The story of Snow White is a story we all know very well. From a young age, we are exposed to this story of a beautiful young lady living out in a hut with dwarves. Following them as the story goes along the dwarves take her in as a part of their own. The story till I read Bettleheim’s psychologically oriented reading of the story was the innocent and rather light-hearted story. One of the best examples that Bettleheim talks about in the beginning is “Here the problems the story sets out to solve are intimated: sexual innocence, whiteness, is contrasted with sexual desire, symbolized by the red blood. Fairy tales prepare the child to accept what is otherwise a most upsetting event: sexual bleeding, as in menstruation”. I had never thought about Snow White in such a way where sexual innuendos would come to mind. As a kid, I did not have that active of imagination but as people get older and learn of these things I can see how these stories become significantly less innocent.
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2 thoughts on “Matthew Hui Discussion 14”
Yes, I agree with you, Matthew, I always thought that snow-white was a very happy story, but this snow-white that I read this week is very dark and not exactly what I am used to. What struck out to me the most in the story was the queen other stories just called her the ‘evil queen’ or something along those lines, but in this story, she isn’t necessarily evil, just blinded by her hubris of being the fairest in other people’s eyes.
Hi Matthew, I agree that as we get older the stories we have been told are not as innocent as we once knew and that these fairytales always have deeper meanings than we thought as children. I like how you elaborated on the sexual innuendos, because blindly watching and listening to these fairytales we think that there is so no actual violence and sexual desire there.