Chapter - 5

Question- Attempt a critical Analysis of "The Queen's Looking Glass" Written by Gilbert and Gubar.

Or
Critically examine "The Queen's Looking Glass" written by Gilbert and Gubar.
Or
Write a note on the Analysis of "The Queen's Looking Glass" written by Gilbert and Gubar.

Answer -

In this story, 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.

The Queen's Looking Glass by Gilbert and Gubar is clearly a touchstone for feminist theory and describes how literature can work to assign roles to women that might not be accurate. Its main purpose is to tell a story; Gilbert and Gubar also clearly tell a story with their interpretation of it. The story gives concrete examples of other stories and words from psychoanalysts, yet much of its evidence just isn't there. There is just as much a lack of scholarly sources and citations.

The story is a clear analysis of the Grimm Brothers' classic fairytale, Snow White. The authors make a well-defined thesis statement: "the Grimm tale of 'Little Snow White' dramatizes the essential but equivocal relationship between the angel-woman and the monster-woman". They go on to grab parts of the fairytale and analyze them. This includes the transition of the Queen from looking outward to looking inward, and how the patriarchal voice of the King drives this. While the King is clearly not that involved physically in the original fairytale, they talk about how he is involved through his presence in the Queen's mind. They also explore the cyclical and dangerous relationship between Snow White and the Queen as evidenced in their thesis statement. This goes much more in depth into how the two women are categorized submissive and dominant.

Ironically enough, the story is a critique of the old fairytale. Therefore, it must have evidence to support why they disagree with what theyare critiquing. In The Queen's Looking Glass, Gilbert and Gubar they start of the story with a strong, supportive sentence; "As the legend of Lilith shows, and as psychoanalysts from Freud and Jung onward have observed, myths and fairytales often both state and enforce culture's sentences with greater accuracy than more sophisticated literary texts". But that's where the evidence seems to end. For the rest of the story, they periodically mention other literary fictional texts, but only to make interpretation easier to understand. The logic behind Gilbert and Gubar's thesis is strong, but it could be a lot stronger if they used non-biased pieces and incorporated more evidence that isn't up for interpretation or juxtaposition of the story. For example, the authors compare Snow White and the story "The Juniper Tree', which is about a boy in the same situation as Snow White. Except, he's a boy so the way he acts in the situation is completely different from how Snow White does.

Then they move ahead 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. 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. 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.

The piece is taken from the book The Madwoman in the Attic. Research shows just how important this book is to feminist theory, and this piece about Snow White only reinforces that. The significance of it is tremendous. It helps to explain ideas, like how "female bonding is extraordinarily difficult in patriarchy" and the recurrent struggle between the women that men want us to be, and the women that men don't want us to be. Gilbert and Gubar write, "But the girl child must learn the arts of silence either as herself a silent image invented and defined by the magic looking glass of the male-authored text, or as a silent dancer of her own woes, a dancer who enacts rather than articulates". The way they describe certain ideas can be dense and take time to dissect.

Overall, the piece is extraordinarily written. The substance, significance, and tone behind it are life-altering. It creates a path for new thought in feminist theory, which is very important because it's not as widely taught as it should be. Yet it lacks in scholarly evidence, which is very important when trying to make a credible point, especially in such a criticized topic. The two authors have very distinguished backgrounds which make their opinion very trustworthy. The book the piece is pulled from is praised as a foundational tool for understanding feminist ideas.

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 andtry to live up to man's expectation but who will not succeed - it is like a never-ending circle.

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