In A Glass Grimmly

Jill is one of the protagonists, and the novel is told partly from her perspective. At the story’s outset, Jill suppresses her authentic self in favor of being the person she thinks her mother wants her to be. Jill believes this compliance will somehow earn her mother’s love but doesn’t realize that she is only harming herself by being someone she is not. When the frog first sees Jill, he thinks her eyes look like the sky “when it was its clearest, deepest blue” (49). That the frog gives the same description the first time he sees Jill’s mother’s eyes shows that Jill has been as beautiful as her mother all along but could not see it because she lacked trust in herself. Jill’s greatest strength is her cleverness, which she doesn’t initially give herself credit for. She can outsmart the giants and save Jack’s life through wit and cunning. Jill thinks nothing of her strengths because she disregards qualities other than physical beauty. Only after the goblins capture her does Jill appreciate qualities other than beauty. Becoming desensitized to compliments lets Jill focus on who she is on the inside rather than the outside. By the end of the book, Jill no longer cares what her mother thinks of her, and she is willing to make her own choices based on what she wants, not what she thinks will earn affection.