“You Must Kill Her”: the Fact and Fantasy of Filicide in “Snow White”
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“You Must Kill Her”: The Fact and Fantasy of Filicide in “Snow White” Michelle Ann Abate Marvels & Tales, Volume 26, Number 2, 2012, pp. 178-203 (Article) Published by Wayne State University Press For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/summary/v026/26.2.abate.html Access provided by Wayne State University (26 Feb 2014 10:12 GMT) MICHELLE ANN ABATE “You Must Kill Her” The Fact and Fantasy of Filicide in “Snow White” No quarrels . are so bitter as family quarrels. —William Alcott, The Young Husband (1846) Psychologists Geoffrey R. McKee and Steven J. Shea have asserted, “Few crimes generate greater public reaction than the intentional murder of children” (678). Given prevailing views about the innocence and defenselessness of young people, the slaying of a boy or girl is seen as particularly heinous. Although individuals can imagine an array of reasons that an adult might kill another adult, they cannot fathom what could possibly prompt an adult to murder a child. As Marianne Szegedy-Maszak has written on the subject, “Both the crime and the motivations defy easy comprehension” (28). As a result, the killing of an infant, toddler, or adolescent is regarded as shocking as it is senseless. Given the condemnation associated with child murder, it is surprising how commonly this act is featured in fairy tales. Many of the homicides depicted in some of the most beloved stories are acts of filicide, neonaticide, or infanticide. The Wolf’s consumption of Little Red Riding Hood, the witch’s similar attempt to bake and eat young Hansel and Gretel, the ogre’s slaughter of his seven daughters in “Little Tom Thumb,” and the stepmother’s brutal decapitation of her stepson in “The Juniper Tree” are just a few representative examples. Of all the fairy tales that depict the murder of a child, arguably the most well-known is “Snow White.” As Linda Dégh has observed, “The common knowledge of the [narrative] is so profound, so deeply ingrained, that, even without the story being told in full, a reference or casual hint is enough” for readers to recognize the plot (102). Although the story of “Snow White” exists in numerous forms, the telling by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm has risen to prominence. As Maria Tatar has written, “Today, adults and children the world over read the Grimms’ tales in nearly every shape and form: illustrated and Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2012), pp. 178–203. Copyright © 2012 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201. 178 MT_26.2_02.indd 178 31/08/12 1:02 AM “YOU MUST KILL HER” annotated, bowdlerized and abridged, faithful to the original or fractured” (Hard Facts xv). The Grimm Brothers’ version of “Snow White” is not only the most popular but also the most homicidal. The jealous stepmother in the tale kills the beautiful title character not once but three times: first, by suffo- cating her with staylaces; next, by brushing her hair with an enchanted lethal comb; and, finally, by feeding her a poisoned apple. Moreover, these murders occur only after an initial unsuccessful attempt on Snow White’s life. In a passage that is as famous as it is gruesome, the evil Queen instructs the Huntsman to take Snow White deep into the woods and “kill her and bring me her lungs and liver as proof of your deed” (Grimm 84). Demonstrating the centrality of murder to the story, even in Walt Disney’s highly sanitized animated film version of the Grimms’ “Snow White,” the title character is murdered: after the Huntsman is unable to kill the little girl, the evil stepmother draws on her magical powers to transform herself into a crone, concoct a poisoned apple, and murder the young girl herself (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). In this essay I seek to account for the ongoing fascination, timeless appeal, and mass popularity of “Snow White” in general and the version by the Grimm Brothers in particular. I argue that the story endures not in spite of its depic- tion of a heinous queen who engages in the horrific act of child murder, but because of it. As Bruno Bettelheim famously argues in The Uses of Enchantment (1975), the story of “Snow White” is the product of the repressed feelings, hidden desires, and forbidden feelings of its juvenile readers. In Bettelheim’s reading the tale is not about a stepmother who is jealous of her daughter but about a daughter who is jealous of her mother. In what has become an oft-quoted passage, Bettelheim asserts: Snow White, if she were a real child, could not help being intensely jealous of her mother and all her advantages and power. If a child cannot permit himself to feel his jealousy of a parent (this is very threatening to his security), he projects his feelings onto this parent. Then “I am jealous of all the advantages and prerogatives of Mother” turns into the wishful thought: “Mother is jealous of me.” The feeling of inferiority is defensively turned into a feeling of superiority. (204) Bettelheim believes that “the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give better direction to his life” (7). In the specific case of “Snow White,” the story helps the child work through the powerful feelings of filial jealousy, which Bettelheim notes is “an age-old phenomenon” (204).1 179 MT_26.2_02.indd 179 31/08/12 1:02 AM MICHELLE ANN ABATE I offer an alternative assessment that upends critical viewpoints about “Snow White” that have persisted for decades. Building on the work of Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Shuli Barzilai about the centrality of the character of the stepmother, I argue that the fairy tale is a product of wish fulfillment or fantasy, but on behalf of its adult readers, not its child readers. Given that “Snow White” is a story that was originally created by adults and initially pub- lished in a collection by the Grimm Brothers that was not primarily intended for a child audience and that the story endures because it is continually rewritten, retold, and republished by men and women instead of boys and girls, the murderous impulses in the story may more accurately be viewed as the result of parental wishes and desires instead of those belonging to children. As I discuss, at least part of the readerly attraction and ongoing appeal of “Snow White” is not that it allows young people to work through psycholog- ical jealousy for their mother but rather, and much more disturbingly, that it allows parents the opportunity to indulge in homicidal fantasies about their children. Once Upon a Time, There Were Only Grown-Ups: Fairy Tales as Narratives by Adults, for Adults—and About Adults In the twenty-first century fairy tales occupy a central place in the canon of literature for young readers. Commonly read by boys and girls as well as to them, stories such as “Cinderella,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Snow White” are seen as largely having a juvenile audience. As a consequence, collections of fairy tales are often shelved in the children’s sections of bookstores and libraries. Similarly, studies about the origins and evolution of children’s litera- ture routinely begin with a consideration of fairy tales, framing them as foun- dational texts of the genre.2 This has not always been the case. Although critics hotly debate whether fairy tales have their root in an oral or written tradition, few contest that they began as stories that were initially created by and for adults.3 For instance, Maria Tatar, in an argument that supports the origins of fairy tales in orality, asserts that “traditionally folktales,” including the ones that the Grimm Brothers would later collect and publish, “were related at adult gatherings after the children had been put to bed for the night” (Hard Facts 23). As a result of this child-free atmosphere, “peasant racounteurs could take certain liberties” (Hard Facts 23). These freedoms took the form of everything from lewd plots and crass language to taboo subject matter and uncouth characters. Indeed, in the absence of child listeners, storytellers were able to “give free play to their penchant for sexual innuendo or off-color allusions” (Hard Facts 23). 180 MT_26.2_02.indd 180 31/08/12 1:02 AM “YOU MUST KILL HER” Meanwhile, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, in her recent book Fairy Tales: A New History, makes a case for the literary tradition of fairy tales, but she likewise points to source material whose authorship and audience were adult and not juvenile: the work of sixteenth-century Italian author Giovan Francesco Straparola. Whatever their specific sociocultural origins and narrative content, folk and fairy tales allowed for the free reign of the imagination. As Jack Zipes has written, “The basic nature of the folk tale was connected to the objective onto- logical situation and dreams of the narrators and their audiences” (Breaking 33). The stories brought amusement at the end of a long work day, and they also allowed adults an opportunity to release pent-up feelings. Through the tales that they read, heard, or invented, men and women could give voice to fears, dreams, and fantasies (Tatar, Hard Facts 20–25). When the tale of “Snow White” was first published by the Grimm Brothers in Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812), it retained this quality. Alfred David and Mary Elizabeth David have written that, even though Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm gave their collection the title “Nursery and Household Stories,” “they did not mean to imply that they had compiled a volume of stories for the nursery” (181).