Snow White: Time Frame

One of my favorite items to look at in literature is the period of which the piece is set in or the time frame that all these events happened. Little Snow White is not immune from this piece, because I believe that the order the events happened are very interesting.

In many interpretations, Snow is a young child typically between the ages of 3 to 9 years old (this is a rough estimate from the interpretations that I know). These interpretations are partially right with Snow being young, but she was even younger than that. In fact, Snow knew the Evil Queen more than she knew her own mother.

And as soon as the child was born, the queen died. A year later the King took himself another wife.

So from the story, Snow was a year old when her father remarried. They never mentioned if the King courted her or if she was a member of the court. We never know if she knew the Queen or had a connection with the royal family before this. We do know that she was the woman who had a lot of influence in Snow's life due to the fact that she was in her life since she was at least a year old.

Snow white grew up and became ever more beautiful. When she was seven years old she was as beautiful as the light of day, even more beautiful than the queen herself.

At age seven, Snow was even more beautiful than her step-mother; At age seven, Snow was still a child; At age seven, Snow angered the queen all because of her beauty. Snow was cast out of the castle and had a planned assassination on her life at the age of seven. I know I keep writing the age of seven, but there are really two points that come up in my mind when I realize she was this young when this all happened.

1. That it is crazy that a young child like this has to go through this
2. Seven is a number known for completion

Going back to the first point, she is seriously a child. This is something traumatic for any child to go through and the sad thing is, there are children like her today who feel unloved by parents and step-parents. I cannot even imagine the psychological  issues she had later in life due to the fact that she had no real stability in her early child years. I wonder if this caused issues in her married life or when raising her own children? Unfortunately, we will never really know the out come of those questions and must assume that she and her prince lived happily ever after.

The second point I find a little more interesting and honestly I just picked up on this earlier today. In the Christian tradition, the number seven represents completeness. Now I'm not going into a religious post due to this fact, but I find it very interesting that at the age of seven, Snow was this beautiful. She was complete with beauty, but I don't believe that this was just skin deep beauty. No, I believe that Snow White had the type of beauty that transcends physical beauty, but a spiritual beauty that related to her actions.

After this age, there are no more ages or years mentioned in this story. I personally always imagined that Snow was in her early to mid teen years when the prince found her. I can say that we do know that Snow White was in the glass coffin a long time as stated below.

Snow White lay there in the coffin a long, long time, and she did not decay, but looked like she was asleep, for she was still as white as snow and red as blood, and as black-haired as ebony wood.

I personally think that the time frame of this story changes the perspective of the story a bit and makes it a little more dramatic (or traumatic depending on the way you choose to look at it). Knowing that this story didn't happen to a teenager who was having a few rebellious thoughts that her step-mother was treating her unfair because her father was dead, but happened to a child who probably did not understand what was happening and did not understand why her step-mother wanted to kill her.

Next week, and I promise I will not procrastinate and will actually post in a week, I will be addressing Snow White's father. I always think he is a character who is always left out of the story or always categorized as the father who was never a part of his daughter's life because he perished from something ill.

If you want to read the story for yourself and pick up on some fun points, I recommend this website. I personally have a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales at home, but it can be a pain to carry it around, but the website is good for a quick read when you are not able to curl up with a book.

Next Week's Blog Title: Snow White: Father, where did you go?