The Lady in the Looking Glass

“People should not leave looking glasses hanging in their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime.”

The opening sentence of the story sets the tone and mood—the reader is greeted with a dry, humorous warning that introduces the subject of intimacy and privacy. It also sets the stage for the theme of Perception Versus Reality and marks the importance of the looking glass as a motif representing this theme. The narrator urges the reader to think about the looking glass at the center of the narrative with a critical eye.

“The house was empty, and one felt, since one was the only person in the drawing room, like one of those naturalists who, covered with grass and leaves, lie watching the shyest animals…”

This passage emphasizes the suggestion of voyeurism and the invasion of privacy that runs through the story. The narrator, themselves unobserved, feels free to observe and conjecture about Isabella’s belongings, and Isabella herself, in a manner that feels illicit.

“But, outside, the looking glass reflected the hall table, the sunflowers, the garden path so accurately and so fixedly that they seemed held there in their reality unescapably. It was a strange contrast—all changing here, all stillness there.”

The juxtaposition of the scene outside and inside of both stillness and movement makes it seem as though the entire scene is both in movement and stillness within the same moment. It also sets them up for comparison, fixing the two scenes as having different qualities for the reader to appreciate.