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Isabella Tyson
The narrator is never named and their gender and relationship to Isabella is unknown—in fact, it’s not even completely clear that the narrator is human, since they are never visible, they never interact physically with the room, and Isabella seems not to notice them when she returns from the garden. Despite this lack of information, the entirety of the story is told through the narrator’s perspective. The narrator sits in Isabella’s drawing room and observes her and her home, both in the looking-glass and in their own imagination. Their opinion of Isabella is at times respectful and almost reverent. As the narrator looks at Isabella’s furniture, for example, they imagine her traveling bravely in the “most obscure corners of the world” to collect beautiful objects for her home. At other times, however, the narrator seems disdainful of Isabella, and they eventually come to the conclusion that, despite her material wealth, she has “no thoughts” and “no friends.” It is not clear what, exactly, causes these shifts in opinion, though it’s possible they are related to the narrator’s own feelings—awe or jealousy—about Isabella’s material wealth. Whatever this inconsistency comes from, it does help underscore the theme that appearances do not necessarily tell the entire story of who a character is. Though the narrator spends the entire story observing Isabella and her home, in the end, their observations may tell readers more about the narrator than about Isabella herself.
The Narrator Quotes in The Lady in the Looking Glass
The The Lady in the Looking Glass quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Lady in the Looking Glass
Quotes
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. One could not help looking, that summer afternoon, in the long glass that hung outside in the hall.
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But, outside, the looking-glass reflected the hall table, the sun-flowers, the garden path so accurately and so fixedly that they seemed held there in their reality unescapably.
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Such comparisons are worse than idle and superficial—they are cruel even, for they come like the convolvulus itself trembling between one’s eyes and the truth. There must be truth; there must be a wall.
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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.
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If she concealed so much and knew so much one must prize her open with the first tool that came to hand—the imagination.
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It was her profounder state of being that one wanted to catch and turn to words, the state that is to the mind what breathing is to the body, what one calls happiness or unhappiness.
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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 and to leave only the truth. It was an enthralling spectacle.
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People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms.
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The Narrator Quotes in The Lady in the Looking Glass
The The Lady in the Looking Glass quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Lady in the Looking Glass
Quotes
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. One could not help looking, that summer afternoon, in the long glass that hung outside in the hall.
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Explanation and Analysis:
But, outside, the looking-glass reflected the hall table, the sun-flowers, the garden path so accurately and so fixedly that they seemed held there in their reality unescapably.
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Such comparisons are worse than idle and superficial—they are cruel even, for they come like the convolvulus itself trembling between one’s eyes and the truth. There must be truth; there must be a wall.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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.
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If she concealed so much and knew so much one must prize her open with the first tool that came to hand—the imagination.
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It was her profounder state of being that one wanted to catch and turn to words, the state that is to the mind what breathing is to the body, what one calls happiness or unhappiness.
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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 and to leave only the truth. It was an enthralling spectacle.
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People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms.
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