Mirror by Sylvia Plath — Central Idea/Main Theme/ Appearance and Ageing

 

Sylvia Plath’s poem has her hallmark stamp of powerful language, sharp imagery and dark undertones. Together with unusual syntax, no obvious rhyme or meter and an astute use of enjambment, “Mirror ” is a personification poem of great depth.

This poem is all about appearances and the search for the self. The fact that the mirror is the voice and has the starring role is a little odd, but Sylvia Plath wanted to show just how powerful an object the mirror is in people's lives. In particular, she wanted to highlight the issue that some females have with their image, and the inner turmoil that can be caused as the aging process picks up its pace. The poet's own struggle for a stable identity only adds to the idea that the face in the mirror must stay young, pretty and perfect.

The poem describes a woman seeing herself growing older and older in a mirror each day—or, more accurately, it describes a personified mirror looking on as the women’s youth fades. The woman clearly resents getting older and losing her beauty and youth—two important social currencies for women living in a male-dominated society, especially in Plath’s day. The poem thus illustrates the anguish of aging, as the woman confronts her mortality in the mirror each morning.

Whereas the first stanza concentrates on the exact truthfulness of the mirror and its ability to reflect precisely, the second stanza sees a transition: the mirror becomes a liquid, it gains depth and a different dimension.

The mirror describes itself as the eye of a little god. Like a god, the mirror sees things exactly as they are. The mirror has no intentions of its own; it has no desire to make the woman feel bad about herself. It does not exist to flatter or insult, but only to reflect appearances truthfully. The woman, on the other hand, experiences the mirror’s objectivity as a pointed reminder of her own mortality. As time passes, she ages and becomes further removed from her youth while getting ever closer to death. The mirror is important to the woman, perhaps because women in particular are so often expected to conform to rigid standards of beauty and youth. Unfortunately, then, the very parts of the woman that patriarchal society deems most valuable are also the parts of her that have a time stamp; they are quickly fading.

The poem metaphorically compares the woman looking in the mirror to a woman bending over a lake to see her own reflection. When she searches for this image, she cannot find “what she really is”—that is, she does not gain a true sense of self-understanding. The fact that she is not just looking at her reflection in the lake, but “searching [its] reaches” speaks to her longing to find out something important about herself—something the poem implies cannot be found in the mirror, no matter how carefully she looks.