accompany her to the dwarfs’ cottage) as to inappropriate behaviors or cleaning practices, singing, “Whistle While You Work,” to speed the job along (Disney). When she catches the deer licking dishes clean, she starts, “Oh! No, no, no, no. Put them in the tub,” and once this issue is rectified, she corrects the squirrels, sweeping dirt and dust under the rug with their tails. “Ah, ah, ah, ah. Not under the rug” (Disney). While Snow White’s qualities of character develop (per the fairy tale’s representation of the female life cycle),

Disney keeps his viewer entertained and engaged through Snow White’s motherly “tut- tutting” in song, as she teaches the little animals and woodland creatures how to clean and keep house and practices the functional role of mothering, also developing into the gendered prototype that American culture warrants.

In the same way that an audience follows Snow White’s narrative development and function through song, the dwarfs too, memorably appear first accompanied by song.

Immediately following the “Whistle While You Work” song and scene, a viewer encounters the dwarfs in the mine, with the song, “Heigh Ho.” This tune begins with the lyric “We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig in our mine the whole day through; To dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig is what we really like to do” (Disney). The dwarfs are pictured here in the mine, happily gathering and sorting jewels of various sorts. Perhaps the more clearly recognizable, titular “Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, It’s home from work we go [Whistle]” ends the tune, carrying the dwarfs through their forest walk home toward their cottage

(Disney). Both Snow White’s “Whistle While You Work” and the dwarfs’ “Heigh-ho” clearly correspond with Disney’s characters’ animated actions, and, even more

155