She's a witch!

The transformation of the stepmother into an old hag has always been a bit puzzling to me, as it seems that such an intelligent woman could have chosen a more appealing disguise with which to ensnare Snow White. Nevertheless, the “character” of the hag (if she can be called a character) raises a number of interpretive issues for the reader/viewer. For one, it is easy to see her as the “true embodiment” of the stepmother, despite the fact that she contradicts one of the defining features of the queen (Grimms: “She was a beautiful lady”). The point seems to be that her concern for beauty literally drives her to make herself ugly (albeit temporarily, in her view); the Disney version metes out a rough condemnation of this behavior by killing the woman off in hag form. On the other hand, though, the old hag offers a much fuller expression of the stepmother’s craftiness and malice—whereas before she can just order proxies to kill off Snow White, the hag can (nearly) accomplish the deed herself. Ultimately, however, this brief display of increased power really only lets the queen heap more condemnation on herself, as it is through her actions that Snow White changes from a powerless refugee to a powerful new queen.

Having the witch as a character distinct from the stepmother was a fascinating innovation of the 1916 film. In some sense, it absolves the stepmother of a few crimes; in the Disney and Grimm stories, she simply wants Snow White dead, but here she is forced to collect the girl’s heart by the new witch character. Again, the witch plays an important role in the story’s rendering of judgment on the queen, literally making the stepmother pay the price for her vanity even while comically sharing that same character flaw (e.g., getting the “pigtails” or showing off her new hair at the end of the story”). However, the idea of the witch/hag being the true embodiment of the stepmother is weakened a bit in this interpretation. The queen does associate and struggle with the witch as she might with her own internal desires, but the fact that the witch herself points out the queen’s true ugliness (in the warning about not breaking the mirror) doesn’t make the viewer see the stepmother in a more evil light so much as it makes us pity her. So instead of reflecting viewer condemnation back onto the queen, the witch in this film seems to absorb it. Who, then, is the true villain: the beauty “addict” or her enabler?

(If the latter, it’s interesting that the patriarchal voice of the mirror plays the exact same role.)