Appearances and Materialism Theme Analysis

In “The Lady in the Looking-glass: A Reflection,” Woolf questions a literary convention of the Edwardian Era in which authors would describe a character by describing, at length, the physical objects they owned. In the process of questioning this convention, she also explores whether having beautiful things can actually make a person happy, and, more generally, the nature of the connection between a person’s material possessions and their inner emotional state. Though the narrator observes that Isabella Tyson is surrounded by beautiful objects, these objects don’t actually tell the narrator or the reader very much about Isabella. Thus, in telling this story, Woolf challenges both the Edwardian method of describing a character’s possessions to tell readers who they are and the idea that physical riches necessarily lead to a rich inner life, suggesting instead that they might actually lead to emptiness and jealousy.

In Edwardian-era literature, writers commonly provided lengthy descriptions of a character’s possessions, which were thought to offer insight into who that character truly was. Woolf implicitly challenges this idea by extensively describing Isabella’s home and belongings and then showing how these superficial things cannot actually reveal who Isabella is. In her essay “Modern Fiction,” Woolf had previously explored the theory that, while detailed descriptions may provide “an air of probability,” describing specific physical details like the buttons on a piece of clothing does not necessarily bring a story to life. In the essay, she questions whether stories that are so focused on objects and physical details are really life-like, arguing instead that a person’s inner world and the way they experience life is much more complex and nebulous than a simple list of possessions might suggest. In this story, Woolf takes a similar jab at the Edwardian obsession with physical details, this time employing a bit of humorous personification. Throughout the story, she describes the objects in Isabella’s house as borderline human, having “passions and rages and envies and sorrows [...] like a human being,” and saying the air moves through the open windows “like human breath.” She claims these objects know Isabella in a way the people in her life cannot, but the claim is clearly satirical, drawing attention to the fact that things like chairs and rugs cannot actually “know” someone at all. In this way, Woolf expands on the idea from her essay, demonstrating the absurdity of thinking that a chair or a particular style of shoe can actually tell readers something about a character. She further highlights this absurdity by having the narrator admit that, despite the fact that so many of Isabella’s possessions are visible, it’s difficult to know much about her. Therefore, rather than shedding light on Isabella’s inner world, the extensive descriptions of her possessions in this story seem to be mostly a distraction.

The possessions themselves may be a distraction, too—as the story suggests, these external riches do not necessarily lead to inner riches like happiness and peace for Isabella, and they may even bring her unhappiness. The descriptions of Isabella's house and belongings are sumptuous and elegant, but the narrator’s final description of her gives the rest of her life a bleaker cast. Rather than leading a rich and friend-filled life, the narrator suggests that perhaps Isabella “care[s] for nobody” and is “perfectly empty.” This suggests that, in the end, Isabella may have filled her home with beautiful objects only to fill a void in herself, using material possessions as a distraction from her loneliness and unhappiness. The narrator’s assertion that the letters are actually all unopened bills makes this even more tragic by implying that Isabella may not be able to pay for these nice things. If this is true, not only do these objects not bring Isabella happiness, but they also lead to her financial ruin. This further highlights the potential gulf between the happiness that possessions might seem to indicate and the possible darker truth of Isabella's inner state.

Yet it is ultimately unclear whether Isabella is actually happy or unhappy, despite what the narrator seems to decide. Even so, what is clear is that the narrator takes pleasure in seeing their initial image of Isabella crumble. This mean-spiritedness seems to suggest an additional drawback of materialism: jealousy that can morph into cruelty. When the narrator sees, in the looking-glass, what they imagine to be Isabella’s terrible “truth,” they call it an “enthralling spectacle,” and they seem to enjoy watching their perfect image of Isabella fall apart. The narrator's description of Isabella’s final reflection in the looking-glass is unsparing to the point of cruelty: she is “old and angular, veined and lined,” with a “wrinkled neck,” “no friends” and “no thoughts.” This harsh description feels almost vindictive, further supporting the idea that the narrator may be taking pleasure in Isabella’s pain. Because of this cruel attitude, when the narrator says that Isabella seems to stand “naked in that pitiless light,” it may actually be the narrator’s judgement that is pitiless, rather than the literal light itself. It’s possible, then, that this final description of Isabella says more about the narrator and their jealousy than it does about Isabella herself. In this way, the narrator’s initial admiration of Isabella’s material wealth may have evolved into jealousy throughout the story’s course, making them eager to seize upon any evidence—even thin or completely imaginary evidence—that this wealth has not made her happy.

Thus, regardless of whether the narrator’s verdict on Isabella’s inner life is accurate, the story does demonstrate how materialism reflects an inner emptiness: either Isabella filling an emotional void with meaningless things, or the narrator dwelling on their jealousy of Isabella because of a dissatisfaction with their own life. What’s more, by showing how the narrator’s fixation on Isabella’s material objects tells readers nothing about who this woman really is, Woolf makes an effective case that—contrary to Edwardian literary conventions—appearances do not provide a reliable source of information about literary characters.