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Sisters in Story Discuss: Mirror, Mirror

6/13/2020

Introducing the Book Club Discussion

Every three months, Mary & Elizabeth will pick a fairy-tale retelling to read, review & discuss as part of the Enchanted Garden Book Club. Mirror, Mirror is our first book club pick. We've already shared our individual reviews (find Mary's here & Elizabeth's here) and an introduction to the historical context of this particular book (found here). Now, we'll conclude with a discussion about the book.

For each book we discuss, we're covering six questions:

In what ways is the retelling similar to the original fairy tale?
How are the two stories different?
Did the retelling retain enough of the original to be satisfying? Why or why not?
What did the retelling do better than the original?
What gaps did the retelling fill in that were missing in the original?
Any additional thoughts about this book?

Mary & Elizabeth Discuss the Book

Discussion Transcript

Elizabeth:
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Enchanted Garden. This is our fairy-tale book club for Briarbook Lane. My name is Elizabeth Wilcox, and this is my sister and fellow inventor/creator behind Briarbook Lane.

Mary:
Hi, I am Mary W. Jensen and the book we’re going to discuss today (we are always doing fairy-tale retellings) is Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire.

So, we have some general questions to compare different books. So, let’s just go ahead and get started:

In what ways is the retelling similar to the original?

Elizabeth:
Alright. Well, the original fairy tale in this case is Snow White and, it's been a while since I looked at the physical copy of Mirror, Mirror, my e-book actually came with the original Grimm fairy tale at the very beginning of the book.

Mary:
Ooh, okay. Comparison, nice

Elizabeth:
Yeah, that made it super easy, comparing the two. I just immediately read the Grimm fairy tale and then the leapt right into reading the rest of the book.

And, honestly, my overall impression of similarities is that, unlike most Snow White retellings that are pretty popular and common, it pretty well followed the plot in terms of the different attempts that the wicked queen stepmother makes on Snow White's life. Most stories seem to follow that Disney trope of ‘let's just do the apple and forget everything else.’

Mary :
True

Elizabeth:
But Gregory Maguire here does work in the different—the poisoned comb, the laces, kind of building up to the poisoned apple, which I appreciate, just because that lends that extra interest. He did not seem to really include the penalties that the wicked queen faces in the same way, though.

Original Snow White, you know, that wicked queen gets to dance to death at Snow White's wedding in those red hot shoes, which is as grim as you would expect from a Grimm fairy tale. I will never get tired of calling the Grimm Fairy Tale Collection super grim; it's just too fitting.

But in this book, it feels like there's not any of that. Probably because he doesn't really include a prince in the way that you’d expect.

Mary:
That’s true

Elizabeth:
There’s none of that fairy tale ending of the blatant comeuppance for the Queen. What are your thoughts on the similarities and differences there?

Mary:
Yeah, I did enjoy that it had a lot of those similar elements. Like you said, hitting on all of the different things, with the corset and—everything that you don’t usually see—and the comb. I did like that it had the dwarves. It took a unique spin on them, but it did have our dwarves.

Elizabeth:
True

Mary:
And of course our mirror, and she had a glass coffin at the end. And even her name meant, you know, “white.”

Elizabeth:
Yeah, he did follow that very literal “snow white” name trope.

Mary:
Without just going “Snow White,” yeah. So, it was a good way to do it.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, he played around with that: How can I use Spanish and Italian to shove some extra meaning in, in a way that's not really blatantly obvious and explicit to the English audience this is written for.

This felt like one of those books—and I know this is an aside, but this felt like one of those books that’s written such that on one level you can just kind of enjoy it as a fairy-tale retelling and take it on that surface level, but as soon as you start doing things like the way I was reading it and googling and figuring out: okay, well, he told me that Snow White's name actually means “Snow White,” are there any other names that mean something interesting? And you're suddenly googling every name in the whole book and your googling ‘wait, what's the translation because now they're saying something in, I think it's Italian; I don't know Italian’ and there's this extra level like below the surface where he's shoving in all of this meaning and imagery.

So it feels kind of like, instead of just writing that surface level retelling, he's doing something that's a more of a literary, critical take is invited on this one. Which is part of the reason why I don't feel bad about some of the criticisms that I have, that are based on more of a literary take, which we’ll get into later, I’m sure.

Mary:
Yes. Yes, that segues into:

How are the two stories different?

Because even though we had a lot of those same elements, a lot of the figures, like especially we didn't have a stepmother/dark queen. She was more of a mother figure that stepped in…Well, she's essentially sent the father away.

Elizabeth:
Yeah

Mary:
And there was no royalty involved.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, she's that mother figure and she has this position of power politically, but she isn't actually a queen, the same way that Snow White's father, Vicente, isn’t actually a king. They’re a kind of different level because he puts it in that actual historical setting; he switches up those roles. And then, you know, they never get married, obviously, so not technically a stepmother.

Mary:
And I was expecting them to, with how it was setting up. There was definitely the flirtation going on there.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, there’s the flirtation with it, and then there’s the sense of she’s kind of set up to be the surrogate mother in that she promises she’ll watch after Snow White—I should just call her by her name: Bianca de Nevada, which basically means “snow white.”

But, a lot of interesting things for me in the book that are where my primary criticism lie come around that figure, where Maguire decides to take this actual historical person and stick her in to that evil queen role, and so seeing the Borgias and the roles that they're playing in the book, he adds on this whole extra character that's not in the Snow White story with, is it Cesare?

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
Yeah, with Cesare Borgia, where it’s like: what kind of role in the fairy-tale would he be playing? Yet, that's not a role that exists in the original Snow White tale.

Mary:
That’s true.

Elizabeth:
But he's a very important figure in this retelling. He also does this interesting thing where, instead of there being a clear cut romantic interest/prince character, he kind of divides it between the Huntsman and the goose boy. So, we don't have just one figure that's there to recognize and rescue Snow White from her coffin. Instead, Bianca has this goose boy that's an interesting character with a lot of stuff going on, and then the Huntsman, and kind of both of them are involved in that scene, and you think ‘oh, the goose boy’s gonna be the one who recognizes her.’ He’s secretly a prince because he's (spoilers, everybody) actually a Borgia kid, in that he is literally the kid of both Borgias in this tale; we've got some incest between Lucrezia and Cesare that’s happening.

Mary:
Very Game of Thrones-esque there.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. Yeah, and so maybe it's like, okay, around the same time we're piecing together that, ‘oooh, the goose boy is the child of Lucretia and Cesare, oh my!’, we start thinking okay, so maybe he's the prince who’s going to rescue Bianca because he's the closest kind of peer that she might have

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
And instead the Huntsman comes up and is like, ‘Nah, fool, get out of the way. I'm gonna rescue this princess.’ It's like oh man, okay. That came out of nowhere, but alright.

Mary:
Yeah, that really did come out of nowhere. The huntsman returns at the right moment to save the girl and bring her home! Like, wait, what?

Elizabeth:
Yeah, so that was a difference. Because you see a lot of retellings that are like, ‘but what if the huntsman is the romantic interest?’ and then you see a lot where it's like a lot closer to the original tale and there's the prince, and it feels like Gregory Maguire kind of played with both here.

Another interesting difference is that, while Snow White (Bianca) is with seven dwarves, there’s an eighth dwarf figure.

Mary:
Yes

Elizabeth:
That ends up going and following Bianca's father when he goes out on his kind of quest for the tree branch from the tree of knowledge. Which is a whole other thing that feels like obviously doesn't have anything to do with the original Snow White tale, but is an interesting way to introduce this special apple that Lucrezia ends up using later.

For me, the differences in the setting just kind of served to set apart like all those differences in plot where it is so similar to the Grimm tale in some ways, that in the ways that it's different it just feels you obviously have to take the differences as very deliberate.

Mary:
Yeah.

Elizabeth:
And so the whole time you’re questioning, or at least I was: Okay, why did Maguire choose to make this difference? What am I supposed to be getting out of these characters that are new to his telling? How am I supposed to feel about these characters, given that they're not there in the original fairy-tale? Because there are, we've mentioned, there's Cesare, who’s a completely new kind of super important figure. There's also the figure of, and I'm gonna have to check my notes to make sure I don't mess up their names: There’s Primavera Vecchia and Fra Ludovico. The kind of cook figure, Primavera, who takes care of Bianca as a child.

Mary:
Yeah, the cook/handmade, caregiver.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, that very original mother figure before Lucrezia comes in and tries to take over that role in a really toxic way. And then Fra Ludovico is the literal friar, basically; the you know, takes care of all the religious needs of Montefiore, the villa where all this happens.

And, as I mentioned with the whole because we know Bianca de Nevada means ‘white as snow’ I started going out and googling everyone's names: Primavera Vecchia. ‘Primavera’ is Spanish for ‘spring,’ especially ‘early spring.’ And ‘Vecchia’ is Italian for ‘old woman.’ So.

Mary:
What interesting contrast there.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and especially in light of one of the characters you think, you know, snow is associated with winter, and there's also that transition of winter to early spring where you might still be seeing some snow, and it's in the kind of early spring of Bianca's life that Primavera is taking care of her; Primavera seems to be this weird—for one thing, it's interesting that even though she is in Italy, at Montefiore, where this family ended up, she still, the same as the de Nevada family does, is incorporating both Spanish and Italian in her name. There's that blend so it kind of ties her in a way, through her name alone, it kind of ties her to the de Nevada specifically family as in terms of loyalty, rather than to Montefiore itself or to…It, like, she’s king of grouped with them just by combining that Spanish and Italian together. But also she's this weird mix of beginnings and endings: she's an old woman who takes care of the kids; she's the person who's been at Montefiore the longest; she's... And it's interesting that it's just like ‘Vecchia’ literally means old woman, but if you look into it, apparently, it's also a term used for someone who was from an old family. So it's like she's this new growth, but also the most established.

Mary:
Yeah, steeped in that history

Elizabeth:
Yeah, there’s this balance that she plays in that role. And you see to, it's kind of Maguire's playing with this there's literal magic mythical stuff right from the beginning, you know, he throws you into this historical setting and you're like ‘oh this is historical Italy; he’s literally giving me what year it is; it's a real place’ and then, very first opening chapter, he's like ‘also, by the way, there's a dragon’ and you're like, ‘okay, magic too, gotcha.’

Mary:
I forgot about the dragon mention

Elizabeth:
Yeah, he's throws it in super early, just as this hint that there might be some supernatural in here. Could be could be some actual magic. And Primavera kind of represents that figure who embraces and believes in the mythical magical stuff. And Fra Ludovico represents the person who’s, like religious mythos is taking over in the minds of people from actual magic mythos. So, we have elements like the dragon and the dwarves and later weirdly with the Huntsman that unicorn encounter, there's some magic stuff; but then, there's the religious magic and there's the branch from the tree of knowledge that, is it actually magic or is it just this art piece? We don’t know. No one really knows. There's this kind of connect of maybe the magic of the old world that Primavera represents is transitioning to the religious magic of this new world that Fra Ludovico’s associated with, and that the whole Catholic Church represents. And it’s super odd, but that’s her, and then I was just—Ludovico becomes this super interesting figure in that he ends up pretending to be really stupid and to be losing his mind so that he won’t…

Mary:
He won’t get exiled

Elizabeth:
Yeah. So that he can be there to help Bianca and help Vicente, he pretends. That kind of weird way of having that courage to pretend in front of the Borgias is hinted in his name, in that ‘Ludovico’ is Italian for ‘famous fighter.’ So, that hint, like, Maguire’s throwing these hints into people’s names. He’s like, ‘Ludovico looks like he’s just a friar—his title, Fra—but, maybe he has some fight in him.’ Anyway, and that’s all over the place. If you haven’t read this book or you haven’t googled all the names in this book to figure out what they mean, there’s these layers upon layers of meaning the more you read.

And I know that I’m straying really far off of the ‘how are the two stories different’ question, but that’s just an example of the weird paths that you follow if you’re trying to figure out, ‘what is Maguire saying here?’

Mary:
But you hope he’s saying something because otherwise it’s just a strange tale.

Elizabeth:
Indeed, yeah.

Mary:
But we’ll get into that more later, probably.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, I’m sure we will.

Mary:
Alright, so next one:

Did the retelling retain enough of the original to be satisfying? Why or why not?

Elizabeth:
I’m really interested in what your answer is here.

Mary:
Well, on a satisfaction level on feeling like a Snow White tale, it definitely hit all the points. It’s like I couldn’t really complain, especially by the end, it’s like, yes, I see all the elements. This feels authentic. Checkmark the box. But I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have other retellings. So, that’s kind of… But I don’t fault it for not being one.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, it’s very clearly a Snow White retelling. There’s no way that you can read Mirror, Mirror and say, ‘but what that Snow White?’ because it just obviously is.

Mary:
There’s no subtle reference. It’s very in-your-face Snow White

Elizabeth:
Yeah, it’s not anything like it could have been; it’s not a historical novel with vague Snow White themes. It is Snow White, straight up. So, if that's all it takes to be satisfying as a retelling, it's got that. The, for me, the question is: are all of the weird changes he makes—the character choices and descriptive stuff that he throws in that muddy it up and the—are they satisfying? Are all those differences worthwhile and are they satisfying? And I think on one level they are; it certainly, this is one of the first books in a long while that I've read and felt like, oh, I could be transported back to undergrad and be doing a critical analysis of this book and I could, you know, write a five-page paper about the themes in Mirror, Mirror. It’s like, it very much lends itself to an analysis that makes it feel like Maguire's trying to sell a message. Which can be really satisfying to dig into, but on the other hand parts of it just feel unsatisfying in that I feel like Maguire's message is letting me down.

Mary:
Yeah, it's like, what is this?

Elizabeth:
Or maybe he’s got all the form with very little substance. Like, what substantively is that message that all of these layers of meaning are building to? And I feel like what it comes to, that's where I was left feeling unsatisfied, like I wanted some great moral story the way that fairy-tales tend to be moral stories. I wanted him to use those differences to give a different kind of moral to this fairy-tale while still having all those elements of the original tale, which is what I love about great retellings as they keep the elements but they twist that moral so you're like, ‘wait, oh, let me think about everything.’

Mary:
Yeah, whether they are making you rethink the original or putting a spotlight on something for modern tales, or something. And, yeah, it feels like, what is his message for us? Or is it just a critical analysis? Because it's great for critics; critics love this book. I don’t know why.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. I feel like critics love this book because it makes them feel smart, and makes them feel like they're in on this little secret of all those little things that Maguire throws in. But, for me, I just can't get over how disappointed I was in what that ultimately ended up being. Like, I don't think I really substantively missed something in Maguire’s point. He had all of these great things he was playing with: with time, with the magic of religion as opposed to what we normally think of as magic, and toying with that idea of—and things like with the dwarves, they have all of that sense of time and of fitting in and of changing to try to match your surroundings, and Bianca’s all about reflecting things and colors and noticing things by being a reflection of her surroundings.

Mary:
She’s the literal mirror

Elizabeth:
She is! And I feel like where I get let down is that, in all of that context, the actual historical figures feel like they're just there to kind of get dumped upon. Like, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia have reputations, historically.

Mary:
Definitely

Elizabeth:
And I feel like Maguire took those reputations and took the very worst elements, and was like, yeah, let’s run with those. And also, let’s have them boink each other, yeah. And I feel like for me a lot of the contrast in the depiction between Lucrezia Borgia and Bianca de Nevada felt very hypocritical in a weird way that I wanted Maguire to acknowledge, and I wanted to be deliberate, and I wanted to have some sort of message behind.

And instead, it just felt like he was saying a big F you to Lucrezia Borgia, and I’m curious what you think about this. Here's a specific example:

Lucrezia Borgia was thirteen when she first got married, historically and in the book. And Maguire adds on this idea that would Lucrezia’s first child, that she has when she's 13 and newly married, is actually her child with Cesare, her older brother. Here's the thing: Cesare’s five years older than Lucrezia is.

So, when you look at that dynamic, even in the historical context of, ‘oh people got married younger, blah, blah, blah’: it's still an adult man very much taking advantage of a child in terms of his sister, another adult man also taking advantage of the child and marrying her, and then you throw Vicente in and he's another adult man who's also depicted as this sexual interest for her. And so Lucrezia is set up where she's this barely-mature young girl who has all of these adult male influences putting sexuality upon her from that young age. And it's kind of implied that it started even younger and that her father maybe abused her and his other kids, like the pope did some bad stuff, like that whole bathing naked in the fountain of mercury whatever stuff. And it kind of ends up being: You’d expect, ‘oh, Maguire's going to make me feel bad for Lucrezia. I'm going to have this moment where Maguire admits that the reason she is so messed up and jealous of Bianca is because she's been trained from a young age to think her only worth it in her physical attractiveness.’ And he describes the sexualization of Bianca in a way that's very sympathetic to Bianca. That she’s having other people's view of her as a sexual object put on her instead of her embodying sexuality and seducing people.

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
So I know Maguire's capable of that kind of depiction because he does it for Bianca. But with Lucrezia from the very beginning it's like, oooh, she takes such care, she's dying her hair, she's wearing these things, she's posing herself; every depiction he makes of her felt to me like very kind of slut-shaming. Like, there was never that awareness level that I expected and hoped for that was like, ‘actually, maybe this is self-defense; maybe this is literally the only way she could respond to this life situation she's in.’ Instead, it's just like, look how pure and innocent and beautiful Bianca is and then look how like slutty and not innocent and not pure Lucrezia is, as polar opposites

Mary:
Exactly

Elizabeth:
And I feel like they're kind of the same character in different situations.

And so, for me, that disconnect was the biggest let-down, and is where I felt really upset by the story.

Mary:
That’s a good point. By the end, it’s like the only way that Bianca was able to stay pure and everything was to put her to sleep for, what, seven years?

Elizabeth:
Exactly!

Mary:
Because otherwise she might have become the same person. And then, Lucrezia also awakens her son, our goose boy, into his sexuality—the off-screen implied thing that happened there, and it's like…okay, so the only one that’s pure and clean is Bianca, but only because she was taken out of the world.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and it’s kind of this, like, everything sexual that happens to Bianca is like, oh, there’s no way this could possibly be her fault. This is, like, she dresses appropriately, she’s demure, whatever. And it’s like, I don’t care if Lucrezia is wearing jeweled gowns.

It kind of feels like the ‘She deserves it because of how she was dressed.’ You know, like, she took care of her appearance, so obviously she wanted to only be a sexual object.

For me, I think it's just Maguire could’ve done Lucrezia a lot better. She could have made all of the same choices and been portrayed a lot better if he was just more sympathetic in his descriptions of her.

Mary:
Especially because we do get her point of view. It’s not just seeing her from the outside; we're in her head for a good, well, a very good portion of the book.

Elizabeth:
Exactly! And it just, yeah. The way he describes Lucrezia is unsettling to me. And not in a, ‘ooh, I feel like I've been unsettled in a way such that my understanding of the world is improved,’ but more like, ‘Maguire, that was kind of gross. Couldn't you have done her better? Treated her better than that?’

Mary:
Especially to be an actual historical character, too, not just, ‘we're just making up some person to be in this role.’

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and what he did in his—did you read his Afterword about the historical?

Mary:
Yes

Elizabeth:
I was like, lame, guy. Like, Maguire's whole point in his afterword is like, ‘I know I did things with these historical figures, but given that Cesare has already been dealt with like in these literary ways with Machiavelli’s portrayal in The Prince and given that Lucrezia was this huge patron of the arts, I don't think they'd mind.’ And it's just like, here's the thing, I think Lucrezia would fucking mind. I just, I don't think…I don't think he treated her appropriately. Like, the whole thing was very upsetting to me. Just in that approach where it felt really out of place. Yeah.

Mary:
I agree.

Following that up with:

What did the retelling do better than the original?

Because one thing I actually did enjoy was the mirror aspect. Having it be coated in quicksilver almost did give more of a reason to her kind of going insane and being super paranoid and suspicious because they show you this is mercury and these are the effects that this can have.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, I liked as well that there's that tie between the dwarves and the mirror. I appreciated all of the imagery of the dwarves as these figures from the ancient magical past that are kind of starting to think that maybe they should adapt a little so they can come out in present society more and that they made this mirror so that they could look through it and observe, and I liked that Lucrezia as that queen figure seeing through the mirror to see Bianca was something that you could either take as that quicksilver madness or you could take as that dwarven magic unintentionally going both ways.

Mary:
Because it was made to be more of a window instead of a mirror.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, exactly.

That was really interesting, and the whole idea of these dwarf figures was a really interesting take, that they’re these really odd figures, and trying to figure out what are these dwarves and what is Maguire doing with them was a really interesting portion of the book. I did enjoy that level of it. I thought it did a lot better—you still have all that mystery because the original fairy-tale never tells you why there are seven dwarves living in a cottage in the forest and what their deal is; this also doesn’t tell us, where did these people/figures come from, but it does a lot more interesting things with what they are and who they are. And he uses it in this very...Like, that portion of it, I think, plays a lot better with the ‘what is self?’ and ‘how did self and society change over time?’ than I feel like he did with any other element of the book.

Mary:
Yeah, it really deals with that self-reflection versus everyone else and society looking in and shaping you.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. And it is interesting to see the dwarves names themselves, but then later they have names given to them by Bianca, and this is another moment where I had to do some Google-fu to translate: the names Bianca gives the dwarves are the days of the week in Italian and the 8th dwarf is just called ‘tomorrow.’ So this dwarf that is called ‘next day’ or ‘tomorrow’ is the one that goes out and is more deliberately figuring out how to become like modern society is, so that they can kind of function in modern society instead of basically just being rocks.

Mary:
Yeah, the one taking action and moving forward. Progressive, like society

Elizabeth:
And so there’s the looking-forward dwarf and then the other dwarves are kind of starting a little bit to look outward, but they only really begin to do that when they have Bianca there to be a mirror for them, because that's what Bianca does: she reflects stuff.

And she shows them what they are and by being present shapes them

Mary:
And their surroundings, yeah

Elizabeth:
And the space they live in—in this very interesting way.

Part of her interaction with the dwarves is deeply unsettling with all them, but that's just Maguire for you, guys. Like, if you're not okay with sexual content and graphic descriptions of things that might be unsettling, probably don't read Maguire at all.

Mary:
Regular bodily functions definitely take place

Elizabeth:
In very irregular ways, too

Mary:
Yes

Elizabeth:
Which is—I remember, and this is, the scene when Bianca wakes up and all of that time hits her all at once, if you will, is the thing I remembered most vividly about this book from when I read it as a child. And when I revisited it now, I was like, ‘That's fair. Yeah, no, that is very vividly memorable; of course that's the part that stuck with me.’

So yeah, there's…there's a lot of…and some of it feels very symbolic and interesting, others of it feel just kind of gratuitous, and I think it's that kind of blend where if it was all really symbolic and interesting I would be on board, but I can't figure out what message Maguire wanted to sell me…

Mary:
Squid. I’m trying to figure out where and why…Yes, just [shrugs]

Elizabeth:
Yeah.

Mary:
Why?

Elizabeth:
Yeah, I think that’s where the book really just comes up short overall is that it poses all these questions and throws out all these images and symbols, and it feels like all of it is unresolved. It's just like, ‘Don't be a slut like Lucrezia.’ Is that…?

Mary: …the message? Sure. Yeah, I guess.

Elizabeth:
Reflect back what people put on you, but like, don’t change? But do change? But… It kind of feels like the message is incoherent. And I get ‘but maybe I can put my own message on it’ and things, but it doesn't feel satisfying in the way…

Mary:
The dwarves got all that change and the growth, but Bianca, from the very beginning, there was never any change for her other than that that physical obvious change of growing up. But she didn’t have any of, any character arc.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. And, honestly, it feels as though Maguire gave really short shrift to all of the female characters. They're all very one-dimensional. Bianca doesn't feel like she even is a character. She's the titular character of this fairy-tale, and a lot of fairy-tale retellings take those characters like Snow White that are just these kind of faceless, helpless princess figures and make them real and give them motives and make you be like, oh yeah, let's explore this in an interesting way that's less sexist than the original tales tend to be, and it feels like Maguire, instead of doing that, doubles down and is like: actually, you know, what? Not only is she just this non-character figure for people to interact with and use she's just a mirror; she's just going to reflect everything around her. And her only personality trait is that she notices color? Like, it's not—it's not much of a personality.

And Primavera is just there to smell like onions and be old.

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
And Lucrezia is just there to get slut-shamed for trying to use the only tools that life gave her. And that’s it.

Mary:
But the hunter; he can have this redemptive arc, and come in and save the day

Elizabeth:
The hunter gets to interact with a unicorn, the hunter gets to have this interesting history and an interesting future and go off and have an adventure.

Mary:
Yeah, he gets this whole bonus story.

Elizabeth:
Even Snow White’s father: like, Vicente gets this whole quest adventure.

Mary:
Yeah.

Elizabeth:
Like, Bianca is just existing in mound of earth in the forest being a mirror for some dwarves until she wakes up and then does some more mirroring for dwarves, and her dad's out like full on having a quest that’s this huge deal, and it's—even if you just look back to the absent figure of Bianca's dead mother, Maria. Like, Maria de Ines is the name he used: literally it just means the Virgin Mary. She's just…it's like, could not make it any more clear that for Maguire all these female figures are just there for the men to interact with and use and use and base their character development on.

Mary:
Yeah.

Elizabeth:
You know, like Primavera gets literally silenced in that her tongue is cut out, whereas the friar gets to have this whole arc of faking insanity and coming back and being courageous. Primavera tries to fight and is silenced, and it feels like Maguire's doing the same thing to all the female characters in the book and that he is judging them and silencing them. And, if it were a deliberate like call to be like, hey, look how sexist and wrong this is, that's one thing. But I feel like it read to me instead like Maguire just wasn't invested in these female characters

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
and just wasn't giving them a fair treatment. Which, that's, it’s disappointing.

Mary:
I think that’s definitely pointing on why this book felt so unsettling.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. I'm really curious if it would feel equally unsettling to male readers.

Mary:
I’m curious on some of those critic reviews, on who the reviewer was, now. Wonder if that made a difference.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, it might. And I feel. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Next question.

Mary:
So, our last actual question for our comparison was:

What gaps did the retelling fill in that were missing in the original?

And I think we kind of hit on a lot of that already.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and what’s interesting is the way that instead of just filling in the gaps, he adds all of these extra elements that kind of have nothing to do with the gaps in the original story, and are just adding stuff to the story.

Mary:
It’s interesting that Cesare, even though he wasn't a character in the original, he was a huge catalyst this time. He was the reason that the father left, that Vicente left on his quest; he was the reason that they were there, that Lucrezia even came to Montefiore; and also was the catalyst for Bianca getting sent away to be killed because of the jealousy.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, really, it’s interesting in that I feel like in adding Cesare to the tale, Maguire takes all of that agency and character away from Lucrezia and gives it to Cesare. Instead of this deeply-interesting wicked queen figure, Lucrezia’s motivation is all Cesare. She's only there taking care of Bianca because Cesare wanted to send Vicente away on this quest that was just for Cesare.

Mary:
And even during that initial presentation of the quest and Lucrezia’s trying to tell the tale, Cesare is taking all the credit and overriding her, even at that moment.

That’s right; he does take all the power and the agency away from both characters.

Elizabeth:
And then, even after he dies, Lucrezia is just all about, ‘I am going to do things because I’m jealous of someone Cesare showed interest in who isn’t me. I’m going to do things because I miss Cesare.’ Like, it's all Cesare; everything is all Cesare. Cesare is the secret father of the child that she views as ‘The Punishment’—and here's the thing: Cesare doesn't care. Cesare doesn't feel like he was punished. Cesare’s just going off doing whatever he wants. And it is interesting that, you know, as much as that you can't quite separate Lucrezia from Cesare, that you have to take them together from her end, but I think from Cesare’s end, yeah, you could take him without Lucrezia and he would still do much the same thing and be the same person.

Mary:
That's true

Elizabeth:
Like, Cesare gets integrally into Lucrezia's identity in a way that isn't reciprocal at all. Which is a really interesting thing, and it feels like, you know, you don't decide to include the Borgias into a story and cut Cesare out, I guess—he is that inspiration behind Machiavelli’s The Prince; he's a big deal—but it is interesting to me that Maguire did cut an entire Borgia sibling out and pretend he never existed. Cesare and Lucrezia had a brother that just plain doesn't exist in this book. And it feels like he's just showing: I can pick and choose which Borgias I include, but you know what? Let's not make this about the girl. This is going to be about Cesare.

Mary:
Even though he was only on stage for just a few short moments.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, he's the catalyst for the entire story. Right all the way back to, I mean, in a way Lucrezia kind of is the reason that the de Nevadas are at Montefiore at all to begin with, but that's also only because of Cesare because the only reason she did that favor for Vicente de Nevada is because Cesare impregnated her and she ended up with this kid, The Punishment, that she wanted to be rid of, and so it kind of falls back to that Cesare again

Mary:
Yep

Elizabeth:
If he’d just kept his hands off of his sister, then she wouldn't have been thinking about throwing a baby off of the wall and Vicente wouldn't have caught her do that and have blackmail material.

Mary:
Yeah. It all goes back.

Elizabeth:
It all goes back to that relationship with Cesare and his sister, and that unsettling way where Maguire goes out of his way to make you feel like oh, look how gross it is that Bianca is being sexualized when she's so young, but also says literally nothing about how young Lucrezia was when those same things happened to her. She was Bianca’s age when Cesare was getting it on with her. And it's all on Cesare when it happens to Bianca, but it’s just not even acknowledged that maybe Lucrezia got abused at any point. It just, it feels…

Mary:
Like the hints are there, but yeah, it feels just kind of sweep over it and move on

Elizabeth:
And he makes enough of that point and that symbolism explicit, like hammers it in often enough, that it's like, well, it feels deliberate that you're not giving that treatment to Lucrezia. And I get that she's the villain of the tale, but, ew, Maguire. Ew.

Mary:

Are there any other parts of the book that you want to point on, or...?

Elizabeth:
Um, man. Uh, I will say there's a lot of really lovely imagery. There's a lot of really interesting dealing with themes. If you want just kind of an exploration of themes of reflection and identity and sexuality and color, and you can ignore or just kind of like judge Maguire harshly for some of the more issues in there, then, you know, it’s definitely an interesting book.

I think the main thing we haven't really touched on that I would add is the interesting way that he uses these historical places and elements and puts that Catholic imagery in there. I think, I did mention a little bit about it, but I think it's a really interesting idea to kind of seed that possibility that the religious tradition and images and ritual are the magic of modern times, and that there's just this transition happening between that kind of old world magic that we normally associate with fairy-tales and the religious magic. And contextually it's interesting to make that comparison because, and this is something that surprised me the first time I went and read the full collection of Grimm fairy-tales, some of those fairy-tales are just religious stories and the magic is actually very Christian religious based, like apostles and Christ are literally visiting people and doing magic things and they're the magic figures in some of the fairy-tales the Grimms collected. I think Maguire plays with that in an interesting way. So, especially for me as an atheist, I appreciated that kind of leveling of the playing field of it's all mythos and it's all magic and there's just a different kind of view taken to it and it’s just a shift of society from one thing towards another the way the dwarves are kind of shifting from one thing to the other.

Mary:
Yeah, those dwarves which are very old world, but even they saw figures of dwarves in the chapel’s windows.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and fun fact, if you look at the frescoes of the actual chapel that actually exists, which I linked to some images of in the historical context post on Briarbook Lane, there actually is a little short guy figure that is definitely that dwarf figure that's being referenced. So, it's interesting to me that Maguire saw that actual fresco and was like yeah, I'm going to use that. I’m curious what came first: did he see that and be like, ‘ooh, this is my whole seeded idea for the story now,’ or was it this cool moment for him where he was like, ‘woah, I could use that in the story I already have an idea for’? I'm a little curious. But if you look at it, like search those frescoes, and yeah that there is literally a figure that looks like a dwarf. It's just a short, but still adult-looking man staring at the cross.

So that's that was interesting for me because that was one of my questions: I was like, is that a real part of the painting? And I looked it up and it one hundred percent is. So, that’s interesting.

Mary:
I did love all the images you collected for that blog because one of my favorite images in the book was that walk at the beginning to Montefiore through those hills and that imagery, and they did tie back to into that, the same thing in the end when Bianca was returning home.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. That’s some of the imagery that I really appreciated is that play of, from a distance things look one way, that as you proceed through time actually trying to move towards them, it's a very different journey than it looks like it's going to be, and that play on the expectations versus reality and reflecting other people's expectations versus just actually doing real things, is very interesting.

Again, I feel like if he’d treated the female characters better, overall, I would have just been happy with it; really thrilled with that use of imagery and symbolism. I think just that one element of how he treated all of the women in the book lets it down for me.

Mary:
Maybe he relied too much on historical characters and should have created maybe a new one? But yet that would have changed the whole aspect…

Elizabeth:
Or even if he just more explicitly acknowledged the problematic way that Lucrezia was…

Mary:
Her upbringing and her experiences

Elizabeth:
Exactly. If he was more—Because he's showcasing the problems with Bianca’s upbringing so obviously that it feels really weird that he's not even acknowledging in any way the parallels with Lucrezia.

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
And part of it could be he’s leaving it for readers to do, but I think part of it honestly just comes across as Maguire being a little bit sexist in a way that is disappointing. You know, if he... That could have easily been addressed to avoid…

Mary:
Especially since in his Afterword he pretty much said he chose what to include and what not to, and what rumors to uphold. He chose; it was a choice.

Elizabeth:
And it was deliberate.

Mary:
Yeah.

Elizabeth:
And when you deliberately choose to basically slander a historical figure in a way that, without acknowledging like the problems there…Even if he had just made Bianca feel more like a real person. Although part of the point is that she is just that mirror, reflective piece, I feel like he could have had her there as the mirror for everyone around her like that's just all people treated her as, while still letting her be an actual person with a personality inside. And I feel like she never really got a moment to have a personality. She's not even mad at what happens; she's not, she's just kind of like ‘yeah. I'm here now. I’ll reflect the people I’m around right now, I guess.’

Mary:
She doesn’t really have any emotions. Even with her time when she’s awake and with the dwarves, it’s really all about caring for them and herself, and nothing really—she’s stuck in time, even though she is awake; she’s just, nothing changes.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and she immediately takes to whatever they tell her. Like, she could just leave and walk home, not a big deal; she could explore the world; she could…anything. And instead, she's just kind of being there to be that reflective way that the dwarves’ personalities get developed and their home gets developed and she's just there to kind of exist. And it's disappointing.

Mary:
Even after meeting the goose boy: she could have gone with him, gone home. You know? But, like, no, I’m just going to run back to my safety bubble of nothing.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. And she’s just deferring to whatever figure is there to defer to.

Mary:
It's really just an escape from reality

Elizabeth:
Yeah, even with her encounter with the hunter, she didn't run because she had a self-preservation feeling and was like, I'm gonna live; she literally only ran away because the hunter said “run away.”

Mary:
Like, I’m going to let you go, and then you run. Hint, hint. Run. Go, go.

Elizabeth:
Hint, hint: You’re gonna run now. Like, the implication is that she would have just stood there and been like, ‘so, are you going to kill me now?’ if he hadn’t told her to run.

Mary:
Yeah.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. It’s a whole thing.

So, overall, Mary: Would you recommend Mirror, Mirror to someone?

Mary:
I’d say, if you want to read it as a critic response and going into that level, then perhaps. Especially if you are interested in that time period. But, if you’re just going in wanting to read a fairy-tale retelling and escape into a world, like many of us do, I would not.

Elizabeth:
I'm right with you there. And if you, say, you came to Gregory Maguire because you love Wicked. And you read Wicked and you're like, oh wow, that was a lot more explicit and weird than the musical was, but it was interesting; I would like more of that. Maybe, unless you're ready to really dive into that critical analysis level, try Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister instead. It's the Cinderella story. It still does a lot of interesting historical context stuff, but it felt less unsettling and problematic and there aren’t so much the actual historical figures that you feel like you need to research. Instead, it just kind of puts it in a time period, and you don't really need to know historical figures and do all of this research and Google-fu to figure out what's happening. It's more appreciable on that level of just an interesting twist on a fairy-tale, and it has that very satisfying, ‘oooh, that’s an interesting twist’ that I kind of missed in Mirror, Mirror. Because Mirror, Mirror is so spot on with the original tale it feels instead of twisting it anywhere he sort of undermines the female characters even more than they already were.

Mary:
Yeah.

Elizabeth:
So, if you like to read retellings just for fun, and if you like to read retellings because you like seeing that whole original fairy-tale subverted in a cool way, this isn’t really going to do it for you.

Mary:
And make sure to visit our blogs at BriarbookLane.com for our full reviews and the post about the historical context.

And then our next book that we will be discussing will be Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. So check back later for that as well.

Elizabeth:
Yep! Alright. Thank you for joining us, and we hope to see more of you here in the Enchanted Garden!

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Enchanted Garden

Sisters in Story Discuss: Mirror, Mirror

Introducing the Book Club Discussion

Mary & Elizabeth Discuss the Book

Discussion Transcript

In what ways is the retelling similar to the original?

How are the two stories different?

Did the retelling retain enough of the original to be satisfying? Why or why not?

What did the retelling do better than the original?

What gaps did the retelling fill in that were missing in the original?

Are there any other parts of the book that you want to point on, or...?

Mirror, Mirror - A Historical Fantasy

The Historical Context of Gregory Maguire's Snow White Tale

Montefiore

Basilica of San Francesco, Arezzo

The House of Borgia

Book Club Intro

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