“The huntsman is said to spare Snow White because she is so beautiful, which implies an acceptance of her potential status as a woman and bringer of new life. The huntsman, therefore, like the prince at the end of the story, is an agent of creative death and transformation as distinguished from the stepmother’s consumptive desire for the finality of death. The huntsman as the first significant male character also forecasts the idea that the medium of transformation and wholeness will ultimately involve the union of opposites, male and female. From a comparative perspective, the color symbolism in some primitive situations involves the idea of a union of the red (menstrual blood) and white (semen) through the agency of the black (the ritual ‘death’ involved in the initiation and marriage union).”
–N. J. Girardot, “Initiation and Meaning in the Tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”