6/6/2020 Disney Left Out the Most Gruesome Aspects of the Original Snow White Story

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Aspects of the Original Snow White Story

Apr 18, 2018 E.L. Hamilton

Oh, Snow White, that classic, if a little retro, fairytale of good triumphing over evil.
It’s a sweet story of an innocent young beauty who is banished by a vain, cruel, and
jealous stepmother and who, with the help of seven lovable dwarfs, ultimately finds
everlasting true love. Walt Disney turned the fable into the first full-length animated
musical feature film in 1937. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is to this day one of

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6/6/2020 Disney Left Out the Most Gruesome Aspects of the Original Snow White Story

the top-10 films of all time (adjusted for inflation), beloved by generations of
children.

It turns out the American animator left out a few gruesome details. Disney’s well-
known Snow White is a sanitized version of the original German Brothers Grimm
fairytale, which was a lot more, well, grim.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm didn’t actually come up with the story of Snow White or
Cinderella, Rapunzel, or any other storybook princess associated with their (and
now Disney’s) name, for that matter. The Grimms were German scholars,
researchers, and authors who collected folktales that were part of a rich oral
tradition, having been passed down from generation to generation of women telling
the stories to pass the time. In 1812, they published the collection as Nursery and
Household Tales.

The dwarfs find Snow White asleep

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6/6/2020 Disney Left Out the Most Gruesome Aspects of the Original Snow White Story

Despite its title, the book was not originally intended for children. The text included
violence, incest, sex, and perhaps most deadly of all—footnotes. In the Cinderella
story, for instance, the stepsisters cut off their toes and heels in order to fit into the
glass slipper.

In “Little Snow-White,” as the original story was called, the Evil Queen asks a
hunter to take Snow White into the forest to kill, as happens also in the movie. (In
the original version, the child is also only 7 years old, as opposed to Disney’s 14.
Neither seems old enough to consider marriage.)

In the Grimm version, the Queen orders the huntsman to bring back Snow White’s
internal organs, saying “Kill her, and as proof that she is dead bring her lungs and
liver back to me.”
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He kills a boar instead, and brings back to the Queen the boar’s lungs and liver—
which the Queen thinks belongs to Snow White and so promptly eats. Ewww!

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6/6/2020 Disney Left Out the Most Gruesome Aspects of the Original Snow White Story

The Queen visits Snow White

“The cook had to boil them with salt, and the wicked woman ate them, supposing
that she had eaten Snow-White’s lungs and liver,” as the Grimm brothers wrote.

The Queen tricks Snow White three separate times in the Grimm version. The first
time, she has Snow White try on a corset, which is so tight, Snow White passes out.
(The dwarfs save her by cutting the laces.) The second time, she sells Snow White
a poisonous comb, which the young girl puts in her hair, causing her to pass out.
(The dwarfs take it out.) The third time the Queen tricks her with the same
poisonous apple we see in the Disney film.

Having fainted and presumed dead, young Snow-White is placed in a glass coffin in
both book and movie. When the Prince happens by in the Grimm version, he insists
on taking the deceased beauty away, even though he’s never met her. The dwarfs
hesitantly agree, but as they are carrying her coffin out of their house, one of them
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6/6/2020 Disney Left Out the Most Gruesome Aspects of the Original Snow White Story

stumbles. Jostled from her resting place in the coffin, Snow White spits out the
apple lodged in her throat and is immediately revived. Without the influence of the
Prince’s kiss.
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In movie and in folklore, Snow White and the Prince fall in love and get married
(never mind that in the original tale, Snow is only 7 years old). In the movie, the
seven dwarfs chase the Evil Queen into the forest, where she tumbles off a cliff—
with a push from a convenient lightning strike—and falls to her death.

The dwarfs warn Snow White

In the book version, the Queen attends their wedding where she is meted out a just
punishment of dancing to her death. (Perhaps this last was thought up by a 19th
century noblewoman forced to dance endlessly to the 1812 version of Bruno Mars’s
“Marry You.”)

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6/6/2020 Disney Left Out the Most Gruesome Aspects of the Original Snow White Story

Related story from us: The earlier versions of Little Red Riding Hood featured
wolves with pretty decadent designs

The more Grimm version of the Queen’s death goes like this: “They put a pair of
iron shoes into burning coals. They were brought forth with tongs and placed before
her. She was forced to step into the red-hot shoes and dance until she fell down
dead.”
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You can see why Disney wanted to clean up that unsavory image!

E.L. Hamilton has written about pop culture for a variety of magazines and
newspapers, including Rolling Stone, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, the New York
Post and the New York Daily News. She lives in central New Jersey, just west of
New York City

16 Comments Sort by Oldest

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Colin Den Ronden

In those days kids were betrothed at 5. It's just that the Moslems have kept those practices
whilst we have moved on. Marriage for nobles was all about shoring up wealth and power. As
Friedrich Engels pointed out in Origin of the Family and the State, it was only the poor that
married for love as that was all they had. As the saying goes, when poverty comes in the door,
love goes out the window.
Like · Reply · 17 · 2y

Odin Matanguihan
" it was only the poor that married for love as that was all they had. As the saying
goes, when poverty comes in the door, love goes out the window."

aren't these two statements contradictory?

Like · Reply · 40 · 2y

Luis Miguel Ventura Lora

Odin Matanguihan YES!
Like · Reply · 2 · 2y

Calin Iosif
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