“Snow White and Rose Red” by the Brothers Grimm has always intrigued me. What is it about purity, innocence, and goodness that make fairy tales so fascinating? Or maybe it’s the loss of these things that entice readers—to be able to have a front row seat to witness the fall of childhood, the awakening of something more—something darker—within.
What if it’s not their moral that grips us but their villain? What if the layers were peeled back, and the sweet, pure characters revealed their skeletons. No one is who they seem.
Fairy tales are not what they seem.
Fairy tales have a unique way of sharing truths about the world we live in and the people who inhabit it. They reveal the twisted and honor the noble. They explore real evil, yet teach us how to overcome it or better yet—avoid it altogether.
Children flock to these often violent stories because they search the familiar, uncover the gruesome, and encourage the honorable. To quote Neil Gaiman, “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
Most of us were introduced to the magic of fairy tales by Disney movies. The very first full-length animated fairy tale ever made was Snow White in 1934. It took three years to complete and changed the story of fairy tales in modern culture.
Snow White and Rose Red by the Brothers Grimm (summary)
But allow me to twist things a bit further. The topic of our story today isn’t the Snow White we grew up with, it’s a different Snow White. And her sister Rose Red. Despite their tale not being as widely known, it is perhaps the most relevant story the Grimms ever told.
To introduce us to the main characters, here’s a poem by Fran Lindsay:
My sister glows out at me,
White blush of mirrors
In her mouth.
Glass fruit on my table,
Ripe roses on hers. Books:
I read fables until
She is the myth and I am the moral:
Suffering, ugly, and good.
I rest then,
While she reads aloud
Of her happiness.
I have one place-mark
For my autobiography.
If we were twins, we were different
Confessions to the same lie.
“Snow White and Rose Red” was added to the Grimm’s collection in 1837. In the tale, “Snow White and Rose Red,” the two girls live deep in the forest with their widowed mother. Snow White is a fair-haired, fair skinned, quiet, domestic type. She is shy and spends a lot of time indoors doing housework, reading, and helping her mother. But Rose Red is completely opposite. She is outspoken, extroverted, and prefers to spend time outside. But despite their differences, the two of them are close friends.
On a cold winter night, as the three women were in their cottage, a knock comes to the door. The girls open it and see a bear. Of course, the women are terrified at first. But the bear tells them not to be afraid and that he only needs to get warm. So, being the kind ladies they are, they decide to trust the bear and allow him in. He lies down in front of the fire and warms himself. And this continues night after night. Soon the girls befriend the bear and the three play with each other and spend lots of time together during the winter season. But when spring arrives, the bear tells him that he has to go and guard his treasure from a wicked dwarf. The girls are sad, but they also understand why the bear must leave. On another day, while they are walking through the woods, they come across a dwarf whose beard is stuck in a tree. To free him, Snow White must cut his beard free. But the dwarf does not like this and curses them for cutting his beautiful beard. Over time, the girls encounter the dwarf again and again and even once more. Every time they have to rescue him, and every time the dwarf curses them for their help.
On the last time that the dwarf and the girls meet, the bear whom the girls had befriended the winter before, is about to kill the ungrateful dwarf. The dwarf tries to convince the bear to eat the girls instead of killing him, but the bear will have none of that. The bear ends up killing the dwarf with one blow of his paw. And then the bear’s skin begins to fall, revealing a handsome prince. The prince explains to the girls that the dwarf had bewitched him to steal his precious treasure. But now that the dwarf is dead, the curse is broken. All the while, the prince had fallen in love with Snow White, and the two of them marry, while Rose Red marries the prince’s brother. The family goes on to live together along with their mother, who keeps two roses, one red and one white planted in front of her window.
The Ungrateful Dwarf by Caroline Stahl, 1816
The story was adapted from Caroline Stahl’s tale “The Ungrateful Dwarf,” first printed in 1816. The key difference between the two is that the Grimm’s added the romantic element between Snow White and the bear. They also elaborated on the sisters and aged them up. Stahl’s stories tended to focus more on morals and messages, while the Grimms often included a romantic element to their tales.
In Stahl’s version, the girls keep the dwarf’s treasure after the bear kills him, which helps pull their family from poverty.
What Makes Snow White and Rose Red Different?
There are certain key points throughout the story that are worth mentioning, which Grimm expert Maria Tatar mentions in the Bicentennial Annotated Edition of the Tales. In the beginning, the Grimm’s paint an idyllic picture of family life at the girls’ home. The house is spotless, and there are references to a lamb and dove at the hearth—a lamb symbolizing Christ and a dove symbolizing love and peace. But what this picture-perfect family is missing is a father.
Not too far into the story, there’s a bit of foreshadowing that is unmistakable. While the girls are playing with the bear, rather roughly, he says:
“Snow White and Rose Red,
You’ll beat your suitor till he’s dead.”
This makes us wonder if—at least at that time—the bear didn’t know which one he preferred best. It also begs the question, was he really there just to be warmed by the fire, or had he spied the girls in the forest, and curious to know more, pursued them—hunted them even?
Much like the dwarfs in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the men are at odds with nature and are fighting against it rather than having a mutually harmonious relationship with it like the females in the stories. Tatar mentions that the dwarfs are similar to the trolls in Scandinavian folklore, which are described as non-Christian, living far away from humans, and are dangerous to humans.
Despite the dwarf being ungrateful and cursing the girls every time they saved him, the girls seem unfazed by his anger. They both exhibit great kindness and gentleness toward him, serving him even when he doesn’t deserve it. The Grimm’s strong message of goodness toward one’s neighbor is reflected in their Christian belief and expressed in Mark 12:30-31.
What makes this tale different than the other Grimm stories?
This story has always been one of my favorites—perhaps even my top favorite—but I never knew until delving into the research that it is argued as a Grimm original. The Brothers were historians, hoping to capture their cultural lore before all remnants of their Germanic roots were absorbed by the French. At the time of collection, Germany was under French rule, and the Brothers sharing a nationalistic need to preserve their culture set out to gather stories that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Though “Snow White and Rose Red” is heavily adapted from “The Ungrateful Dwarf,” the tone, symbolism, and ending are so different that the Brothers—namely Wilhelm—created their own original tale. Having never realized this before, it only adds to my love for the story, knowing that this one is especially Grimm.
Jack Zipes, a folklorist, believes that the story was biographical. You see, the brothers Grimm lived alone in a forest with their mother much like the sisters in the story. They also had a wonderful relationship with one another—had a deep respect and a friendship. Just as the sisters did in the story. Jack Zipes says, “the girls, not unlike the brothers Grimm, or like night and day but are inseparable and supportive of one another.” Could this be why the girls are friendly even though they’re opposite, which is very different from most sibling relationships in the fairytales? He goes on to say, “the treasures of a realm are restored to the rightful owners. The girls enter into new unions but remain inseparable. Their mother, as cultivator of their home and heritage, stays with them, and their tradition flourishes.” Knowing what we know about the Grimms and their devotion to tradition, this seems very possible.
Unlike Jack Zipes, Bruno Bettelheim looks at the story in psycho-sexual terms. The two male figures in the story, the bear and the dwarf, represent the opposite side of human nature—the good and the evil. But Bettleheim says the tale implies, “both friendly and disgusting aspects to our nature’s, And when we rid ourselves of the latter, all can be happiness. At the story’s end the essential unity of the protagonist is re-stated by Snow White’s marrying the prince, and Rose Red his brother.” Bettleheim goes on to say that the story’s protagonists have been split into two and that the girls and the men in the tale complement one another. The females in the story must first deal with overcoming evil to get to good. For example, they must first take care of the dwarf so that they can reap their reward of a prince. Bettelheim suggests that stories like this one are about a girl needing to change her attitude about sex from “rejecting to embracing it .” He earlier stated that “it is the heroine’s affection and devotion that transform the beast into its human form.”
Maria Tatar takes a different approach. She believes it is useful to understand how the story speaks to children on a moral ground. For example, readers of a “Snow White and Rose Red” will see two girls with exemplary behavior. They are kind to their mother, keep a clean house, have servants’ hearts, and will help people no matter what. The story also shows a healthy family dynamic. In the end, the girls live together with their mother and essentially live happily ever after.
If you enjoy the history and analysis of fairy tales, check out this article on Rapunzel.
Though the girls were playful with the bear, their everyday lives seem to be fairly pure, lacking much mischief. And unlike the “Little Red Riding Hood” story that we discussed in episodes five and six, these girls are on the straight and narrow. They’re not going against the grain or breaking any rules. In fact, their mother encourages their relationship with the bear.
Going back to Bruno Bettleheim’s suggestion of a psycho-sexual relationship between the heroine and a beast, it’s essential to understand what folklorist call the animal groom. The most popular of these tales is “The Beauty and The Beast.” It is in falling in love that a curse is broken and the beast becomes the prince. Or the groom. This sometimes occurs vice versa. But much like the beauty and the beast, Snow White’s involvement with the Bear transforms him to something better.
Bettelheim explains, “much more popular and numerous are tales which—without any reference to repression which causes a negative attitude to sex — simply teach that for love, a radical change in previously held attitudes about sex is absolutely necessary. What must happen is expressed, as always in fairytales, through a most impressive image: a beast is turned into a magnificent person.”
There are typical traits in animal groom stories. First, we initially don’t know why the groom has been changed into an animal. Second, some type of magical character has done this to the groom. And third, it is a parent who causes the connection between the heroine and the beast.
In our story here, the beast does not behave as much like an animal as he does a gentleman, which is another reason why “Snow White and Rose Red” is such a unique tale.
To the Modern Readers of Snow White and Rose Red
Though the story isn’t popular in modern retellings, it is much more relevant than we give it credit for. It’s often overshadowed by the other Snow White tale. The moral of the story being that kindness and goodness reap amazing rewards is still a truth we all want to believe. And its independent female characters aren’t damsels in distress; instead they play active roles in their futures and their relationships.
In fact, Wilhelm added an element to this story that seems to negate the warnings in most other fairy tales. The girls are encouraged to roam the woods alone. We’ve discussed the perils of being a girl alone in the woods before, so something about this seems a bit off. The story says that an angel protects them in the forest because they are good children, so they have no need to fear any evil. That doesn’t mean they won’t encounter it, though, as the dwarf is the symbol of evil in the tale.
To a modern reader, the Grimms—in arguably their only original tale—seem to be advocates for young women exploring the unknown world around them as long as they remember the good they’ve been taught. Also, the fact that the girls have one another and are always together—speak to that we, as people, are stronger in relationship with others rather than tackling to the world alone.
Despite there being promises of marriage and of happily ever afters at the end, I have a feeling that these ladies weren’t done having adventures in the dark, dark wood. I wonder what other evils they met in life and how their sisterly bond overtook them. Perhaps, they too at some point, as we all have on occasion, played the villain. Huh, now there’s a story…
SOURCES:
Print:
Bell, Elizabeth. Haas, Lynda. Sells, Laura. From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture. “One Breaking the Disney Spell” Zipes, Jack. 1995.
Bettleheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. 1976, pp. 285-286.
Lindsay, Fran. “Snow White and Rose Red.” College English, vol. 40, no. 8, 1979, pp. 928–928. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/376530.
Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Brothers Grimm: The Bicentennial Edition. 2012, pp. 375-386.
MUSIC:
- “Magic Forest” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ - “Ghostpocalypse – 6 Crossing the Threshold” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
