Informative Essay On Bloody Mary

Stories meant for kids are always cheerful and have a happy meaningful ending, yet it’s ironic how almost all stories meant for kids have a much darker backstory. Take Disney for example and the movie The Lion King. Its origins are traced back to the Shakespeare play Hamlet. As a kid you don't realize this, though, you just take it for what you see. Which is why when my grandmother and I walked around her garden I wasn't thinking twice about chanting the nursery rhyme, Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, and how it was truly about Bloody Marry. As a kid, casual walks in my grandmother’s garden were far from abnormal. Up until I moved away, I would help her water her flowers and feed the birds. One day my grandmother told me a little rhyme, “Mary Mary quite contrary. How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells. And
As the title states, that is quite the contrary, this rhyme is about Mary Tudor, the daughter of King Henry VIII. The woman who, “persecuted and murdered many Protestants” (Ryhmes.org.uk) and became better known as “Bloody Mary”. People believe that in the rhyme the silver bells were, “thumbscrews which crushed the thumb between two hard surfaces by the tightening of a screw,” and the cockleshells were, “instruments of torture which were attached to the genitals" (Source). With the knowledge that Mary had murdered many Protestants and the knowledge of what those tools really were, it can be concluded they were the tools used to kill. That isn't the only torture tool mentioned within this short rhyme though. Think the rhyme is talking about maids used to clean your house? Think again. In the past, “maids were a device to behead people called the Maiden” (Ryhmes.org.uk). Mary, who eventually becomes Queen after her father passes, is supposed to be the ruler of the land and to be respected. Quite the contrary that she is a straight up