Queen (Snow White)
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The Queen is a fictional character in the German fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, collected by the Brothers Grimm, and adapted by the Disney into an animated film.
The Queen is extremely beautiful, but highly narcissistic. She seduced and married a widowed king, who had a daughter called Snow White with his first wife. After the king died, the Queen sent Snow White to work in her castle and forced her stepdaughter to abandon her title as Princess, similar to the situation of Cinderella.
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[edit] Fictional character history
The German fairytale was collected by the Brothers Grimm in their 1812 Kinder- und Hausmärchen ("Children's and Household Tales"). In the first edition, though not the subsequent ones, the Queen is Snow White's biological mother, not stepmother.[1]
In the Grimm version, the Queen orders her Huntsman to take Snow White (or Snowdrop as she is called in the first edition[1]) into the forest, and bring her back her lungs and liver as proof that he has killed her. The Huntsman takes pity on Snow White, and instead brings the Queen the lungs and liver of a boar, which she eats, believing them to be Snow White's.
As in the Disney adaptation, the Queen discovers that Snow White has survived by questioning her magic mirror. However, unlike the film, she does not use a potion to change herself into an old hag, but instead dresses in a disguise in her later attempts to kill Snow White. First, she visits the dwarves' house as an old peddler woman, and sells Snow White laces for a corset; but laces them tightly to asphyxiate her. When that fails, she returns as a different old woman, and tricks Snow White into using a poisoned comb. Finally when the comb fails to kill her, she visits again as a farmer's wife, and gives Snow White a poisoned apple.
Although the Queen does not die right after giving Snow White the poisoned apple, as in the film, she is killed eventually. After Snow White and the Prince reveal her true nature, she is invited to their wedding, where she was forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and "dance until she dropped down dead."[2]
[edit] Disney version
| The Wicked Queen | |
|---|---|
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| Walt Disney version of the Queen | |
| First appearance | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) |
| Created by | Walt Disney Pictures |
| Voiced by | Lucille La Verne |
| Aliases | Evil Queen, Wicked Queen, Queen Grimhilde |
The film version of the Queen was often referred to as Queen Grimhilde in Disney publications of the 1930s, and was voiced by Lucille La Verne. The Queen ranks #10 in the American Film Institute's list of the 50 Best Movie Villains of All Time.[3]
The Queen, jealous of her stepdaughter Snow White's beauty, forces her to work as a servant in her castle; even in rags, however, Snow White's beauty shines through, causing the Queen to worry that Snow White's beauty may one day surpass her own. She has such vanity that she consults her Magic Mirror every day, ordering the slave within to reveal the name of the fairest in the land. Every day the spirit says that the Queen is the fairest, and she is content, until the mirror informs her that Snow White has finally become the fairest in the land. Outside, as Snow White works, she sings to herself, attracting the attention of The Prince, who is passing by, and they are instantly infatuated with each other. The Queen watches from her window, unseen by the two lovers, and, jealous both of Snow White's beauty and the Prince's affections, closes the curtains furiously.
Summoning her faithful Huntsman to her, the Queen orders him to take Snow White far into a secluded area of the forest, where she can pick wild flowers, and kill her. She presents him with a box, in which Snow White's heart must be brought as proof. The Huntsman is reluctant to carry out such a deed, but, knowing the penalty for failure, takes Snow White deep into the forest. Just as he is about to stab the princess, he finds that he cannot bring himself to destroy such beauty and, frantically warning Snow White of the Queen's vanity and jealousy, tells her to flee into the forest. He returns to the Queen, bringing in the box the heart of a pig. Meanwhile, Snow White finds the Cottage of the Seven Dwarfs, and is found by the dwarfs, whom she tells of the Queen's attempts to kill her. They are fearful of the dark magic of the Queen, not least because, Grumpy, not keen on having a woman around the house, refers to her as an "ol' witch" and suggests that she may have discovered them already, have made herself invisible, and be watching them right now. They nevertheless take pity and agree to take her in (though Grumpy is reluctant to do so, fearing the Queen's power, as well as being a self-proclaimed woman-hater).
That night the Queen once again consults the slave in the Magic Mirror, who tells her that Snow White is living in the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs and that the Huntsman has brought her a pig's heart. Furious, the Queen descends a spiral staircase, entering a dark chamber filled with arcane and magical artifacts, as well as a raven perched on a skull. The Queen decides to go to the cottage herself, disguised as a peddler. Consulting a potions book on disguises, she mixes the required potion ingredients and drinks it, transforming into the Witch. She then decides to dispose of Snow White with a Poisoned Apple, which will send its victim into the Sleeping Death.
The Witch brews the poison and dips an apple into the brew, turning the fruit a tempting red. She reads that the victim of the poison can be revived by 'Love's First Kiss', but convinces herself that the Dwarfs will bury the poisoned Snow White. Cackling to herself, she puts the apple in a basket, and walks down through the dungeon below, emerging from the castle's catacombs in a raft. As she makes her way to the dwarfs' cottage, two sinister vultures see her and, sensing that death is imminent, quietly pursue her.
She reaches the cottage and, according to plan, finds that the Dwarfs have left and Snow White is alone. Catching the girl by surprise, the Witch offers her the apple, but is attacked by the animals of the forest (who sense danger when they notice the two wicked vultures). Snow White does not recognize any danger in the old woman and lets her into the house to offer her a drink of water, while the animals rush to find the Dwarfs. The Witch tells Snow White that the apple will grant wishes, and, knowing of Snow White's romance with the Prince, persuades her to wish for a happy reunion before taking a bite. Snow White falls to the floor, taken by the Sleeping Death, and the Witch cackles with glee as a storm starts outside. The dwarfs arrive in time to see her leave and, led by Grumpy, chase her up a mountain and corner her on a cliff. She attempts to crush them with a huge rock, but lightning strikes the cliff, causing her to fall to her doom. The dwarfs watch as the two wicked vultures fly down to her body at the bottom of the cliff.
[edit] Other appearances
The Queen has made other appearances in various Disney media. In the night-time fireworks and visual hydrotechnic show Fantasmic!, the Queen is the leader of the Disney Villains that appear near the climax of the show. The Queen also makes a cameo in Mickey's House of Villains, and is seen sitting with Lady Tremaine in her queen form, and with Madam Mim and Witch Hazel in her witch form. She is one of the featured characters in the Disney's Greatest Villains one-hour television special, and segments of the Queen's appearance are shown in Disney's Halloween Treat and in A Disney Halloween. In the "The Disney Villains Mix and Mingle" stage show in Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, the Queen is one of the villains led by Maleficent that appear during the Cinderella Castle Forecourt Stage. The Queen is one of the four Disney Villains that appear in the Disney's Villains' Revenge video game. Jiminy Cricket and the player venture into the worlds of the stories to correct the happy endings, which have been altered by the villains themselves. In the altered story, the Queen has built a giant house resembling her infamous poisoned apple and has put Snow White to sleep and intends to do the same to the seven dwarves. She also makes a cameo in her witch version in Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
[edit] Other versions
[edit] A Tale of Terror version
The film Snow White: A Tale of Terror was an attempt to make a more "realistic" story. There the character is not a Queen, but rather a noblewoman named Lady Claudia played by Sigourney Weaver. Also, while portrayed as a tragic character, she is a far more malignant character than in any other version. It is probably the most faithful to the original story.
She starts out by marrying widower Frederick Hoffman, a man whom she dearly loves. She also seeks to befriend his daughter, Lilliana. They at first get along well — she gives her a puppy and plays with the girl's caterpillar friends — but Lilliana grows suspicious. That suspicion is vindicated when she sees her grandmother die in agony after seeing a mirror that had belonged to Lady Claudia's mother. From that, her comments about casting the runes early on, her mentioning that "they" hate her and her mother's kind, and that Snow White is a German fairy tale she might be a holdout of Germanic paganism hiding in a Christian world.
By the time Lilliana is a teenager, she and her stepmother despise each other. For example, when the people of the manor bless Lord and Lady Hoffman's marriage bed so that their consummation might be fruitful, Lilliana throws the holy water at Claudia's face. By the ninth year of her marriage to Lord Hoffman she is pregnant with a son. The night of the celebratory dance, she offers Lilliana the dress she had worn as a maiden but the daughter refuses. When she arrives at the dance, she wears her birth mother's dress and dances with her father. With Frederick Hoffman, and all the others, turn away from his wife for his daughter — and his first wife's memory — the enraged Lady Claudia suffers such a severe rush of stress that she collapses and goes into labor. The baby is stillborn.
Driven mad by grief, she turns to her magic mirror for reassurance, but sees her reflection distorted and deformed. The mirror blames Lilliana for the baby's death and with that Claudia plots her stepdaughter's death. Lilliana goes to play in the forest, and Claudia sends her mute, inbred brother to kill her. When she escapes, the brother kills a pig and gives his sister the organs of proof of the deed. Lady Claudia serves part of the organs as a stew which she eats with sexual, cannibalistic relish. She also dances as she smears herself with the rest of the bloody organs. When her mirror tells her that her stepdaugher is alive, she uses her black magic to murder her brother by means of forced suicide.
On learning Lilliana's whereabouts by means of her ravens, Lady Claudia tries to kill her and the seven miners with whom she hides by means of her witchcraft. She first buries a bird in the falling sand of an hourglass to cause a cave-in at the mine. She fails to kill Lilliana but succeeds at killing a miner. Later she pushes over and breaks her husband's statues of the Saints to make the trees in the miner's forest home fall over and hopefully break her stepdaughter. She fails and instead kills more miners. She then takes the mirror's advice; that advice being to kill her stepdaughter with the Serpent's fruit: the apple. Using magic to turn herself into a hag, Lady Claudia poisons Lilliana, placing her in a coma.
With Lilliana thought dead, Lady Claudia turns her attention inward, trying to seduce Lilliana's fiancee, Peter Gutenberg, and raping her husband as a prelude to human sacrifice in an attempt to revive her dead baby. The actual ritual itself is performed inside the manor chapel, Lady Claudia bringing her sacrificial victim before the image of the crucified Jesus Christ in order to profane Christian soil. She also bewitches every last servant of the manor house, turning them into her monsters. When her stepdaughter at last is healed, she, Gutenberg, and Will, the chief miner, confront Lady Claudia. Peter is killed and Lilliana finds her father crucified upside down opposite the figure of Jesus on a life-sized crucifix now hanging upside down by a chain from the manor chapel's ceiling.
After seeing this, Lilliana confronts her stepmother. A fight ensues during which a fire is started. Lilliana ultimately kills her evil stepmother by stabbing her image in the mirror, causing Claudia to rapidly age. As Claudia screams in horror the mirror explodes and the shards of glass strike Claudia who screams in horror and blunders into the flames, catching fire. She flails around in agony until she is finally crushed by falling debris.
[edit] GoodTimes Adaption
In the GoodTimes Entertainment adaption of Snow White, the story follows mostly the same as the original story, only the Queen uses magic to disguise herself, turning into an old peddlar woman and trying to strangle Snow White with laces, then as an old peddlar man who gives her poison comb, then as a young girl selling apples. The Queen believes she has finally killed Snow White, until the day she leaves for a wedding being held in the city. Before she leaves, the Queen asks her mirror who the loveliest woman in the kingdom was, and she is horrified to learn that it is Snow White, still alive, whose marriage is the very one she was about to attend. In a fit of rage, the Queen begins to smash all the mirrors in her throne room, before throwing a hand mirror at her magic mirror, when the magic mirror sucks the hand mirror in. The voice in the mirror begins to suck the horrified Queen in, taunting her for her attempts to murder her stepdaughter and telling her she will never see her own face again. The Queen is last seen banging on the other side of the glass before disappearing.
[edit] Queen of Fables
The Queen of Fables is a witch from DC comic books. She was a scheming villainess who in her youth wrought Hell on Earth until she was trapped in a book by her own stepdaughter, Snow White. Centuries later, she was freed accidentally by Snow White's descendants and has since faced many Justice League superheroes like Superman and Wonder Woman whom she thought was Snow White due to her great beauty.
[edit] Christine White
In the 2000 miniseries The 10th Kingdom the main villain is Christine White. After the events in the story of Snow White, the Evil Queen, who was left near death fled to Earth where she met Christine Lewis, a jealous, adulterous madwoman who was addicted to prescription drugs. After almost killing her daughter in a psychopathic rage, Christine accompanied the Queen to the realm of the Nine Kingdoms and was groomed by the undead Evil Queen (now known as the Swamp Witch) to be her successor and the means by which she would have revenge. Christine insinuated herself into the House of White, first as the nanny of Snow White's grandson, Prince Wendell White, and later as Wendell's stepmother, after having poisoned his mother. Prior to the events of the miniseries, Christine was finally imprisoned for the subsequent poisoning death of Wendell's father. As The 10th Kingdom begins, she escapes to cause further destruction, and at the climax of the series she is killed by the main protagonist, her daughter, Virginia.[4]
[edit] Snow White (TV film)
In the 2001 TV film Snow White: The Fairest of Them All, the Queen is a power hungry hag-like creature named Elspeth, one of a race of strange humanoid creatures. She is transformed into a beautiful queen by her brother, the Green-Eyed Granter of Wishes. As in all versions of the story she grows to envy her stepdaughter, Snow White. Rather than disguising herself as an old crone she disguises herself as a young woman resembling Snow White's mother and succeeds in poisoning the young princess with a poisonous apple. She also has a habit of turning dwarves into stone statues with which she decorates her palace. Her fate is even more ignominious than in most versions of the story. At the climax of the film she becomes a withered old crone once again and is later throttled to death by the numerous dwarves whom she had turned to stone who have been released from her spell.
[edit] The Evil Queen in popular culture
- In Terry Gilliam's fantasy film The Brothers Grimm, actress Monica Belluci plays a villainous character with many similarities to the Queen. Known as the Toringian Queen (also known as the Mirror Queen) she is extremely vain, obsessed with preserving her youth and beauty and being the fairest in the land and has a gigantic mirror in her chamber.
- One of the main antagonists in the Sailor Moon manga and anime, Queen Nehellenia is based on many evil sorceresses from fairytales with a particular emphasis on the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Snow Queen. Like the Snow Queen and the Evil Queen she has a large magic mirror and like the latter she is extremely vain and arrogant.
- In "Mirror Mirror", by Gregory Maguire, the Queen and Witch are portrayed as Lucrezia Borgia.
- This fictional character appeared in Snow White and the Three Stooges. She was played by Patricia Medina in the film.
- Ellen Reid's 2001 debut album Cinderellen features the song "In Defense of the Wicked Queen", which tells the story from the Queen's empathetic perspective.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Terri Windling, "Snow, Glass, Apples: the story of Snow White"
- ^ Brothers Grimm (2002). "Little Snow White". The Complete Fairy Tales. Routledge Classics. ISBN 0415285968.
- ^ AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains
- ^ Simon Moore, The 10th Kingdom, DVD, directed by David Carson and Herbert Wise, New York: Hallmark Entertainment, 2000.
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