Snow White From Post-colonial Perspective
When examining Snow White from a Post-colonial perspective it becomes clear that the 7 dwarves are like European settlers and Snow White is a native. This becomes clearer each time Snow white gets tricked by her stepmother. Each time they come home and find her laying there almost dead they saver her but at the same time they also just tell her the same thing every time. They tell her to not let anyone in and not to trust anyone. They are totally fine with leaving her alone the next day and really have no concern for her. Even after each time, her mom tricks her and she keeps falling for it and isn’t learning they have the same response and don’t do anything about it. They fail to care for her and they expect her to do everything for them. This would imply that the dwarves are settlers and are just using her and doing the minimal that they can. She has to do all the work while they go explore.
Another good example of this is when Snow White actually dies from the poisoned apple the 7 dwarves put her in a glass coffin which is quite disrespectful and they are almost showing her off in away. This would imply that she really didn’t have much meaning to them and that they did not care all that much for her. They had a sense of she was just their housekeeper and was by chance the most fiar.
Near the end of the fairy tale, it is almost as the dwarves suddenly start to care for Snow White. This change of attitude seems to happen quite quickly as all of a sudden they refuse to sell her coffin for all the gold in the world to the prince. This is very odd because the prince sees her and within a few seconds claims that she is the love of his life and can not live without seeing her and promises to take care of her. It is not made clear if the dwarves gave her away because they had no use for her anymore or if it was just because they felt pity. After they went through so much effort to keep her is seems that just pity wouldn’t be a good enough reason to give her away.
When looking at this great tale from a Post-colonial perspective it could be seen that snow white is just a pretty, attractive object that is taken advantage of and passed around. It could also be warning girls about vanity and to be careful to not be taken advantage of.
