Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was always one of my favorite films as a young girl growing up. There is even a story of a young girl who was buried in a coffin with a glass top close to where we lived. According to the locals, the young girl died shortly after marrying and her husband could not bear to bury her and never see her again, so he had a special coffin made with a glass cover and had her body preserved so he could look at her every day when he visited her grave. Now, I know this sounds as if I made up the story to add interest to my post, but I have confirmed the story with numerous people in the area and there were grave sites as the location mentioned in the story. Nevertheless, it is a great story! As a girl I would often fanaticize of this story and of Snow White and hope that a man would be so in love with me he would find me in my glass coffin and rescue me.

In the analysis by Gilbert and Gubar the conflict between Snow White and the Wicked Stepmother “is fought out largely in the transparent enclosures into which both have been locked”. (388) This is a significant point in the story. We can see the characters as they truly are but they cannot. The Wicked Stepmother’s reflection is not what it appears, but we have insight to her deepest, darkest desires and to the evil in her heart. Snow White, on the other hand, we see her outward beauty trapped in a glass coffin, but we think we know the desires of her heart, but do we? Did she harbor ill will towards her Wicked Stepmother and we could not see it?

The power struggle in this story is between the two women. There are several struggles occurring simultaneously: mother versus daughter; young versus old; woman versus woman (who will control the father); good versus evil; and finally their own inner struggles with themselves. In the introduction the critics say this about these power struggles: “Bettelheim sees a generational conflict between mother and daughter, Gilbert and Gubar see an intrapsychic drama.” (87) Clearly nothing in the conflict between these two characters is transparent.

Another intriguing aspect of this story to me is methods of dealing with the Wicked Stepmother at the end of the story. In the Disney version she is dealt with by the ravages of time, accelerated of course due to her evil behavior, and is turned into an old hag in the end. A rather different death occurs in the recent movie Snow White and the Huntsman, Snow White leads a battle against the Wicked Stepmother which is more likely the usual human reaction to the situation. “She becomes a ‘pure and innocent’ warrior princess, an angelic savior who channels Joan of Arc,” (91).