girl. At which point, the chunk of apple flies from her throat, and she wakes up. Which is even more hilarious than dropping her.

Of all the editions, I’d have to say that 1812 is my favorite; that’s the one I’d share with kids. But better than sharing just one edition, I think, is sharing them all. For when we know the many layers of a story, our reading becomes as rich as its history.

I like the second version better