Wicked Tales and Strange Encounters

Jacob Stein

9/8/17 Wicked Tales and Strange Encounters

Paper 1

Dr. Jacobs

    Beauty As An Object   

    Beauty and Envy are very complicated concepts. People have a general understanding by what is meant when discussing these two ideas, but very few people relate these things to the problems they can lead to when taken far enough. In Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Snow White, these two ideas are reflected between the characters of Snow-White and the Evil Queen. Beauty can lead to a power struggle between two people if it is taken far enough. The Queen’s envious nature and her viewing of beauty as an object are the reasons that lead to her downfall at the end of the story. The struggle that these two characters have emphasizes beauty as an object, which is the basis for the envy the queen feels towards Snow-White.

    Beauty is seen as a commodity at the very beginning when we see the queen constantly asking her magic mirror to tell her that she is the fairest of them all. She always assumes the answer will be her, but the moment that it is not, she is furious, knowing Snow-White has taken her place as the most beautiful. From this moment, “The queen took fright and turned yellow and green with envy. From that hour on whenever she looked at Snow-White her heart turned over inside her body, so great was her hatred for the girl.” (Grimm and Grimm). Viewing beauty as this object that can lead to power, this may show how the queen wanted to maintain her status through the beauty she had before Snow-White came along. The queen, fearing that she may lose her status, could explain why she wanted her huntsman to kill her competition, so that way she could stay the fairest and keep her originally positioning. When she sends the huntsman to go do her dirty