Bear

Bear takes its inspiration from the fairy tale “Snow White and Rose Red.” This is a German tale made famous by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and it appears in their 1837 collection. The tale features two sisters who live together with their widowed mother. The sisters are best friends but opposites. Rose Red is outgoing and friendly, preferring to engage with other people outside their home, while her sister is quiet and reserved, confining herself to domestic life and the small world of their home. The sisters’ complexions and physical features reflect these differences. The conflict involves a bear who unexpectedly knocks on their door one winter night, wanting to come inside to warm himself. The three women sense that the bear intends no harm and allow him to enter. He returns, night after night, where he lies beside their fire. When spring arrives, he tells the women that he must leave to protect his treasure, which an evil dwarf seeks. The sisters sadly bid the bear goodbye.

Not long after this, they meet a dwarf whose beard is caught in a tree. They free him by cutting off his beard, which angers the dwarf. The sisters repeatedly encounter the dwarf; each time, he has gotten himself into a predicament and requires rescue. During their final encounter, the bear appears. He kills the dwarf, and his bear fur immediately falls away, revealing a prince. The prince explains that the dwarf placed a curse on him and that the dwarf’s death enabled the prince to return to his true identity. He goes on to marry Snow White, while his brother marries Rose Red. At the end of the tale, their mother plants two rose bushes—one red and one white—to symbolize her two daughters.

The Grimms’ tale derives from an 1816 story by Caroline Stahl titled “The Ungrateful Dwarf.” In this source story, however, no marriage occurs. Furthermore, in Stahl’s ending, the sisters find the treasure (previously stolen by the dwarf), which frees them from poverty (Eccles, Vanessa K. “Snow White and Rose Red.” Fabled Collective, 18 May 2022).

Phillips updates the Grimms’ version by setting her novel in the year 2020. She emphasizes the family’s economic hardships by making them a central source of conflict. She uses the trope of the sisters being opposites and builds on it, developing a complex set of sisters whose bond is strong but whose distinctly opposing views on the bear’s presence threaten to divide them.

The appeal of fairy tales is in part their timelessness: They often address universal human experiences, including love and relationships; family dynamics; and social constructs, such as class, wealth, and success. They typically include a mixture of both tragic and triumphant moments and often end with the protagonist making a significant change or learning a moral lesson.

Other contemporary novels that are rooted in classic fairy tales include Eowyn Ivey’s 2012 novel The Snow Child (inspired by a Russian folktale); Barbara Comyns’ 1985 novel The Juniper Tree (after the Grimm brothers’ story of the same name); and Helen Oyeyemi’s 2019 novel Gingerbread, which is based on “Hansel and Gretel,” also made famous by the Grimms. In 1984, poet Rika Lesser and illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky collaborated to recreate the latter story in their picture book Hansel and Gretel, and Zelinsky’s illustrations won him the Caldecott honor.