What are some criticisms of the role of women in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves?

Question

Any interesting critiques or ideas?

Answer 1

The Queen's extreme vanity (her main concern was to be the prettiest in all the world).

The dwarfs (who were all male) offered her a home in exchange for cooking, making beds, knitting and cleaning for them. Snow White accepted the offer gladly.

Snow White was a helpless creature. She had no common sense, for she repeatedly (three times) opened the door to the woman who had been trying to kill her.

Answer 2

The biggest problem I see is in the reinforcement of gender roles and stereotypes of women. Snow white is the representation of “good” women and their virtues: domesticity, subservience to men, accepting ones fate with out question or challenge. She goes from being a princess to being a maid come on. The queen is the representation of all “bad” women and their characteristics. She is the only female character in this story who is independent and who has any power and she is vilified. She was able to make choices for herself, to think independently, and tell men what to do (ie the guy she sent to kill snow white in the beginning of the story.) which are all good characteristics for a queen. But she is turned into a bad “guy” in favor of the docile subservient princess who couldn’t have taken the queens place because of the vary characteristics that made her the sympathetic character.

Although I must say I like Tracy Bonham’s song “Behind every good woman” in it she has a line that says “something tells me that snow white was smarter than we think, seven men at perfect height……” now there’s an idea as to why she was always at home.

Answer 3

That's a good question, never gave it much thought. As one of the other answerers stated, there's the dichotomy of the 2 main female characters. I'd say it's that they are both representations of 2 major female stereotypes: the Victorian angel of the house & the ambitious b***ch. Snow White can handle housekeeping, but the second she's outside the house, she's helpless & at the mercy of everyone who passes her by. She needs guidance just to stay alive in the backyard. The wicked queen, on the other hand, is ruthless in realizing her ambition, & her ambition is to be most beautiful, therefore I'd say most desired by men. Hence, she will do whatever it takes to get all the attention of men she wants. She is ambitious, & evil. The only thing she didn't do which fits that stereotype, is sleep her way to the top. Although perhaps she had to marry to become queen in the first place.

Answer 4

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that the two primary female characters: Snow White and her step-mother, the queen, are pitted against each other because of jealousy. The queen appears to only see Snow White as a competitor who must be vanquished. A number of scholarly articles have been written on this subject. If you search Google scholar on this topic, you're bound to come up with a number of them.

Answer 5

If you are looking for an unordinary interpretation of this fairy tale you should fead Neil Gaiman's short story "Snow, mirror, apple"
Snow White is a vampire
Prince is a necrophil
Dwarves are pervert pygmies
And stepmother is the only positive character
Really unusual. You won't be able to think about this tale as before

Answer 6

In the advertising world, her name is associated with cleansers - just a good cleaning lady. Is anything wrong with that?