Speaker 1: School of Humans. This episode discusses sensitive topics. Please listen
Speaker 1: with care. My name is Miranda Hawkins. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: Deep Dark Woods. Today's story is at U seven O
Speaker 1: nine or snow White.
Speaker 2: Once upon a time in midwinter, when the snowflakes were
Speaker 2: falling like feathers from heaven, a queen sat sewing at
Speaker 2: her window, which had a frame of black ebony wood.
Speaker 2: As she sewed, she looked up at the snow and
Speaker 2: pricked her finger with the needle. Three drops of blood
Speaker 2: fell into the snow. The red on the white looked
Speaker 2: so beautiful that she thought to herself, if only I
Speaker 2: had a child as white as snow, as red as blood,
Speaker 2: and as black as the wood in this frame. Soon
Speaker 2: afterwards she had a little daughter who was as white
Speaker 2: as snow, as red as blood, and as black as
Speaker 2: ebony wood. And therefore they called her little snow White.
Speaker 2: And as soon as the child was born, the queen died.
Speaker 2: A year later, the king took himself another wife. She
Speaker 2: was a beautiful woman, but she was proud and arrogant,
Speaker 2: and she could not stand it if anyone might surpass
Speaker 2: her in beauty. She had a magic mirror. Every morning
Speaker 2: she stood before it, looked at herself and said, mirror,
Speaker 2: mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest
Speaker 2: of all? To this the mirror answered you, my Queen,
Speaker 2: are fairest of all. Then she was satisfied, for she
Speaker 2: knew that the mirror spoke the truth. Snow White grew
Speaker 2: up and became ever more beautiful. When she was seven
Speaker 2: years old, she was as beautiful as the light of day,
Speaker 2: even more beautiful than the Queen herself. One day, when
Speaker 2: the Queen asked her mirror, nearer, nearer on the wall,
Speaker 2: who in this land is fairest of all? It answered you,
Speaker 2: my Queen, are fair, It's true, But snow White is
Speaker 2: a thousand times fairer than you.
Speaker 1: The Queen took.
Speaker 2: Fright and turned yellow and green with envy. From that
Speaker 2: hour on, whenever she looked at snow White, her heart
Speaker 2: turned over inside her body. So great was her hatred
Speaker 2: for the girl.
Speaker 1: The envy and.
Speaker 2: Pride grew even greater, like a weed in her heart,
Speaker 2: until she had no peace day and night. Then she
Speaker 2: summoned the huntsman and said to him, take snow White
Speaker 2: into the woods. I never want to see her again.
Speaker 2: Kill her, and as proof that she is dead, bring
Speaker 2: her lungs and her liver back to me. The huntsman
Speaker 2: obeyed and took snow White into the woods. He took
Speaker 2: out his hunting knife and was about to stab it
Speaker 2: into her innocent heart when she began to cry, saying, oh,
Speaker 2: dear huntsmand, let me live. I will run into the
Speaker 2: wild woods and never come back. Because she was so beautiful,
Speaker 2: the huntsman took pity on her and said, run away,
Speaker 2: you poor child. He thought the wild animals will soon
Speaker 2: devour you anyway. But still it was as if a
Speaker 2: stone had fallen from his heart, for he would not
Speaker 2: have to kill her. Just then, a young boar came
Speaker 2: running by. He killed it, cut out its lungs and liver,
Speaker 2: and took them back to the queen As proof of
Speaker 2: snow White's death.
Speaker 1: The cook had to boil.
Speaker 2: Them with salt, and the wicked woman ate them, supposing
Speaker 2: that she had eaten snow whites lungs and liver.
Speaker 1: As a kid, I always had short hair. If I'm
Speaker 1: being honest, It was a bowl cut. It was downright awful,
Speaker 1: but I loved the feeling of getting my hair cut.
Speaker 1: So every time my mother, who loved to keep her
Speaker 1: hair short, got her hair trimmed, so did I, and
Speaker 1: this is why whenever my friends and I played princess,
Speaker 1: they always stuck me with snow White, even though I
Speaker 1: looked absolutely nothing like her. Although snow White has different
Speaker 1: versions across the globe, there are two real life people
Speaker 1: the story may be based on. In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: German historian Eckered Xander published his book snow White, Is
Speaker 1: It a fairy Tale? He said snow White was based
Speaker 1: on Philip the forces daughter. Born in fifteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: the German countess was named Marguerite von Waldeck. When she
Speaker 1: turned sixteen, her stepmother, Katharina of Hotsfeld, forced her to
Speaker 1: move to wild Yfe and Brussels. Von Waldock fell in
Speaker 1: love with Prince Philip, who would later become King Philip
Speaker 1: the Second of Spain, but her father and stepmother disapproved
Speaker 1: of their relationship for political reasons, and then at twenty one,
Speaker 1: von Waldeck died from poison. According to Sander, historical accounts
Speaker 1: say the King of Spain might have sent Spanish agent
Speaker 1: to murder the young woman. Doctor Claudia Schwabe is a
Speaker 1: German professor from Utah, State University. She says, von Waldeck
Speaker 1: knew she was going to die, and that's why she
Speaker 1: wrote her will.
Speaker 3: By the handwriting, you could see how trembling, how shaky
Speaker 3: her hand was. And then there was a book of
Speaker 3: death I don't know how you call it in Wildungen,
Speaker 3: where she was from, and the mayor wrote in there
Speaker 3: that she was poisoned. So that information we do have,
Speaker 3: but it just shows you how some times fairy tales
Speaker 3: are really very close to life. And I'm sure Margharitavonvaldek
Speaker 3: is not the only aristocratic woman that ever happened to right,
Speaker 3: I'm sure this happened throughout time in many different cultures
Speaker 3: that we have a scenarios that very much resemble a
Speaker 3: fairy tale story. But it just shows you that fairy
Speaker 3: tales are just like stories that life rights.
Speaker 1: The second woman snow White might be based off is
Speaker 1: Maria Sophia von Earthel. Fabulology is fairytale science. A fabulology
Speaker 1: group did a study on Laura Bavaria, and that group
Speaker 1: says von Earthel was born June fifteenth, seventeen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Her father, Prince Philip Christophon Earthel, was an eighteenth century
Speaker 1: landowner married to Baroness von Bettendorf. After the Baroness died,
Speaker 1: her father remarried Claudia Elizabeth Maria von Venningen, who was
Speaker 1: the Countess of Reichenstein. Based on a letter, Claudia didn't
Speaker 1: like her stepchildren, but that's the only evidence of her
Speaker 1: relationship with her stepkids. Mirror's maid in Lare were considered
Speaker 1: able to speak or tell the truth because they were
Speaker 1: made so well they showed clear reflections. They also had
Speaker 1: inscriptions on them. Today, the magic Mirror is displayed at
Speaker 1: the von Earthel Castle, which is now referred to as
Speaker 1: the Lore Castle and has been turned into a museum.
Speaker 1: Here's what doctor Schwabe says about von Earthel.
Speaker 3: I have to say straight away from the very beginning,
Speaker 3: So the whole story with Maria Sophia von Erta, that
Speaker 3: was a hoax invented by a pharmacist called Karl Heinz
Speaker 3: Bartels and it was a big hoax. And he came
Speaker 3: up with a nonsense word for doing fairytale archaeology. He
Speaker 3: called it fabu lology. And then the city officials they
Speaker 3: decided to use this for profit for tourism, so they
Speaker 3: could attract tourists to their town of Lore and then
Speaker 3: tell them this story of the aristocratic woman who once lived.
Speaker 3: But again, this is all a hoax.
Speaker 1: That's right, it was all made up for money. Well,
Speaker 1: von Earth was real, but the details of her story
Speaker 1: don't match up. There are many inconsistencies. Still, many believe
Speaker 1: that von Earthel could be an inspiration for Snow White,
Speaker 1: and this was reinforced after her grave was uncovered in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. But back to von Waldeck, doctor Schwabe says
Speaker 1: she and the Grim snow White had more similarities.
Speaker 3: For instance, my Garreta Vonvaldek had blonde hair, and now
Speaker 3: you might say snow White had dark hair black hair. However,
Speaker 3: in the very first unpublished version of the Grims, called
Speaker 3: the Uhlenbergam Manuscript, they actually wrote that snow White had
Speaker 3: blonde hair. The Waldek family owned several copper mines in
Speaker 3: the northern Hessan regions, and eckert Sunder found out that
Speaker 3: they employed children in these copper minds, children who wore
Speaker 3: special headgear to protect them from rocks falling down. And
Speaker 3: when they came out of the copper mines, it must
Speaker 3: have looked like what we imagined dwarfs to look like.
Speaker 1: Also, historian ECKERD. Standers believes the Poisoned Apple from snow
Speaker 1: White was based on a true story of a man
Speaker 1: giving kids poisoned apples kids he thought were stealing from him.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to believe one woman could inspire the
Speaker 1: story of snow White when she pops up in stories
Speaker 1: around the world time and time again. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: snow White stories can be found all over the globe.
Speaker 1: They might not have a magic mirror, but all stories
Speaker 1: have the same setup. A family member envies a beautiful
Speaker 1: young woman who is put into a suspended sleep. Mercina
Speaker 1: is a Greek tale where the sun declares three times
Speaker 1: the youngest of three sisters is the most beautiful, which
Speaker 1: makes her two older sisters jealous. Nori Hadig is a
Speaker 1: story from Armenia where the mother asks the moon who
Speaker 1: is the prettiest in all the world. In the epic
Speaker 1: Indian palm pod Novat from fifteen forty, the queen asks
Speaker 1: a truth telling parrot if she or the princess Podmavat
Speaker 1: is more beautiful. There's this epic Indonesian poem titled sayer
Speaker 1: Bit Asari. It's believed to have been written around seventeen fifty.
Speaker 1: I like this story simply because we haven't heard an
Speaker 1: Indonesian story yet, but also because of their depiction of beauty.
Speaker 1: In the eighteenth century, in the Palm, a merchant finds
Speaker 1: a young girl in a basket floating down the river.
Speaker 1: A fish is swimming beside her, and the merchant realizes
Speaker 1: that if you take the fish out of the water,
Speaker 1: then the girl stops breathing. The merchant decides to adopt
Speaker 1: the girl, uses a vase to scoop the fish out
Speaker 1: of the water, and then takes both the girl and
Speaker 1: the fish home. Later, the king of the land marries
Speaker 1: for the second time. The new queen is secretly a witch,
Speaker 1: and she has a magic mirror. The queen asks the
Speaker 1: magic mirror who's the prettiest in all the land. Normally
Speaker 1: it says the queen, but this time it says bit Asari,
Speaker 1: whose cheeks are the color of the bill of a
Speaker 1: flying bird, her nose like a jasmine bud, her face
Speaker 1: is like the yellow of an egg, and her teeth
Speaker 1: like a bright pomegranate, which is like a reddish brown.
Speaker 1: The queen brings Bitasari to the palace as a servant.
Speaker 1: She hopes that her beauty will fade, but it doesn't,
Speaker 1: so the queen decides to burn her face off, but
Speaker 1: when she sets the girl on fire, she doesn't burn
Speaker 1: and the fire is magically extinguished. Bitasari tells the queen
Speaker 1: she can't hurt her that her life is tied to
Speaker 1: a fish at home. So the queen finds the fish,
Speaker 1: and when she removes it from the base, the girl
Speaker 1: falls down dead. The queen then keeps the fish in
Speaker 1: a locket around her neck. Bitasari's father is devastated. He
Speaker 1: builds a tomb where he lays bit Asari to rest.
Speaker 1: During this time, the queen's step son has and having
Speaker 1: visions of Bitasari. He believes he's in love with her.
Speaker 1: One day, he stumbles across the painting of her and
Speaker 1: asks who she is. He's told she has died, and
Speaker 1: he decides to visit her tomb. When he arrives, Bitasari
Speaker 1: wakes up, but she doesn't wake up because of him,
Speaker 1: but because at that moment, the queen is taking a bath,
Speaker 1: and as she bathes, the fish falls out of the
Speaker 1: locket into the water, alive. Bitasari uses that time to
Speaker 1: tell the prince about his stepmother and how she needs
Speaker 1: that fish to live. While Bitasari fills the prince in,
Speaker 1: the queen notices the fish has fallen out of her
Speaker 1: locket and scoops it up to put it back in
Speaker 1: her necklace. Bitasari falls dead again. The step son rushes
Speaker 1: home to confront his stepmother. The two fight, and the
Speaker 1: prince kills the queen and puts the fish back in water.
Speaker 1: That Assari comes back to life, and she and the
Speaker 1: prince Mary. French author Charles Perraut may not have a
Speaker 1: version of snow White, but Italian author John Batiste Basilee
Speaker 1: doesn't disappoint. In sixteen thirty four he published The Young Slave,
Speaker 1: which is not a great title. A baron has a
Speaker 1: younger sister named Celia, and she goes to the garden
Speaker 1: to play games with other young maidens. That day, a
Speaker 1: rose tree has a beautiful new bloom. The maidens make
Speaker 1: a wager to see who can jump over the tree
Speaker 1: without damaging the bloom. All the maidens try to no avail.
Speaker 1: When it was Celia's turn, she jumps over the tree
Speaker 1: but knocks a single leaf off the bloom. She quickly
Speaker 1: swallows the leaf before anyone notices. With her deception, she
Speaker 1: wins the bet. Three days later, Celia feels she's pregnant. Worried,
Speaker 1: she visits some fairy friends and they confirm her suspicions.
Speaker 1: They say she is quote with child of the leaf
Speaker 1: she had swallowed. Celia hides her magical pregnancy, and on
Speaker 1: the fourteenth night, she gives birth in secret. Her daughter
Speaker 1: is born with a face like the moon. Celia names
Speaker 1: her Lisa, and then sends her daughter to be raised
Speaker 1: by the fairies. Each of the fairies want to give
Speaker 1: Lisa a charm, but the final fairy, who runs to
Speaker 1: meet the child, twists her foot. In her anguish, she
Speaker 1: curses Lisa, saying that when she turns seven, her mother
Speaker 1: will forget a comb in Lisa's hair, which would cause
Speaker 1: the girl to die. The fairy's curse comes to pass.
Speaker 1: In her devastation, Celia has Lisa placed in a casket
Speaker 1: made of seven crystals, one inside the other and locks
Speaker 1: it in a distant chamber of the baron's castle. Celia
Speaker 1: then keeps the key in her pocket. But not long
Speaker 1: after Celia is on her deathbed, she entrusts all her
Speaker 1: possessions to her brother. When she gives him the key,
Speaker 1: she makes him promise he will never open the distant chamber.
Speaker 1: He assures her he won't. A year later, the baron
Speaker 1: marries while away on a hunt, the baron puts his
Speaker 1: new wife in charge of the house and tells her
Speaker 1: not to open the chamber. Of course, as soon as
Speaker 1: the baron leaves, she searches a castle, finds the key
Speaker 1: in his desk, and opens the room. The new wife
Speaker 1: sees a girl in a casket made of seven crystals.
Speaker 1: Lisa has grown as time has passed, and the caskets
Speaker 1: have grown with her. The woman is filled with rage
Speaker 1: and jealousy, believing her husband comes into this room to
Speaker 1: worship the beautiful girl. In a fit, she yanks the
Speaker 1: girl out of the casket by her hair, and doing so,
Speaker 1: the comb falls out, and the girl wakes up crying
Speaker 1: for her mom. The baroness answers, I'll give thee mama
Speaker 1: and Papa, and proceeds to beat Lisa, cut her hair,
Speaker 1: dress her in rags, and make her a slave. The
Speaker 1: story says, every day the baroness beats on her head,
Speaker 1: gives her black eyes, scratches her face and makes her
Speaker 1: mouth bleed, as if she'd just eaten raw pigeons. When
Speaker 1: the baron returns, he asks the baroness why the young
Speaker 1: girl is being treated so poorly. The baroness lies, saying
Speaker 1: her aunt had sent the child to her and she
Speaker 1: needs to punish her to keep her in line. After
Speaker 1: some time, the baron goes to the country fair. Being
Speaker 1: kind hearted, he asks all the servants what they would like.
Speaker 1: When it's Lisa's turn, The baroness tells him to ignore her,
Speaker 1: but he would not. Lisa asks for a doll, a knife,
Speaker 1: and a pummice stone. She also says that if he forgets,
Speaker 1: he will not be able to cross over the river
Speaker 1: on his way home, and so the baron heads to
Speaker 1: the fair but forgets Lisa's items. When he tries to
Speaker 1: cross the river, he can't. Then he remembers the slave
Speaker 1: girl's request and goes back for her items. Once Lisa
Speaker 1: has her gifts, she retires to the kitchen and tells
Speaker 1: the doll her life's story. She asks the doll if
Speaker 1: she hears her, and when the doll doesn't answer, she
Speaker 1: begins sharpening the knife on the pummice stone. Saying she
Speaker 1: will take her own life. At that, the doll grows
Speaker 1: and answers, yes, I did hear thee I am not deaf.
Speaker 1: This goes on for several days until one day the
Speaker 1: baron overhears the servant girl crying and talking. He puts
Speaker 1: his eye to the keyhole to see Lisa recounting her
Speaker 1: story once again and sharpening her knife on the pummice stone.
Speaker 1: At this point, the baron kicks down the door, snatches
Speaker 1: the knife, and has Lisa tell him her story. When
Speaker 1: he understands who she is and what she's been through,
Speaker 1: the baron hugs his niece, then sends her to live
Speaker 1: with other relatives and commands that she be well treated.
Speaker 1: After a couple months, Lisa becomes as beautiful as a goddess,
Speaker 1: and her uncle throws a great feast for her in
Speaker 1: his castle. During this feast, he presents Lisa as his
Speaker 1: niece and has her recount her tale to the guests.
Speaker 1: Everyone weeps hearing how the baroness treated Lisa. The baron
Speaker 1: then sends his wife back to her family, declaring she
Speaker 1: is not worthy to be his mate. Later, the baron
Speaker 1: finds his niece a handsome husband who she loves. It's
Speaker 1: a happy ending. In some of the stories, it's actually
Speaker 1: snow whites by a lot mother who kills her for
Speaker 1: her beauty, like in the Scottish tale Silvertree gold Tree.
Speaker 1: The story was collected by Joseph Jacobs and published in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety two. In this tale, a king has a
Speaker 1: wife named Silvertree and a daughter named gold Tree. One day,
Speaker 1: Silvertree and gold Tree visit a glen with a well.
Speaker 1: The well has a trout swimming in it. Silvertree asks
Speaker 1: the trout is she the most beautiful queen in all
Speaker 1: the world. The trout replies she is not. When the
Speaker 1: queen asks who is, then the trout says it's her daughter,
Speaker 1: gold Tree. The queen goes blind with rage. When she
Speaker 1: returns from the glen, she climbs into bed, claiming to
Speaker 1: be sick and vows she'll never be well until she
Speaker 1: eats her daughter's heart and liver. When the king gets home,
Speaker 1: he asks his wife what is wrong, and she tells
Speaker 1: him she needs to eat gold Tree's heart and liver
Speaker 1: to be well. Luckily, a prince from another kingdom has
Speaker 1: asked the king to marry gold Tree, and the king
Speaker 1: has agreed, so the king sends her away with the
Speaker 1: prince to keep her safe. He then has some men
Speaker 1: hunt down a goat. The king feeds the queen the
Speaker 1: heart and liver of the goat, claiming they are gold Trees,
Speaker 1: and once she eats, the queen is well and healthy
Speaker 1: once more. A year later, Silvertree visits the glen again.
Speaker 1: She asks the trout who's the most beautiful queen, and
Speaker 1: the trout responds gold Tree. The queen says it can't
Speaker 1: be because gold Tree is dead. The trout then tells
Speaker 1: her that her daughter isn't dead, but married to a
Speaker 1: prince oversees. Silvertree begs the king to give her the
Speaker 1: long ship to visit her daughter. For some reason, the
Speaker 1: king agrees. The queen takes the long ship, which is
Speaker 1: wide and stable but fast and light, and heads to
Speaker 1: the kingdom across the sea. Gold Tree recognizes the long
Speaker 1: ship as it's coming ashore. She tells her servants it's
Speaker 1: her coming to kill her. The servants devise a plan
Speaker 1: to lock gold Tree in a room where her mother
Speaker 1: can't reach her. When Silvertree reaches the castle, she cries
Speaker 1: out for Goldtree to come say hello to her. Mother.
Speaker 1: Goldtree says she can't because she's locked in a room,
Speaker 1: but Silvertree convinces her daughter to stick her finger through
Speaker 1: the keyhole so that she could give it a kiss.
Speaker 1: When Goldtree does, her mother puts a poisoned stab in
Speaker 1: her daughter's finger. The prince is heartbroken when he returns
Speaker 1: to find his wife dead, but she's too beautiful to bury,
Speaker 1: so he locks her away in a room and keeps
Speaker 1: the key on him. A while later, the prince remarries.
Speaker 1: One day, he forgets to keep the key on him,
Speaker 1: and his new wife takes it. It opens the room.
Speaker 1: There she finds Goldtree, the most beautiful woman she's ever seen.
Speaker 1: The new wife notices the stab in gold Tree's finger
Speaker 1: and pulls it out. Goldtree awakens alive once again and
Speaker 1: as beautiful as ever. The prince returns from hunting crestfallen.
Speaker 1: His wife asks what's wrong, and he replies he wishes
Speaker 1: gold Tree was alive. She tells him that gold Tree
Speaker 1: is indeed alive once again, in the room he had
Speaker 1: put her in. When the prince sees gold Tree, he
Speaker 1: is overjoyed and can't stop kissing her. The new wife says,
Speaker 1: since the prince married her first. She will leave, but
Speaker 1: the prince says no, that he will have both of them,
Speaker 1: and this turns out to be a good thing. At
Speaker 1: the end of that same year, Silvertree visits the glen
Speaker 1: for a third time and learns that gold Tree is
Speaker 1: still alive. Once again, Silvertree convinces her husband to lend
Speaker 1: her the longboat to visit gold Tree. The prince is
Speaker 1: out hunting when gold Tree notices the longboat. She tells
Speaker 1: the second wife it's her mother coming to kill her.
Speaker 1: So the second wife joins gold Tree to meet Silvertree.
Speaker 1: When Silvertree comes ashore, she tells gold Tree she has
Speaker 1: a precious drink to share with her. The second wife
Speaker 1: tells Silvertree it is customary in their country that the
Speaker 1: person who offers the drink must take the first sip.
Speaker 1: As Silvertree brings the cup to her lips, the second
Speaker 1: wife knocks the cup so some of the liquid goes
Speaker 1: down the queen's throat. The queen falls down dead, then
Speaker 1: gold Tree and the second wife bury her corpse. The
Speaker 1: prince and two wives then lived happily the rest of
Speaker 1: their days. The story ends with the line I left
Speaker 1: them there. I'm not sure what that line means or
Speaker 1: why it's included in the tail, but I liked it.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel like the narrator was watching from
Speaker 1: a distant hill, and now that this tale has concluded,
Speaker 1: they're off to find other stories. As discussed in previous episodes,
Speaker 1: the Grimms heavily editorialize the stories they collected. Similar to Rumpelstilskin.
Speaker 1: The brothers created their own version of snow White, including
Speaker 1: making the biological mother a stepmother. Here's doctor Schwabe.
Speaker 3: In many versions, early versions of the Grim's fairy tales,
Speaker 3: it was always biological mothers, and then with the second
Speaker 3: edition and later, the Grims swapped them out for stepmothers
Speaker 3: to preserve the good mother, the sanctity of the good mother,
Speaker 3: and also they had a really good relationship with their
Speaker 3: own mother, so I think there were might have been
Speaker 3: also some complaints from mothers actually about these fairy tales,
Speaker 3: and that's why they swapped that out.
Speaker 1: The brother's grim tail also reflects the beauty standards for
Speaker 1: Western culture at the time. Doctor Schwabe explained what the
Speaker 1: colors and snow white represent.
Speaker 3: We think of the white as snow. We always think
Speaker 3: of skin and red as blood, we think of the lips,
Speaker 3: and then you know, for the black as ebony, would
Speaker 3: we think of the hair, But that if you read closely,
Speaker 3: that is not emphasized in the tail, and in some
Speaker 3: versions it's also the eyes are black as ebony, or
Speaker 3: the cheeks are as red as blood. The body parts
Speaker 3: are not labeled specifically when you ask yourself what do
Speaker 3: these colors represent. So white is, at least in Western culture,
Speaker 3: associated with innocence, and we can tie it to birth.
Speaker 3: Red represents life and passion, and black represents death, so
Speaker 3: we can really go full circle. Also, they allude to
Speaker 3: the triple goddess, the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if you know that, but that
Speaker 3: came way after the Grims, So between eighteen sixty seven
Speaker 3: and nineteen eighty, the flag of the German Empire was
Speaker 3: also black, white, and red. So I just wanted to
Speaker 3: point that out. It's an interesting parallel.
Speaker 1: Now let's pick up the grim Snow White story where
Speaker 1: we left off. At the beginning of the episode. The
Speaker 1: queen has just eaten lungs and a liver, believing them
Speaker 1: to be snow whites. But snow White is still alive. Terrified,
Speaker 1: snow White runs through the woods until she stumbles upon
Speaker 1: a little house where seven little doarves live. It's empty. Exhausted,
Speaker 1: snow White falls asleep in one of their beds. When
Speaker 1: the seven dwarfs arrive home from the mine, they notice
Speaker 1: their food has been eaten, their wine has been drunk,
Speaker 1: and there is a girl sleeping in one of their beds.
Speaker 1: When she wakes up, she tells the dwarves what's happened
Speaker 1: to her. They agree to let her stay as long
Speaker 1: as she DOA's chores. Snow agrees, but the dwarves also
Speaker 1: warn her she will be alone all day while they work,
Speaker 1: so she must be cautious. The next morning, the Queen
Speaker 1: asks the mirror about being the fairest in the land.
Speaker 1: The Queen is startled to learn it's still snow. She
Speaker 1: realizes the huntsmen lied. The Queen knows the dwarfs must
Speaker 1: have saved snow White because they're the only ones who
Speaker 1: live in the seven Mountains, so she dresses up as
Speaker 1: an old peddler woman. The Queen arrives at the dwarf's home,
Speaker 1: calling out for someone to open up. Snow asks the
Speaker 1: disguised queen what she's selling, and the queen says, bodice laces. Snow,
Speaker 1: believing the queen's costume, opens the door to let the
Speaker 1: woman help relace her bodice. The queen ties the bodice's
Speaker 1: lace so tightly that Snow can't breathe and falls to
Speaker 1: the ground, seemingly dead. The queen leaves satisfied. As night falls,
Speaker 1: the doors return home to find snow on the floor.
Speaker 1: They realize the lace bodice is too tight and cut
Speaker 1: it off. She is revived. They then warn her about
Speaker 1: letting people inside the house. The next time, the queen
Speaker 1: asks the mirror who's the fairest and all the land.
Speaker 1: She is shocked again that it's still snow, so the
Speaker 1: queen spends the next day and a half devising a
Speaker 1: new plan. She makes a poisoned comb and dons a
Speaker 1: new disguise. She travels back to the dowarfs home and
Speaker 1: knocks on their door. Snow tells the woman she's not
Speaker 1: allowed to let anyone in, but when the Queen pulls
Speaker 1: the comb out, Snow loves how beautifully it glistens and
Speaker 1: opens the door. The moment the queen puts the coal
Speaker 1: in Snow's hair. The girl falls down dead and the
Speaker 1: queen leaves satisfied. The dowarves arrive home just in time
Speaker 1: and remove the comb. When Snow wakes back up, they
Speaker 1: warn her to not let anyone in, and Snow promises.
Speaker 1: For the third time, the queen asks the mirror who's
Speaker 1: the fairest and all the land, and yet again the
Speaker 1: mirror responds Snow. The queen is furious and heads to
Speaker 1: her secret room. There she creates an apple one half
Speaker 1: is safe, but the other half is poisoned, and dresses
Speaker 1: as a peasant woman. She then heads back to the
Speaker 1: little house in the mountains. This time, Snow is more
Speaker 1: suspicious and won't let the woman in, so the clever
Speaker 1: queen cuts the apple in two and takes a bite
Speaker 1: out of the non poisonous side. Snow's desire for the
Speaker 1: apple grows so much that she lets the old woman
Speaker 1: hand her the other half through the window. Snow barely
Speaker 1: takes a bite before she falls down dead. This time.
Speaker 1: When the doorves get home, they can't figure out what
Speaker 1: is wrong with her and can't revive her. They lay
Speaker 1: her on a beer and cry for three days. When
Speaker 1: they notice her body remains fresh. They build her a
Speaker 1: glass coffin with gold letters that spell her name and
Speaker 1: have her ancestry, and one of them always remains by
Speaker 1: her side. Time passes and snow remains in the coffin.
Speaker 1: One day, a prince rides through the mountains and comes
Speaker 1: upon the dwarfs home. He asks for shelter for the night,
Speaker 1: and they agree. In their parlor, he sees snow in
Speaker 1: her coffin, and he learns she was a king's daughter.
Speaker 1: He is so taken by her beauty he asks the
Speaker 1: dorives to sell her to him so he can take
Speaker 1: her home, but they refuse. Then he asks if they
Speaker 1: would give her to him because he can't live without
Speaker 1: seeing her, and he promises to cherish her as the
Speaker 1: most valuable thing on earth. The dwarfs take pity and
Speaker 1: give the prince the coffin. The prince takes the coffin
Speaker 1: to his castle and places it in a room where
Speaker 1: he watches it day and night. Anywhere he goes. He
Speaker 1: has servants carry it because he could not bear to
Speaker 1: be parted from snow. This angers the servants. One day,
Speaker 1: one of the servants removes the lid and sits snow
Speaker 1: upright saying we are plagued the whole day long just
Speaker 1: because of such a dead girl, and hits her in
Speaker 1: the back. This dislodges the piece of apple, and Snow
Speaker 1: once again comes to life. Snow walks up to the prince,
Speaker 1: who was filled with joy. The two then decide to marry.
Speaker 1: Their wedding is set for the next day. Snow's stepmother
Speaker 1: is invited. That morning, the queen steps in front of
Speaker 1: the magic mirror again, only for it to tell her
Speaker 1: the new Queen is a fairison all the land, but
Speaker 1: she doesn't know it's Snow. The Queen is horrified, but
Speaker 1: her jealousy drives her to attend the wedding anyway. When
Speaker 1: the queen arrives, she sees the new Queen is snow white.
Speaker 1: The Queen is afraid, and they make her put on
Speaker 1: a pair of iron shoes that had been heated in
Speaker 1: a fire and dance until she dies in the Grimm's tail.
Speaker 1: The evil queen meets a violent end, and perhaps in
Speaker 1: the Grim's eyes, this punishment was fair because not only
Speaker 1: did she poison an inner sent woman multiple times, the
Speaker 1: stepmother corrupted the idea of motherhood. Doctor Schwabe says the
Speaker 1: Grims were big on protecting biological mothers.
Speaker 3: Snow White never really had a mother, and if you
Speaker 3: read the text very closely, it's also things that a
Speaker 3: mother would do. And she would say, oh, come, let
Speaker 3: me brush your hair properly like a mother would do,
Speaker 3: or let me lace you up properly, like a mother
Speaker 3: would do to her daughter. And it's the there is
Speaker 3: this tension or this parallel or the nourishing factor, you know,
Speaker 3: and let me give you food. It's what the mother does.
Speaker 3: And so she twists these things and distorts them because
Speaker 3: it's the evil step mother.
Speaker 1: Doctor Schwabe brings up another huge theme of snow White beauty.
Speaker 1: We have to think why was the queen so threatened
Speaker 1: by the beauty of her stepdaughter, well, because beauty was
Speaker 1: one of the only ways women could have.
Speaker 3: Power, especially at the end where we have the wedding
Speaker 3: scene and she is so afraid that it's emphasized several
Speaker 3: times that the queen is so afraid. You have to
Speaker 3: ask yourself, why is she so afraid? Why is she
Speaker 3: in such fear. Is it that they found out that
Speaker 3: she tried to kill snow White or is it the
Speaker 3: fact that her scheme didn't work out, and she's no
Speaker 3: longer the most beautiful of all meanings. She's getting old
Speaker 3: and she is going to die. The women didn't have
Speaker 3: much power in those days, and the only power the
Speaker 3: Wicked Queen has is her beauty. That's what gives her power.
Speaker 3: That's why the king essentially picked her to be his queen.
Speaker 3: And by the way, the king is completely absent in
Speaker 3: the story, and we can talk about it later, but
Speaker 3: that the mirror. We don't know the voice of the mirror,
Speaker 3: if it's male or female, but in most adaptations it's
Speaker 3: a male voice, and we can zoom that the mirror
Speaker 3: stands representative for the king's voice or patriarchy if you
Speaker 3: want so. Coming back to the queen, her beauty is
Speaker 3: her only power. So when she finds out and the
Speaker 3: mirror tells her that snow White is a thousand times
Speaker 3: fairer than her, she knows this is the point where
Speaker 3: snow White's beauty is taking over and she is in danger.
Speaker 3: At that point that her power wanes and snow White
Speaker 3: will be the new queen.
Speaker 1: And that theme of beauty still resonates today. Walt Disney's
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven release of Snow White change the company
Speaker 1: and the history of animation forever. Snow White was the
Speaker 1: first US full length animated film, and although Disney had
Speaker 1: used a multiplane camera to create depth on an animated
Speaker 1: short before, snow White was the first time to use
Speaker 1: that process for a feature length film. It was the
Speaker 1: highest grossing film of its time. Disney Snow White and
Speaker 1: the Seven Dwarfs also changed parts of the story. It
Speaker 1: was the first time the doors were given names and personalities.
Speaker 1: It's also when Truelove's Kiss to Wake snow was introduced
Speaker 1: to the story, which, as I've talked about on the show,
Speaker 1: comes with a range of issues. Here's doctor Schwabe.
Speaker 3: So the whole thing of a woman sleeping and then
Speaker 3: being rescued by a hero savior. I think that goes
Speaker 3: way back, and that's why we have it show up
Speaker 3: in so many fairy tales, and it's just the typical
Speaker 3: damsel in distress needs rescuing from a hero male figure.
Speaker 3: But also in snow White, and this has been set before,
Speaker 3: she really becomes an object of art if you want,
Speaker 3: because she is in this class coffin, and remember the
Speaker 3: name is written in golden letters, so she becomes the
Speaker 3: still objects something to be admired and gazed at and
Speaker 3: looked at. But she herself is static. She is comatose
Speaker 3: or what you want to call it, and she can't
Speaker 3: move and speak. She's silent. She is really an object
Speaker 3: just to be looked at.
Speaker 1: Since Disney, there have been so many snow White variations,
Speaker 1: approaching the story in different ways. Some tales day pretty
Speaker 1: true to the brothers Grim snow White, with slight changes.
Speaker 3: We have a lot more emancipated female protagonists who fight
Speaker 3: for their own destiny and don't need a male savior anymore,
Speaker 3: like even you know snow White and the Huntsman, just
Speaker 3: that she's a lot more like she's a warrior maiden.
Speaker 1: And then we have stories that turn the tail on
Speaker 1: its head, like Neil Gaiman's snow Glass and Apples.
Speaker 3: The story is told from the perspective of the queen,
Speaker 3: and snow White is a vampire and she kills her
Speaker 3: father and she still gets together with the prince, but
Speaker 3: they're the bad ones.
Speaker 1: Some even rework the evil stepmother to make her less evil.
Speaker 3: Because it's totally unfair to all the stepmothers out there
Speaker 3: that they have to fight against the stereotype. And we
Speaker 3: have to come to a new understanding of stepmothers as
Speaker 3: a whole and try to get away from that stereotypical
Speaker 3: evil stepmother.
Speaker 1: As we said, something all of these snow White tales
Speaker 1: have in common is, of course, jealousy about another's beauty.
Speaker 1: But many contemporary versions of the tale question not only
Speaker 1: why beauty is so valuable, but where does that judgment
Speaker 1: of our beauty come from. One way to understand this
Speaker 1: idea is how newer versions of snow White have changed
Speaker 1: the voice of the magic mirror. Take, for example, the
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven feature length film titled snow White, A
Speaker 1: Tale of Terror.
Speaker 3: There's one adaptation with Sigourney Weaver which I actually like
Speaker 3: a lot, where she sees herself her reflection and she
Speaker 3: speaks in a female voice and she sees her own reflection.
Speaker 3: And that I always ask my students, so what do
Speaker 3: we make of this? That we imagine the voice of
Speaker 3: a mirror to be a male voice? And then usually
Speaker 3: my students notice, well, maybe it's the judging of the
Speaker 3: male or the king. It's the judgmental voice that because
Speaker 3: the king is not present in the fairy tale, so
Speaker 3: that the mirror is a stand in for the absent king,
Speaker 3: and you know, women still look into the mirror or
Speaker 3: their social media posts, and we are still recipients of
Speaker 3: these judgmental voices.
Speaker 1: It's very much buying into the idea that our beauty
Speaker 1: is based on the male gaze.
Speaker 3: It's the patriarchy or what do you want to call it?
Speaker 1: And the story I want to end today's episode with
Speaker 1: challenges the modern standards of beauty. It's the twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs full length animation. The
Speaker 1: Seven Dwarfs are actually seven princes who are cursed. They
Speaker 1: were cursed by a princess who they thought was actually
Speaker 1: a witch because they thought she was too ugly to
Speaker 1: be a princess. The magic wielding princess says to break
Speaker 1: the spell, they have to kiss the most beautiful girl, Snow,
Speaker 1: who calls herself Red Shoes, is trying to save her father,
Speaker 1: who has disappeared. She stumbles upon a pair of red
Speaker 1: shoes that change her appearance from a regular everyday girl
Speaker 1: to an unrealistic Barbie Dolph figure Doe eyes included, and
Speaker 1: in the end, the characters learn beauty isn't defined by appearance.
Speaker 1: Next time, an author who turned the Yellow Brick Road
Speaker 1: upside down before tackling the brother's grum. The Deep Dark
Speaker 1: Woods is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: It was created, written, and hosted by me Miranda Hawkins.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by mikel. June was senior producer
Speaker 1: Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley,
Speaker 1: and Maya Howard. Stories were voiced by Julia Christgau. Theme
Speaker 1: song was composed by Jesse Niswanger. This episode was sound
Speaker 1: designed and mixed by Chris Childs. If you enjoyed this show,
Speaker 1: please leave her review and you can follow along with
Speaker 1: the show on Instagram at School of Humans