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In their first edition, the Brothers Grimm published the version they had first collected, in which the villain of the piece is Snow White's jealous mother. In a version sent to another folklorist prior to the first edition, additionally, she does not order a servant to take her to the woods, but takes her there herself to gather flowers and abandons her; in the first edition, this task was transferred to a servant.[4] It is believed that the change to a stepmother in later editions was to tone down the story for children.[5]

Snow White's triple seeming-death and resurrection, beyond an amusement or wish-fulfilling temporary escape, fulfills the initiatory process of life, as Mircea Eliade described it: "What is called 'initiation' coexists with the human condition, reaffirms the ultimate religious significance of life and the real possibility of a 'happy ending.'"[6]

Maria Tatar interprets the tale[7] as a polarization of women into the evil and active versus the innocent, passive and domestic.