When Ruth dies, before she stops the clock, Sipsey covers a mirror up. Why would she do this?
In Judaism, this is a custom when sitting shivah, that mirrors are covered up all over the house. Now, I know Jessica Tandy famously played an elderly Jew in Driving Miss Daisy, but is Ruth also supposed to be Jewish here?
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
In the many times I have watched this film, I always figured Sipsey covering the mirror was an old tradition, either in the South or otherwise. I have heard of it as the Jewish tradition in sitting shivah. Perhaps it is or has become more widespread as well. Or the writers/producers included it to give a wider cultural comment on death traditions.
You also may have noticed that Sipsey also stopped the pendulum clock. This notes the time of death for recording later. But it also is an old tradition in many cultures as a metaphor that time has stopped for the deceased and those who grieve (at least for the moment, until the pain of fresh grief has passed on a little).
There are old beliefs pertaining to these death customs that the spirit of the dead person will stop to admire themselves in the mirror, or stop to look at the time, and they will linger in the house instead of moving on to the afterlife.
Some years ago I was reading one of Leslie Rule's books about ghosts, and she wrote about a family from I think the late 1800s, where some neighbors went over one morning to visit, and the whole family had been butchered in their sleep, and somebody had covered every mirror in the house before the neighbors got there.
The gypsies do that because it stops there souls from getting caught up in reflective surfaces like mirrors, glasses and any other surface
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