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Katherine Wong
Professor Greg McClure
Writing 39B
24 October, 2016
Rhetorical Analysis Rough Draft
In the short horror story, Snow, Glass,

Apples, Neil Gaiman reverses the roles of the two

main characters in the traditional fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs, to send a message

that in todays society female sexuality is perceived as a more useful and powerful tool than a
womans experience, maturity and intelligence. Bridget Whelan, professor of the University of
Louisiana at Lafayette, wrote an article, Power to the Princess: Disney and the Creation of the
20th Century Princess Narrative, that explains how Disneys retelling of fairy tales, specifically
Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs, created an image of the ideal princess that young girls have
desired to become since its first release in 1937. Gaiman, however, takes this well-known
childhood fairy tale about a princess falling in love and creates a story that shares a message
about feminism in modern day society. In Cristina Bacchilegas article, Cracking the Mirror
Three Revisions of Snow White, she shares how authors similar to Gaiman have also written
subversions of Snow White

and the Seven Dwarfs in an effort to change how society views

women in contrast to how they are portrayed in Disney fairy tales. Gaimans version of this fairy
tale is unique because its genre is completely different from the original version. Gaiman uses
the expectations of the horror genre that are listed in Nol Carrolls article, The Nature of
Horror to support his claim about how women are perceived in our world today. By
implementing aspects of horror to his story, Gaiman is emphasizing that princesses are not

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always the perfect role model that young girls aspire to grow up to be. Instead, Gaiman wants his
readers to be aware of the corruption that exists in our world when it comes to women using their
physical attributes and sexuality rather than their wisdom and knowledge to get ahead in life. In
Gaimans short story, the roles of the antagonist and protagonist are exchanged with one another
as a resistance to the traditional roles in the original story. The reversal of the roles supports
Gaimans point of how a womans sexuality can overpower another womans intelligence.
By reversing the roles of the queen and Snow White, Gaiman is creating what Bridget
Whelan calls a progressive princess. The progressive princess is a princess who rejects
stereotypical behavior from the past, behavior that was perpetuated by the first and second wave
Disney princesses. Such behavior includes characteristics considered to be unpalatable to
contemporary feminists, such as passivity, dutifulness, and subservience to male characters
(29). Gaimans Snow White is the opposite of submissive because she takes authority and
controls her victims, both male and female. She waits for her victims to approach her, and at the
first sign of weakness she attacks. It doesnt have to be a sexual gesture from her victim, either.
For example, the queen narrates, I had always been scared of the little princess, but at the
moment I warmed to her and, with my fingers, gently, I stroked her cheek. She looked at me and
smiledshe smiled but rarelythen she sank her teeth into the base of my thumb, the Mound of
Venus, and she drew blood (Gaiman). Snow White uses her physical attributes to make the
queen vulnerable. Her smile makes the queen feel safe, therefore the queen lets her guard down,
which is when Snow White strikes. Gaiman adds a layer of horror to bring the audiences
attention to the fact that Snow White is not just an ordinary little girl. The queen would not be
scared of a six year old princess unless she has characteristics of a horror monster. Nol Carroll

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explains how in works of horror, the humans regard the monsters that they encounter as
abnormal, as disturbances of the natural order (52). The queen was shocked when Snow White
bit her because it was out of the ordinary for someone in their world to act like a monster, more
specifically a vampire. Snow White combines her physical features with her use of supernatural
powers to take advantage of people in order to get what she wants. As the story continues, Snow
Whites actions intensify and she learns that she can use her sexuality to take advantage of the
men in her life.
In addition to taking advantage of the queen, Snow White uses her feminine sexuality to
lure men, including her own father, the king. The queen, who is more mature and experienced
than Snow White, does not have the ability to provide her husband because he is getting his
needs taken care of from his daughter. Looking at Snow White through the eyes of writers like
Barthelme, Carter, and Coover, then, involves more than renewing the narratives powerful
image in the modern world, it necessitates the cracking of that mirror so as to begin to imagine
female initiation and its narratives anew (Bacchilega 20). Gaiman is stripping Snow White of
all of her personality traits that she possesses in the original tale, and is creating a new character
whose morals are the exact opposite. She is no longer an innocent child, but a young woman who
uses her sexuality for her own personal benefits, even if it means hurting others in the process. In
this case, the king suffers greatly from Snow Whites actions. He died unshriven, his skin
nipped and pocked from head to toe with tiny, old scars (Gaiman). The audience can infer that
the scars described come from Snow White biting and sucking his blood. Slowly killing your
father, as Snow White is doing, is immoral and disturbing. Nol Carroll states, Things that are
interstitial, that cross the boundaries of the deep categories of a cultures conceptual scheme, are

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impure, according to Douglas (55). Snow Whites actions fit perfectly into this description of a
monster who is impure. Her actions are literally killing her own father, and she does not care
because all she wants is to gain power and control. To the audience it may seem as though Snow
White is only targeting her family so that she can gain control of the kingdom, but later in the
story the queen witnesses her seducing men in the forest so that she can gain her own personal
strength from killing them.

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Works Cited
Bacchilega, Cristina. Cracking the Mirror Three Re-visions of Snow White. Duke University
Press. 1988.
Carroll, Nol. The Nature of Horror. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 1987.
Gaiman, Neil. Snow, Glass, Apples. Dreamhaven, 1994.
Whelan, Bridget. Power to the Princess: Disney and the Creation of the 20th Century Princess
Narrative. Interdisciplinary Humanities, Volume 29, Issue 1, 2012.