The Lady in the Looking Glass

“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.

“For it was another fact—if facts were what one wanted...”

The story presents "facts” about Isabella as a means to grasp things about her that can be “known” while also suggesting that they may not be useful in the endeavor of knowing her more deeply. This statement highlights the subjectivity of understanding, and that there might be many different approaches to learning about someone, which might render very different results. This is typical of the narrator’s self-conscious tone, which reminds the reader of the text as construct.

“Sometimes it seemed as if they knew more about her than we, who sat on them, wrote at them, and trod on them so carefully, were allowed to know.”

Isabella’s home furnishings are personified. Here, they are attributed as knowing more than the narrator about Isabella. This situates the narrator as a character within the narrative, a person who interacts with Isabella. It also parallels the scene of the narrator in the room alone with an image of Isabella in the same room alone at another time, past or present. This highlights the unknowableness of the individual, and the centrality of their experience.

“Isabella had known many people, had had many friends; and thus if one had the audacity to open a drawer and read her letters, one would find the traces of many agitations, of appointments to meet, of upbraidings for not having met, long letters of intimacy and affection, violent letters of jealousy and reproach, terrible final words of parting.”

One of the narrator’s major imaginings about Isabella is that she has known many people and lived a life full of passionate relationships and friendships. This speculation represents the unclear distinction between perception and reality as explored in the story’s core theme.

“Under the stress of thinking about Isabella, her room become more shadowy and symbolic; the corners seemed darker, the legs of chairs and tables more spindly and hieroglyphic.”

The narrator displays more qualities of a character in the narrative, as they fall under stress after such deep contemplation about Isabella. This also serves as a meta-narration, as the details of the story become “shadowy and symbolic” because of the lack of clear distinction between perceptions and reality.

“They lay there invested with a new reality and significance and with a greater heaviness, too, as if it would have needed a chisel to dislodge them from the table. And, whether it was fancy or not, they seemed to have become not merely a handful of casual letters but to be tablets graven with eternal truth—if one could read them, one would know everything there was to be known about Isabella, yes, and about life, too. The pages inside those marble-looking envelopes must be cut deep and scored thick with meaning.”

Due to a lack of knowledge about Isabella’s inner life, the letters delivered by the postman tempt the narrator as a source of learning more about her. Rather than mere casual letters, they are believed to be stone tablets of deep meaning. Such stone tablets usually contain a deep meaning about life, a religious text, or an eternal truth. It is as though gaining the smallest insight into Isabella’s mind and life would be as revealing as an eternal truth.

“The thought served as a challenge. Isabella did not wish to be known—but should no longer escape. It was absurd, it was monstrous. If she concealed so much and knew so much one must prize her open with the first tool that came to mind—the imagination.”

Isabella is compared to her belongings. Just as her letters are hidden away, her inner existence is also under lock and key. The narrator imagines that the only way to “pry” her open is to do what one does with a letter. In this case, the imagination is being used to speculate about her life, bringing to light that perception and reality are indeed at odds with each other in the narrative.

“One must put oneself in her shoes. If one took the phrase literally, it was easy to see the shoes in which she stood, down in the lower garden, at this moment. They were long and narrow and fashionable—they were made of the softest and most flexible leather. Like everything she wore, they were exquisite.”

Isabella’s clothing, and her shoes in particular, are one of the only physical attributes of hers that are visible to the narrator from their vantage point and reflection in the looking glass. The realist detail of the shoes is a parody of realist literature: The description is interesting to a point but ultimately, the story suggests, reveals nothing about Isabella except the nature of her shoes.

“The sun would beat down on her face, into her eyes; but no, at the critical moment, a veil of cloud covered the sun, making the expression of her eyes doubtful—was it mocking or tender, brilliant or dull?”

Just as a view into Isabella’s eyes is at hand, nature seems to conceal her once again as though it is her ally. Two very opposite expressions are juxtaposed, further complicating any truth that could be gleaned about her from the scene.

“At the mention of those words it became obvious, surely, that she must be happy. She was rich; she was distinguished; she had many friends; she travelled—she bought rugs in Turkey and blue pots in Persia.”

The narrator shows that it is possible to confidently claim that Isabella is happy based on the fact that she is rich, but that it is a superficial way of judging her lived experience.

“To cut an overgrown branch saddened her because it had once lived, and life was dear to her. Yes, and at the same time the fall of the branch would suggest to her how she must die herself and all the futility and evanescence of things.”

The story moves here in tone from contemplation toward sadness and regret. This passage prefigures the shocking description of Isabella as an old woman at the end.

“At last there she was in the hall. She stopped dead. She stood by the table. She stood perfectly still. At once the looking glass began to pour over her a light that seemed to fix her; that seemed like some acid to bite off the unessential and superficial to leave only the truth. It was an enthralling spectacle. Everything dropped from her—clouds, dress, basket, diamond—all that one called the creeper and convolvulus.”

The rising action brings the reader to finally seeing Isabella face to face in the looking glass. The narrative peels away the things that surround her, leaving a “truth” of what can be seen in the mirror. The physical truth of the mirror, however, is reductive, and cannot capture all those things that are expressive of Isabella in her mind or the mind of others.