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book: The Fairest of Them All
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The Fairest of Them All

Snow White and 21 Tales of Mothers and Daughters
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2020

About this book

“With her trademark brio and deep-tissue understanding, Maria Tatar opens the glass casket on this undying story, which retains its power to charm twenty-one times, and counting.”
—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

The story of the rivalry between a beautiful, innocent girl and her cruel and jealous mother has been endlessly repeated and refashioned all over the world. The Brothers Grimm gave this story the name by which we know it best, and in 1937 Walt Disney sweetened their somber version to make the first feature-length, animated fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Since then, the Disney film has become our cultural touchstone—the innocent heroine, her evil stepmother, the envy that divides them, and a romantic rescue from domestic drudgery and maternal persecution. But each culture has its own way of telling this story of jealousy and competition. An acclaimed folklorist, Maria Tatar brings to life a global melodrama of mother-daughter rivalries that play out in unforgettable variations across countries and cultures.

“Fascinating…A strange, beguiling history of stories about beauty, jealousy, and maternal persecution.”
—Wall Street Journal

“Is the story of Snow White the cruelest, the deepest, the strangest, the most mythopoeic of them all?…Tatar trains a keen eye on the appeal of the bitter conflict between women at the heart of the tale…a feast of rich thoughts…An exciting and authoritative anthology from the wisest good fairy in the world of the fairy tale.”
—Marina Warner

“The inimitable Maria Tatar offers us a maze of mothers and daughters and within that glorious tangle an archetype with far more meaning than we imagine when we say ‘Snow White.’”
—Honor Moore

“Shocking yet familiar, these stories…retain the secret whisper of storytelling. This is a properly magical, erudite book.”
—Literary Review

Reviews

Tilt the magic mirror this way, that, and you’ll find in The Fairest of Them All nearly two dozen reflections, each dazzling, of the ur-fairy tale known as Snow White. With her trademark brio and deep-tissue understanding, Maria Tatar opens the glass casket on this undying story, which retains its power to charm twenty-one times, and counting.
-- Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Mirror Mirror

A fascinating volume…Far from demystifying fairy tales, Tatar’s analysis has the effect of deepening an appreciation for their magic…The Fairest of Them All delivers a trove of forgotten fairy tales to readers and returns the Snow White of Disney and the Brothers Grimm to her international context—as but one version in a strange, beguiling history of stories about beauty, jealousy, and maternal persecution.
-- Wall Street Journal

Is the story of Snow White the cruelest, the deepest, the strangest, the most mythopoeic of them all? The answer must be yes. Maria Tatar trains a keen eye on the appeal of the bitter conflict between women at the heart of the tale, unearths retellings from far and wide, and spreads a feast of rich thoughts on the tale’s remarkable aesthetic migrations into literature and film. The Fairest of Them All is an exciting and authoritative anthology from the wisest good fairy in the world of the fairy tale.
-- Marina Warner, author of Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale and Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights

The Snow White tales that Tatar presents here are not as slick as the confections of the Grimms and Disney… What Tatar urges in her deft and thoughtful introduction is that we read each variation, whether it is from West Africa, Afghanistan or China, with equal attention… This provides a way of thinking about how fairy tales reveal more than the essentially early 20th-century upper bourgeois insights of Freudian psychoanalysts. There are plenty of examples of mother–daughter rivalries in these tales to be sure, but there is so much more of the material and temporal world—food, hunger, disease, and war—too.
-- Kathryn Hughes The Guardian

[A] fascinating collection of tales…Shocking yet familiar, these stories of regeneration and transformation even when written down retain the secret whisper of storytelling. This is a properly magical, erudite book that follows Snow White’s trail into the darker forests of the human psyche in which she originated.
-- Lucy Lethbridge Literary Review

Going to the root of a story is a journey to the very core of the soul. Reading across the world, the inimitable Maria Tatar offers us a maze of mothers and daughters and within that glorious tangle an archetype with far more meaning than we imagine when we say ‘Snow White.’
-- Honor Moore, author of Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    CONTENTS

    vii
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    PREFACE

    ix
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    Introduction

    1
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    LITTLE SNOW WHITE

    63
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    THE YOUNG SLAVE

    78
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    THE DEATH OF THE SEVEN DWARFS

    83
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    MAROULA AND THE MOTHER OF EROS

    85
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    THE ENCHANTED STOCKINGS

    89
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    PRINCESS AUBERGINE

    94
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    SNOW-WHITE- FIRE- RED

    102
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    THE MAGIC SLIPPERS

    108
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    THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

    114
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    SILVER-TREE AND GOLD-TREE

    129
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    KING PEACOCK

    134
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    THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER

    138
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    THE MIRROR OF MATSUYAMA

    148
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    THE GIRL AND THE DOG

    151
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    THE UNNATURAL MOTHER AND THE GIRL WITH A STAR ON HER FOREHEAD

    154
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    THE HUNTER AND HIS SISTER

    165
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    THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER

    170
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    NOURIE HADIG

    179
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    BLANCA ROSA AND THE FORTY THIEVES

    188
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    THE WONDER CHILD

    194
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    THE JEALOUS MOTHER

    200
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    Bibliography

    213
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    Credits

    221
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
May 18, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9780674245822
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674245822
eBook ISBN: 9780674245822
Keywords for this book
storytelling; witchcraft; folklore; global narratives; psychology; childrens literature; disney; maternal; magic; death; love; anthology
Downloaded on 22.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.4159/9780674245822/html
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