The presence, or absence, of the mirror, as well as its gender, in the Snow White tales makes an important distinction in the stepmother's paranoid narcissism. The Grimms' "Snow White," the 1812 version anyway, does not kill off Snow White birth mother which makes her narcissism and worry that her daughter will replace her within the household and her desire to kill her daughter much scarier. She utilizes a genderless magic mirror, which "she knew would always tell the truth" and informs her that even at the age of 7, Snow White has surpassed her in beauty. The mirror's very real and implants the jealousy in the queen's mind. Perhaps the Grimms didn't endow this magical entity with any sort of gender clues because its observations have such dire consequences: the ideal female has already been violated by making Snow White's own mother the one who desires her death and an upright male voice would never order such a thing.
Walt Disney endows his Wicked Stepmother's magic mirror with a male, Jewish voice, thus provoking both wise deception and a promise behind its observations. It's a mask that covers nothing, yet the Queen trusts it so. The fact that Disney made the mirror a male voice gives its observations more weight since more than likely, it is for men that a woman's beauty matters. It's also interesting to point out that a man would never feel threatened, especially by a woman, by telling a woman that she isn't the most beautiful thing in the world. A woman, on the other hand, knows better: they know how dangerous it is to their welfare to fight against anyone in power; they're supposed to be meek, docile creatures.
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Faith, to expand on both your own and my own responses, we should also consider what it means that, in the 1916 version, the mirror cannot be broken or the queen loses all her beauty. In such a way, the genderless mirror is not just a teller of truths, but also a holder of precious power. The mirror is, then, a sort of fountain of youth. The mirror reflects the queen's unfulfilled desires - it can reflect, maintain, and create/destroy beauty. The mirror can do to her what she strives to do to Snow White - destroy her (beauty).
ReplyDeleteNot only is the Grimms' version of Snow White frightening in its decision not to kill off the biological mother and thus the subsequent implication that this sort of tragic hatred between true and daughter is a plausible occurrence, but it is a frame that poses another concern to the reader: the foreshadowing of Snow White's future role. If her biological mother was once the "fairest one of all" and likely a pleasant woman and wife (according to typical fairy tale accordance of inner-outer beauty), some transformation must have occurred. In her older age, post-marriage, and post-child-rearing, Snow White's mother has changed from "angelic" woman to "monstrous" woman, to use Gilbert and Guber's terms. What does this mean for Snow White, then? Now she is young, healthy and beautiful-- but also unrivaled in these feminine "virtues." Perhaps her mother's experience foreshadows her own downfall. After all, we see evidence of malevolent intentions just beginning at the very end of the tale, as she sentences her mother to a horrid, painful death. Who is to say that if Snow White here ignores the "should be" unconditional love between mother and child, she will not proceed to treat her own progeny likewise?
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