Given the continuing unpopularity of these fairy tale comics, it was definitely imperative to write a third. Basically, I could go on for a while, because when you look at this kind of story through a modern, scrutinizing lens, ignoring the magic, they’re all subject to ridicule, and there are 250 of them in Jack Zipes’s Grimm translation alone.

According to Zipes, when the prince sees the beautiful dead girl he said, “Let me have the coffin, and I’ll pay you whatever you want.” The dwarves reply, “We won’t give it up for all the gold in the world,” and the prince answers, “Then give it to me as a gift.”

Of course, the dwarves are already complicity in the objectification of the dead girl, having interred her “in a transparent glass coffin so that she could be seen from all sides.” All the better to transform you into the object of the male gaze, my dear.

The illustration in the Zipes edition goes one better, omitting the glass entirely, showing the dwarves laying flowers on her midriff and kissing her hand, while forest animals weep.

Creepy. But it all works out for her in the end. I guess. Except for the part where the prince likes to play that game where she lies very, very still and doesn’t respond to anything. Happily ever after. The End.