Snow White.. the courage of the young woman, whose upbringing was so cruelly restricted, to strike out on her own and alone when she found out…
The dwarves took her in because—never having seen an upper-class woman before—they thought she was one of them. The rickets, caused by extreme vitamin D deficiency, she had in common with the dwarves, whose limbs were stunted and bowed because as young children they had been forced to work all day every day in the mines. The cruel restrictions that confined Snow to curtained chambers were imposed by her father the king who was competitive with the other nobility for who had the palest daughter.
About the Handsome Prince, some of it is true, The wake-from-sleep-kiss thing was, of course, an old custom, a formality that had been promoted in a previous century by a pompous advisor to the king, who liked to think that a girl was not really awake until she had a lover. But, Snow really did marry H.P. and they really did love each other.
The story has a sad ending. Just before her 16th birthday, the poor girl died in her first childbirth, her pelvis abnormally contracted by the rickets.
From Molten Wood and Feral Ideas chasens.ca/book