In “Little Snow-White” by The Brothers Grimm, the story tells how the queen, Snow White’s stepmother, is consumed by jealousy of her child who, in growing up, surpasses her in beauty.
To be completely transparent, I don’t think I had ever actually read the full fairy-tale; I only knew her as a princess.
There are a few points of Bettleheim’s psychoanalysis of this story that are, in my opinion, incredibly insightful. The first being the three drops of blood that fall onto the snow when Snow White’s mother pricks her finger in the beginning of the story.
Bettleheim states, “Fairy tales prepare the child to accept what is otherwise a most upsetting event: sexual bleeding, as in menstruation and later in intercourse when the hymen is broken. Listening to the first few sentences of “Snow White,” the child learns that a small amount of bleeding—three drops of blood (three being the number most closely associated in the unconscious with sex)—is a precondition for conception, because only after this bleeding is the child born” (Bettleheim 202).
I would have never considered the possibility of blood representing anything in a fairy-tale, let alone a precondition for conception.
“The stepmother’s narcissism is demonstrated by her seeking reassurance about her beauty from the magic mirror long before Snow White’s beauty eclipses hers” (Bettleheim 202). Narcissism is another concept I didn’t consider with the queen constantly consulting the mirror about her beauty.
I also had no idea that the word Narcissism comes from Narcissus, in Greek mythology, who loved only himself, so much that he falls in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it for the remainder of his life.
Bettleheim’s reading was very enlightening, and I might find myself analyzing some more fairy tales in the future.
