A World of Mirrors: Part II

The Mirror-Dominated World of Snow White

Read A World of Mirrors: Part I here.

In my last mirror blog, I began a discussion about mirrors and reflections by discussing their presence and significance in Veronica Roth’s Divergent. To recap, the main symbolism of mirrors in the dystopian series seems to be that too much focus on ourselves, either on our external appearance or even on our character, excludes others and profoundly affects our relationships with others as well as the way that we see ourselves. However, mirrors were primarily important in the Divergent world because they were a background symbol—that is, their general absence was deeply symbolic.

What happens, though, when a world and its characters are essentially ruled by the dictates of a mirror? I would like to explore this by traveling back in time several centuries to the world of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. If you need a quick refresher on the non-Disney version, you can read the Wikipedia version, the Grimmstories version, the Classiclit version, or my humorous version to get caught up.

So now that you have reviewed some of the non-Disneyfied elements of the original Snow White story, let’s look at a few of the key elements. To start, the three main figures of the story (in order of appearance) are Snow White, the evil Queen, and the mirror. I would like to reverse this order, though—reflect it, if you will—to analyze the symbolism and importance of each figure in turn. (The dwarfs are a different component, and I will discuss them briefly later.)

The mirror is one of those iconic images in our society—partly because of Shrek and partly because of Disney’s version, of course. The story is also iconic because of that memorable rhyme: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Of course, there are several variations on this rhyme—it seems as though every retelling has a different one (“Looking-glass upon the wall, who is fairest of us all?”/”Magic mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?”/”Looking-glass, looking-glass on the wall, who in this land is the fairest of all?”). The exact wording isn’t important, of course—it is the fundamental facts of the story that are important. For one thing, we must remember that the mirror is a stationary object. It doesn’t move out of the Queen’s control, and although it speaks truly, it is also the Queen’s personal possession, meaning that it may be used for good or ill according to the owner’s desires, and, as we all know, the Queen is a bad egg.

Furthermore, we should also ask for what purpose mirrors are typically used. Think back to Divergent, in which mirrors are representations of vanity. Maybe that is true, maybe not—but mirrors do reflect our external appearances. They don’t really do anything else in the real world. That thin pane of glass reflects only our own surfece—the face that we show to the outside world. It is not surprising, then, that the Queen used it for this but also used it to compare her surface beauty to others. However, remember that this is a magic mirror that has the power to search the entire country/land/world and state who the “fairest” is. What is really interesting about this, though, is that the term “fairest” really doesn’t tell us whether the mirror is looking for internal or external beauty. Certainly we assume that the “fairness” comes from external beauty from the events in the story (the Queen’s obsession with physical beauty, Snow White’s own unusual appearance, and the prince’s instantaneous reaction to the comatose preteen), but those things, like physical appearance itself, are primarily assumptions. It is possible that the mirror, being more than a mere two-dimensional reflecting surface (remember that it is magic, after all), is looking for more than a surface beauty.

It is also possible that the Queen was the most fair both in appearance and in character until Snow White turned seven years old. I cannot help but remember that Snow White does [theoretically] have a father, but he is so uninvolved in the events of the story so as to be nonexistent. We are not told whether he has died or whether he cares nothing for his daughter’s welfare, but the father is not mentioned after he marries the evil Queen. The Queen herself is no responsible stepparent, obviously, but the dwarfs are somewhat negligent as well (they do leave a child unattended when they know that the Queen wants to kill her). Even Snow White herself basically trashes the dwarfs’ house when she first comes, and she succumbs to temptation and vanity not once but three times. I suppose that leaves open the question of what the point of the story is. We only have the mirror’s word that Snow White is more beautiful than all others, and I am assuming for the time being that her beauty is not only physical but spiritual.

Back to the mirror. Now that we know that it is possible that the mirror reflects the internal character and worth of the land’s inhabitants as well as their external appearances, the question is what the Queen does. What does she do with the mirror? She keeps it to herself and uses it to stage an enormous, worldwide beauty pageant that only she knows about. That’s the wrong way to use power, if you haven’t guessed. Someone with a talent is misusing that talent if she hoards it and keeps it away from everyone else, looking down on the world because of her enormous secret talent. (For another story about this, refer to the parable of the three servants in Matthew 25:14-30).

Also, what does the Queen do with the information she gets from the mirror? She has several choices, including (a) accepting that she is in second place, (b) trying to better either her appearance or her character, (c) rejoicing in her stepdaughter’s beauty and helping her to become a better person, or (d) eliminating the opposition. Tragically, she chooses option (d)—and it is not just tragic for Snow White! Snow White actually has a happy ending, despite nearly dying three times. Remember—there are only three deaths in the entire story: the good Queen, the evil Queen, and the boar. We know why the deaths of the good and evil Queens are significant, but why the boar? The boar dies as a stand-in for Snow White, and the Queen actually does die after Snow White is brought back to life by the prince. So the only deaths are to a complete innocent and to the evil entity—but Snow White, for whom all this fuss is about, survives, giving the story as a whole a happy ending. 

How does Snow White escape? Well, after the boar incident (when the hunter ordered to kill the princess let her go and killed a boar instead, presenting its lungs and liver to the Queen to eat), Snow White runs off into the forest and finds the seven dwarfs. To put it another way, she finds refuge in community (the opposite of a mirror) while the Queen attempts to isolate herself entirely from others. Thus, we see more of the mirror symbolism, and we also see what happens when Snow White escapes the mirror’s dictates. She finds a community in which she can thrive and mature as long as she follows some basic rules, such as not letting any strangers into the house while the dwarfs are gone.

However, even though Snow White finds this safe haven, she makes a lot of mistakes. For starters, Disney got it wrong; in the original story, Snow White is more like Goldilocks than like the Disney sweetheart. She actually eats the dwarfs’ food and messes up their house. They come home to find their house trashed, their food eaten, their dishes used, and a strange girl sleeping in their beds. Instead of punishing her, though, they invite her to live under their protection as long as she helps to keep the house tidy from now on. Before you scream "SEXIST," though, remember that the dwarfs themselves are not exempt from working. They simply go off to work in the mines all day, every day. Such work is simply not appropriate for a preteen girl (who may or may not be around seven years old) on the run from her evil stepmother. They are actually inviting Snow White to join in the necessary tasks of maintaining a household, and are thus helping her to learn important skills. They do admonish her not to talk to strangers, though, or to allow any into the house, for they know that Snow White’s stepmother is still at large.

Naturally, though, the Queen is a lot more cunning than Snow White supposes. When she finds out from the magic mirror that Snow White is still the fairest in all the land, she comes up with a cunning plan. She dresses up as a peasant woman, fills a basket with beautiful bodices, and heads toward the dwarfs’ cottage to tempt Snow White. The little girl is easily convinced to let the Queen tie on a bodice, and the Queen takes advantage of this to lace the bodice up so tightly that the girl faints on the floor, unable to breathe. The dwarfs come home just in time, release the girl from her bindings, and help her recover. The Queen soon finds out that her plan failed and comes up with a new plan. She dresses as a comb-seller, brings a basket of poisoned combs to the cottage, Snow White lets her in, and the Queen offers to comb the gullible girl’s hair. As soon as the comb touches the girl’s head, she again collapses and the Queen makes her getaway. The dwarfs arrive home just in time to remove the comb from Snow White’s head before it kills her.

Before we move to the apple, what do these first two temptations have in common? First, they appeal to Snow White’s vanity. She is tempted to make herself look more beautiful, which is ironic because they are specifically designed to kill her so that the Queen is the most beautiful in the land. Second, both the bodice and the comb affect external changes in Snow White. The bodice constricts her breathing from the outside, and the comb’s poison is neutralized as soon as the comb is removed from Snow White’s head.

We now approach the iconic part of the story—the apple. When the Queen discovers that Snow White still lives, she turns white and red with rage and decides to poison an apple in the way that she was taught once upon a time. She disguises herself as a peasant woman, treks up to the dwarfs’ cottage again, and invites Snow White to partake of an apple with her—a luscious, gleaming, red apple that is sure to keep the roses in those youthful cheeks, never mind that nothing is threatening Snow White right now (except for the Queen herself, that is). To sweeten the deal, the Queen eats the apple along with Snow White—but when she cuts the apple in two, the Queen takes the harmless half and gives the poisoned half to Snow White. As soon as the girl bites into the fruit, it lodges into her throat and essentially kills her. This time, the Queen lingers long enough to be sure that the girl will not revive, and she goes home. We may presume that the mirror tells the Queen that she is now the fairest in the land.

The dwarfs, when they return to the cottage, soon discover the dead Snow White on the floor. They cannot find any reason for her death, so they sadly believe that she is dead and create a coffin for her. It is made out of glass, though, for even in death she is so lovely and life-like that they do not wish to bury her belowground.

Here we have a few more crucial parts of the story. First of all, we can clearly see the contrast between the apple and the two temptations that came before. Whereas the bodice and comb appealed to the vanity and destroyed from the outside, the apple is a food, which means that it appeals to our wish to cling to life. The apple also destroys from within, showing how our own sinful nature kills us in a way that external temptations cannot.

Furthermore, the peculiar glass coffin is a type of reversal of the Queen’s magic mirror. Remember that the magic mirror is still a two-dimensional pane of glass which reflects the viewer’s image. In contrast, Snow White’s glass coffin does the opposite. It is a three-dimensional box that allows others to look at her (thus showing the consequences of the Queen’s evil and Snow White’s weakness)—and, were she awake, she could see those outside of the coffin as well. The glass coffin suggests people—a community, as it were.

Now, as the dwarfs mourn the death of Snow White, whose pure beauty is sullied by the sting of death, a prince arrives on the scene. He sees clearly into the glass coffin, perceiving the beauty of the dead girl inside, and asks the dwarfs if he may take the coffin as his own. As the dwarfs transfer their burden of death to the prince, the coffin is jostled and the apple is dislodged from Snow White’s throat, giving her once more the  breath of life and a full recovery from her deathlike state. The prince joyfully asks Snow White to marry him, and she assents at once.

We like to think that is the end of the tale—but there is still one more part: the vanquishing of the Queen. She is still after Snow White, now that she is no longer the fairest and is about to be replaced as Queen by the girl she tried to kill. The prince, then, invites her to the wedding but gives her a pair of red-hot iron shoes in which she must dance to her death—a truly horrible demise, but fitting, perhaps, for as by vanity the Queen lived, now to her death she must go by dancing in new shoes. I always thought it a rather odd death, though, for I would imagine that the Queen would stop dancing and kick off the shoes if at all possible. Because of this, I suspect that her death is at least partially self-inflicted. It is the reversal of her attacks against Snow White in that her death comes by external means (the shoes) but also comes by internal means (dancing in the face of death).

The story of Snow White, then, has a lot of food for thought in it. The themes and characters are rich and full of symbolism, and we are also prompted to think further on the function of the mirror in the story and in our own lives.