A Love Letter to Bigamists

Right off the bat, you need to know that the Snow White story has never done much for me. This may have something to do with being traumatized before age 6 by the re-release of the Disney version (the transformation scene, oh my god), but it's also deeply rooted in my disdain for heroines who don't do anything, and distrust of stories that hold them up as role models. By now you should know that I'll take Kate Crackernuts over the fairest of them all any day of the week.

Which makes it odd that a Snow White variant is among my favorite fairy tales of all time.

Silver-tree, John Batten

"Gold-tree and Silver-tree" is different from the classic version, though, in all the ways that matter. The Scots felt no need to whitewash the mother's murderous designs on her biological daughter; Silver-tree, the evil queen, even couches her single successful plot in a false solicitude for Gold-tree's well-being. Gold-tree has a modicum of sense; when she sees Silver-tree's ship coming for her, she knows perfectly well that her mother wants to kill her, and that she needs to hide. But the biggest difference, and the reason why I love this version, lies in the actions of the prince.

In the Grimms' Snow White, the prince is at best a moron and at worst a necrophiliac. Either way, he is primarily a plot device. And in "Gold-tree and Silver-tree," that's exactly how he starts out. Right after Silver-tree finds out that Gold-tree is more beautiful than she is, up rides the prince, seeking Gold-tree's hand in marriage. Problem solved: Gold-tree marries the prince, her father slips Silver-tree a goat's heart, and for bonus points, Gold-tree and the prince actually fall in love. Everything's perfect until Silver-tree realizes that Gold-tree's alive, sticks a poisoned dart in her finger, and sails back home, presumably cackling all the way.

Death of Gold-tree, Michelle Hunt

Point one in the prince's favor: He doesn't try to kiss, sleep with, or otherwise perform acts of dubious consensuality on the seemingly-dead body of his wife. (He does keep her unblemished corpse in a locked room, but he can't really be blamed for that, since it's plot-relevant and he's grieving for his lost love. At least, I cut him some slack on that. And I bet poor Talia would, too.)

And then things get really interesting. The prince remarries.

So. It's a fairy tale. We already know that Gold-tree's not really dead. But no one in the story does. This may be the one and only time where I'm glad to see characters not operating in full awareness of fairy tale logic. I'll pull out my hair and scream at clueless third brothers and innocent girls victimized by their stepsisters, wondering why the hell they don't wise up. But here, I'm completely on board, because what's happening is that real-life logic is superseding fairy tale logic. Of course the prince would remarry. He's a prince, and he didn't have any kids with Gold-tree. It's his job, regardless of the fact that he still mourns the woman he loved.

Gold-tree, Morris Meredith Williams

And then, he wins my undying love, because his second wife is a complete and total badass. When he forgets to take the key to Gold-tree's locked room, she Bluebeards in there and finds the body of her predecessor. Does she go all "other woman" on poor defenseless Gold-tree? Does she cook her in a stew? Does she confront her husband about the near-literal skeleton in his closet?

Nope. She just takes out the poisoned dart. And when the prince gets home, she tells him right away, "Hey, I woke up your first wife, and you obviously still love her, so I'll just peace out and let you two lovebirds get back together." Is there anyone else in fairy tales who freely walks away from a love conflict with sincere goodwill? Is there anyone in the real world who can do that? The second wife basically thumbs her nose at fairy tale convention, while at the same time making us desperate to keep her around. I love her for it.

Two Princesses, One Prince, V-Eclipse

Point two in the prince's favor: He made a very intelligent second marriage.

Point three in the prince's favor: As soon as the second wife offers to step out, he refuses to let her. She says she'll go away. His exact words in reply? "Oh! indeed you shall not go away, but I shall have both of you."

This guy is so cool. Maybe not smart enough to just take the dart out of his first wife's finger, but totally smart enough to marry a woman with brains, to value her for her intelligence, and to let his first and second loves know that he cherishes them both equally.

It's hardly conventional, either in fairy tales or in the world we live in. But I have to think that this is one awesome three-way marriage. No one is superior: Gold-tree owes her life to the second wife, who owes her continued place to the prince, who owes his happiness to both of them. It's impossible to feel like anyone's an interloper here, because they all play integral parts in the relationship. Plus we get to keep the smart girl on the heroes' team. This is a total win for everyone involved.

The clincher of it all, vindicating the prince's unconventional decision, is that the second wife is solely responsible for the death of Silver-tree (remember her?). Once again, Silver-tree hears that Gold-tree's alive and comes back for more murder. Gold-tree's initial instinct - to flee, again - is firmly countermanded by the second wife, who gets them both down on the beach to say hello. Silver-tree offers Gold-tree a cup laced with poison, pulling the caring-mother card yet again in front of witnesses. Cool as a cucumber, the second wife retorts that she doesn't know where you come from, honey, but in this country the person offering a drink takes a sip first, I mean really, where are your manners. And when Silver-tree pretends to drink, the second wife just smacks the bottom of the cup so that the poison goes straight into the would-be murderess's mouth. Call me crazy, but I think that's even more karmic than Snow White's stepmother dancing to death in red-hot iron shoes. It's quick, it's elegant, and it's not nearly as grotesque.

The Two Princesses of Bamarre, eala-nedea

This is a fairy tale where real-world rules also apply. Sure, there's a talking trout and some confusion over the actual fact of death. There's also unvarnished mother-daughter darkness, the irreplaceable value of second love, and perhaps the most unconventional marriage fairy tales have to offer, portrayed in unambiguously glowing terms. I've never read a fairy tale quite like this one. With the exception of the Beauty and the Beast variants, I've never seen more interesting romantic dynamics. It's a lot more complicated and compelling than "someday my prince will come."

And it's subversive as hell. It pokes fun at the passive heroine. It giggles at the genre's conventions. A secondary character steals center stage halfway through, and the reader never looks back. It never punishes its heroes for their atypical choices, and in fact rewards the unexpected over the standard. Fairy tales exist to reinforce the status quo. But by the end of this one, you're cheering for the triumph of true love expressed through bigamy. That is gutsy like nobody's business. And more than anything else, I love this story for that very fact: that it stakes out its territory, takes a stand, and refuses to back down.

If only we could get Snow White to read it...

Where Have All the Mothers Gone?

It's impossible to read fairy tales without realizing one very glaring absence in the lives of nearly every hero or heroine. They have no mothers. They have stepmothers out the wazoo, perfectly ready to throw their innocent stepchildren under the closest available bus, but no mothers. They have fathers, who are either malicious favorite-players or ineffectual weaklings bullied by their second wives. But no mothers. Fairytale Land should put out an APB for all its missing moms.

The Death of Rachel, Giambettino Cignaroli

The lack of maternal influence has painfully obvious results. Scads of motherless heroines fall effortlessly into the clutches of their evil stepmothers. And that's not even the worst of it. Take the story of Joseph and his brothers. Granted, those kids had four mothers to share around, but the death of the beloved Rachel leaves a huge hole in the structure of Jacob's family. Zilpah and Bilhah are never allowed much say in the raising of their sons, and Leah is either incapable of or uninterested in keeping twelve rowdy boys in line. In effect, if not in fact, Jacob's sons are motherless. They live in a world of ruthless male competition. And Jacob himself, as consolation for the loss of his love, makes no bones about the fact that Rachel's son Joseph is his favorite. With no mother to teach morality and a father who's hardly modeling good behavior, it's no wonder that resentment and hatred fester among the brothers, leading ultimately to the other eleven selling Joseph into slavery to get rid of their rival. It's difficult to say what would have happened with Rachel as an active presence in their lives, but it's pretty clear that Jacob wouldn't have favored Joseph so flagrantly if he hadn't been mourning the boy's mother.

Snow White illustration, Franz Juttner

The plot thickens when you go back to the Grimm stories and realize that those clever German boys weren't just cataloging folktales. They were deliberately shaping the moral compasses of the next generation. Mothers, real mothers, could never be allowed to do the horrific things to their children that they do in those well-loved stories: poison them with apples, abandon them in the woods, etc. It was much easier to kill the mothers before they had a chance to become evil. That way, the stories preserved a saintly image of a mother who often dies in giving her child life, side by side with the villainous hag who usurps her place. Better to put the kids at risk from a world without a mother than to admit that mothers are, in fact, capable of the same horrors as other human beings.

Kate Crackernuts, Trina Schart Hyman

But that line of thinking leaves us singularly ill-equipped to handle, say, the heroine's mother in Kate Crackernuts. Bold, quick-thinking princess Kate is clearly the story's protagonist, but her half-sister Anne is the beauty of the family. Kate's mother (who is Anne's stepmother) resents her biological daughter being overshadowed, so out of love for Kate, she magics a sheep's head onto Anne's shoulders. What on earth should our reaction be? Should we be glad that at least one fairytale mother cares about her daughter's future? Should we be outraged that the queen could do such a thing to her trusting stepdaughter? Should we renounce the queen's actions utterly (as Kate herself does), or should we allow that her motive was love and concern? After all, the queen's just doing exactly what fairytale convention demands of her: being cruel and manipulative toward her stepdaughter. It's her bad luck that her story involves one of the few sets of siblings who actually like each other, creating an instant gray area where the evil stepmother's biological child is our hero.

So, having no mother is bad. Having a vindictive mother is bad. Having a caring mother is bad. Is there any kind of good mother who's not also dead?

Demeter and Persephone, Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire

Well, there's always Demeter.

Right from the start, she's got the loving and nurturing aspect of motherhood covered; she's goddess of the harvest, so we already know she'll take awesome care of her daughter. And going by the brief glimpse we get of young carefree Persephone before Hades abducts her, it seems fair to say that Demeter knocked it out of the park. Once Persephone goes missing, Demeter essentially shuts down the earth, holding life itself hostage until her daughter is returned. Her determined crusade to find Persephone is the sole reason Zeus gets off his arse and sends Hermes to bring Persephone back. And even though Hades tricks Persephone into spending three months of the year with him, the remaining nine are divinely judged to be the purview of the mother-daughter team of spring and harvest, which creates lovely weather and plentiful harvests and ensures that even the mortals want Persephone to stay with her mom.

Isis & Horus, Judith Page

And look over there! It's Isis, who brought her dead husband back to life just so she could get pregnant. She spends decades incognito, using her powerful magic to protect Horus from his murderous uncle who's got teams canvassing Egypt looking for him. When Set gets past her vigilance and nearly kills Horus via scorpions, Isis calls in favors from the gods in order to save her son. She devotes every waking minute to teaching Horus exactly how to survive the inevitable battle with Set. Unlike with Demeter and Persephone, we get to see Isis's efforts fulfilled: Horus trounces Set (albeit with some interesting methods), avenges his father, and becomes king of Egypt (and ultimately a god). Well done, Isis.

And now the Virgin Mary is knocking at the door. Gotta count her, too. Betrothed-but-not-married knocked-up-by-God virgin mom sounds like the premise of a VH1 show. But Mary makes it work. She convinces a very skeptical Joseph that she didn't actually cheat on him (at least not by choice - we can talk

Madonna and Child, Il Sassoferrato

about God's consent issues later), goes with him to Bethlehem ready to drop at any second, gives birth alone in a freaking stable, and maintains a strong and loving relationship with her son for his entire life, which sadly ends before hers. Statistically, she should have been screwed. Every card was stacked against her. But out of the jaws of defeat, Mary snatches an enormous parental victory. Very few women can successfully raise a Savior.

So yes, there are positive models of motherhood who play active and crucial roles in their children's stories. But there's a catch. They're all goddesses. (You can quibble about Mary's divine status, but she ascends to Heaven at the moment of her death, and has more icons and fan-worship than any sanctified Christian who's not Jesus. The woman's a goddess.) Fairytale mothers are mortals with only mortal strength. Is it fair to ask human mothers to live up to the astonishing lengths that goddesses go to in protecting and raising their children?

Brave, Disney/Pixar

It might actually be fine. Because what the ranks of good living mothers sorely need to oppose the army of evil mothers is power. The evil mother's menace comes from the fact that she has all the power and her child-victim has none. To declare her disgust for her mother's methods, Kate Crackernuts has to go into self-imposed exile. Even the sainted dead moms have power; Cinderella's dresses her up for the ball, assisting her in her only avenue of escape from her powerful stepmother's dominance. So the good mothers need the power that goddesses of life and love can provide: the strength to endure, the courage to nurture, the will to make things better. The goddess-mothers aren't providing an unreachable ideal. They exist to brace up mortal mothers, to show them what qualities will serve them best, and to remind them that - divine or not - every good mother has what it takes.