The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  These connotations are not readily available to the modern child. But the dwarfs evoke other unconscious associations. There are no female dwarfs. While all fairies are female, wizards are their male counterparts, and there are both sorcerers and sorceresses, or witches. So dwarfs are eminently male, but males who are stunted in their development. These “little men” with their stunted bodies and their mining occupation—they skillfully penetrate into dark holes—all suggest phallic connotations. They are certainly not men in any sexual sense—their way of life, their interest in material goods to the exclusion of love, suggest a pre-oedipal existence.*

  At first sight it may seem strange to identify a figure that symbolizes a phallic existence as also representing childhood before puberty, a period during which all forms of sexuality are relatively dormant. But the dwarfs are free of inner conflicts, and have no desire to move beyond their phallic existence to intimate relations. They are satisfied with an identical round of activities; their life is a never-changing circle of work in the womb of the earth, as the planets circle endlessly in a never-changing path in the sky. This lack of change or of any desire for it is what makes their existence parallel that of the prepubertal child. And this is why the dwarfs do not understand or sympathize with the inner pressures which make it impossible for Snow White to resist the queen’s temptations. Conflicts are what make us dissatisfied with our present way of life and induce us to find other solutions; if we were free of conflicts, we would never run the risks involved in moving on to a different and, we hope, higher form of living.

  The peaceful pre-adolescent period Snow White has while living with the dwarfs before the queen again disturbs her gives her the strength to move into adolescence. Thus she enters once more a time of troubles—now no longer as a child who must passively suffer what Mother inflicts on her, but as a person who must take part in and responsibility for what happens to her.

  Snow White and the queen’s relations are symbolic of some severe difficulties which may occur between mother and daughter. But they are also projections onto separate figures of tendencies which are incompatible within one person. Often these inner contradictions originate in a child’s relationships with his parents. Thus, the fairy-tale projection of one side of an inner conflict onto a parental figure also represents a historical truth: this is where it originated. This is suggested by what happens to Snow White when her quiet and uneventful life with the dwarfs is interrupted.

  Nearly destroyed by the early pubertal conflict and competition with her stepmother, Snow White tries to escape back into a conflict-free latency period, where sex remains dormant and hence adolescent turmoils can be avoided. But neither time nor human development remains static, and returning to a latency existence to escape the troubles of adolescence cannot succeed. As Snow White becomes an adolescent, she begins to experience the sexual desires which were repressed and dormant during latency. With this the stepmother, who represents the consciously denied elements in Snow White’s inner conflict, reappears on the scene, and shatters Snow White’s inner peace.

  The readiness with which Snow White repeatedly permits herself to be tempted by the stepmother, despite the warnings of the dwarfs, suggests how close the stepmother’s temptations are to Snow White’s inner desires. The dwarfs’ admonition to let nobody enter the house—or, symbolically, Snow White’s inner being—is to no avail. (The dwarfs have an easy time preaching against adolescent dangers because, being fixated to the phallic stage of development, they are not subjected to them.) The ups and downs of adolescent conflicts are symbolized by Snow White’s twice being tempted, endangered, and rescued by returning to her previous latency existence. Snow White’s third experience with temptation finally ends her efforts to return to immaturity when encountering adolescent difficulties.

  While we are not told how long Snow White lived with the dwarfs before her stepmother reappeared in her life, it is the attraction of stay-laces which induces Snow White to let the queen, disguised as a peddler woman, enter the dwarfs’ dwelling. This makes it clear that Snow White is by now a well-developed adolescent girl and, in line with the fashion of times past, in need of, and interested in, laces. The stepmother laces Snow White so tightly that she falls down as if she were dead.*

  Now, if the queen’s purpose was to kill Snow White, she could easily have done so at this moment. But if the queen’s goal was to prevent her daughter from surpassing her, reducing her to immobility is sufficient for a time. The queen, then, stands for a parent who temporarily succeeds in maintaining his dominance by arresting his child’s development. On another level the meaning of this episode is to suggest Snow White’s conflicts about her adolescent desire to be well laced because it makes her sexually attractive. Her collapsing unconscious symbolizes that she became overwhelmed by the conflict between her sexual desires and her anxiety about them. Since it is Snow White’s own vanity which seduces her into letting herself be laced, she and the vain stepmother have much in common. It seems that Snow White’s adolescent conflicts and desires are her undoing. But the fairy tale knows better, and it continues to teach the child a more significant lesson: without having experienced and mastered those dangers which come with growing up, Snow White would never be united with her prince.

  On their return from work, the good dwarfs find Snow White unconscious and unlace her. She comes to life again; she retreats temporarily into latency. The dwarfs warn her once more, and more seriously, against the tricks of the evil queen—that is, against the temptations of sex. But Snow White’s desires are too strong. When the queen, disguised as an old woman, offers to fix Snow White’s hair—“Now I will comb you properly for once”—Snow White is again seduced and lets her do it. Snow White’s conscious intentions are overwhelmed by her desire to have a beautiful coiffure, and her unconscious wish is to be sexually attractive. Once more this wish is “poisonous” to Snow White in her early, immature adolescent state, and she again loses consciousness. Again the dwarfs rescue her. The third time Snow White gives in to temptation, she eats of the fateful apple which the queen, dressed up as a peasant woman, hands to her. The dwarfs can no longer help her then, because regression from adolescence to a latency existence has ceased to be a solution for Snow White.

  In many myths as well as fairy tales, the apple stands for love and sex, in both its benevolent and its dangerous aspect. An apple given to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, showing she was preferred to chaste goddesses, led to the Trojan War. It was the Biblical apple with which man was seduced to forswear his innocence in order to gain knowledge and sexuality. While it was Eve who was tempted by male masculinity, as represented by the snake, not even the snake could do it all by itself—it needed the apple, which in religious iconography also symbolizes the mother’s breast. On our mother’s breast we were all first attracted to form a relation, and find satisfaction in it. In “Snow White” mother and daughter share the apple. That which is symbolized by the apple in “Snow White” is something mother and daughter have in common which runs even deeper than their jealousy of each other—their mature sexual desires.

  To overcome Snow White’s suspicion of her, the queen cuts the apple in half, eating the white part herself, while Snow White accepts the red, “poisonous” half. Repeatedly we have been told of Snow White’s double nature: she was as white as snow and as red as blood—that is, her being has both its asexual and its erotic aspect. Eating the red (erotic) part of the apple is the end of Snow White’s “innocence.” The dwarfs, the companions of her latency existence, can no longer bring her back to life; Snow White has made her choice, which is as necessary as it is fateful. The redness of the apple evokes sexual associations like the three drops of blood which led to Snow White’s birth, and also menstruation, the event which marks the beginning of sexual maturity.

  As she eats of the red part of the apple, the child in Snow White dies, and is buried in a transparent coffin made of glass. There she rests for a long time, visited not only by the dwarfs bu
t also by three birds: first an owl, then a raven, and last a dove. The owl symbolizes wisdom; the raven—as in the Teutonic god Woden’s raven—probably mature consciousness; and the dove stands traditionally for love. These birds suggest that Snow White’s deathlike sleep in the coffin is a period of gestation which is her final period of preparing for maturity.*

  Snow White’s story teaches that just because one has reached physical maturity, one is by no means intellectually and emotionally ready for adulthood, as represented by marriage. Considerable growth and time are needed before the new, more mature personality is formed and the old conflicts are integrated. Only then is one ready for a partner of the other sex, and the intimate relation with him which is needed for the achievement of mature adulthood. Snow White’s partner is the prince, who “carries her off” in her coffin—which causes her to cough up or spit out the poisonous apple and come to life, ready for marriage. Her tragedy began with oral incorporative desires: the queen’s wish to eat Snow White’s internal organs. Snow White’s spitting out of the suffocating apple—the bad object she had incorporated—marks her final freedom from primitive orality, which stands for all her immature fixations.

  Like Snow White, each child in his development must repeat the history of man, real or imagined. We are all expelled eventually from the original paradise of infancy, where all our wishes seemed to be fulfilled without any effort on our part. Learning about good and evil—gaining knowledge—seems to split our personality in two: the red chaos of unbridled emotions, the id; and the white purity of our conscience, the superego. As we grow up, we vacillate between being overcome by the turmoil of the first and the rigidity of the second (the tight lacing, and the immobility enforced by the coffin). Adulthood can be reached only when these inner contradictions are resolved and a new awakening of the mature ego is achieved, in which red and white coexist harmoniously.

  But before the “happy” life can begin, the evil and destructive aspects of our personality must be brought under our control. The witch is punished for her cannibalistic desires in “Hansel and Gretel” by being burned in the oven. In “Snow White” the vain, jealous, and destructive queen is forced to put on red-hot shoes, in which she must dance until she dies. Untrammeled sexual jealousy, which tries to ruin others, destroys itself—as symbolized not only by the fiery red shoes but by death from dancing in them. Symbolically, the story tells that uncontrolled passion must be restrained or it will become one’s undoing. Only the death of the jealous queen (the elimination of all outer and inner turbulence) can make for a happy world.

  Many fairy-tale heroes, at a crucial point in their development, fall into deep sleep or are reborn. Each reawakening or rebirth symbolizes the reaching of a higher stage of maturity and understanding. It is one of the fairy tale’s ways to stimulate the wish for higher meaning in life: deeper consciousness, more self-knowledge, and greater maturity. The long period of inactivity before reawakening makes the hearer realize—without consciously verbalizing it—that this rebirth requires a time of rest and concentration in both sexes.

  Change signifies the need to give up something one had enjoyed up to then, such as Snow White’s existence before the queen became jealous, or her easy life with the dwarfs—difficult and painful growing-up experiences which cannot be avoided. These stories also convince the hearer that he need not be afraid of relinquishing his childish position of depending on others, since after the dangerous hardships of the transitional period, he will emerge on a higher and better plane, to enter upon a richer and happier existence. Those who are reluctant to risk such a transformation, such as the two older brothers in “The Three Feathers,” never gain the kingdom. Those who got stuck in the pre-oedipal stage of development, such as the dwarfs, will never know the happiness of love and marriage. And those parents who, like the queen, act out parental oedipal jealousies nearly destroy their child and certainly destroy themselves.

  *For example, one Italian version is called “La Ragazza di Latte e Sangue” (“The Girl of Milk and Blood”), which finds its explanation in the fact that in many Italian renderings the three drops of blood which the queen sheds do not fall on snow, which is very rare in most parts of Italy, but instead on milk, white marble, or even white cheese.

  *Some elements of one of the earliest versions of the “Snow White” motif found in Basile’s “The Young Slave” make it clear that the heroine’s persecution is due to a (step)mother’s jealousy, the cause of which is not just the young girl’s beauty, but rather the real or imagined love of the (step)mother’s husband for the girl. The girl, whose name is Lisa, dies temporarily from a comb that gets stuck in her hair. Like Snow White, she is buried in a casket of crystal in which she continues to grow as the coffin grows with her. After she has spent seven years in the coffin, her uncle goes away. This uncle, who is her foster father really, is the only father she has ever had, since her mother was magically impregnated by the leaf of a rose which she had swallowed. His wife, insanely jealous because of what she views as her husband’s love for Lisa, shakes her out of the coffin; the comb drops out of her hair, and she awakes. The jealous (step)mother turns her into a slave; hence the story’s title. At the end, the uncle finds out that the young slave girl is Lisa. He restores her and drives away his wife, who, out of jealousy for his love for Lisa, has nearly destroyed her.64

  *Giving each dwarf a separate name and a distinctive personality—in the fairy tale they are all identical—as in the Walt Disney film, seriously interferes with the unconscious understanding that they symbolize an immature pre-individual form of existence which Snow White must transcend. Such ill-considered additions to fairy tales, which seemingly increase the human interest, actually are apt to destroy it because they make it difficult to grasp the story’s deeper meaning correctly. The poet understands the meaning of fairy-tale figures better than a film maker and those who follow his lead in retelling the story. Anne Sexton’s poetic rendering of “Snow White” suggests their phallic nature, since she refers to them as “the dwarfs, those little hot dogs.”67

  *Depending on the custom of time or place, it is not stay-laces but another piece of clothing which tempts Snow White—in some versions it is a shirt or a cloak which the queen wraps so tightly around Snow White that she collapses.

  *This period of inertness may further explain Snow White’s name, which stresses only one of the three colors that account for her beauty. White frequently symbolizes purity, innocence, the spiritual. But by emphasizing the connection with snow, inertness is also symbolized. When snow covers the earth, all life seems to stop, as Snow White’s life seems to have stopped while she is lying in her coffin. Then her eating of the red apple was premature; she had overreached herself. Experiencing sexuality too soon, the story warns, can lead to nothing good. But when it is followed by a prolonged period of inertia, then the girl can recuperate fully from her premature and hence destructive experiences with sexuality.

  “GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE

  BEARS”

  This story lacks some of the most important features of true fairy tales: at its end there is neither recovery nor consolation; there is no resolution of conflict, and thus no happy ending. But it is a very meaningful tale because it deals symbolically with some of the most important growing-up problems of the child: the struggle with the oedipal predicaments; the search for identity; and sibling rivalry.

  In its present form this story is of recent origin, although it is derived from an ancient tale. Its short modern history illustrates the development over time of a cautionary tale as it acquires fairy-story characteristics, becoming ever more popular and meaningful. Its history demonstrates that a fairy tale’s appearance in print does not preclude its being revised in later editions. But when such altering occurs, the changes—in contrast to the time when fairy tales were only perpetuated orally—reflect more than just the personal idiosyncrasies of the storyteller.

  Unless he is an original artist, an author recasting a fairy tale for a
new printing is rarely guided mainly by his unconscious feeling for the story, nor does he have a particular child in mind whom he wishes to entertain and enlighten or help with a pressing problem. Such changes are instead most often instituted on the basis of what the author thinks a “general” reader wishes to be told. Designed to satisfy the desires or moral scruples of an unknown reader, the tale is often recounted in ways which are trite and commonplace.

  When a story exists only in oral tradition, it is largely the teller’s unconscious that determines what story he relates, and what of it he remembers. In doing so, he is motivated not only by his conscious and unconscious feelings for the story, but also by the nature of his emotional involvement with the child to whom he tells it. In many such oral repetitions of a story, over many years, by various persons to different listeners, a version is finally reached which is so convincing to the conscious and unconscious of many people that no further change seems appropriate. With this, the story has attained its “classic” form.

  There is general agreement that the original source of “Goldilocks” is an ancient Scottish tale of three bears which are intruded upon by a she-fox.68 The bears devour the trespasser—a cautionary tale warning us to respect others’ property and privacy. In a small homemade book written by Eleanor Muir in 1831 as a birthday gift for a little boy and discovered again only in 1951, she told the story with an angry old woman as the intruder. It is possible that in doing so she mistook the “vixen” of the original to mean not a female fox, but a shrewish woman. Whether this alteration was a case of mistaken identity, a “Freudian” slip, or deliberate, it was the change which began the transition of an old cautionary tale into a fairy story. In 1894 another probably quite old rendering of the story became known from the oral tradition, in which the intruder helps herself to milk, sits in the chairs, and rests in the beds of the bears, which, in this version, live in a castle in the woods. In both these stories the intruder is most severely punished by the bears, which try to throw her into the fire, drown her, or drop her from a church steeple.