Gender Roles In Snow White By Jacob And Wilhelm Grimm

In the adaption of the classic fairy tale, Snow White, as told by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm the authors portray the feminist topics of the obsession with beauty and gender roles. In the story, a young girl named Snow White is target by her evil stepmother, the Queen, due to her beauty. In the story Snow White is deemed helpless and needs the protection of men. Both the treatment and actions of Snow White symbolises the gender roles and stereotypes of society.
For Snow White, in order to obtain protection and shelter at the dwarves house she had to perform the traditional roles of a woman such as cooking and cleaning. The dwarves told her, "If you will keep house for us, and cook, make beds, wash, sew, and knit, and keep everything clean and orderly, then you can stay with us,". This passage reflects the gender roles portrayed in the story, because If Snow White had been a boy the dwarves would have asked her to help the work in the mines or with other manual labor. The novel also describes Snow White as completely dependant on the dwarves for protection due to her characterization of innocence and foolishness. Unable to protect herself when the dwarves leave her alone, she falls prey to the Queen’s …show more content…
The story described the Queen as, “ a beautiful woman, but … proud and arrogant,”. Her actions also implies a sense of distance between the Queen and King because the Queen’s arrogance and proud personality leads her to push the men in her life away. Thus the Queen appeared more powerful than the King. The King appears ignorant as he apparently turned a blind eye towards the Queen’s actions toward his daughter, Snow White. The King’s ignorance of the Queen and his failure to act in Snow White's disappearance leads the Queen to appear with absolute power. But, this also implies because of her power she can not hold a relationship with the