Good Girls and Wicked Witches by Amy M. Davis

Author:Amy M. Davis [Davis, Amy M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Widow Tweed

The next woman to feature in a film from this period of the Disney studio’s history is the character of Widow Tweed, the old woman who adopts Tod the fox in The Fox and the Hound. The only human female in the film, she is portrayed as an old woman, living alone. She is shown to have a grandmotherly demeanour and comforting aspect. She makes her living as a farmer, and one of the ways she is seen to make money is to sell milk (something which is itself associated with mothers, nourishment, and comfort). Widow Tweed functions as a source of safety, protection, and love for Tod (indeed, she adopts Tod as a baby fox when his mother is shot by a hunter and he is left alone in the woods). Although the film’s predominant focus is on the animals (in particular on Tod and Copper, the fox and the hound, respectively, of the title) and not on their human counterparts, the humans in this story nonetheless play an important role in the film, and are on the screen for a large proportion of its running time.

In saying that Widow Tweed is a farmer associated with the fox (whom she loves and keeps as a pet) and Amos Slade is a hunter associated with the hound (whom he is training to be a hunting dog), one could easily spin out various arguments about the association of women with the natural order, pacifism, and maternalism, and the symbolic value of making the man an aggressive, non-nurturing hunter who advocates violence and the subverting of the natural order. The fact is that Widow Tweed’s basic function in the plot – her adoption of Tod and her keeping and loving him as a pet – could have been assigned to a male character as easily as a female. Likewise, Tod’s care could have as easily been taken up by Big Mama, the old owl who leads Widow Tweed to Tod after his mother is killed, and who remains a friend and confidante to Tod throughout the film. The fact that Widow Tweed is a woman, and that she was given a very definitely adversarial relationship with Amos (who spends much of the film trying to shoot Tod and who trains Copper to hate Tod – and all foxes – and to hunt them), exercises a distinctly symbolic function within the plot, whether the Disney story department, animation directors, or artists put it there intentionally or otherwise. Widow Tweed’s affiliation with the natural world is cemented when, in an ultimate act of love, she takes the then-adult Tod to an animal sanctuary and leaves him there (despite the obvious pain and sorrow it causes her to give him up) because she is afraid that, if he stays with her, Tod will be killed by Amos.

At the end of the film, Amos is eventually made to see that he has been wrong to try to kill Tod (this happens when he sees Tod

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