But hardly had the first bite passed Snow White’s lips, than she fell down dead, from Snow White, 1997, by Charles Santore (Collection of the artist)
VALERIO: Another well-known story you’ve
She’s saying, “Daddy loves me more than he loves
illustrated is Snow White.
you.” This is what begins to propel the story—at
SANTORE: Yes, for Snow White I focused on the
idea of the stepmother and how that functions
least that’s what Bettelheim says. His ideas were a guide for me.
within a family. The psychologist Bruno Bettelheim
VALERIO: Is that psychological understanding of
says that children can’t criticize their mothers.
the story built into the pictures?
That’s why the stepmother is introduced into stories, not only in Snow White, but Cinderella and others. Whatever gripes children have against their mothers, they can freely pour those difficulties onto symbolic stepmothers, because stepmothers are a step removed. Snow White is really a story about a little girl who gets to be about seven years old and starts to vie with her mother for her father’s attention. When the stepmother looks in the mirror and says, “Who is the fairest of them all?” and the mirror says, “It’s not you anymore, it’s Snow White,” it’s really the little girl saying that to her mother.
44
WOODMERE ART MUSEUM
SANTORE: Yes. If you look at older versions of
Snow White, the pictures never make much sense, because Snow White is a big girl and the dwarves are small. At the end, the prince has to marry somebody who’s an adult. I’ve never seen anybody do what I did, which is to start with a seven-yearold girl. She doesn’t grow until she’s in the crystal casket, which I interpret as a chrysalis, like a moth or a butterfly. In the beginning, however, she’s a little girl, because she’s fooled three times by the stepmother in disguise; if you can fool a teenage girl three times, she deserves whatever she gets! So,