Mirror- Sylvia Plath Flashcards
Summary of Mirror
- In this poem, a mirror describes its existence and its owner, who grows older as the mirror watches.
- The mirror first describes itself as “silver and exact.” It forms no judgments, instead merely swallowing what it sees and reflecting that image back without any alteration. The mirror is not cruel, “only truthful.” It considers itself a four-cornered eye of a god, which sees everything for what it is.
- Most of the time, the mirror looks across the empty room and meditates on the pink speckled wall across from it. It has looked at that wall for so long that it describes the wall as “part of my heart.” The image of the wall is interrupted only by people who enter to look at themselves and the darkness that comes with night.
- The mirror imagines itself as a lake. A woman looks into it, trying to discern who she really is by gazing at her reflection. Sometimes, the woman prefers to look at herself in candlelight or moonlight, but these are “liars” because they mask her true appearance. Only the mirror (existing here as lake) gives her a faithful representation of herself.
- Because of this honesty, the woman cries and wrings her hands. Nevertheless, she cannot refrain from visiting the mirror over and over again, every morning. Over the years, the woman has “drowned a young girl” in the mirror, and now sees in her reflection an old woman growing older by the day. This old woman rises toward her out of the mirror like “a terrible fish.”
First Analysis
Context and Content
- In this short but beloved poem, the narrator is a wall mirror in what is likely a woman’s bedroom. The mirror is personified - that is, it is endowed with human traits. It is able to recognize monotony, commenting on the regularity of the wall that it reflects most of the time. Further, while it does not offer moral judgment, it is able to observe and understand its owner (the woman) as she grapples with the reality of aging.
Compared to most of the others in Plath’s oeuvre, this poem is not particularly difficult to analyze. Though the speaker is a mirror, the subjects are time and appearance. The woman struggles with the loss of her beauty, admitting each day that she is growing older. Though the woman occasionally deludes herself with the flattering “liars” candlelight and moonlight, she continually returns to the mirror for the truth. The woman needs the mirror to provide her with an objective, unadulterated reflection of self, even though it is often discomfiting, causing her “tears and an agitation of hands.” The mirror is well aware of how important it is to the woman, which evokes the Greek myth of Narcissus, in which a young man grows so transfixed with his own reflection that he dies.
Second Analysis
Context and Content
- Some critics have speculated that the woman is vexed by more than her changing physical appearance. They posit that the woman is observing her mind, her soul, and her psyche, stripped of any guile or obfuscation. By seeing her true self, she becomes aware of the distinction between her exterior and interior lives. In other words, she might be meditating on the distinction between a “false” outer self of appearance, and a “true” inner self. After Plath’s 1963 suicide, many critics examined the writer’s different facets, contrasting her put-together, polite, and decorous outer self with her raging, explosively-creative inner self. Perhaps Plath is exploring this dichotomy in “Mirror.” The slippery and unnerving “fish” in the poem may represent that unavoidable, darker self that cannot help but challenge the socially acceptable self.
Third Analysis
Content
- The critic Jo Gill writes of “Mirror” that even as the mirror straightforwardly describes itself as “silver and exact,” it feels compelled to immediately qualify itself. Gill writes, “as the poem unfolds we see that this hermetic antonym may be a deceptive facade masking the need for communion and dialogue.” The mirror actually dominates and interprets its world, and thus has a lot more power than it seems to suggest. It does not merely reflect what it sees, but also shapes those images for our understanding. Gill notes that the poem is catoptric, meaning that it describes while it represents its own structure; this is down through the use of two nine-line stanzas which are both symmetrical, and indicative of opposition.
Final Analysis
Conclusion
- The second stanza is significant because it, as Gill explains, “exposes…the woman’s need of the mirror [and] the mirror’s need of the woman.” When the mirror has nothing but the wall to stare at, the world is truthful, objective, factual, and “exact,” but when the woman comes into view, the world becomes messy, unsettling, complicated, emotional, and vivid. Thus, the mirror is “no longer a boundary but a limninal and penetrable space.” It reflects more than an image - it reflects its own desires and understanding about the world.
- Overall, “Mirror” is a melancholy and even bitter poem that exemplifies the tensions between inner and outer selves, as well as indicates the preternaturally feminine “problem” of aging and losing one’s beauty.
Line
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
- The speaker of this poem is a mirror. It begins by saying that it does not have a preconceived idea of what it’s looking at: it will take in and reflect exactly what it sees, and will not be affected by how much it hates or loves you. The mirror reflects the truth.
This line, and the poem as a whole, could also reflect the numbness that resulted from Plath’s severe depression: she became unable to feel anything, let alone love or hate anything.
- This line, and the poem as a whole, could also reflect the numbness that resulted from Plath’s severe depression: she became unable to feel anything, let alone love or hate anything.
^While “The Bell Jar” paints a vivid image of (what is said to be) Sylvia Plath’s own psyche, we cannot safely assume that this poem holds any empirical import. That is an English faux-pas. Note the irony in that I just followed the word “English” with a French phrase…
Line
I am not cruel, only truthful—
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
- The mirror is saying how it will never lie. Nothing the mirror says is personal and everything the mirror will say is what the person looking in already knows.
- The mirror is being compared to the eye of a god. It sees people for what they really are.
Like God, the mirror is omniscient, as it is able to see and reflect the truth. You can’t hide yourself from its gaze.
The lack of a capitalization in “god” suggests that it could even be any god, not just God Himself.
Line
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
- These lines continue to anthropomorphize the mirror, i.e. give it human qualities. The mirror is given a heart, and is able to form abstract thoughts and meditate.
“Flickers” and “Faces and darkness separate us over and over” gives us the image of faces coming to the mirror, looking at themselves, then turning off the lights and leaving the mirror alone in the darkness. over and over.
The flickering of faces and darkness may also convey rapid passing of time; as the woman ages from a ‘young girl’ to an ‘old woman’.
Line
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
- The mirror has changed its form from an enduring wall into the essentially transient horizontal lake. A change in visual state is only possible for the omnipresent mirror. This change of state alludes to the overarching theme effect of senescence on youth.
Richardson, Donna. “Plath’s MIRROR.” Explicator 49.3 (1991): 195. ProQuest. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
Plath alludes here to the myth of Echo and Narcissus, showing how people can become obsessed with searching for themselves in a mirror–as Narcissus became obsessed with his own reflection in a lake.
- People look for emotional qualities as well as physical qualities in a mirror.
Line
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
- Candlelight and moonlight are both romanticized light sources, soft and flattering.
The speaker is suggesting that the candles and the moon do not provide real light, therefore the mirror distorts the image reflecting back. They are personified as liars because they do not allow the truthful image to be shown.
Line
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
- The woman relies on the mirror. The fact that she cries suggests she is disappointed by the way she looks, and ‘agitation of hands’ also reveals she is worried by the changes in her appearance as she grows older.
Line
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
- When the woman looks into the mirror, she wants to see her beauty from years past. However she is not able to because the mirror is simply truthful and can’t bring back the young girl who once looked in.
“Like a terrible fish” is a simile through which the woman is reflected as her current age, rather than the beautiful young girl she once was. The comparison illustrates the horror the woman feels in growing old.
She may also be saying that the woman has wasted her life as a narcissist, spending large amounts of time peering at her reflection, and becomes distraught as she realizes that her beauty is fading.
- Perhaps the ‘terrible fish’ simile expresses the physical similarities between an old woman and a fish: gaping mouth empty of teeth, ugly and bald and perhaps suffering breathing difficulties.
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Water Analysis
Color, light, and Darkness Analysis
Reflection Analysis
Form and Meter Analysis
Speaker Analysis
Setting Analysis
Sound Check Analysis
Title Analysis
Calling Cards Analysis
More Info Analysis
http://www.shmoop.com/mirror-sylvia-plath/trivia.html
