You know all the hot takes about how Snow White is everything wrong with Disney Princesses? Well, what if I told you the film makes it explicitly clear she saves herself with her belief in her own worth and her willingness to grow? 

I’m finally getting around to something I talked about months ago: defending Disney Princesses as characters with a lot to offer besides poofy dresses and songs that will never leave your head. I’ll be writing a post for every princess, probably going in chronological order by film release year. I also plan to do a couple movies where the characters aren’t official Disney Princesses, but are so in my heart (Esmeralda, Megara, maybe Jane?), and I’m probably not going to do Merida, because she’s the only princess whose movie I don’t particularly enjoy.

There are plenty of legitimate criticism of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. It’s very 1930s in terms of its view of women and portrays Snow White happy to cook and clean and take care of men. That’s a legitimate critique and this is not going to invalidate any valid criticism of her film, but rather offer a different perspective on her film, and specifically on Snow White as a character. She’s not an exceptionally complex female character, but I think she’s a good one who works excellently in the story she’s in. She does indeed have an arc–one of growing up. If you evaluate her and devalue her based on the strong presence of her traditionally feminine traits while ignoring her very real and very present strength, perhaps you should be reexamining your own sexism. 

I’m going to reference this excellent article on Snow White several times in this meta; I highly encourage you to check it out! I found it after my rewatch and was excited because it talks about some of the same things I plan to talk about. 

So let’s dissect this film and Snow White’s character. 

At the start of the story Snow White is dependent on the queen. 

She’s her stepdaughter and despite being a future ruler and displaying many competent traits of a leader, she is not yet mature enough for to be a leader. The story traces her maturation, and throughout her arc, one trait stands out: Snow White has a healthy sense of self-worth, a far cry from an insecure girl waiting for a prince to save her.  

When the Queen asks that famous question–“Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” and the Mirror tells her it’s Snow White, the Mirror also adds “rags cannot hide her gentle grace; alas, she is more fair than thee."  He then does cite Snow White’s physical traits, but grace itself may not be just physical (as it is not in the original fairy tale). Snow White’s beauty comes from within, and the Queen has absolutely none of that. Her stepmother’s jealousy can also be seen as stemming from her dislike of Snow White’s internal beauty. Snow White is a mirror that exposes her flaws. 

It’s not her physical beauty that’s so much the issue (as the Queen’s willingness to sacrifice her physical beauty in the end so long as she gets to poison Snow White reveals): it’s that Snow White never doubts who she is and her own value despite the Queen doing everything to take it from her, ordering a princess to be a scullery maid. In other words it’s the Queen’s own insecurity that dooms her, and Snow White’s self-confidence that saves her.

Pan to Snow White. She sings "I’m Wishing” for someone to come and save her. One line is “I’m dreaming of the nice things he’ll say!” So basically, Snow White knows she deserves better than the way she’s being treated now, even though she’s making the best of it. She wants someone to be nice to her. That’s actually a fairly healthy attitude, and she’s not the first abused kid to want someone to save her. The thing is? The Prince does not take her away from this abusive situation. Snow White takes herself away from it. 

The Prince apologizes for scaring her and then waits for her outside, below her window. They share a song, and at the end of the song, a dove, a symbol of purity, kisses Snow White on the lips, flies to the prince, and then kisses the prince on the lips. 

As the article I mentioned earlier states:

they share a song together, which is Disney/musical theatre code switching for “romantic/sexual love.”  Generally speaking, the big waltz that Disney’s romantic duos share at the end of the movie is their act of sexual consummation—sex without sex on Disney terms

In a fairytale, this is the equivalent of the sex scene in a romcom. (I’m not arguing it’s sexual; it isn’t. It just conveys the same emotional meaning for the characters.) 

(As for the criticism that Snow White and the Prince fell in love in one day… it’s a fairy tale, aka a simplified story made to encourage kids. It’s not meant to be a life rule book showing kids how to live and what to expect in life; it’s meant to encourage them, to teach that the world can be good and suffering doesn’t have to define your life which given that this was made as the US started to emerge from the devastation of the Great Depression might have been relevant to people’s lives. I’m not going to delve into a historical criticism but suffice to say a story is going to address the needs and questions of its age. There’s a reason Elsa tells Anna you can’t marry a guy you just met in a film made in 2013 vs a fairy tale made in 1937. But along those same lines, if a story remains popular with young kids after 80+ years I’m going to suggest it has something else to offer kids besides pretty dress kiss with a boy at the end. Like, for example, a message of hope that most fairy tales intrinsically have.)

In order to kill Snow White, the queen commands the hunter take her to a place where she can pick wildflowers. This is kind of a Thing with Snow White. She finds beauty in the things around her, as the article says. That’s been consistent since her introduction where she’s scrubbing the stairs, sighs, and then gets up and sings about wishes and daydreams. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to encourage someone to find beauty/worth in the things around them, or to dream, because Snow White pretty clearly also sees herself as having worth. 

While out with the hunter, she finds a baby bird crying. The bird has lost its parents and is symbolically a lost child, aka Snow White herself, looking for the people to make it safe. And she reaches out. Her kindness, her compassion for a lost bird (aka her self-compassion which she extends outward) enables the bird to fly away to safety, and is what prevents the hunter from killing her. 

She’s naive but not stupid. At the warning from the huntsman, she doesn’t insist he’s wrong. She runs. She runs into a forest where everything is ugly and the branches transform into hands grasping at her, symbolic of how the best she was trying to make of her world has now been shattered, and ugliness has entered.

I think she’s earned a good cry. But all the eyes that were so terrifying to her turn out to be woodland animals, not terrifying monsters, and they come to her to check if she’s okay. The ugliness was an illusion created by fear. She frightens them when she sits up but assures them she won’t hurt them and tells them how she’s been afraid and befriends them all. Basically, this is showing that sometimes even though the world looks terrifying, it looks that way because of the fear inside you; there is still good in the world. And acknowledging fear is not a bad thing inherently, though she does then denigrate it a bit.

The song she sings is “With a Smile and a Song,” and some of the lyrics go:

There’s no use in grumbling
When the raindrops come tumbling
Remember, you’re the one
Who can fill the world with sunshine

I mean, I think grumbling is just fine. But the statement that “you’re the one/who can fill the world with sunshine” again reveals what Snow White thinks of herself. She does not think of herself as someone who is worthless, a bad person, despite what her stepmother has done for her. Snow White has good self-esteem. 

When Snow White goes into the dwarves’ house, she worries they have no mother (before she meets them) as she herself has no mother (again with the self-compassion directed outwards), and asks the animals to help her clean. She doesn’t do all the work on her own, in contrast to common criticism. She delegates, like a good leader. Also of note? She’s not the only character in the story who takes joy in her work and sings in it. The dwarves do as well, and they’re male. 

The dwarves are also much more worldly-wise: they are nervous and fear Snow White is a monster when they discover her in their house. In other words, while Snow White has much to teach them about… cleanliness, but specifically also beauty in the world, they have to teach her about how to be an adult about it. Wise as a serpent but innocent as a dove, really. The dwarves have the wisdom but not as much of the innocence as they could have, and Snow White has the innocence but not all the wisdom she needs to grow into a woman and therefore truly escape her stepmother’s control. The dwarves know that the Queen is evil from the moment Snow White mentions her, though Snow White naively insists the Queen will never find her in their house. And then the dwarves will warn her not to let anyone in the house. But she does. Sigh. 

It’s also worth mentioning that when the dwarves try to send Snow White away, she begs them not to, telling them that the queen will kill her–she is naive, but not ignorant, and values her own life. Snow White also negotiates being able to stay in exchange for cooking–essentially, she’s again redeeming the abuse she suffered by using the skills she gained from her abuse to survive.  Yes, she seems to enjoy cooking and cleaning and looking after people. It’s still a skill we were explicitly told the queen forced her to learn as a scullery maid. 

Snow White and the dwarves’ relationship is great. She is motherly, yes. She’s firm and not a pushover, proving that her sense of self worth does not stem from her ability to do these things. It’s also yet another example of her looking at the good in people and focusing on that rather than on evil. She knows she can accomplish good in the world, even banished to a cabin and away from the throne. She has confidence in this and exercises it. She’s the one who can fill the world with sunshine, and she knows it, and she’s also confident enough in who she is to learn and grow. It’s not as if Snow White has no insecurities–she does, as shown when she prays for her dreams to come true “and please make Grumpy like me” to God. She does want to be liked. She just doesn’t take her hurt over people not liking her out on others. 

So let’s discuss “Someday My Prince Will Come,” the song that’s always taken out of context. Snow White isn’t talking about some hypothetical rando. She’s talking about someone she’s met and already fallen in love with. Idk I think when you’re forced to run away and thus can’t be with someone you love because someone is out to get you for a trait you’re born with, hoping that they will find you is rather understandable. Perhaps even, dare I say it, admirable. As the article says:

She isn’t sighing, passively hoping that some nameless, faceless “Prince” will appear and whisk her away. She’s not just waiting for a man to rescue her. She is fantasizing about her prince, her love, the man she already knows and adores, making good on the implied promise of their song and marrying her. It’s cheesy, but it’s a lovesick fantasy, as so many lovesick fantasies are.

Snow White still has faith in her loved ones to treat her well despite being treated terribly by someone who should love her. Basically this is a simplified version of Sansa and Cersei’s struggle in Game of Thrones, but told to be appropriate for kids. The good aspects of Snow White’s innocence are present here. Despite being betrayed by her stepmother, she still has faith in people who claim to love her. 

In contrast, we have a return to a smug Queen. She realizes she’s been tricked with a pig’s heart and in a scene paralleling Snow White’s run into the forest, where she’s forced into a world with some ugliness to it, the queen literally makes her own descent into the horrific ugliness of the palace dungeons. 

She climbs down a spiral staircase and the beady eyes of menacing rats watch her, but she’s not scared. She scares the raven in her study, as opposed to befriending creatures like her stepdaughter. The queen is naive like Snow White in some ways, but she doesn’t have the confidence to save her. Her fury that she’s been naive enough to be deceived causes her to rely only on herself, in contrast to Snow White’s good leadership via delegation. She declares “I’ll go to the cottage myself,” and she gives up the thing she’s been supposedly so jealous of Snow White for–her beauty–just to be able to kill the girl who points out all her flaws. Being the extra witch she is, she demands that the wind make her hate stronger. She revels in hate and in jealousy and ugly things.

Hence, why she makes a poison apple. It’s a symbol of who the Queen is. As she even says to Snow White, it’s a most beautiful apple, but it’s really poisoned. And she knows Snow White will be alone and will help “a harmless old peddler woman.” She uses Snow White’s insecurities–her desire to be liked–and her strengths–her ability to find beauty in everything, and specifically not physical beauty which Snow White has never shown any preference for as well as her desire to help the abused (as the queen is attacked by birds who know what she’s going to do), and her hopes for a better future (the queen tells her it’s a wishing apple “to make all your dreams come true”)–to convince her into letting her into the house and then taking a bite of the apple. Abusers do indeed prey on their victim’s insecurities and strengths, twisting them to serve their own purposes. 

It’s explicitly not Snow White’s fault. But her naivete has consequences, and she can only be woken up by true love’s first kiss (are married ppl screwed), aka an adolescent symbol. Snow White is leaving her childhood naivete behind and growing up. As for the “He kisses her without her consent!” argument–like I do get it, don’t kiss an unconscious person, but that’s simply an incorrect understanding of the film in context. They’re in a relationship by fairytale film genre standards, and it was also going to save her life. That’s a seriously out of context argument. Snow White’s not getting buried because of her beauty is also a symbol again for how Snow White’s philosophy–being the sunshine–lingers even in the darkest of situations, like death, and is greater than herself, but also springs from herself. Like, the sun literally shines on her casket alone.

And her happy ending gives hope to her subjects (the forest animals) and is supposed to give hope to the audience as well. 

And oh look, her happy ending–the castle they go off to live in–literally emanates from the sun too, a callback to the line from “With a Smile and a Song” about how you are the one who can fill the world with sunshine. Snow White created her own happy ending. 

As for the queen, she climbs with difficulty a mountain (symbolic again and a contrast to her descent earlier) and tries to wrestle with a boulder in the middle of a storm–a callback to her request that the wind and thunder strengthen her hatred earlier in the film. She dies because of her own insecurity, because of the hatred she asked for. It’s tragic. 

So in conclusion:

Snow White is an abuse victim who decided to still appreciate the beauty in the world and wound up saving herself and inspiring people along the way. Legend. It’s her sense of self-worth and confidence that is precisely what makes her such a good fairy tale female character. 

^^me to opinions chalking Snow White up to a weak-willed girl with no sense of self-worth except for a man. She earned her trophy husband, who, for the record, is not really any less developed than half the girlfriends of superheroes. 

I will be looking at Cinderella next! It may not be up for about a week since I’m rewatching the movies to analyze them, and that will take time. Thank you for reading this, and feel free to let me know your thoughts!