Starting with snow white

Kinder-und Hausmarchen 
in 
light of this moment, one finds that they operated in a means true to the standards of 
a 
kind of
folkloric study. At the time, “Scholarly recording of oral tales from the folk 
meant notation of a skeleton content of stories judged to be genuine” or more “plot 
23
For Bettelheim, Musäus too fell into this group, with his 
Volksmarchen der Deutschen 
(1782-87). 
24
In “
A Workshop of Editorial Practice:
The Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmarchen,” David Blamires offers, 
“The notes they [(the Grimms’)] added to the printed texts from the first volume of the first edition 
onwards indicate their continuing concern to place what they collected from oral sources within as 
comprehensive a framework as possible” (74). 

---

52
summaries” than “verbatim records of an orally performed tale” (“What did the Grimm”
70; “
Workshop” 
75). Blamires also equates the revisionary or editorial process of 
addressing “variant versions” with the scholarly treatment of Medieval texts, where 
“Scholars attempted to reconstruct the original form of a work on the basis of a 
comparison of extant versions varying in date, dialect, substance, vocabulary, [etc.] […] 
[to create a] ‘critical text’” (“
Workshop” 
79). In writing a work primarily of scholarship, 
the Grimms’ process was systematic. The notes throughout their editions serve as a 
testament to this diligence. Yet, at the same time, they artfully crafted a “composite 
text,” utilizing the variant with the most “coherent plot structure” as a base and mapping 
on details from other variants, in addition to “proverbs, traditional verses and folk 
customs” (“
Workshop” 
79). Throughout this “editorial process,” as Blamires terms it, 
the most persistent “artistic form of the 
Märchen
” was created, that “distinctive short 
narrative genre” with which readers are familiar with today (“
Workshop” 
82; “What did 
the Grimm” 69). Thus, in developing their nation’s folklore, the Grimms negotiated a 
careful balance between authentically re-presenting collected materials and deploying the 
nuance and artful acumen to re-imagine those tales in their truest and most 
impressionable form. 
By way of the system of collecting and editing referenced above, one might 
imagine the Grimms to have utilized Musäus “Richilda”
 
to serve as the structural core of 
“Sneewittchen” (“Little Snow White”). Given that the Grimms’ were likely familiar with 
Musäus work, I offer this as a plausible possibility, but not a certainty or matter of fact.
That said, as mentioned previously in the discussion concerning Richilda’s folkloric 

---

53
alliance, the narrative structure of this novelette closely aligns with the Grimms’ tale.
Further, it provided sufficient detail to either expand upon or transform, based on other 
variations. Because of its highly-developed narrative (not really a tale at all), it would 
have enabled the Grimms to compare its elements to other collected materials, selectively 
choosing which details and characters warranted greater significance, both for the 
veracity and further telling of the tale. In short, it would have provided the bases for the 
stylistic fashioning that the Grimms’ proved themselves so highly capable of, an attribute 
which served to further benefit their tale’s passing and final status as a “classic.” 
With their title alone, “Little Snow White,” the Grimms embraced the larger 
Snow 
White 
tradition by returning the focus of the tale to Basile’s persecuted heroine. The 
innocence of the young heroine is emphasized both through the use of color (white) and 
the diminutive adjective, “Little.” It is that innocence which needed to be recalled and 
striven for, particularly as the tale would be directed toward an audience of child and 
adult readership (a point that I will later discuss in further detail). Where adult readers 
might empathize with the elder female character’s indignation, as her beauty is surpassed, 
this quality of character is by no means the ideal that should be emphasized for young 
girls. Therefore, the focal point required a shift from that of Musäus’ “Richilda.” 
As Snow White reclaimed center stage in the tale, the Grimms strove to make her 
memorable. The description of “a little girl who was white as snow, red as blood, and 
black as ebony,” precedes a reader’s or listener’s introduction to Snow White (Grimm 
249-250). However, this is not the first reference to her coloring. Her mother, wishes for 
“a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood of the window 

---

54
frame” where she sits, sewing (Grimm 249). And even before the wish, the color contrast 
is brought to the reader/listener’s attention, as the mother is imagined to be looking out “a 
window with an ebony frame” onto the winter scene, “when snowflakes the size of 
feathers were falling from the sky,” and “three drops of blood” from her freshly pricked 
finger “fell onto the snow” (Grimm 249). Thus, the Grimms set the stage for 
reminiscences of Snow White by drawing the young heroine’s appearance to the 
forefront, placing it in distinct colored terms, and repeating those terms again, and again, 
and again.
By the time the second female figure comes onto the scene, before any mention 
has been made of her desire to reign supreme in beauty, the beauty of the former has been 
established and the emphasis on this young beauty will not be forgotten as the narrative 
moves forward. Her coloring is later recalled in the composition of the poisoned apple 
“white with red cheeks,” and holding the promise of death or blackness. Still again, the 
colors are cackled “laughing[ly]” by the queen after Snow White’s fateful bite, “White as 
snow, red as blood, black as ebony!” (Grimm 258). The beauty of the coloring is 
ridiculed, brought low by the queen’s poisoned treat. Still, even in death, the young 
woman “looked just as if she were sleeping, for she was still white as snow, red as blood, 
and had hair black as ebony” (Grimm 260). Although she has so little voice in the tale, 
the 
image
of “little snow white” is imagined and consistently recalled so as to ensure that 
her tale would be retold. Roger Sale argues that “The fears and wishes themselves are 
never extraordinary, but what animates a good tale and distinguishes it from other similar 
ones is a precision about them” (38). It is in this “precision”—distinguishing the 

---

55
particular quality of this character’s beauty through the repetition of adjectives, coloring 
her appearance—within which both the fears and wishes of the queen mingle. And it is 
this same precision which marks the attributes that audiences would continue to seek out 
in (Little) Snow White. As a result, it is this particular representation which would 
become the