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Edward's ancestors: the greatest pre-Twilight vampires [part 3]
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And she looks so innocent.
I’ve already mentioned seeing the slogan “Forget princess; I want to be a vampire” emblazoned on Twilight paraphernalia. And you know, I’d have to agree. I would rather be a vampire than a princess. But what if you could be a princess and a vampire? What if you could be a Disney princess and a vampire? Is such a thing possible, you ask? It is in the world of my next featured pre-Twilight vampire:
Snow White in Neil Gaiman’s short story “Snow, Glass, Apples” Neil Gaiman, god of the literary speculative fiction world, is probably best known for the Sandman graphic novels and the 2002 children’s book Coraline, which recently became a film and a musical. But the prolific Gaiman has also written several pieces of short vampire fiction: “Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot,” “Vampire Sestina,” and, the most chilling and captivating, “Snow, Glass, Apples.”
Basically, the premise of this story is that Snow White is a vampire.
When you think about it, it makes sense. She is very pale, with dark hair and crimson lips. Even Disney doesn’t dispute that. "Snow, Glass, Apples" is told from the point of view of the supposedly evil stepmother. Through her eyes, the story is completely different. She marries Snow White’s father when she is a teenage girl. Not long after she moves into the palace, Snow White attacks her and drinks blood from her hand. Snow White eventually kills her father by sucking his blood.
In the 1937 Disney movie, the stepmother has Snow White sent into the woods to be killed. A sympathetic huntsman brings back a pig’s heart instead of Snow White’s to make the stepmother believe that she’s dead. In this version, the stepmother has Snow White sent into the forest to be killed to prevent her from continuing to vampirize her closest friends and relatives. The huntsmen bring the stepmother her real heart, which continues to beat. Losing her heart doesn't slow Snow White down in the slightest; as the years go on, the stepmother receives reports of the “forest folk” (aka the dwarfs) disappearing. So she sets out into the forest to give Snow White the infamous apple, which becomes lodged in her throat and sends her to her coffin. But Snow White gets the last laugh. When the fairytale prince comes along, he engages in an activity that results in the apple becoming dislodged from her throat (what activity? Let’s just say that the prince has some necrophilia issues). In the end, Snow White and her prince conduct a smear campaign against the stepmother (presumably, in Gaiman’s universe, that’s how we ended up with the version of the Snow White fairytale that we know today) and the stepmother is put to death.
"Snow, Glass, Apples" was originally published in 1994. Four years later, it appeared in Gaiman’s short story collection Smoke and Mirrors. Don’t expect vampirism to be hot and appealing when you read this story. Snow White is a vampire from the days of folklore, before the nineteenth century turned vamps into sophisticated aristocrats. Here, vampires are just grotesque and creepy, not grotesque, creepy, and kind of attractive. Still, this deconstructionist fairytale, which draws many of its details from the Brothers Grimm version of the story, is quite clever and fun to read. But beware—Gaiman says in his introduction, “I like to think of this story as a virus. Once you’ve read it, you may never be able to read the original story in the same way again.” I know I’ll never again watch pale and pretty animated Snow White prance across the silver screen without thinking, “She’s totally a vampire.”
Fun fact: Tori Amos, the singer-songwriter, is good friends with Neil Gaiman. In her song "Carbon," off the 2002 album "Scarlet's Walk," she sings, "Get me Neil on the line/No, I can't hold/Have him read 'Snow, Glass, Apples'/Where nothing is what it seems."
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