The Looking-Glass Symbol Analysis

The titular looking-glass that hangs in Isabella’s hall represents the difficulty of discerning truth based on appearance alone. Throughout the story, the narrator views Isabella’s home through the looking-glass, using the details visible in the glass (cabinets, rugs, the garden path) to imagine what Isabella and her life must be like. However, Woolf casts doubt on whether the details reflected in the glass can reveal anything true or definitive about who Isabella is. For one, the mirror always sees a limited and distorted view of the world. The narrator often describes the rim cutting off details and making parts of the house (and, for a while, Isabella herself) invisible. Furthermore, even what’s visible isn’t necessarily accurately reflected; when the postman comes to deposit letters, for instance, his reflection is initially so mangled that he’s not even legible as human. Aside from the concerns about the mirror’s incomplete and distorted reflection of reality, the details that the mirror does clearly reflect have ambiguous meaning. For example, the narrator sees the letters on Isabella’s table and initially assumes that they’re evidence of her many fascinating friends. Later on, based solely on Isabella not immediately opening the letters, the narrator decides that, actually, the letters are bills and Isabella has no friends. Of course, without seeing the contents of the letters, the narrator (and, by extension, the reader) cannot know which assumption (if either) is true. The mirror, however, can only give access to the surface details of Isabella’s life—such as the envelopes that contain the letters—which remain ambiguous and misleading.

Finally, Woolf depicts the mirror itself as somewhat menacing. The story opens and closes with the advice that “people shouldn’t leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms.” While at first this seems to be a warning about allowing others to see intimate details of one’s life, by the end this statement is more ambiguous, since it’s not clear that the mirror does give access to any truth about who Isabella is. Instead, the mirror seems to have distorted the image of her life in a way that Woolf describes as almost violent; it strips the life from her and her world. Near the beginning of the story, the narrator contrasts the liveliness of the drawing room with the stillness reflected in the mirror. The air flowing through the drawing room is like “breath” and the room seems to experience a range of emotions, making it almost human. By contrast, the mirror reflects a world that is “fixed,” “still,” and without any breath at all. The mirror, in other words, seems to kill life by making it into an image—something the mirror does to Isabella at the story’s end. When she finally appears in full view of the mirror, the reflection seems to “fix” her (or to preserve her in that moment) and reveal the cruel truth of her essence: that she has no thoughts or friends. However, even as the mirror gives the appearance of showing the truth, by this point the mirror lacks credibility: its reflection has been described as limited, distorted, superficial, and deadening, so why should the reader believe this final reflection? By demonstrating the disconnect between image and reality, the mirror also makes an implicit commentary on the project of realist literature, which purports to reflect reality as-is back to its audience, promising access to truth via descriptions of people and objects. Because the mirror’s reflections of Isabella and her home do not seem to reveal any inner truth about Isabella, the story ends up questioning whether this project of reflecting reality through a realist novel is even possible—thus also questioning whether realist literature is ultimately effective at leading to a true understanding of the world.