Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” begins with a blanket statement: “No matter what life you lead / the virgin is a lovely number” (Lines 1-2). Sexton establishes the tone of the speaker; the casual phrase of the first line suggests a modern voice, not one from the fairy tale itself, and the confident, informal tone hints at the subtle critique to come, as she undercuts the value of the virginal ideal throughout the poem. The speaker describes what makes the virgin so lovely: “cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper, / arms and legs made of Limoges, / lips like Vin Du Rhone” (Lines 3-5). Sexton sets up the virgin as a uselessly beautiful object: She is fragile and weak, liable to break at any point. She is consumable, like a glass of wine or cigarette, and thus easily objectified. Rather than being warm and human, she has “china-blue doll eyes” (Line 6) that are only capable of being open or shut, with no other nuances.

Sexton writes that the doll-like virgin’s eyes can be “Open to say, / Good Day Mama, / and shut for the thrust / of the unicorn” (Lines 8-11). She introduces the impossible standard of the ideal lovely woman: On one hand, the woman must be innocent, naive, and virginal, polite in her interactions. One the other, she must be willing to keep her eyes “shut for the thrust” (Line 10), accepting any male sexuality that is forced on her. By specifying this thrust as “of the unicorn” (Line 11), however, Sexton undercuts this expectation, suggesting that the standard is as impossible as encountering a mythic beast. The ridiculousness of the image also establishes the tone that the speaker will periodically return to throughout the poem, a mocking voice that uses sharp humor to critique the characters in the Snow White story. The stanza ends by emphasizing the most important quality of a virgin: “She is unsoiled. / She is white as a bonefish” (Lines 12-13). Rather than identifying her by qualities that she has, things that she does, interests, or anything that could provide substantial characterization, the virgin is identified by what she lacks, or what is absent.

Sexton moves into the retelling of the Snow White story, which adheres faithfully to the Grimm’s fairy tale in plot, while adding a layer of contemporary commentary through the speaker’s voice. The speaker recounts that Snow White was a “lovely virgin” (Line 14), suggesting we think of her as a 13-year-old girl. Her stepmother is also beautiful but “eaten, of course, by age” (Line 19). Food, eating, and chewing are all sinister acts in the poem, and anthropomorphizing age as something that consumes the queen creates a visceral threat: to not be beautiful is to suffer violent, physical damage.

The speaker jumps in to say, “Beauty is a simple passion, / but, oh my friends, in the end / you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes” (Lines 21-23). Alluding to the stepmother’s death at the end of the original Grimm fairy tale, the speaker implicates her reader in putting too much value in physical beauty. She establishes the cyclical damage this kind of beauty can wreak, foreshadowing the final lines of the poem when Snow White succumbs to it herself. Beauty, however, is the only power and value that women have in fairy tales, and the stepmother suffers as a result, growing dependent on this sole, subjective value.

Sexton writes that the stepmother “had a mirror to which she referred— / something like the weather forecast” (Lines 25-26). The queen treats beauty as scientific, believing falsely that it provides objective truth. When she asks it who the fairest in the land is, it replies that she is, and “pride pumped in her like poison” (Line 33). The simile foreshadows the poisoned apple the queen will later give Snow White, and Sexton’s use of alliteration emphasizes the negative impact pride has on her.

When the mirror suddenly tells her one day that Snow White is the fairest, the queen now notices “brown spots on her hand / and four whiskers over her lip” (Lines 40-41). These markers of ugliness are tiny and insignificant, but their presence causes the queen to condemn Snow White “to be hacked to death” (Line 43) to eliminate her competition. She instructs a hunter to bring Snow White’s heart back so that the queen can “salt it and eat it” (Line 45). When the hunter lets Snow White go and brings a boar’s heart back to fool the queen, she “chewed it up like a cube steak” (Line 48). Sexton’s food imagery in these lines is visceral and shocking. The verb “chew” suggests a prolonged contact with the heart, not a quick gulping down. When the queen goes on to “lap her slim white fingers” (Line 50), she relishes the meal, demonstrating how her pride has poisoned her.

The narrative switches to Snow White, as she wanders for weeks in the forest. At each turn she encounters “twenty doorways / and at each stood a hungry wolf, / his tongue lolling out like a worm” (Lines 53-55). The wolves represent sexual threats to Snow White, with their phallic tongues and their desire to consume her in their hunger. The scene continues to unsettle: “The birds called out lewdly, / talking like pink parrots, / and the snakes hung down in loops, / each a noose for her sweet white neck” (Lines 56-59). Sexton doubles down on the threatening, phallic imagery comparing the snakes to an instrument of execution. Finally, Snow White encounters the dwarf house, complete with seven of everything, and she eats and lays down to sleep.

The speaker describes the dwarfs as “little hot dogs” (Line 69), her cheeky tone surfacing again, reminding the reader not to become too immersed in the traditional tale at face value. Unlike Snow White, who is passive throughout the tale, unable to fend for herself, the seven male dwarfs are “wise / and wattled like small czars” (71-72). Comparing the dwarfs to czars, Sexton emphasizes the different values between the genders: The dwarfs earn the ridiculous description of powerful rulers, while Snow White remains trapped by her fragility. All she is good for now is to “keep house” (Line 78) for the men. Sexton critiques the cultural value of a woman, as simply a domestic worker, not valued for her wisdom as the dwarfs are.

Snow White tells the dwarfs about her stepmother, and they instruct her to never open the door when they are away at work, warning that the queen will likely find her soon. The queen promptly learns from her mirror where Snow White is and travels to the dwarf house, where Snow White “opened the door / and bought a bit of lacing” (Lines 91-92) immediately, without a moment of thought or memory of the dwarfs’ warning, emphasizing the wisdom gap between them. The queen ties the lacing around Snow White “as tight as an Ace bandage” (Line 95), and again Sexton intrudes with a modern image, jarring the reader out of the traditional fairy tale for a moment to draw attention to her critique of Snow White’s character. Rather than presenting a strong, independent woman, the original Snow White story perpetuates the cultural expectations of women as dumb objects of beauty. Snow White has no agency; she “swooned” (Line 96) and “lay on the floor, a plucked daisy” (Line 97). Sexton purposely uses hyper feminine language to emphasize the damage these kinds of cultural expectations exact upon women.

It is only when the dwarfs return and undo the lace, a simple action, that Snow White “revived miraculously” (Line 99). They warn Snow White about her stepmother again, explicitly telling her “she will try once more” (Line 103), but Snow White continues to unthinkingly open the door. She buys a poison comb from the queen, and the dwarfs must miraculously revive her again. Finally, on the third visit the speaker calls Snow White a “dumb bunny” (Line 117) and describes her final fall, after eating a poisoned apple, from which the dwarfs cannot revive her: “she lay as still as a gold piece” (Line 128). Even in death, she is beautiful, and beauty has material value in this world. Sexton writes that the dwarfs could not stand to bury her underground, “so they made a glass coffin / and set it upon the seventh mountain / so that all who passed by / could peek upon her beauty” (Lines 131-134). Snow White becomes a literal object whose humanity is meaningless. Even in death, she cannot escape the patriarchal confines of her society.

An unnamed prince comes to see Snow White and “would not budge. / He stayed so long his hair turned green / and still he would not leave” (Lines 136-139). The dwarfs, who remain in control of Snow White’s body, reward the prince’s obstinance and one-sided pursuit of Snow White’s body, deciding to “give” (Line 140) Snow White to him, so he can “keep [her] in his far-off castle” (Line 142). The men pass her body around like a gift, an object that is present merely for their pleasure. Sexton highlights the ridiculousness of this situation in the next lines, as the prince’s men drop Snow White’s coffin, and “the chunk of apple flew out / of her throat and she woke up miraculously” (Lines 145-146). The black comedy of Snow White’s third resurrection at the hands of men reiterates her powerlessness.

Sexton follows this, writing, “And thus Snow White became the prince’s bride” (Line 147), again highlighting that Snow White has no agency or choice in any major life event, including her marriage. As foreshadowed, the queen is invited, “and when she arrived there were / red-hot iron shoes, / in the manner of red-hot roller skates, / clamped upon her feet” (Lines 149-152). The speaker describes in rich detail the suffering the queen will undergo: “First your toes will smoke / and then your heels will turn black / and you will fry upward like a frog” (Lines 153-155), and “she danced until she was dead, / a subterranean figure, / her tongue flicking in and out / like a gas jet” (Lines 157-160). The speaker emphasizes the punishment the queen undergoes in visceral detail, setting the reader up for the final lines in which Snow White proceeds with her life, holding court and “rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut / and sometimes referring to her mirror / as women do” (Lines 162-164). In this somewhat abrupt ending, the reader learns that Snow White is present in the same inescapable cycle that her stepmother was, likely doomed to the same fate of jealousy and death. Describing Snow White in this matter-of-fact way at the end, just after the horror of the queen’s death, underscores the inescapability of the cycle. Society has placed Snow White in the role of virginal beauty with no agency, and she has no skills to escape it.