Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children's Literature

1.‘‘You Must Kill Her and Bring Me Her Lungs and Liver as Proof’’: ‘‘Snow White’’ and the Fact as well as Fantasy of Filicide

chapter one ‘‘You Must Kill Her and Bring Me Her Lungs and Liver as Proof’’ ‘‘Snow White’’ and the Fact as well as Fantasy of Filicide No quarrels . . . are so bitter as family quarrels. william alcott, The Young Husband (1846) Psychologists Geo√rey R. McKee and Steven J. Shea assert that ‘‘few crimes generate greater public reaction than the intentional murder of children’’ (678). Given prevailing views about the innocence and defenselessness of young people, the slaying of a boy or girl is seen as particularly heinous. While individuals can imagine an array of reasons why an adult might kill another adult, they cannot fathom what could possibly prompt them to murder a child. As Marianne Szegedy-Maszak remarks, ‘‘Both the crime and the motivations defy easy comprehension’’ (28). Given the condemnation associated with child murder, it is surprising how commonly this event occurs in classic fairy tales. Many of the homicides depicted in some of the most beloved stories are acts of filicide, neonaticide, or infanticide. The Wolf’s consumption of Little Red Riding Hood, the Witch’s similar attempt to bake and eat young Hansel and Gretel, and the Ogre’s slaughter of his seven daughters in ‘‘Little Tom Thumb’’ constitute just a few examples. Of all the fairy tales that depict the murder of a child, arguably the most well known is ‘‘Snow White.’’ As Linda Dégh has observed, ‘‘The common ‘‘Snow White’’ 37 knowledge of the [narrative] is so profound, so deeply ingrained, that, even without the story being told in full, a reference or casual hint is enough’’ (102). Although the story of Snow White exists in numerous forms, the telling by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm has risen to prominence. According to Maria Tatar, ‘‘Today, adults and children the world over read the Grimms’ tales in nearly every shape and form: illustrated and annotated, bowdlerized and abridged, faithful to the original or fractured’’ (Hard xv). Nowhere, perhaps, is this more true than in the United States. Fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers have long been staples of American childhood. For generations, volumes of their narratives have been given to young people as gifts, read to them as bedtime stories, and loaned to them by school and public libraries alike. It is no coincidence, for example, that when Walt Disney sought to bring the story of Snow White to the silver screen in 1937 he chose the version by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. While Disney did make modifications to the narrative, the tremendous commercial success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs—breaking box o≈ce records, winning an honorary Academy Award, and being beloved by generations of children to this day (Wasko 14, 129)—solidified its status in the United States. Other editions of the story are still extant, of course, but the Grimms’ version is the one that is commonly seen as the ‘‘best,’’ and—in the minds of many American children and adults alike—even the ‘‘real’’ or ‘‘correct’’ one. The Grimm Brothers’ ‘‘Snow White’’ is not only the most popular but also, perhaps not surprisingly given the national obsession with violence, the most homicidal one. The jealous stepmother in the tale kills the beautiful title character not once, but three times: first, by su√ocating her with staylaces; next, by brushing her hair with an enchanted, lethal comb; and, finally, by feeding her a poisoned apple. Moreover, these murders occur after an initial unsuccessful attempt on Snow White’s life. In a passage that is as famous as it is gruesome, the Queen instructs the Huntsman that, after taking Snow White deep into the woods, ‘‘you must kill her and bring me her lungs and liver as proof of your deed’’ (84). Demonstrating the centrality of murder to the story, even in Walt Disney’s highly sanitized version of the Grimms’ ‘‘Snow White,’’ the title character is murdered: after the Huntsman cannot bear to kill the little girl, the evil stepmother draws on her magical powers to disguise her identity, concoct a poisoned apple, and murder the young girl herself. This chapter seeks to account for the ongoing fascination with the Grimm Brothers’ ‘‘Snow White.’’ I argue that the story endures not in spite of its 38 Bloody Murder depiction of a heinous queen who engages in the horrific act of child murder but because of it. As Bruno Bettelheim famously asserted in The Uses of...