17 pages • 34 minutes read
Mirror
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Themes
Societal Expectation
The poem’s central theme is the idea of physical appearance; specifically, the relationship the woman in the poem has with her own appearance. The expectation the world has for what the woman should be frames both the woman’s relationship with her appearance and her relationship with her own emotions. In the first stanza, the wall of the girl’s room is described as “pink, with speckles” (Line 7). This color is traditionally associated with young girls and the image they’re expected to project onto the world. As the girl becomes a woman, she leaves the pink room behind and searches for something more.
Although the mirror protests that it is “exact” (Line 1), “not cruel, only truthful” (Line 4), the woman instinctively knows that what she sees is not the whole story. Instead, she finds herself “[s]earching [her] reaches for what she really is” (Line 11). The mirror is not as objective as it pretends. It only reflects the surface of a person—the face shown to the outside world. Here the mirror becomes a metaphor for society as a whole. While the woman understands that what she’s seeing isn’t the real truth, her reflection is still “important to her” (Line 15) because it’s what determines her place in society.
The disconnect between internal truth and the emergence of old age also suggests a societal pressure to remain young and beautiful. As the “young girl” of her youth fades away (Line 17), the woman feels she has become inherently less valuable. This is in spite of the accumulated wisdom and experience of old age; the value society places on a woman is determined by her youthful appearance. Despite the mirror’s belief that it expresses the whole and objective truth, in reality it is only expressing a small piece of the truth, the piece that has been bestowed power beyond proportion because of the hollow expectations of society. The “unmisted” views of the mirror (Line 3) are therefore every bit as subjective and damaging as those of the wider world.
Mortality and Aging
A central theme of “Mirror” is leaving youth behind and coming to terms with maturity. In the first stanza, the mirror looks upon a pink, speckled wall—this image suggests the room of a young girl rather than a woman. It is implied that the girl doesn’t spend much time with the mirror; instead, the mirror spends most of its time staring at the wall with only the occasional interlude of “Faces and darkness” (Line 9) passing in between. The girl is presented impersonally here, as something featureless, which suggests the mirror hasn’t yet developed a relationship with her. By extension, this means the girl hasn’t yet developed the same intrinsic awareness of her own appearance that she will be beholden to later on.
In the second stanza, the girl has become a woman and a more fully formed character. The woman “search[es]” (Line 11) the mirrored surface, looking for a truth that is in conflict with what she sees. This illustrates a disconnect between the woman and her encroaching mortality, a sense that it must not be real. The penultimate line, “In me she has drowned a young girl” (Line 17), reveals the true nature of the conflict, which is followed by the reference to the old woman rising steadily and unstoppably toward her. The reference to drowning represents a metaphorical death, and the drowning of the girl makes room for the literal death of the woman that must eventually follow.
The two mirrored stanzas juxtapose the contrasting attitudes the character has toward aging and mortality: in the first, the young girl barely notices it as she lives with the certainty that her youth will last forever. In the second, the woman lives in constant fear of its looming presence. The fish represents the inevitability of old age and the tragic futility of the woman’s fear.
Femininity and the Natural World
Between the two stanzas, there is a juxtaposition not only of youth and maturity but of an indoor setting and an outdoor one. The first stanza takes place in a young girl’s room, with a painted wall and a manmade mirror that sits opposite. In the second stanza, however, the scene shifts to a symbolic outdoor space through metaphor, where the artificial mirror becomes a body of water—an extension of the natural world.
This progression suggests a parallel progression between the artifice of youth and the more natural expression of maturity. As the woman slowly comes into the truth of her own being, she also experiences a new relationship with the natural world. This can be seen as symbolic on a few levels: It brings to mind the way women are seen as being closer to nature than men; literature and cultural attitudes often personify the natural world as feminine, and humans even refer to this world as a whole as “Mother Nature.” However, the second stanza shows a discord between the woman and the natural world—they are presented as at odds with each other. This discord is the foundation of the contemporary beauty industry and represents a fundamental rupture in the way women see themselves as they age. They take steps to hold back the tide of mortality, going directly against the natural order of the world.
As the poem closes, the woman sees her older self rising toward her “like a terrible fish” (Line 18). Although it’s presented as an antagonistic force, her old age is still immersed within the natural world and a symbol of nature itself. The woman acknowledges this extended piece of her being, but she futilely tries to distance herself from it, thereby creating a tragic disconnect within the self.
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