Starting with snow white

Jealousy and resuscitation 
mingle in this scene.
 
Enraged at 
the sight of the beauty, the baron’s wife “at once cut off the damsel’s hair, and gave her a 
good drubbing, and arrayed her in rags. Every day she beat her on her head and gave her 
black eyes and scratched her face and made her mouth to bleed just as if she had eaten 
raw pigeons” (Basile 208). Here, at last, is the “persecuted heroine”
15
that one expects to 
find all throughout the tale, struggling at the mercy of her jealous counterpart.
15
For more on the “persecuted heroine” cycle, see Jones, 
The New Comparative Method: Structural and 
Symbolic Analysis of the Allomotifs of “Snow White
.
”

---

36
Although the narrative action culminates in a 
resolution
through which the 
jealous executer (the baron’s wife) is punished, or returned to her family and deemed 
unfit, the scenes which precede this one feature a heroine who takes hold of her own fate.
When the baron goes to a country fair and asks all in the household what they would like, 
Lisa’s response of a few mundane items, as well as her warning that the baron will be 
incapable of returning lest he forget these items aligns her story and character with 
“Cinderella.”
16
With “action traits” or “dramatic events” that bespeak multiple tales, one 
might wonder what compartment of tales this one belongs in based on the use of Jones’ 
model of classification. 
From the first defect in the episodic structure, followed by the tale’s disordered 
presentation of episodic actions, classification of Basile’s version as a major 
Snow White
precursor according to Jones’ model is troubled. Although the folkloric model permits 
the missed episodic action, this alteration and others in the episodic structure of the tale 
produce shifts in the dramatic action, narrative, and meaning of the tale. As a result, the 
model no longer quite seems to fit, yet Basile’s tale continues to be considered one of the 
primary 
Snow White 
precursors by Jones and others.
While I do not mean to suggest that the structure of “The Young Slave” runs 
entirely counter to Jones’ nine-episode model (as a host of the episodes he gestures 
toward are present), I find that in this case, his structural model simply does not function 
according to its intended purpose. Because of the displaced episodes in Basile’s tale, 
Jones’ structure, as a tool of classification, does not resolve the issues that Aarne and 
16
See Basile’s “The Cat Cinderella” in Zipes, 
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition
. 

---

37
Thompson’s model produced. Moreover, it proves most problematic in its emphasis on 
jealousy. This central episodic action is 
not
the key motivator of the “The Young 
Slave’s” dramatic action 
in the way that Jones has positioned it
(driving each of the two 
parts of his model). Jealousy, in Basile’s tale, leads to neither expulsion nor death; 
therefore, subsequent episodes fall out of line or are eliminated altogether.
Although Basile’s “The Young Slave” does not readily adhere to the episodic 
structure that Jones enumerates, this version of 
Snow White
does speak to Jones’ other 
precepts for the study of a tale. His understandings of folk or oral traditions 
reconstituting themselves in the literary realm and of folkloric retelling based on 
“thematic continuities” apply to both Basile’s and Musäus’ versions of 
Snow White
(
New