The
presence of stepmothers in fairy tales is quite common, as the role of stepmother
is often a key, if not one of the main, characters. Unfortunately, in folk and fairy
tales, this character is often referred to, or portrayed, as a wicked
stepmother. Why are there so many stepmothers in these tales? And why are they
so wicked? What is the purpose of the wickedness of the stepmother?
The
Stepmother Trend
In
earlier versions of fairy tales, such as Snow
White and Hansel and Gretel, the
biological mother was cast as the antagonist against her own child/children.
The Brothers Grimm later revised the tales, replacing the evil birth mother
with an evil stepmother, in an effort to make the stories more suitable and
less horrific for children. Rejection by a non-biological parent, although
detrimental, may be less traumatic than rejection by one’s biological mother,
thus making the tales more acceptable among readers, both children and adults
alike. “As the audience of the tales changed, the need to shift the burden of
evil from a mother to a stepmother became ever more urgent” (Tatar, “The Hard Facts”
142).
Another
reason for the increased trend in fairy tale stepmothers stems from historical
fact. In centuries past, when many well-known fairy and folk tales were
written, women were much more likely to die during childbirth than in modern
times. “Complications of childbirth was one of the leading causes of death for
women in the past. In one European study, 1 out of every 14 women died from
childbirth, leaving a large population of motherless orphans. Other 19th
century studies in Europe showed equally high rate of motherless status
children” (qtd. in “The Wicked Stepmother”).
Faced
with the unexpected reality of having to raise children on their own, it was
not uncommon for men remarry, thus creating what modern society refers to as a
blended family. Records from the 1500’s indicate that “remarriage by widowers
was more frequent than remarriage by widows, making Stepmother households
relatively common” (“The Wicked Stepmother”).
Some
versions of certain fairy tales, such as Disney’s Cinderella and “Mirror Mirror”, a modern motion picture version of Snow White, imply that the widowed
father believes his daughter needs a mother figure to help raise his daughter,
thus introducing a substitute mother for his child or children, a stepmother.
“The gentleman was a kind and devoted father, and he gave Ella everything her
heart desired. But he felt she needed a mother. So he married again” (Disney, Cinderella).
“Marie-Louise
von Franz . . . viewed the stepmother as representing the loss or death of the
child’s mother, either in reality or symbolically as the child ages” (“The
Wicked Stepmother”).
Why
So Wicked?
Euripides
is quoted as having said, “Better a serpent than a stepmother!” (“The Wicked
Stepmother”)
An
article on Inter-disciplinary.Net
states that according to the 1913 Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, the
root word “step” in stepchild comes from Old English word “steop”, which means
“bereaved”, which is derived from Old High German root word “stief”, meaning
“pushed out”. Stief comes from Proto-Indo-European base “steup”, which means
“to strike or push”. Thus, a stepchild is one who is bereaved of a parent and
pushed away. This suggests that the stepparent rejects or pushes away a
grieving orphan (“The Wicked Stepmother”). Webster’s Third New International Dictionary
(1966) lists one definition of stepmother as “one that fails to give proper
care or attention” (Ashliman, Garry, and El-Shamy). Gerda-Elisabeth Wittmann
states, “Fairy tales, especially those with the mother/stepmother divide, are
excellent examples of illustrating the process of abjection, or casting away of
the child by the mother” (3).
It
is suggested that gender bias exists in fairy tales. “Women are traditionally
either passive, obedient, and good in fairy tales, or downright evil”
(Kristin). This assertion may seem a bit puzzling when many tales were, in
fact, originally told my women. One explanation could be socialization. “In a
strongly patriarchal society no one, not even in a fantasy tale, would be
comfortable laying too much blame on male characters. Further, by placing other
mother figures in bad light, the female storytellers could make themselves look
good by comparison” (Ashliman, Garry, and El-Shamy).
Feminist
fairy tale historians assert that women storytellers celebrated “active female
protagonists and feminine wisdom” but that the “tales have been largely
suppressed by the predominantly male compilers” (Williams 265).
Feminist
analysts suggest that these tales, written from the perspective of the
patriarchy, vilify the older, stronger, more dominant woman, while favoring the
young, passive, innocent female. “Women are constructed in less than flattering
ways: from passive objects of male desire to powerfully evil figures working
from selfish motivations” (Williams 265). In their article, “Snow White and Her
Wicked Stepmother”, feminists Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar suggest that it is
the patriarchy that have created this rivalry between “the angel-woman and the
monster-woman” (291) in which sweet, young, fair, innocent Snow White is pitted
against the also fair, yet older, fiercer, queen stepmother.
Gilbert
and Gubar assert that Snow White, for example, is the ideal woman, in the eyes
of the patriarchy. However, when the time period during which the story was
written is taken into consideration, as well as the time of the motion picture
release (1937), this is no surprise. “Strengthening the chaste maiden in her
passivity, they have made her into precisely the eternally beautiful, inanimate
objet d’art patriarchal aesthetics
want a girl to be” (294-5).
Feminist
theory refers to these tales, particularly those featuring the wicked
stepmother character, “as part of the way society trains women to be submissive
by showing agency as dangerous or as owned by males” (“The Wicked Stepmother”).
When referring to Snow White’s life with the seven dwarfs, Gilbert and Gubar
state that it provides her with lessons of service, selflessness, and
domesticity. “Snow White is a housekeeping angel” which demonstrates “the
story’s attitude toward ‘woman’s world and woman’s work’ . . . in which the
best of women is not only a dwarf but like a dwarf’s servant” (295).
Feminist
theory suggest that in fairy tales “passivity is virtuous and activity
villainous . . . with their vaunting of feminine passivity and rejection of
feminine activity as wicked or monstrous” (Williams, 264). Gilbert and Gubar assert
that in the eyes of the patriarchy, a character such as the queen stepmother, who
exerts herself as an independent, domineering woman, must be shut down or
eliminated. However, the presence of an independent, strong-willed female may
not necessarily be the sole cause for the queen to be shut down. The fact that she
was the epitome of evil and relentless in her plot to kill young, innocent Snow
White, a child, would seem to be the most obvious reason to bring her down and
eliminate her.
Splitting/Separation
Theories
Tatar
states that Bruno Bettelheim suggests that the death of the “good” biological
mother and the introduction of an evil stepmother represents the splitting of
the maternal function, and that the two characters actually represent two
sides, or personalities, of the same person. Bettelheim presents the following
argument:
The
oedipal child has a deep need to preserve a positive image of mother, one
uncontaminated by the natural feelings of anger and hostility that arise as
differences develop between mother and child. The wicked stepmother of fairy
tales “permits anger at this bad ‘stepmother’ without endangering the goodwill
of the true mother, who is viewed as a different person.” (Tatar,
“Introduction: Snow White”, 75)
He
further claims that “the Wicked Stepmother represents the parts of the child’s
real mother who sets limits or denies the child’s demands . . . the Wicked
Stepmother is the reality behind the child’s idealized mother.” In addition,
Sigmund Freud, suggests that “folk and fairy tales demonstrate a type of wish
fulfillment. Every child has a wish to punish or destroy the mean adults in his
or her life and these tales allow it to happen” (“The Wicked Stepmother”).
Wittmann
suggests that the splitting, or separation, of mother and stepmother, as in
Cinderella and Snow White, helps children “make sense of reality” (8) and gives
them “stability, until they have overcome their dichotomous world view of good
and evil” (7). “The biological mother has to be seen, as least partly, as evil,
to motivate the child to break away from her and become independent” (10).
Wittman
also states that “by splitting the mother image in two, the child is able to
remain loyal towards her while understanding that the abjection process is necessary
and healthy . . . the stories . . . have the power to assist them in strengthening
their own identity and self-image and to make sense of otherwise perplexing
developments in their world” (10).
However,
Marina Warner has stated that Bettelheim’s theory “has done irreparable damage
to the genre and to motherhood”. She further argues that such theory makes the
bad mother “an inevitable, even required ingredient in fantasy, and hatred of
her a legitimate, applauded stratagem of psychic survival . . . has contributed
to the continuing absence of good mothers from fairy tales in all kinds of
media . . . has even helped to ratify the expectation of strife as healthy and
the resulting hatred as therapeutic (qtd. in Williams 260). She further asserts
that the theory reinforces negative female stereotypes. “Had Betteleheim’s
theory not been so popular, perhaps the wicked stepmother would not be embraced
as the fairy-tale villain” (260).
Motives
of the Infamous Stepmothers
For
centuries, fairy and folk tales of multiple languages and cultures have incorporated
wicked stepmothers. Perhaps the most well-known stepmothers are those featured
in Snow White and Cinderella, both originated and
published in multiple versions, from a variety of cultures and regions, and
made even more famous by Walt Disney. What makes these stepmothers so wicked?
What are their motives? What drives these ornery characters to abuse, torture,
and even attempt to murder their stepchildren?
A
plethora of emotional and psychological issues are demonstrated among these
women, such as envy, greed, or selfishness. It is actually stated within
certain tales that the stepmother suffers from a lack of peace. It would
probably be safe to assert that most, if not all, of these fairy tale
stepmothers are psychopaths, as some plot the murder of their stepchildren. They
are masters, or rather, mistresses of manipulation. Most of them are very
domineering women who exert full control over their husbands and/or others in
their circle. In some tales, the dominance of the stepmother and mistreatment
of the stepchildren is accompanied and quite possibly fueled by the absence,
disappearance, or diminished role and presence of the father. Additionally,
their sinister plots and schemes against their stepchildren lead to their own
demise.
Snow
White’s stepmother, the wicked queen, was not only manipulative, but she was also
extremely narcissistic. “She was a beautiful lady, but proud and domineering,
and she could not bear the thought that anyone might be more beautiful than she
was” (Grimm and Grimm, Snow White
250).
After
learning that Snow White was “a thousand times more fair” (250) than she, “from
that moment on, she hated Snow White, and whenever she set eyes on her, her
heart turned cold like a stone. Envy and pride grew as fast as weeds in her heart.
By day or night, she never had a moment’s peace” (250-1). She was so afraid of
not being “the fairest in the land” that she allowed insecurity, envy, and fear
to consume and drive her to order and personally and repeatedly attempt to
murder her own stepdaughter, a mere innocent child. The need of an adult,
particularly a queen, to compete with a child further demonstrates her
insecurity and miniscule image of herself. Other theories, such as those of
Bettelheim, suggest that the wicked queen and Snow White are in an oedipal
struggle and competition for the attention, affection, and approval of the
King, Snow White’s father. Additionally, the fact that the wicked queen
stepmother had nothing better to do than to consistently inquire of her magic
mirror about her looks not only further proves the existence of insecurity, but
also indicates that she was lazy and unproductive.
In
addition, her cannibalistic tendencies, to eat the heart and liver of Snow
White after she believes the huntsman (hitman) has carried out her orders to
kill her, clearly place her in the category of a psychopath.
Cinderella’s
stepmother is another all-too-familiar character. “The story of a young woman
who functions as her stepmother’s servant, but who through magic, ends up with
the prince, is not only seen in Cinderella but also in at least 20 other
languages and countries” (“The Wicked Stepmother”). This stepmother forced
Cinderella, the daughter of a wealthy man, into not only her servitude, but
also that of the wicked stepsisters. Cinderella is treated as a second-class
citizen, forced to dress in rags, and live in substandard conditions. The
stepmother uses these mistreats Cinderella, allows her daughters to bully
Cinderella, and uses the aforementioned methods to destroy Cinderella’s
self-image, to make her forget that she comes from a wealthy upbringing. In addition,
the manipulative, selfish stepmother comes up with every excuse possible to
keep Cinderella from going to the ball, where her daughters compete to win the
attention of the prince. This sibling rivalry, fueled by none other than the
wicked stepmother, is made even clearer at the end of the tale, as the stepsisters
compete for the interest and role as the wife of the prince, by even resorting
to cutting off parts of their feet (at the orders of their mother) in order to
fit the coveted glass slipper.
Much
of this stepmother’s mistreatment of Cinderella is supported by theories of
Evolutionary Psychology stating that a stepparent “demonstrate[s] less paternal
investment in non-genetic children compared to her [own] genetic children” and
“in order to best ensure the survival of one’s offspring . . . one cannot waste
energy or resources on someone else’s offspring. The offspring of other people
are in competition with one’s own offspring for finite resources and therefore,
for survival. This is called ‘Discriminative Parental Solicitude’” (“The Wicked
Stepmother”). In addition, “epidemiological data from the mid-19th
century until the present demonstrates that stepchildren do have higher rates
of neglect and abuse . . . than do children raised by genetic mothers,
especially when raised with step-siblings” (“The Wicked Stepmother”).
Hansel
and Gretel’s stepmother, motivated by selfishness and fear of starvation,
convinces their father to join forces with her and lead the children into the
forest and abandon them, thus leaving the children to fend for themselves, where
they could possibly be killed and eaten by wild animals, or the witch, who
actually held them hostage with the intent to devour them. Not only is this
stepmother selfish and domineering, but she’s also verbally abusive to her
husband and stepchildren.
In
“Little Brother and Little Sister”, the main characters, Little Brother and
Little Sister run away from home because of the poor treatment by their abusive
stepmother.
Since
the day that our mother died, we haven’t had a moment of peace. Our stepmother
beats us every day, and when we try to talk to her, she just gives us a swift
kick and drives us off. All we get to eat are crusts of hard bread. Even the
dog under the table is better off than we are. At least he gets an occasional
tidbit. Our mother would be turning over in her grave if she knew what was
happening. It’s time for us to leave home and seek our fortune out in the
world. (Grimm and Grimm, “Little Brother and Little Sister” 45)
This
wicked stepmother, who was a witch, was also driven by envy after discovering
that her stepchildren, who had long escaped her, were living in “peace and
prosperity, envy and jealousy began to stir in her heart and gave her no peace.
She was constantly trying to figure out how to turn the tide on the two,
bringing misfortune on them” (Grimm and Grimm, “Little Brother and Little
Sister” 50-1). Like Cinderella’s stepmother, she fueled sibling rivalry between
her ugly daughter and her stepdaughter, whom she tried to murder and replace, by
deceit and manipulation, with her daughter, in the king’s home as queen and
mother of his child.
Driven
by greed and yet another case of Discriminative Parental Solicitude, the evil stepmother
in “The Juniper Tree” mistreats, abuses, and eventually murders her stepson.
Whenever
she looked at the little boy, she felt sick at heart. It seemed that no matter
what he did he was in the way, and the woman kept wondering how she could make
sure that her daughter eventually inherited everything. The devil got hold of
her so that she began to hate the little boy, and she slapped him . . . The poor
child lived in terror, and when he came home from school he had no peace at
all. (Grimm and Grimm, “The Juniper Tree” 217-8)
After
murdering her stepson, this stepmother even demonstrates a lack of compassion
for her own daughter, inflicting the blame of the murder on her daughter, who
becomes consumed with guilt and grief. Eventually, the lack of peace and
torment the stepmother caused her stepson and daughter ends up consuming her
and leading to her own demise.
The
stepmother in “The Three Little Men in the Woods”, driven by manipulation, lies,
deceit, and envy, exhibits similar cruel treatment of her stepdaughter. Like
other fairy tale stepmothers, demonstrates Discriminative Parental Solicitude, stirs
sibling rivalry between her daughter and stepdaughter, and plots the demise of
her stepdaughter by sending her in into the snow in thin clothing to accomplish
an impossible tasks. Similar to the stepmother in “Little Brother and Little
Sister”, after the stepdaughter becomes queen, she plots to kill her and
replace her as queen and mother of the king’s child, only to be defeated and
destroyed herself, along with her ugly daughter.
The
stepmother in “The Six Swans”, also a witch, allows curiosity, selfishness, and
jealousy (of the king’s time spent with his children) to drive her to cast a
spell on and rid herself of her stepchildren. This tale also tells of a lack of
peace from which she suffers because of her curiosity.
Wicked
Stepmothers - Fiction or Reality?
According
to Bettelheim, “the malice of the stepmother is . . . nothing more than a
projection of the heroine’s imagination. Fairy tales . . . do not stage
scenarios that correspond to psychological realities of family life . . . they
dramatize projections of trouble brewing in the young child’s mind” (Tatar,
“Introduction: Snow White”, 75). However, epidemiological data from 19th,
20th, and even 21st centuries suggest otherwise.
As
previously mentioned, 19th century data stated stepchildren suffered
greater neglect and abuse, particularly when raised with stepchildren. However,
the data also indicated higher incidences of early death than children raised
by their biological mothers, particularly when raised with step-siblings. Data
from 20th and 21st century studies also indicate the
following:
Stepmothers
. . . may withhold proper nutrition . . . spend less money on milk, fruit and
vegetables compared to non-stepmother homes with similar incomes, education,
etc. A similar study found that children who live with Stepmothers are less
likely to visit a doctor or dentist compared to children who do not live with a
stepmother . . . The same study found that children living with Stepmothers are
less likely to wear a seatbelt when riding in an automobile. (qtd. in “The
Wicked Stepmother”)
Research
shows that stepchildren under the age of five have more accidental injuries,
non-fatal and fatal, than biological children, and are much more likely to die
in accidental drownings (“The Wicked Stepmother”). “Rates of accidental
injuries in young children are associated with direct parental supervision,
which appears to be decreased in Stepmother homes” (qtd. in “The Wicked
Stepmother”).
Studies
on the subsequent years in the lives of stepchildren also indicate more hardships
for them than biological children. Stepchildren are less likely to attend
secondary education compared to biological offspring. They receive less
economic aid for education than biological children, because
step-mother/biological father couples save less money for education than
couples consisting of both biological parents (“The Wicked Stepmother”).
One
study asked both biological parents and stepparents to list their family
members. Fifteen percent of the stepchildren were left off the list of family
members, despite the fact that they lived in the same household as the
stepparents. As previously suggested, those stepchildren were considered
invisible, irrelevant, or were forgotten (“The Wicked Stepmother”).
The
rate of child abuse of stepchildren far exceeds the rate of abuse of biological
children. The risk of child abuse for children living with a stepparent is
almost seven times greater than that of children who live with both of their
biological parents. Research also indicates that stepparents who abuse their
stepchildren usually do not abuse their own children. Studies in which runaway
children were asked their reasons for leaving home indicate that a large
percentage of them indicated violence by stepmothers as a reason for running
away (“The Wicked Stepmother”). In addition, “stepchildren who had stepsiblings
experience worse abuse and neglect than those without stepsiblings” (qtd. in “The
Wicked Stepmother”).
“One
study of nearly 200 cases of homicide by either the genetic mother or the
Stepmother found homicide rate by Stepmothers was more than twice that of
genetic mothers . . . stepparents beat stepchildren to death at 100 times
higher rate than do genetic parents” (qtd. in “The Wicked Stepmother”). This could
be one reason why custody of very young children has often been granted to
biological mothers in divorces rather than to the biological fathers and
stepmothers, “an unconscious move to protect the most vulnerable children from
the most dangerous caregivers” (“The Wicked Stepmother”).
Overall,
epidemiological evidence indicates that stepchildren have more difficult family
lives than children who live with both biological parents (“The Wicked
Stepmother”).
Conclusion
While
no single reason can explain the abundant presence of wicked stepmothers in
fairy tales, the role of this infamous character seems to be one that will
remain in the forefront and very influential, as a key player in antagonistic
roles and continuing to capture the interest of readers and viewers.
Works Cited
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