Fairest

In Fairest, Gail Carson Levine reimagines “Snow White,” a fairy tale published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm gathered hundreds of European folk tales that had been passed on for generations through oral tradition. These stories were published in German as Kinder-und Hausmärchen, which means Children’s and Household Tales, and later translated into English as Grimm’s Fairy Tales. 

Although the original title of the brothers’ compilation reveals that the stories weren’t intended exclusively for children, Levine wrote Fairest for a middle grade audience. One of the key changes that Levine makes to the story is its treatment of beauty. In the original fairy tale, the princess’s snow-white skin, blood-red lips, and ebony hair are the answer to her mother’s wish to have a daughter with those vivid and lovely features. However, Levine purposefully subverts the fairytale trope of conventionally beautiful heroines—Aza’s features share the same striking combination of white, red, and black as Snow White, but these bold hues are considered hideous in her culture. This change allows the author to examine The Impact of Beauty Standards on Self-Worth. Although Aza temporarily attains conventional beauty with the use of a magic potion, she ultimately accepts her natural appearance. Levine’s modernization uses elements from the classic tale to critique the pursuit of beauty while reminding readers of the subjective nature of beauty standards.

Levine also borrows from the fairy tale’s familiar cast but shifts their relationships to develop more round and dynamic characters. In the original story, Snow White is a princess, and the wicked queen is her stepmother. In Levine’s retelling, both Aza and Ivi are commoners who become royalty through marriage, and Ivi eventually becomes Aza’s stepmother-in-law. As in the fairy tale, the queen’s fixation with being the fairest in all the land leads her to conspire against the protagonist, but the Grimms’ queen is cruel and manipulative, whereas Ivi is erratic rather than evil. 

The character Skulni represents another distinctive reinterpretation of the traditional fairy tale’s elements. The Grimms’ magic mirror always speaks the truth and is simply a tool the queen uses, but Skulni is a malicious entity who manipulates and deceives the queen to achieve his own ends. The character of the prince also undergoes significant changes; the original unnamed prince first sees Snow White when she’s in a deathlike state and proposes to her in their first and only conversation because his narrative function is to facilitate the fairy tale’s happy ending. On the other hand, Ijori is a round character with his own backstory, struggles, and strengths, and Levine takes care to show the young couple falling in love gradually.

Levine’s supporting characters, however, help to preserve the overall structure of the original fairy tale. For example, Uju the guard takes the place of the huntsman. Both are instructed to kill the main character by the queen but spare her because of her beauty. Gnomes fill in for the dwarfs by caring for the main character during her exile from the castle and by becoming like a family to her. The dwarfs don’t possess names or distinct personalities in the original, but Levine provides the wise and kindly Master zhamM with significant character development. In addition, she gives gnomes their own culture, language, and prophetic abilities that build up the story’s foreshadowing and suspense.

Levine also updates the story’s themes for a modern audience. Both texts offer moral lessons and uphold kindness as a great virtue through the heroines’ compassionate nature, and Aza and Snow White are both rewarded for their goodness with royal marriages. In addition, Ivi’s and the wicked queen’s character arcs warn of the dangers of envy and obsession. However, Levine uses Ivi’s character arc to celebrate mercy and redemption. At the end of the original fairy tale, the queen is forced to wear heated iron shoes and dance herself to death at Snow White’s wedding, a typically gruesome justice meted out to antagonists in classic fairy tales. In contrast, Levine’s ending is more child-friendly by contemporary standards, and Ivi proves that she is not irredeemable by aiding the king’s recovery and apologizing to the people of Ayortha before leaving the castle. Levine preserves the core of the original narrative while offering rounded characters and moral lessons that appeal to modern expectations for children’s literature.