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Jieyao Zhang

Professor Greg McClure

Writing 39B

February 21, 2018

The reality of gender status recognition behind the horror:

Neil Gaiman’s transformation on the traditional Snow-White impression

I believe that every person must know the most popular version of Snow white fairy tale, which was

originally published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. In the original fairy tale, Snow White is definitely

the pure, innocent, and beautiful princess and angel. She has short curly black “hair as ebony, lips red as

the rose, and skin white as snow” (Grimm 1812). The Queen is undoubtedly the evilest woman. She is

jealous of princess’s pretty face and tries to make her die. And the prince, who finally gives a sweet kiss

to the princess, is a heroic and handsome man. This beautiful and romantic story makes girls have illusion

that the reality is just like this. We will meet our own prince without any difficulty. The justice will defeat

evil. However, Neil Gaiman’s transformed version “Snow, Glass, Apples” totally subverts the characters

and story of the original Snow White. The haunting darkness and the cruel reality behind this beautiful

fairy tales can remain in readers’ head for a long time. What’s the most important is that the author is

trying to give a message that women’s power is sometimes being discussed and regarded unequally as

men’s power. The Queen, who is a wise and brave woman, suffers from the relationship with the King

and the sexual behavior with the prince. And the young princess Snow White, now becomes an evil

vampire who just try to get what her want without morality. The phenomenon that women’s sexuality is

the only value to men is a serious problem in modern society.

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The Queen, who plays a wicked and mean role in the traditional Snow-White fairy tale, becomes a

brave and wise female. Her new characteristics represents positive feminism impression, which is

understanding what she wants and what she needs to fight against. By using Queen’s voice to narrate the

story, Gaiman makes the readers feel more strongly about the real thoughts of the Queen. In the text, the

Lord of the Fair praised the Queen: “When you were a child you found a strayed foal by staring into a

pool of ink; when you were a maiden you found a lost infant who had wandered far from her mother, by

staring into that mirror of yours. You know secrets and you can seek out things hidden. My queen”

(Gaiman 1994). By this, the author creates an impression to the readers that the Queen is full of wisdom,

and she cares about the country and the people.

Nonetheless, the Queen suffers from the lack of love from the King and also the fear from the young

princess Snow White. At the beginning, the Queen just wanted to have a normal relationship with the

King. She wanted to live a happy life with her loved ones. However, the King could not understand her.

He is not considerate at all. He did not tell her about he is victimizing by the young princess, the vampire.

And he had less and less passion and energy about having sex with the Queen. Therefore, their

relationship eventually broke down. As for the young princess, she is a nightmare to the Queen. Because

the young princess is a vampire that needs humans’ blood to be fed on. Snow White’s appearance is

described as “Her eyes were black as coal, black as her hair; her lips were redder than blood” (Gaiman

1994). As a consequence, the Queen suffers from the young princess. “She looked at me and smiled —

she smiled but rarely — then she sank her teeth into the base of my thumb, the Mound of Venus, and she

drew blood.” What’s more, “I had been frozen by her, owned and dominated. That scared me, more than

the blood she had fed on. After that night I locked my chamber door at dusk, barring it with an oaken
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pole, and I had the smith forge iron bars, which he placed across my windows.” This monologue is the

true thinking of the Queen. We can see her fear and helplessness when she lived with the young princess.

Overall, from the Queen’s life, we can see a positive feminist, who tried to fight against the people who

scorn and look down on women like her. But the reality is she they still suffer while she fights.

On the contrary, the beautiful, pure, and innocent Snow White, is subverted into an evil vampire with

impurity, which symbolizes some extreme feminists who only cares about their own benefits, and do

selfish things without consideration for others. The young princess is the step-daughter that came with the

King. However, the young princess sucks the King’s and the Queen’s blood silently. “The little Princess

fastened her mouth to my hand and licked and sucked and drank. When she was finished, she left my

chamber” (Gaiman 1994). From the description of her action, we can see the Queen’s increased scariness

if the young princess lives in the same house with her one more day. Besides sucking blood, she also

enjoys the sexual satisfaction with the King and the prince. Eventually, the young princess and the prince

decided to get married. Thus, the impression of the young princess really shocks the readers, as her

original impression left to the readers has already disappeared. The Snow White, in Gaiman’s version,

represents a relatively negative feminine impression. They are selfish, extreme, and aggressive. They can

obtain what they want to get without humanity and morality.

As for the male characters, the King and the prince, they represent the men who merely seeks for

sexual satisfaction from women’s bodies in the dark modern society. The prince, who came two years

after the young princess had swallowed the toxic apples, found the Queen and sought for sexual

satisfaction from the Queen. For example, “At first the prince seemed excited. He bade me remove my

shift, and made me stand in front of the opened window, far from the fire, until my skin was chilled stone-
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cold. Then he asked me to lie upon my back, with my hands folded across my breasts, my eyes wide open

– but staring only at the beams above” (Gaiman 1994). It is pornographic and perverted to a certain

extent, but it shows the darkness behind this horror story. What’s more, the princess possesses

necrophilia. “Hands, gently caressing her cold cheek, moving her cold arm, rejoicing to find the corpse

still fresh and pliable” (Gaiman 1994). From the verbs “caressing”, “moving”, and “rejoicing”, we can see

that he was obsessed with the young princess’s death body by forcing the seven dwarfs to open her body.

By describing the prince’s perverted and wicked behavior, the author made a strong twist which surprises

and also thrills the readers. Since at first, we did not see the other side of the prince, but suddenly he did

such a disgusting thing. The twisting really attracts the readers. Thus, the prince is no longer a heroic,

handsome guy; instead, he seeks for sexual satisfaction from the Queen. While the King, who did treat the

Queen well, actually did not want to have a normal love relationship with the Queen. Gaiman writes, “He

could no longer make love as a man makes love; and he would not permit me to pleasure him with my

mouth: the one time I tried, he started, violently, and began to weep” (Gaiman 1994). The King, who is

actually have sexual behavior with the young princess and being sucked by her, never speaks out any

words about this to the Queen. “I ran my fingers across his skin as he slept. It was covered in a multitude

of ancient scars. But I could recall no scars from the days of our courtship” (Gaiman 1994). Discovering

several scars from the King’s body, the Queen started to realize that his husband just kept silence about

the fact the young princess sucks his blood until he died. This plot also metaphorizes that under certain

gender cultures, males still despise and ignore females’ social status and real feelings. They just care

about females’ sexuality.

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Differ from traditional fairy tales, this fairy tale that every household knows is successfully

transformed into a horror fairy tale, which means it is a combination of horror stories and fairy tales. One

characteristic that fits the fairy tale convention is that although Snow White is a monster, it is still a

normal person superficially. However, as this is also a horror story, it does have some elements that

belong to horror genres. For example, this young princess is a vampire, and she can live without her heart

inside her. What’s more, based on The Nature of Horror by Noël Carroll, who is a renowned American

philosopher in contemporary philosophy of art, it says “in works of horror the responses of characters

often seem to cue the emotional responses of the audience”. Indeed, since the Queen fears about the

young princess and the perverted prince, our readers can get the emotional responses from the characters.

One important trait that is worth mentioning about this horror story is that females tend to become the

victims in the works of horror (Clover 1992), just like the narrator, the Queen. Because in a great number

of horror works, women’s social status is still regarded as “weak” and “vulnerable” compared to men.

What’s more, the males do not represent the heroic roles any more. Thus, the whole story does a good job

in terrifying the readers by subverting the traditional horror stories’ elements.

Behind this horror fairy tale, the author is trying to give readers an important message: the ideal

princesshood, or girlhood, is in fact not existing in our real life. Females’ social status is being ignored,

despised, or even threatened by men to a certain extent. After the Grimm’s fairy tale, the film Snow

White and the Seven Dwarfs “brought the princess narrative to life in a way that children had never before

witnessed it” (Whelan 1904). In order to subvert the stereotype of Snow White princess in people’s mind,

the author uses horror story to tell the truth about unrealistic princess-centered notion. By comparing the

characters from the original fairy tale, the Queen, who gets jealousy of Snow White’s beauty and gives
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her the toxic apples to eat, now transformed to a wise woman. She strived to fight against the evil young

princess and prince, no matter how scared she was every day. But, the Snow White is totally opposite to

the Queen. She is mean and scary. She can get whatever she wants without morality. Therefore, the

author successfully alters the tradition perspectives that readers hold for the relationship between the

Queen and Snow White.

To summarize, this horror story not only means to terrify the readers, but also to criticize the

traditional ideal girlhood and to tell the cruel reality of the situation that men’s social status is still beyond

women to a great extent in modern society. To be honest, I cannot get back to the original feelings when I

once again read the original Snow White story, since it reminds me of Gaiman’s version. The new

personalities created by Gaiman makes you think about the characters in a different way, and makes you

think deeper about the reality. For the Queen, even though she is a clever and considerate leader, she is

miserable as the King always looks down upon her, and does not maintain a loving relationship with her.

And she suffers from the sexual behavior with the princess. As a result, the Queen symbolizes the modern

positive feministic figure. Whereas the prince, who should be handsome, heroic, and polite, becomes a

perverted and evil-minded existence. He only seeks for sexual satisfaction from the Queen, and the

insensible princess. The prince represents the males who only value females’ bodies, and nothing more

than that. Through this dark fairy tale, the author criticizes the overvaluation upon men compared to

women. In modern society, many people still think that only men can have true power. Women that have

power are regarded as a joke. Therefore, the author uses the Queen as the first narrator in order to express

his feelings towards this dark side of the society. Overall, this story reflects a strong sense of feminism,

and the criticism towards the general perspective that men’s status is beyond women.
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Works Cited
Carroll, Noël. “The Nature of Horror” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 46, No.

1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59

Clover, Carol J. “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” Princeton University Press, 1992

Gaiman, Neil. “Snow, Glass, Apples” The Dreaming, 1994.

https://thedreaming.moteofdust.com/1999/10/10/snow-glass-apples/

Accessed 10 Feb. 2018

Grimm, Jacob Ludwig, Wilhelm Carl Grimm. Grimm’s Fairy Tales Snow-White and the Seven

Dwarfs, 1812.

Whelan, Bridget. “Power to the Princess: Disney and the Creation of the 20th Century Princess

Narrative” Interdisciplinary Humanities; Spring2012, Vol. 29 Issue 1, p21, April

2012