Referring to the most famous and memorable Disney princess, everyone must mention Snow White. Debuting in the animated movie that shocked the world in 1937, this princess not only made the whole world fall in love, but also laid a solid foundation to build the Disney “empire” today. The story of “true love” of Snow White until now is still loved and admired by generations of children. However, perhaps few people know about the dark truth behind this fairy tale when it was first composed.
Snow White was originally described as a beautiful princess, making her stepmother, the queen, jealous. With the help of a magic mirror, she hunts down and harms Snow White with a poisoned apple. Snow White is placed in a glass coffin by the 7 dwarfs, accidentally seen by a passing white horse prince. He places a kiss on Snow White’s lips, waking her up.
This story, however, is far from the first version of the story, which has its roots in 19th-century German folk tales. Between 1812 and 1864, brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm introduced published 17 editions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, with many modifications to the story of Snow White.
In the 1812 version, the evil queen who harmed Snow White was actually her biological mother. However, in later versions, the Grimm brothers found that letting the villain be the biological mother was a topic that was too immoral for children. So, they replaced this character with the image of the stepmother.
Also in this version, Snow White actually did not wake up thanks to the prince. Instead, a servant beat her dead body.
The prince requested that Snow White’s glass coffin be placed in his castle, where he could look at her every day, unable to take his eyes off her. Every time he had to go out and not be able to see Snow White, he became sad. The Prince can’t eat unless he’s next to Snow White’s coffin.
However, the prince’s servants soon grew tired and angry from constantly carrying the coffin around. Once, someone opened the coffin, picked up Snow White, and said, “We’ve been tortured all day long, just because a girl died,” and then hit Snow White on the back with his hand. Thanks to that, the piece of poison apple flew out of Snow White’s throat and she came to life.
Since 1819, the Grimm brothers began to diminish the prince’s “perverted” preference for Snow White’s corpse. That year’s version changes that Snow White wakes up when the servants carry her body to the castle. At this moment, someone tripped and the apple fell out of Snow White’s throat, and she woke up.
Although the prince still had a mysterious and morbid preference for the dead body of a little girl (specifically when it was about 7 years old!), he did not ask to kiss her. The idea of the kiss came from Disney to convince the audience that they had passionate love between them. The company also added details that the prince and Snow White had met before, to make the relationship more convincing. However, this “corpse love” kiss, without consent, has now become insensitive and aroused many controversies.
Image source: Synthesis, Disney
