From "Snow White and Her Wicked Stepmother" by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

From watching the movie "Snow White" as a child, not most people think about the story aside from being a fairytale. But once looking more deeply into all the hidden meanings in the story it becomes much more than that. The story is about a young girl whose mother dies and her father than marries an evil woman. Without looking into depth of the story most people would assume that the second wife of the King is just another woman, but looking more deeply at the story it becomes obvious that the second wife is the same as the first but just a wicked and jealous version.
The more deeply read into the story, the reader can begin to see that the father or the King "never actually appears in this story at all". But he does a very important presence in the story. He is, in fact, "the voice of the looking glass, the patriarchal voice of judgement that rules the Queen's - and the every woman's - self-evaluation". This story is not a basic fairytale but a story of how women perceive themselves based on the judgement of men. The stepmother always looks at her mirror and asks who is the fairest of them all and the mirror always replies that she is. In this story we see that women are so indulged in what other people think, mainly men, that we forget to live our lives.