Evil Queen
The Evil Queen, also called the Wicked Queen or simply the Queen, is a fictional character and the main antagonist of "Snow White", a German fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm. In the Grimm's story, the Queen is Snow White's stepmother obsessed with being "the fairest in the land". When the Queen's magic mirror reveals that the young princess Snow White is considered more beautiful than her, the Queen decides to kill Snow White using witchcraft. When this attempt fails, Snow White is rescued and the Queen is executed for her crimes. A stock character of this type also appears in a number of other fairy tales and legends.
The Grimms' tale is didactic, meant as a warning to young children against the dangers of narcissism, pride, and hubris, and demonstrates a triumph of good over evil. In some revisions, however, the Queen has been reworked or portrayed more sympathetically, serving as the protagonist, antihero, or tragic hero. Her many variants in adaptations notably include the Disney version.
Brothers Grimm tale
Story
The Evil Queen is described as a "proud and arrogant" woman of exceptional beauty who marries the King following the death of his first wife, Snow White's mother. Obsessed with her own beauty, the Queen stands before a magic mirror every morning to confirm that she is the most beautiful, thus validating her vanity. One morning, the mirror informs her that her stepdaughter, the seven-year-old Princess Snow White, has surpassed her in beauty "a thousand times". Furious, the Queen formulates a plan to kill Snow White. The Queen orders her Huntsman to lure Snow White into the forest to murder her. The Queen tells him to bring back the child's lungs and liver as proof that the princess is dead. However, the Huntsman takes pity on Snow White and instead, he brings the Queen the lungs and liver of a wild boar. The Queen or a cook prepares the lungs and liver, believing them to be Snow White's organs, and the Queen eats them.After questioning her mirror again, the Queen discovers that Snow White has survived and found sanctuary with the Seven Dwarfs. Intending to kill Snow White herself, she takes on the disguise of an old peddler woman. Under this guise, she visits the dwarfs' house and sells Snow White laces for a corset. The Queen intentionally laces the corset too tight in an attempt to suffocate Snow White. When this fails, the Queen returns again, this time as a comb seller, and tricks Snow White into using a poisoned comb created through the art of witchcraft. When the comb also fails to kill Snow White, the Queen proclaims, "Snow White shall die… even if it costs me my life!" She again visits Snow White, disguised as a farmer's wife, and gives her half of a red, beautiful apple that had been poisoned, which places Snow White in a deep sleep. However, Snow White is awakened by a kiss from a Prince from another kingdom and they invite the Queen to their wedding. Although she fears what will happen, the Queen's jealousy drives her to attend. At the celebration, she is forced to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance until she drops dead.
Origins and evolution
In the first print edition of the Brothers Grimm story from their 1812/1815 collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen, the Queen is Snow White's biological mother. At the beginning of the story, she is sewing at an open window when she pricks her finger with her needle, causing three drops of red blood to drip onto the white snow on the black ebony windowsill. She then wishes to have a daughter with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony, and she later gives birth to Snow White. In subsequent versions after 1819, this was changed; the text was added to include that Snow White's mother died and the King remarried. According to Jack Zipes, that change was made because the Grimms "held motherhood sacred". According to Cashdan, a "cardinal rule of fairy tales" mandates that the "heroes and heroines are allowed to kill witches, sorceresses, even stepmothers, but never their own mothers". Zipes' 2014 collection of Grimm fairy tales in their original forms reinstated the Queen as Snow White's mother. This revision was likely the work of Wilhelm Grimm. In the Brothers' original Ölenberg Manuscript, the Queen herself abandons Snow White in a forest after taking her there to pick flowers, and ends up being punished by the returning King after he revives their daughter.The wicked stepmother was not unknown in German versions predating the Brothers Grimm's collection. In 1782, Johann Karl August Musäus published a literary fairy tale titled "Richilde" which reimagined the folktale from the villain's point of view. The main character is Richilde, arrogant Countess of Brabant, who as a child received the gift of a magic mirror invented by her godfather Albertus Magnus. Many elements of the Grimms' Snow White appear in this story, including the wicked stepmother, the magic mirror, the poisoned apple, and the punishment of dancing in red-hot shoes. The Grimms knew of Snow White, a play by their contemporary and rival Albert Ludwig Grimm, which according to Zipes "treated the Queen more gently".
Equivalents to the Evil Queen can be found in Snow White-like tales from around the world. In the Scottish Gaelic oral tale "Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree", the Queen is named Silver-Tree and is the heroine's biological mother. A talking trout takes the place of the Queen's mirror and the huntsman figure is the princess's own father. The villain's relationship with Snow White can also vary, with versions from around the world sometimes featuring wicked sisters, wicked sisters-in-law, or a wicked mother of the prince. One early variation of the tale was Giambattista Basile's "The Young Slave". In this telling the heroine's mother is unintentionally involved in putting her to sleep. She is then awoken by her cruel and jealous aunt who treats her like a slave. Furthermore, the Evil Queen's tricks also vary from place to place. In Italy, she is found using a toxic comb, a contaminated cake, and a suffocating braid. In France, she is found using a poisoned tomato. There are many more examples. The Queen demands varying proof from the huntsman. In Spain, Snow White can be found needing to stop a bottle of blood with her toe; in Italy, it is the princess's intestines and blood-soaked shirt.
Oliver Madox Hueffer noted that the wicked stepmother with magical powers threatening a young princess is a recurring theme in fairy tales; one similar character is the witch-queen in "The Wild Swans" as told by Hans Christian Andersen. According to Kenny Klein, the Celtic enchantress Ceridwen of the Welsh mythology was "the quintessential evil stepmother, the origin of that character in the two tales of Snow White and Cinderella".
Violence and sanitisation
In the classic ending of "Snow White", the Evil Queen is put to death by torture. However, such extreme punishment is often considered inappropriate for children. Already the first English translation of the Grimm's tale, written by Edgar Taylor in 1823, had the Queen choke on her own envy upon the sight of Snow White alive. An 1871 English translation by Susanna Mary Paull "replaces the Queen's death by cruel physical punishment with death by self-inflicted pain and self-destruction", as it is instead her own shoes that become hot due to her anger. Many modern revisions of the fairy tale also change the gruesome classic ending in order to make it less violent. As Sara Maitland wrote, "We do not tell this part of the story anymore; we say it is too cruel and will break children's soft hearts".Alternative endings may have the Queen, for example, instantly drop dead "of anger" at the wedding or in front of her mirror upon learning of Snow White's survival, fall victim to her own designs going awry, die by nature, killed by the dwarfs during a chase, destroyed by her own mirror, run away into the forest never to be seen again, or simply banished from the kingdom forever. In some versions, the Queen is merely prevented from committing further wrong-doings and does not die, but is banished or disappears; in others, she may die by accident. Fawzia Gilani-Williams's Snow White: An Islamic Tale, for instance, has Snow White forgive her evil witch stepmother entirely, making her repent and redeem herself, as part of the book's religious lessons for children.
Such revisions have been considered a softening of the original text and many today feel the story has become too "sanitized". Sheldon Cashdan, Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, argues that in accordance with the logic of fairy tales, the Queen could not be allowed to flee or merely be locked up, as fairy tale narrative demands that "the reader needs to know that the death of the witch is thorough and complete, even if it means exposing young readers to acts of violence that are extreme by contemporary standards". Conversely, writers such as Hueffer have expressed sympathy for the queen, or, like psychology professor Sharna Olfman, have removed the violence when reading the story to children, while also acknowledging that verbal storytelling lacks "graphic visual imagery".
Interpretations
According to some scholars, such as Roger Sale and University of Hawaiʻi professor Cristina Bacchilega, the story has ageist undertones vilifying the older woman character, with her envy of Snow White's beauty. Terri Windling wrote that the Queen is "a woman whose power is derived from her beauty; it is this, the tale implies, that provides her place in the castle's hierarchy. If the king’s attention turns from his wife to another, what power is left to an aging woman? Witchcraft, the tale answers. Potions, poisons, and self-protection." Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar regard Snow White and her mother/stepmother as two female stereotypes, the angel and the monster. The fact that the Queen was Snow White's biological mother in the first version of the Grimms' story has led several psychoanalytic critics to interpret "Snow White" as a story about a repressed Oedipus complex, or about Snow White's Electra complex and sexual rivalry with the Queen. According to Bruno Bettelheim, the story's main motif is "the clash of sexual innocence and sexual desire": "whereas Snow White achieves inner harmony, her stepmother fails to do so. Unable to integrate the social and the antisocial aspects of human nature, she remains enslaved to her desires and gets caught up in an Oedipal competition with her daughter from which she cannot extricate herself. This imbalance between her contradictory drives proves to be her undoing." Cashdan interprets the Queen's motives as "fear that the king will find Snow White more appealing than her." This struggle so dominates the psychological landscape of the tale that Gilber and Gubar even proposed renaming the story "Snow White and Her Wicked Stepmother". Zipes considered it a story of a "natural" competition where the Queen "acts on behalf of her genes" as she seeks to both maintain her status as the most beautiful woman and to secure her own progeny. Harold Bloom opined that the three "temptations" all "testify to a mutual sexual attraction between Snow White and her stepmother." Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations for her picture book version show the Queen's mental suffering in her descent into madness caused by her jealousy in a psychological interpretation not contradicting the Brothers Grimm story but expanding on it.The Brothers Grimm, who wrote their book as an "educational manual", may have felt that a brutal punishment for a villain was a necessary element augmenting the happy endings of their tales, as in Snow White's ascent as new queen and triumph over her evil enemy. Cashdan proposes that the evil queen "embodies narcissism, and the young princess, with whom readers identify, embodies parts of the child struggling to overcome this tendency. Vanquishing the queen represents a triumph of positive forces in the self over vain impulses." As such, "the death of the witch signals a victory of virtue over vice, a sign that positive forces in the self have prevailed." In addition, "the active involvement of heroin in the witch's demise communicates to readers that they must take an active role in overcoming their own errant tendencies." Similarly, psychologist Betsy Cohen wrote about the perceived symbolism of the act: "In order to avoid becoming a wicked queen herself, Snow White needs to separate from and kill off this destructive force inside of her." In the words of Bettelheim, "only the death of the jealous queen can make for a happy world."
Regarding the manner of the Queen's execution, scholars such as Cashdan, Sheldon Donald Haase, and John Hanson Saunders argue that from psychological and storytelling perspectives, the Queen's punishment fits her crimes, gives closure to the reader, and shows good triumphing over evil. Jo Eldridge Carney, Professor of English at The College of New Jersey, wrote: "Again, the fairy tale's system of punishment is horrific but apt: a woman so actively consumed with seeking affirmation from others and with violently undoing her rival is forced to enact her own physical destruction as a public spectacle." Likewise, Mary Ayers of the Stanford University School of Medicine wrote that the red-hot shoes symbolize that the Queen was "subjected to the effects of her own inflamed, searing hot envy and hatred." It was also noted that this ending echoes the fairy tale of "The Red Shoes", which similarly "warns of the danger of attachment to appearances". Diane Purkiss attributes the Queen's fiery death in the Brothers Grimm tale to "the folk belief that burning a witch's body ended her power, a belief which subtended the practice of burning witches in Germany." The American Folklore Society noted that the use of iron shoes "recalls folk practices of destroying a witch through the magic agency of iron." In other variants of the "Snow White" type tales, the story usually also ends with the punishment of the wicked stepmother through burning, immurement, or decapitation.
Rosemary Ellen Guiley suggests that the Queen of the Brothers Grimm tale uses an apple because it recalls the temptation of Eve; this creation story from the Bible led the Christian Church to view apples as a symbol of sin. Many people feared that apples could carry evil spirits and that witches used them for poisoning. Robert G. Brown of Duke University also makes a connection with the story of Adam and Eve, seeing the Queen as a representation of the archetype of Lilith. The symbol of the apple has long had traditional associations with enchantment and witchcraft in some European cultures, as in the case of Morgan le Fay's Avalon.