Abstract:

As white as snow, as red as blood:The aesthetic mise-en-scène of the beautiful corpse in various versions of the Grimm fairy tale Snow White (KHM 53)The aesthetic connection between female beauty and the melancholy of death, which Edgar Allan Poe declared central to perfect poetic expression in 1846, finds its apotheosis in the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale Snow White. In the aesthetic miseen-scène of death, the beautiful female corpse in the glass coffin becomes an object of observation for the male gaze and is sublimated into an idealized, venerable image. By considering theories of fetishism, it becomes clear that the beautiful corpse -- an exhibited object removed from any means of direct contact -- is stylized as an aesthetic fetish. Since Snow White’s corpse is displayed publicly and is visible to all, the gaze, transformed into an aesthetic gesture, ultimately provides the sole possible means of reaching the otherwise distant object of desire. The cult of mourning even transforms into a ceremony of religious devotion in individual versions of the Grimm fairy tale, as well as in heightened form in the 1937 Walt Disney film. If Snow White’s beauty is so incomparable it represents an extreme in life, it follows that her corpse, which cannot decay and is not beholden to the laws of nature, also follows this narrative logic: in death, Snow White’s preserved corpse symbolizes exactly that claim to absoluteness and to eternity which the Queen demands for herself and seeks to claim through the poisoned apple.

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