Approaches to teaching Snow Child: Wendy Low 1/11/14
Folklore motifs:
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The snow child (Frosty; innocent children helped by animals (Baba Yaga)
The Snow queen (Hans Christian Anderson / Frozen)
The childless but worthy couple (millions of cats, gingerbread man, etc.)
The wild child (Mowgli)
The orphan (major religious founders; pathetic and noble, face adult challenges w/o adult
guidance)
 Foxes (European vs. East Asian)
 The third son (often named Jack) (European vs. Chinese)
 The betrayal of a kindness or an innocent / of the wild or magical helper (The Ancient
Mariner) (The Pied Piper) (The fox in one version of The Snow Child)
 The animal or fay wife (fox seductress / self-sacrifising swan maiden doomed selkie little
mermaid)
Jungian/Dream significance of snow, ice, mountains, etc.
Significance of the names?:
Mabel: Beautiful, loving, lovable
George the Dragon slayer,
Esther the fearless beheader
Jack, the regular guy
Garrett, garret, garrott, watchtower, spear, defender
Faina: Alpen Glow (afterglow at sunset)
Character relationships:
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The Snow Child love hexagonal and Little Jack / Jay.
Read the poem “Home Burial” by Robert Frost. Write the birth and burial of Mabel and Jack’s child
from Jack’s POV. Include why he never told Mabel the gender or name.
How well do each of the duets of characters understand one another? What gets in their way? What
lends insight?
Write the scene where Mabel goes for Jack, from her POV. Write the scene where Esther goes for
George, from any POV.
Jack and Mabel could have remained childless forever. Many couples and individuals do. What would
be missing from their lives if that happened? In what ways would their lives be complete anyway?
Additional Themes:
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Wildness, purity, and their effect on the human soul.
Ice and cold as positives.
Community and/vs. self-reliance
Innocence / Self-reflection, self conciousness and art
American Puritanism, Conventialism meet each of our frontiers and are in what ways changed?
In what ways reinforced or relentless?
Wild animals (canines) versus tame, (her fox, her dog) and our attitudes toward them.
Other Issues:
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Where did you have to suspend disbelief? Did it wever interfere with the story?
The foreshadowing is fairly thick. Does it need to be?
If a reader takes Faina as symbolic of the pre-colonization arctic wilderness, what would the
story tell us?
If you eliminated the magical and/or folktale elements, would the story still be compelling?
Numerous modern novels feature children rescued from bad circumstances, and in some sense
redeem the people who “rescue” them: The Bean Trees, The Kite Runner, The Shipping News,
The Good Thief. Why do you think this theme has so much traction right now? With each case,
do you find the child believable or symbolic, or both?
Other literature to compare, gain insight:
A fascinating review of the snow woman theme:
http://thefairytalecupboard.blogspot.com/2009/12/queens-of-snow-and-ice.html
Frosty the Snowman song by Walter "Jack" Rollins and Steve Nelson
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson
Other Animal &/or fairy wives in various litterature
The Swan Maiden
(Folklore; swan lake) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_maiden
Tamamo, the Fox Maiden http://www.worldoftales.com/Asian_folktales/Japanese_folktale_57.html
Yuki-onna Japanese Snow Maiden From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuki-onna
Leda and the Swan
by Yeats
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How
The
And
But
can those terrified vague fingers push
feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
how can body, laid in that white rush,
feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad
By John Keats
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge (exerpt)
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The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moonshine."
"And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
`God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus! Why look'st thou so?' -"With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross."
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And foward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
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