The Queen’s Looking Glass by Gilbert Guber PDF

Preview

Summary

Hierbei handelt es sich um eine Zusammenfassung und Interpretation des Textest "the Queen’s Looking Glass" von Gilbert und Gubar. ...

Description

CMA – Once Upon a Time

Kristina Luzija

“the Queen’s Looking Glass” In this text, Gilbert and Gubar analyse and tell us their own version of “Snow White”. According to them, the whole story is all about Snow White’s relationship with her wicked stepmother because this is where all the significant action arises from;

So, they start off by describing the Queen (Snow White’s actual birth mother), who is looking through a window and wishing for a baby. She pricks her finger and bleeds  symbolising the loss of her virginity and getting pregnant. “All the motifs introduced in this prefatory first paragraph—sewing, snow, blood, enclosure—are associated with key themes in female lives.” However, the actual story begins, when the Queen, who has become a mother, transforms into a witch, into the wicked “step” mother. Instead of having two different people, Gilbert and Gubar separate the Queen into different stages of how the husband's “patriarchal voice of judgement” initiates a woman's “self-evaluation”. So, then we meet the “new” Queen, who is “framed in a magic looking glass” just like the “old” Queen (or her earlier self), who had been framed in a window. So, they point out that the first Queen was looking outwards, throughout a window and the second Queen is looking inwards, “obsessively studying self-images as if seeking a visible self”. So, the first Queen was innocent and beautiful and the new one is mean and arrogant, however, they are also constantly implying that the two Queens are the same person.

Then later in the text, they mention that the looking glass is used as a “weapon against a woman’s self-image”. As they mainly focus on Snow White and her stepmother, they point out that Snow White is the younger self of the Queen which leads to conflict between “self and self or rather woman and woman”. One of them is “fair, young, pale, the other is just as fair, but older, fiercer; the one a daughter, the other a mother”.

The stepmother is linked to the mirror and Snow White to her glass coffin. As already mentioned, they state that the mirror implies that the stepmother is “driven inward, obsessively studying self-images as if seeking a viable self”. However, in connection to that, they also comment on the King’s absence, which is basically the main point of the text.

CMA – Once Upon a Time

Kristina Luzija

He never appears in the story, however, according to Gilbert and Gubar, he is there, he exists through the looking glass, it is his voice, the voice “of judgement that rules the Queen’s – and every woman’s self-evaluation”. So, this means that the mirror or looking glass is the voice of approval and confirmation. Meaning that ultimately, a man is the one who gets to decide who is more beautiful, so he is basically the reason why mother and daughter turned against each other, making the Queen angry and jealous. Additionally, they state that the King does not even need to be present because “the woman has internalised the King’s rules: his voice now resides in her own mirror, the mirror of her mind”. They also note that “female bonding is extraordinarily difficult in patriarchy: woman turn against each other because the voice in the looking glass sets them against each other”. Well, if Snow White is the daughter of the old and the new (wicked) queen, why does the second Queen hate her so much? Is she threatened by Snow White? Gilbert and Gubar explain that this idea of the looking glass exposes the presence of patriarchy throughout this and many other fairy tales. In this particular story, a conflict in which the patriarchal powers lead them to destroy themselves in an effort to become what the male-driven society wants them to be.

(Show clip)

The mirror or looking glass does not only serve as justification of beauty but it also oppresses woman’s independence which makes them more depended. In Grimm’s version of “Snow White”, when the queen learns that “Snow White is the fairest of them all” she gets so angry and turns to another man, namely the huntsman, and trusts him to kill Snow White. Even when the huntsman tells her that he killed Snow White, she still needs the mirror’s opinion. She is so depended on the mirror that she loses control over herself and her own selfimage. She kind of needs the mirror to tell her that she is the most beautiful creature out there because she wants to be accepted, which shows us her lack of independence.

The Queen’s obsession with the mirror symbolises what society has made of her, namely a person who is over obsessing on how she looks, she will never reach the level of perfection that she is looking for. There is always going to be someone who is “better” as in more beautiful and younger and so on.

CMA – Once Upon a Time

Kristina Luzija

In the end, they mention that Snow White represents the ideal woman which then becomes a motionless corpse in a glass coffin. Even the prince refers to Snow White (and the coffin) as “it”, not “her” which is a bit weird but it does tell us that exactly that is a man’s ideal woman. In the text it says, “she is an object, to be displayed and desired”.  Gilbert and Gubar state that Snow White has been appreciated only for her beauty, so they think that one day, there is going to be someone who will be more beautiful than her, she is destined to become the new wicked Queen, who will do anything to be the most beautiful and try to live up to man’s expectation but who will not succeed - it is like a never-ending circle....