The Pirate Review - Snow White: Silver Anniversary Edition

This is the real Grimm, unadulterated and beautiful

Once upon a time, in the villages and farms of old Germany, there lived souls who—despite living long ago and far away—were very much like you and me. They worked hard during the day, and at night they came home to their loved ones for some much-needed rest. They liked a bit of gossip and speculation as much as the next person. And although they had no PS2, no Internet, no television, no radio, and in some cases no books, they were not without cheer or entertainment in their lives—for the people of Germany had discovered the fine art of storytelling.

Many of the stories they created and told each other had their roots in everyday experiences. Then, as now, human beings were beguiled by fantasy and shocked by the dark side of the human experience. Transformation, miraculous recovery, witchcraft, abandonment, incest, abuse—all were fair game for the storyteller's art, and the tales grew and developed in the telling. Some were told to children, but the majority were meant for adults, to be spun out on winter nights as the fire died down and the embers crumbled into grey ash.

Then two brothers, young university-educated men with an interest in folklore and linguistics, began to circulate among the people. They too wanted to hear the old tales and stories, but with one difference: they intended to write them down. As Germans became more cosmopolitan and well-to-do, the old tales were being told less and less often, and the brothers feared that unless someone took pains to record them, they would be lost to humanity forever. So they called on many households and sat at many firesides, listening to the old tales, taking notes, asking questions.

And so it was that in 1814, the first edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen was published. Much later, an animator named Disney would enter the scene and blow everything to hell—but that, my friends, is a story for another day.

I'm not entirely certain how the Grimm brothers' book, Children and Household Tales, came to be regarded as a book of "fairy tales." Fairies, as such, rarely if ever appear in these stories; likewise, few of the tales contain subject matter that is usually deemed appropriate for children. Instead, they reflect the tastes of the adult audience for whom they were originally intended—complete with scenes of horrific violence, cannibalism, death, dismemberment, poisonings, drownings, and other similarly wholesome pursuits.

And, I will argue, that is just what gives these stories their universal and undying appeal. Human nature is drawn to certain fantasy elements, as well as the more deviant acts of humanity. (Think we don't still yearn for stories of murder and abandonment? Try watching the evening news.) The soft-soaped, watered-down versions of the original tales are "only for children" because, in the process of losing some of their hard edges, they have also lost much of the gritty, realistic qualities that made them universal and compelling.

The book I hold in my hands, Snow White, has not been watered down. And that's precisely why I love it.

The text was taken directly from the original Grimm edition and translated into English by Paul Heins. It includes the gory details found in the original, such as the wicked queen commanding a huntsman to take Snow White into the woods, kill her, and remove her liver and lungs for the queen to consume. Snow White has three attempts made on her life in this tale, and the third attempt succeeds. She lies dead in a glass coffin for many years. In the end, the wicked queen's jealousy and cruelty are rewarded by being forced to dance in shoes of red-hot iron until she falls dead.

The illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman, however, are what make this version of Snow White truly special. Most of the Grimm tales are simple, straightforward and archetypal, lacking a certain richness of description—but where the details of the text end, Ms. Hyman's illustrations begin. From the very first page, we see the young queen's beauty, her blood against the snow, the rich details of her sewing basket, the wooden iconic triptych on a shelf. The very next illustration shows the same room transformed by the glory of the sunset, the moon, and the beautiful but haughty new queen reflected in her magic mirror. Hyman's attention to detail builds on the story—Snow White may begin as a child of seven, but in each page she grows older until by the end of the tale she is clearly a young woman. The wicked queen's lust for ultimate beauty and her continued attempts to destroy her rival are continually reflected in her face, until we see her at the pinnacle of her prowess—an evil beauty, bestowed with power and sorcery, with unnaturally pale skin and the harrowed, staring eyes of a woman gone insane with jealousy. Even the mirror despairs of reflecting such an image.

This version of Snow White was originally published in 1974; the Silver Anniversary edition was re-released in paperback in 1999. It's worth seeking out, both as a beautiful book in itself, and as a surefire antidote to the saccharine-sweet pop-culture version of this tale.

Besides, your kids ought to learn that not every fairy tale ends with "happily ever after."