Snow White’s Mother Was the Villain

The story as it is told

The tale as almost everyone knows it begins in winter, with a queen sewing at a window who pricks her finger. Three drops of blood fall on the snow, and she wishes for a child white as snow, red as blood and black as ebony. She gets her wish and dies, and the king marries again. The new queen is beautiful and vain and owns a magic mirror. Every morning she asks it who is fairest, and every morning it says she is, until the day it names the girl, Snow White, now seven years old.

The queen orders a huntsman to take the child into the woods and kill her, and he cannot do it. Snow White runs over the hills to the house of seven dwarfs, who let her stay. The queen learns she is alive and comes three times in disguise: with lace for her bodice, with a comb, and at last with an apple. The dwarfs lay Snow White in a glass coffin, and a prince who sees it falls in love with her. In the version most people carry, a kiss wakes her. They marry, and the wicked queen is made to dance in red-hot iron slippers until she is dead. The "wicked stepmother" is so fixed a type that the phrase is almost one word.

A popular interpretation says the Grimms turned mothers into stepmothers to protect the idea of motherhood for a family audience. The text history supports the change itself. The motive is the scholars' reading, quoted below as theirs.

What we can confirm

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began collecting tales in 1806. In spring 1812 Achim von Arnim urged them to publish, and by June the Berlin publisher Georg Andreas Reimer had agreed. The first volume of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen came out on December 20, 1812, from Reimer's Realschulbuchhandlung in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). The Lippische Landesbibliothek Detmold gives the print run as 900 copies for volume 1.

Tale no. 53 in that volume is "Sneewittchen (Schneeweißchen)". It opens in the familiar way: a queen sews at an ebony window in winter, pricks her finger and wishes for a child. Then it departs from the version everyone knows. The queen has the daughter and does not die. She is the same woman who later asks the mirror who is fairest. When the mirror names Snow White, who is seven years old, the queen tells a hunter to stab the child in the woods and bring back "seine Lunge und seine Leber" (her lungs and her liver), "die will ich mit Salz kochen und essen" (I will cook them with salt and eat them). The hunter spares the girl and brings the organs of a young boar instead. Later Snow White tells the dwarfs how "seine Mutter" (her mother) tried to kill her. At the wedding, the text calls the villain "Sneewittchens gottlose Mutter" (Snow White's godless mother). She is made to dance in red-hot iron slippers "bis sie sich zu todt getanzt hatte" (until she had danced herself to death).

The 1812 version has other surprises. There is no kiss. The prince has the glass coffin carried with him wherever he goes, and a servant, annoyed at hauling a dead girl around all day, strikes her on the back, and the bite of apple flies out of her throat.

The second edition of 1819 changed the mother. Now "wie das Kind geboren war, starb die Königin" (when the child was born, the queen died), and after a year the king takes another wife. The villain becomes the "Stiefmutter", and at the wedding the "gottlose Stiefmutter". The plan to eat the lungs and liver stayed. It is still in the 1857 edition, the last the brothers saw through the press.

Snow White was not the only one. The Detmold library's exhibit shows Hansel and Gretel's "Mutter" becoming a "Stiefmutter" by 1840, and summarizes the logic: if mothers are unloving, they can only be stepmothers ("wenn Mütter lieblos sind, kann es sich nur um Stiefmütter handeln"). That is the exhibit's reading of the editing.

The irony sits in the brothers' own 1812 preface, dated Kassel, October 18, 1812. They promised that no detail had been "hinzugedichtet oder verschönert und abgeändert" (added, prettified or altered). By 1819 the preface said they had carefully deleted every expression unsuited to childhood.

English readers met the later version. Margaret Hunt's translation, dated 1884 on its London title page and now on Project Gutenberg, has the queen die in childbirth and the king remarry. It also turns the lungs and liver into a heart, a change the German editions never made. A complete English translation of the 1812 and 1815 volumes did not appear until Jack Zipes's, copyright 2014.

The facts

• Vol. 1 of the KHM appeared Dec 20, 1812; Reimer agreed in June 1812 after Arnim's push. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin exhibit page.
• First edition print runs 900 (vol. 1) and 1,100 (vol. 2). LLB Detmold exhibit..
• 1812 text: the queen who wished for the child is the mirror queen; no death, no remarriage. Wikisource transcription of 1812 KHM 53, pp. 238-250.
• 1812: "da stichs todt, und zum Wahrzeichen bring mir seine Lunge und seine Leber mit, die will ich mit Salz kochen und essen". same.
• 1812: Snow White is seven; tells the dwarfs "wie seine Mutter es habe wollen umbringen"; wedding names "Sneewittchens gottlose Mutter"; red-hot iron slippers until "zu todt getanzt". same.
• 1812: a servant strikes the girl's back and the apple piece comes out; no kiss. same.
• 1812 notes record another oral version: "Sneewittchen hatte aber einen Hund, der hieß Spiegel"; the queen (who in that version has three daughters) questions the dog, who answers like the mirror. notes printed with the Wikisource 1812 text (p. XXXIV).
• 1819: "Und wie das Kind geboren war, starb die Königin. Ueber ein Jahr nahm sich der König eine andere Gemahlin"; "Stiefmutter", "gottlose Stiefmutter". Wikisource Sneewittchen (1819), pp. 262-274.
• 1857 keeps "Lunge und Leber zum Wahrzeichen" and the cook salting them for the queen to eat. Wikisource Sneewittchen (1857).
• Hansel and Gretel 1812 says "die Mutter" (and "seine Frau"), no "Stiefmutter" in the text. Wikisource Hänsel und Gretel (1812). Change to "Stiefmutter" by 1840. LLB Detmold.
• 1812 preface dated "Cassel, am 18ten October 1812"; "Kein Umstand ist hinzugedichtet oder verschönert und abgeändert worden". Wikisource KHM Band 1 (1812).
• 1819 preface: "jeden für das Kinderalter nicht passenden Ausdruck in dieser neuen Auflage sorgfältig gelöscht". Wikisource KHM Band 1 (1819).
• Hunt's translation is dated 1884 on its title page: "Translated from the German and edited by Margaret Hunt, with an introduction by Andrew Lang... London: George Bell and Sons... 1884"; the 1884 print has "Kill her, and bring me back her heart as a token". Internet Archive, Boston Public Library copy.
• Hunt 1884 English: "when the child was born, the Queen died. After a year had passed the King took to himself another wife"; huntsman told to "bring me back her heart as a token". Gutenberg eBook #5314.
• Zipes's Princeton book is billed as the 1812/1815 tales "in English for the first time"; copyright 2014. Princeton University Press page.

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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