Snow White: Since the magic mirror indicates that the Queen has multiple personality, the seven dwarfs may be Snow White’s alternate personalities.

The Queen could not have been more familiar with how Snow White looked—Snow White was the Queen’s stepdaughter—so any ordinary mirror would have told the Queen who was more beautiful.

Why, then, did the Queen need a magic mirror?

Perhaps the Queen was in denial, and needed someone to tell her the truth. But since it is not hard to imagine a magical person who could have served that purpose, why was a magical mirror used instead?

Well, people with multiple personality sometimes see strangers in the mirror; that is, their alternate personalities. (Search “mirror” and “mirrors” to find past posts.) Thus, the use of a magic mirror raises the issue of multiple personality. And since there was no necessity to raise that issue, I call it “gratuitous multiple personality,” which is multiple personality found in stories for no other reason than that it reflects the author’s own psychology (many fiction writers have a normal version of multiple personality).

Now, it might be argued that the Queen’s multiple personality is not gratuitous, that it is intentional, since the seven dwarfs, found by Snow White in the forest, could be interpreted as her own alternate personalities. And if the author did have the intention of writing a multiple personality story, but did not wish to say so explicitly, then instead of calling it “gratuitous,” I would call it “unacknowledged” multiple personality.