Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is a 164-line free verse, narrative poem by Anne Sexton that revisits the original Grimm’s fairy tale from the perspective of a contemporary narrator. Sexton published the poem in 1971 as a part of her collection Transformations, where she retold 17 different Grimm’s fairy tales from “The Frog Prince” to “Rapunzel” to “Rumpelstiltskin.” While Sexton is primarily seen as a confessional poet, gaining critical acclaim around the same time as Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and W. D. Snodgrass, her poems in Transformations less explicitly connect to her personal life, while still examining many of the themes for which she was well-known. “Snow White” criticizes the cultural expectations of female beauty and sexuality, and condemns the cycle of harm these expectations perpetuate. At the beginning of the poem, Sexton sets up the fragile, virginal ideal of female beauty and behavior. From there, she recounts the Snow White story straightforwardly, interspersing occasional modern details or comments to subtly connect the fairy tale to her modern reality. The poem ends not with a happily-ever-after ending, but with a disturbing insinuation that the mirror that prompted Snow White’s stepmother to set into motion a series of violent acts will still influence Snow White herself, as well as other women.

Poet Biography

Anne Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1928, one of three daughters. She attended boarding school as a teenager and afterwards matriculated at Garland Junior College for a year, after which she married Alfred “Kayo” Sexton II when she was 19. Kayo served in the Korean War, and during that time, Sexton modeled for Boston’s Hart Agency. When Kayo returned, they had two children: Linda in 1953 and Joyce in 1955.

Sexton had several mental health conditions for much of her adult life, including postpartum depression that led to a psychiatric hospitalization after Linda’s birth, and several other subsequent episodes that resulted in further hospitalizations. As part of her treatment, her therapist suggested she begin writing, first about her thoughts, feelings, and dreams, and then later more formally. Soon, Sexton was writing multiple sonnets a day and participating in writing groups in Boston. She met other poets, like Maxine Kumin, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath, who would later become good friends.

Sexton published her first collection, To Bedlam and Part Way Back in 1960, which touched on her own mental health struggles. Later collections would also embrace the confessional style, and Sexton won numerous prizes and honors, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for Live or Die, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Frost Fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and many others, including academic appointments at Colgate and Boston University. In addition to writing intimately about her mental health, Sexton embraced other topics that were otherwise taboo in the culture, including incest, adultery, abortion, and menstruation, among others. Transformations, published two years before her death, deviates somewhat from her confessional style but still operates from a feminist lens, exploring women’s roles in the cultural and domestic spheres with a biting critique.

Sexton died by suicide in 1974 at the age of 45. Her daughter, Linda, is her literary executor.

Poem Text

Sexton, Anne. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Academy of American Poets.

Summary

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” begins in the voice of an omniscient narrator, establishing the tone of the speaker, and introducing the image of the fragile virgin. The speaker describes this ideal virginal woman as “fragile as cigarette paper” (Line 3) and “unsoiled” (Line 12). In the second stanza, the speaker begins to recount the Snow White fairy tale. She establishes that Snow White was a 13-year-old virgin, living with a beautiful but aging stepmother, the queen. The speaker alludes to the stepmother’s fate in the original fairy tale, in which she was condemned to dance in hot iron shoes until she dies. The queen frequently asks her enchanted mirror who the fairest in the land is, and the mirror always replies “you” (Line 31).

In the third stanza, the mirror changes its answer, telling the queen that Snow White is fairest in the land. The queen begins to see her own flaws: “brown spots on her hand / and four whiskers over her lip” (Lines 40-41), and asks a hunter to kill Snow White and bring back her heart so the queen can eat it, “like a cube steak” (Line 48). The hunter cannot kill Snow White and instead releases her into the woods, where she encounters 20 hungry wolves and other sinister animals. Eventually she finds a cottage, eats, and sleeps.

The dwarfs who live in the cottage find Snow White and consider her a “good omen” (Line 73), asking her to stay and keep house for them. They warn her of her stepmother, who they say will attempt to find her. They tell her not to open the door when they are at work in the mines.

The queen consults her mirror and dresses up like a peddler, setting out to trap Snow White. Snow White opens the door, she purchases lacing from her, and the queen fastens it around Snow White so tight that she faints. When the dwarfs find her, they undo the lace, and “she revived miraculously” (Line 99). Despite their warnings, Snow White continues to fall for her stepmother’s traps, fainting from a scorpion comb the next day, and a poison apple after that. After she bites the apple, the dwarfs are unable to revive her. They construct a glass coffin so that all passersby can see her.

A prince comes to Snow White’s coffin one day and refuses to leave until the dwarfs “[take] pity on him” (Line 139) and give Snow White to him. As his men are carrying her coffin, they drop her, and the chunk of apple that had been in her throat dislodges. She once again wakes up “miraculously” (Line 146).

The speaker writes: “And thus Snow White became the prince’s bride” (Line 147). The stepmother comes and suffers her fate, dancing in a pair of red-hot roller skates until she dies. The final stanza goes into great detail of the queen’s suffering, detailing how she will “fry upward like a frog” (Line 155). The poem ends with echoes of the stepmother, as Snow White “hold[s] court” (Line 161) like a doll and “sometimes refer[s] to her mirror / as women do” (Lines 163-164).