![]() ![]() She asks, rather, for Snow White’s lungs and liver. In the 1857 version of Snow White, the step-mother does not ask the Huntsman to bring back the little girl’s heart, as she does in the film. I’ll merely point out the major differences, assuming you remember the film. The final, 1857 edition of the tale has a great deal in common with the most famous retelling, Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Wilhelm in particular revised the stories that they heard, adding delicious and dark details and elevating the prose.Īn excellent example of this process is the tale entitled “Schneewittchen” (SCHNAY-vitt-chen), or “Little Snow White.” Together, they cast a wide net, bringing in hundreds of stories, and then choosing those they deemed the most typical of the German folk and the most satisfying for children and adults. Wilhelm was the artist-though also a scholar in his own right. Jacob, the older brother, was the task-master and the father-figure. The Brothers Grimm had a peculiar combination of scholarly brilliance and artistic flair. Why do their stories still take pride of place, two hundred years later? ![]() It is no exaggeration to say that those two young German scholars changed the world.īut how? What did they do that was so special? There were folklorists before them (like Brentano) and after them. And in 1937 Walt Disney began his full-length motion picture empire with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, breaking box-office records and winning a special Academy Award. In 1900, The Daily Mail of London named it one of the ten books all children must own. In the English-speaking world, it had become wildly successful as well. By the turn of the century, the Tales of the Brothers Grimm had become the second best-selling book in Germany, behind only the Bible-a distinction it holds to this day. In 1870, not long after the Brothers’ deaths, the Grimm’s fairy tales were incorporated into the teaching curriculum of Prussia. Over the next forty-five years the Brothers Grimm published a total of seven editions of the fairy tales, and their reputation steadily grew. In German, the Grimm tales are called Kinder- und Hausm ärchen, which means “Children’s and Household Tales,” and is pronounced “KIN-der oont house-MYARE-cccccccchen.” That last syllable relies on you hocking a loogie while speaking. They didn’t call them “fairy tales,” though, since there is not a single fairy in their book. So in 1812, once it became clear that Brentano was not following through on his project, the Brothers Grimm published their own editions of the fairy tales. Luckily, the Brothers Grimm, like the diligent scholars that they were, had backed up their work. Brentano, it seems, took them to a monastery in Alsace and left them there. Those stories were not seen again for more than a hundred years. Among them were the stories of Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, and Snow White. In 1810, the Brothers Grimm sent forty-nine tales to Clemens Brentano. ![]() ![]() They invited acquaintances and amateur story-tellers from all walks of life-petty aristocrats and French Huguenot exiles and bankrupt soldiers-to their home and wrote down the stories they heard. These two young scholars, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, took up the challenge zealously. Would they help him collect stories from the people of Germany, so that he might publish them? Brentano asked for their scholarly assistance. He was introduced to two young brothers who had recently graduated from law school, but found their passions flowing rather towards folklore than the law. He had recently published a collection of German folksongs, but was looking to start working with folk tales as well. In 1806, the most famous folklorist in Germany was not named Grimm. And so, once I’ve recounted the tale’s twisted history, I will explain why those bloody, grim incarnations of Snow White are exactly the ones that you should be sharing with your children and your students. Those versions are, as you might guess, rather bloody and rather grim. In this essay I will tell you the real story of Snow White or rather, the real stories-for the Brothers Grimm published more than one version of the tale. No, I find that survey’s results disturbing because the dwarves in the original Snow White stories don’t have any names. I will, in fact, argue just the opposite. Not because the Supreme Court is more important than Snow White. In 2006, a survey found that while only 24% of Americans could name two Supreme Court Justices, 77% could name two of Snow White’s dwarves. ![]()
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