Vanity In The Brothers Grimm's 'Little Snow White'
1071 Words5 Pages
Rick Escobar
Professor Madden
English 1A
29 September 2015
DRAFT
Vanity is an illness, which brings to light the ugly inner self. In the story “Little Snow White” by the Brothers Grimm Snow White’s vain stepmother tries to have little Snow White murder after being told that she is no longer the most beautiful and Snow White’s vanity almost gets her killed three times. This story reveals how vanity makes vulnerable through the use of symbolism the Grimm Brothers put in to words one of there morals.
Snow White’s vanity shows her vulnerability through three symbols: stay-laces, comb, and the apple. The first symbol, the stay-laces, shows her vanity when Snow White’s stepmother, the queen, comes dressed up as old woman and knocks on the door selling…show more content… Snow White’s vanity is seen when she decides to open the door and let the disguised queen to purchase a stay-laces. When the disguised woman cries out “a fright you look”(16) and quickly laces Snow White so tightly and so rapidly that she drops as if dead. Vanity is shown when Snow White allows the disguised queen to lace her because she makes a comment about her appearance, showing how Snow White in the middle of the forest still cared how she looked. The second symbol, the comb, a symbol of Snow White’s vanity is the second way her stepmother tries to assassinate her stepchild. According to the Dictionary of Symbols the comb is what holds the hair, that is, the components of the “individual’s personality” (“comb”). Meaning Snow White’s attention is directed to the comb because of her personality, in herself is the girl who is vain, who cares about how she looks. All she has ever heard people around her say she is beautiful, she is never brought up in another aspect of herself. This basically sets her on the path to grow up being vain. When the queen knocks on the dwarf’s home and shows Snow White the comb it “pleased” the girl “so well”(17) that she let her self be combed by the queen’s