Snow White

Today I saw Snow White with my mom. I notice that the movie is a lot about woman-to-woman competition: Snow White and her stepmom are competing for who is the most beautiful. Of course, the whole mother-daughter competition Electra thing would probably make Freud happy.

Then, we have Snow White living with 7 dwarfs, who she performs stereotypical household chores for, such as cleaning and cooking. She also has an oddly asexual relationship with them: There is no kissing etc., - how could there be, when it would recognize a woman's right to polyamory? At the same time, there is dancing and flirtation, and Doc blushes when Snow White kisses him, so there are definitely some erotic undertones.

Of course, Snow White needs these male dwarves to protect her, and then needs a male prince to rescue her - enough said. Snow White only gets into trouble when she disobeys the dwarves by talking to the old lady witch who entices her to eat the apple, while the dwarves are away - much as Eve only gets into trouble by talking to the snake while Adam is away, and eating from the fruit as a result of the snake's words. It is when women trespass the rules men make in order to protect them that they are harmed.

It is interesting that this theme, of women eating fruit - symbols of female fertility - and getting into trouble as a result, appears in Snow White and in the Bible, though since Snow White post-dates the Bible, those two facts might not be unrelated. What I find more fascinating is that in Greek Mythology, it is because Persephone ate from a tree of the underworld that she is bound to Hades for six months - thus exiled from earth just as Eve is exiled from the garden, only here the fruit binds her to her husband, whereas with Eve, the fruit caused a fight (Adam seems resentful when he tattle on her to God) - yet on the other hand, were they not bound together in exile, which is shown by their having a child immediately after? (Of course, Rashi puts Cain and Hevel's birth as pre-exile from the garden, because it says "And Adam had known his wife", implying it had happened in the remote past.)

Persephone's eating from the fruit of Hades results in winter, since the earth is barren when she is underground. Eve's eating from the fruit results in a world in which the earth is hard to work. In both stories, a woman's eating from a symbol of agriculture, results in agricultural hardships.

I don't know what to make of all this, but the coincidences hardly seem coincidental - which maybe means I should start seriously reading up on the whole Greek-Jewish intellectual history relationship.