Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety

Abstract

of the most disheartening aspects of folkloristics, the scientific study of folklore, is the persistent lack of analysis or interpretation. It is not just popularizers who churn out anthology after anthology of only without attention to context or possible meaning(s) of such texts, but the academic folklorists themselves, who despite pretentious definitional debates about the wisdom of continuing to use the term or exaggerated claims of the importance of reporting folklore as performedeven to the point of calling this approach ---what exactly is the theory supposedly underlying theory???do little more than report folkloristic texts totally devoid of the slightest hint of thoughtful commentary. Yes, certainly the legitimate concern for performance has resulted in more accurate reporting of texts, but it is nonetheless hard to find instances where such increased accuracy has yielded actual insights with respect to the meaning or significance of folkloristic event. I would like to illustrate this disappointing facet of folkloristics by examining one single traditional ritual found in American folklore. (It has also been reported in Newfoundland [Hiscock 1996].) After surveying what little is known about the ritual, I will propose an interpretation of it which I believe will make perfectly clear what the ritual is all about. In 1976, and Herbert Knapp, in their anthology of American children's folklore, devote whole paragraph in general discussion of what they term Scaries to the following item: One child told us she was always too chicken to summon Worth. She said, 'I knew I'd really be scared.' And really being scared is no fun. A child summons alias Mary, alias Jane, by going into the bathroom alone at night, turning out the lights, staring into the mirror, and repeating Worth, softly but distinctly, forty-seven times. She comes at you out of the mirror, with knife in her hand and wart on her nose. Never when we read Worth comic strips did we dream that the respectable busybody was moonlighting as mirror witch! (1976:242). Here we most of the primary elements of this ritual: child, almost always girl, goes into bathroom at night (or at in the dark) and repeats the name in some form which supposedly results in frightening creature named emerging from out of the bathroom mirror. Folklorist Simon J. Bronner in his 1988 American Children's Folklore included an entire page of discussion of what he called Worth Rituals. He describes the ritual as a girls' tradition common in elementary school which invokes atmosphere of the seance (1988:168). Whoever the figure is, Bronner indicates that the participants are Huddled typically in bathroom with the lights turned off and that they have to really 'believe' in her, or else she won't (1988:168). In his notes to his texts, Bronner remarks that Bloody Mary is yet another name for variations of 'Mary Worth' rituals (1988:266, n.24). of the five texts Bronner reports-collected from male informant from Middletown, Pennsylvania, in 1984-is as follows: was character who was murdered in the woods behind Pine Road Elementary School. To call her ghost, girls go in the bathroom and prick their fingers with pin to draw drop of blood. Then they press the two droplets of blood together and say We believe in Mary ten times with their eyes shut. Then upon opening their eyes they look into the bathroom mirror. The image of Mary's face would appear in the mirror. She was said to been young girl with long hair, very pale skin, and blood running down her face from large cut in her forehead (1988:168169). Bronner offers no more in the way of interpretation than did the Knapps, but his text includes an element not found in the Knapps' brief report, namely, the presence of blood. …