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allysonrosen
Registered User
(1/24/01 7:31:49 pm)
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Tattercoats/ Snow White
I just finished reading Midori's adaptation of Tattercoats in "Black Thorn, White Rose." Bravo!
Right now, I'm trying to find a good way of adapting Snow White for my show (see Transformations post). I want to explore the relationship between the stepmother and the king, focusing on similar themes as the marriage in Midori's Tattercoats: a wife who feels invisible because her husband seems to have lost interest. I'd like to start a discussion on this theme in Snow White in the hopes of finding some great observations to use in my show. So, whatimpressions have y'all had about the stepmother? (and yes, I want to keep the variant of the antagonist being the STEP-mother instead of the mother, because motherhood will be explored later, in another tale....)
Allyson
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La
Reine Noire
Registered User
(1/24/01 9:29:59 pm)
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*You* wrote "Tattercoats"?????
Midori,
Wait...*you* wrote that wonderful "Tattercoats" story in "Black Thorn, White Rose"? It was easily my favourite in the entire book! My God, I'm completely giddy!
~Kavita
| Midori
Unregistered User
(1/25/01 7:19:49 am)
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stepmothers
Kavita,
Thanks, I'm glad you liked the story. The original has long been one of my favorites. (so what happened with that "brutally blunt" CW teacher?)
Allyrosen,
A look at Marina Warner's "From the Beast to the Blonde" might be useful to you here. She discusses the vulnerable position of older women--whether they are second wives (and step mothers), hags, crones. There is an underlying tension that surrounds these women...their social position can be very vulnerable, more often surviving on the margins of society and consequently they have a reputation for being too clever, too aggressive, too dangerous on their own behalf. The step mother in SW is in a tricky place. The mother is dead, but the daughter is rapidly coming to resemble the beauty of the dead Queen...imagine the anxiety of a woman, who assumes she has her husband's attention, only to watch the ghost-image of the original queen survive in the face of his daughter. On one level it can make for a very nuanced and complicated set of emotions: the father's desire for his daughter because she resembles his first wife (haven't we seen enough narratives that suggest that particular expression of incest?) the stepmother competing against both the image of the dead birth mother and the living daughter for the husband's attention (on which her own security surely rests) and the daughter, caught between them...wanting the mother, but getting hostility from a woman who regards her as a rival. Maybe all this is only in the anxious mind of the step mother...pushing her husband away because she is repulsed by the possible undertone of incest, clinging to the man because that is her security as a woman in a society that doesn't offer many alternatives, fear of her own aging--because the daughter isn't hers, she can't relate to SW as an extension of her physical self (the idea of children providing a link to immorality)...and when SW comes of age, then it is no longer a daughter, but an image of the dead wife...so she sees SW as a rival adult woman for the attentions of the husband. What an isolated place for her, neither integratedby blood nor truely secure by marriage. I guess if I wanted to pull out of this narrative that relationship between husband and wife, I would locate it in the tenuous position of the stepmother. Then I guess I would try and decide if the crisis were one she is constructing out of her fears, or whether it is really happening. Supposing the tables were turned completely on this narrative and the step mother correctly perceives a real threat of incest to SW...and gets her away from the king (that *that* is the hidden truth of the narrative, which is reinterpreted by an angry father who see his desires thwarted--much like women nowadays who rather than trust the courts go underground with their kids to keep them from being abused--so the story of SW we know today is the one written by the husband to lay the blame on the Stepmother)...but the stepmother cannot leave herself, is stuck in that relationship because she has no other alternatives...what kind of marriage relationship might that be? On the other hand if the stepmother is inventing the external drama because of her own internal fears then how does the husband handle that? How would he relate to a woman is a contradictory mass of love/hate, need and repudiation, fear of rejection and the desire for acceptance. I'm just thinking aloud here...but I would suggest looking at Warner's book. I think you would get a wealth of ideas...
m.
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CoryEllen
Registered User
(1/25/01 3:33:46 pm)
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StepMothers
I've thought about this before . . . even wrote a poem about it, once. That poem focused on the rivalry subtext, and the idea that abuse goes in cycles. The driving motive for the stepmother's actions was her perception that the girl was deliberately attempting to seduce her father's affections, and, speaking to Snow White, she predicts that the rescuer will not be a prince, but a "grizzled, widowed king" with a very young daughter at home, whose skin is white as snow, etc.
The poem is partly about the way in which stepmothers and daughters really do sometimes view themselves as rivals for the father's affections, but it's also about the too-often sexualized relationships between fathers and daughters - like Jane Yolen said, in Allerleirauh, "having always wanted her father's love, she does not question the way of it."
So that's my take on Snow White. Or one of my takes.
| Carrie
Unregistered User
(1/25/01 5:51:14 pm)
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Snow White
Cory Ellen,
Terri wrote a wonderful article on Snow White which is posted on the Endicott site. If you haven't already, you should check it out.
www.endicott-studio.com/forsga.html
Cheers.
Carrie
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La
Reine Noire
Registered User
(1/25/01 6:37:37 pm)
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Stepmothers et al
Midori,
Has anyone tried telling "Snow White" from the stepmother's point of view? I recall reading a short piece about something similar in one of the Datlow/Windling anthologies, but I can't be sure.
And, as to the "brutally blunt" teacher, she was surprisingly complimentary. She skimmed some of my stuff and told me that even though she normally advised freshmen to put off applying for the Creative Writing department's study abroad program for two years, that I ought to do it this year.
So, we'll have to see what happens.
~Kavita
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Terri
Registered User
(1/26/01 6:48:33 am)
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Re: Stepmothers et al
Yes, there have been re-tellings from the stepmother's point of view. Two that I can think of offhand are Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples," published in his collection Visitations and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Vol. 8. Also Pat Murphy's "The True Story," published in Black Swan, White Raven, which uses the theme discussed above: incest, and the mother's desire to get the girl away from the king. They are both great tales.
But heavens, *everything* has been done before when it comes to fairy tales, so don't let that stop you from creating your own take on the story.
| Colleen
Unregistered User
(1/26/01 9:02:16 am)
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Stepmother's Point of View
Isn't the Snow White story in Tanith Lee's "Red as Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer" told from the stepmother's point of view? It's been a long time since I read it, so I could easily be misremembering, but I seem to recall that it is. Anyone want to correct my assumption? (My copy is buried in storage so I can't look it up, either - *but* - last night we signed the lease on our new apartment and we begin to move in next Thursday! Our own home again! Yay!!)
Colleen
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Terri
Registered User
(1/26/01 4:25:29 pm)
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Re: Stepmother's Point of View
Tanith's story "Red as Blood" is from the point of view of both the mother and the child, but definitely subverts the story in interesting ways. The same is true of her new Snow White novel, "White as Snow," in which neither the queen nor Snow White is entirely sympathetic. It's a dark, strange, fascinating reworking of the story, mixed in with the Demeter-Persephone myth...and including some rather randy dwarves. When she was writing it (for the Fairy Tale series I edit for Tor Books), I came in from the garden one day to pick up the phone and hear a voice on the other say: "Terri, I'm glad you're there. Is it all right if the dwarves have sex?" Since I didn't immediately recognize Tanith's voice, and since Snow White was the furthest thing from my mind just then, it was a very surreal moment.
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allysonrosen
Registered User
(1/28/01 11:25:13 am)
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Re: Stepmother's Point of View
Midori and Company-
Thanks for your input. I have "From the Beast to the Blonde" in my collection of resource materials, and it has been incredibly useful to me. So far, I have been telling the story of my heroine (who has lived the adventures in Hansel and Gretl, Little Red, and Cinderella) from the point of view of peripheral characters. For example, a former classmate of Hansel and Gretls' recalls "the incident" that caused so many stories of old women kidnapping children in the woods. The child psychologist who was assigned to Little Red after her rescue discusses the case report. A gardener who pruned Cinderella's father's garden remembers seeing Cinderella change from an obsessive compulsive neat-freak into a rebellious socialite who snuck out of the house after curfew.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to tell the story of SW's stepmother, using the issues that Midori so wondefully dicussed? I'm stuck right now: who could play the role of a witness, similar to the roles of the storytellers in the previous tales? Also know that each time a new tale is told, it has echoes of the previous tale within it: the cottage in the woods (of the old witch and the grandmother) dark hair and green eyes (of the wolf and the prince) ashes (from cooking the witch to the ash tree that grows from Cinderella's mother's grave...) Get it?
My first inclination is to have the Stepmother's hairdresser gossip about the scandal. Anyone have any ideas to contribute?
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La
Reine Noire
Registered User
(1/28/01 12:17:12 pm)
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Re: Stepmother's Point of View
Allyson,
I like the idea of a hairdresser or a maid spreading gossip about the daughter...it's a source enough removed from the main action that it can signal the gravity of the situation. If the commoners know about it, then it's surely bad.
~Kavita
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Perrina
Registered User
(1/31/01 9:18:57 am)
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Maybe farfetched...
Have you thought perhaps of a
sympathetic ex-boyfriend of your heroine? Perhaps one who saw something
was wrong, talked to the stepmother about his concern, discovered
the truth, confronted her, then was cast aside for a new boyfriend?
Just a thought.
Kerrie
Edited by: Perrina at: 1/31/01
9:29:56 am
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allysonrosen
Registered User
(2/6/01 2:29:10 pm)
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Re: Maybe farfetched...
Interesting...then I have a whole new twist on the story. I've been looking for an opportunity to have a male point of view...Ooo! Ooo! Even better, the boyfriend could be a human representation of the magic mirror, the person who the Queen turns to after the King begins to favor Snow Whiter. AND to have the mirror say "Snow White is the fairest of them all" could be the last straw for her. Thank you, Kerrie!
(Just vomiting ideas onto a computer screen...whicch is the best way for me to work...)
Allyson
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