“Mirror” is a short, two-stanza poem written by Sylvia Plath in 1961. “Mirror” is an exploration of uncertain self and was probably influenced by the poem of James Merrill written under the same title.Sylvia Plath's poem has her hallmark stamp of powerful language, sharp imagery and dark undertones.

1. S. Mohan Raj M.A, B.Ed., M.Phil., (PhD)
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3. 1. Sylvia Plath – an American poet known for
her novel The Bell Jar, and poetry collections
The Colossus and Ariel.
2. Sylvia Plath was born in Boston,
Massachusetts, on October 27, 1932.
3. Plath met and married British poet Ted
Hughes, although the two later split.
4. The depressive Plath committed suicide in
1963.
5. In 1982, Plath became the first person to
win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.
6. Sylvia Plath was a gifted and troubled poet,
known for the confessional style of her work.
7. Her interest in writing emerged at an early
age, publishing a number of works, Plath
won a scholarship to Smith College in 1950.
8. In 1953 working for Mademoiselle magazine
as a guest editor.
9. Plath tried to commit suicide, having
received treatment in a mental health facility
and recovered.
10. Plath returned to Smith and finished her
degree in 1955.

4. ⁂ In 1957, Plath spent time in Massachusetts to study
with poet Robert Lowell and met fellow poet and
student Ann Sexton.
⁂ Plath returned to England in 1959.
⁂ Sylvia Plath had her first collection of poetry, The
Colossus, published in England in 1960.
⁂ That same year, she gave birth to her first child, a
daughter named Freida.
⁂ Two years later, Plath and Hughes welcomed a second
child, a son named Nicholas.
⁂ Unfortunately, the couple's marriage was failing ,
Hughes left her for another woman in 1962, Sylvia
Plath fell into a deep depression.
⁂ Struggling with her mental illness, she wrote The Bell
Jar (1963), her only novel, which was based on her
life and deals with one young woman's mental
breakdown.
⁂ Plath published the novel under the pseudonym
Victoria Lucas.
⁂ She also created the poems that would make up the
collection Ariel (1965), which was released after her
death.
⁂ Sylvia Plath committed suicide on February 11, 1963.
The story of Sylvia Plath – her
troubled life and tragic death – was
the basis for the 2003
biopic Sylvia starring Gwyneth
Paltrow in the title role.

5. Summary
1) In this poem, a mirror describes its existence and
its owner, who grows older as the mirror watches.
2) The mirror describes itself as “silver and exact.” It
figures no verdicts, as a substitute merely swallow
and reflect the image back as it is. The mirror is
loyal, “only truthful.”
3) It deem itself as a four-cornered eye of God,
which sees everything as it is.
4) Most of the time, it looks transversely the empty
room and meditates on the wall which is pink
speckled. It has looked at that wall for a long time,
it describes the wall as “part of my heart.”
5) The image of the wall is interrupted by people who
enter to look at themselves and by the darkness
that comes in the night.
6) The mirror imagines itself as a lake. A woman
looks into it, trying to discern who she really is by
gazing at her reflection.

6. 1) The mirror imagines itself as a lake. A woman
looks into it, trying to discern who she really is
by gazing at her reflection.
2) Sometimes, the woman prefers to look at herself
in candlelight or moonlight, but these are “liars”
because they mask her true appearance. Only
the mirror (existing here as lake) gives her a
faithful representation of herself.
3) Because of this honesty, the woman cries and
wrings her hands.
4) Nevertheless, she cannot refrain from visiting
the mirror every morning, over and over again.
5) Over the years, the woman has “drowned a
young girl” in the mirror, and now sees in her
reflection an old woman growing older by the
day. This old woman rises toward her out of the
mirror like “a terrible fish.”
Summary…

7. Analysis
1. A short but beloved poem, the narrator is a wall
mirror likely to be in a woman's bedroom.
2. The mirror is personified - it is endowed with
human traits. It is able to recognize monotony,
commenting on the regularity of the wall that it
reflects most of the time.
3. It is able to observe and understand its owner, she
grapples with the reality of aging. The subjects are
time and appearance.
4. The woman struggles with the loss of her beauty,
admitting each day that she is growing older. She
occasionally deludes herself with the flattering
"liars" candlelight and moonlight, but returns to the
mirror for the truth.
5. The woman needs the mirror to provide her with an
objective, unadulterated reflection. The mirror is
well aware of how important it is to the woman,
which evokes the Greek myth of Narcissus, in
which a young man grows so transfixed with his
own reflection that he dies.

8. Analysis…
1. Some critics have speculated that the woman is
vexed by more than her changing physical
appearance.
2. They posit that the woman is observing her
mind, her soul, and her psyche, stripped of any
guile or obfuscation.
3. By seeing her true self, she becomes aware of
the distinction between her exterior and interior
lives.
4. In other words, she might be meditating on the
distinction between a "false" outer self of
appearance, and a "true" inner self.
5. The slippery and unnerving "fish" in the poem
may represent that unavoidable, darker self that
cannot help but challenge the socially
acceptable self.

9. Line by line analysis:
 This poem is all about appearances and the search for the self.
 The mirror is the voice and has a role to show how powerful an object (mirror) in people's lives.
 She wanted to highlight the issue and inner turmoil caused by aging. The poet's own struggle for
a stable identity of young, pretty and perfect.
Lines 1-3
♣ Introduce the passive rectangle of silver, the glass and its shiny surface, Mirrors have no prior
knowledge of anything; they simply are. The use of the verb “swallow” suggests that the mirror has
a mouth, digest whole images instantly, like a creature.
♣ The next line emphasizes the savage nondiscriminatory nature of the mirror.
Lines 4-6
♣ This objective theme continues as the mirror reinforces the idea of neutrality–it simply tells the
story as it is, no fuss, no elaboration, no fabrication.
♣ And it is this quality of truthfulness, ‘the eye of a little god’ “meditate on the opposite wall” Like
some open-eyed, staring sage, the mirror sits contemplatively.
Lines 7-9
♣ The wall is pink, speckled, and is now an integral part of the mirror's heart, suggesting that this
silver-eyed god has gained a feminine side to its persona. Pink is associated with girlie things, but
the connection isn't that clear. There are uncertain faces coming between it, and the wall of pink. Is
the mirror losing its grip on its own reality? Are the ripples starting to affect the smooth surface?

10. The first stanza concentrates on the exact truthfulness of the mirror and the second stanza sees a
transition: the mirror becomes a liquid, it gains depth and a different dimension.
Lines 10-12
♣ With god-like, medium-shifting power, the mirror becomes a lake. In it is reflected the image of
a woman and she is bending over as one would over the surface of a lake to see the reflection.
♣ Seeing her reflection, the woman is uncertain of herself. Narcissus look into a similar lake, and
was so overcome with his own beauty, he fell in and drowned.
♣ The woman isn't interested in beauty, it seems. She realizes that she can't dwell on the past.
Lines 13-15
♣ The mirror “sees her back” the woman weeps, which pleases the mirror, perhaps because the
tears replenish the water in the lake, woman is clearly upset because of powerful memories, not all
of them positive.
Lines 16-18
♣ The mirror believes it is important to the woman, and so it appears relentlessly. The woman
looks at herself in the mirror each morning, so reliant has she become.
♣ The revelation - a shock, is that the woman's younger self is dead, drowned by her own hand.
♣ Imagine the horror of facing the mirror each morning and confronting an inner demon, which is
what the poet conveys through her poem.
♣The innocent, romantic, crazy girl floats lifeless in the water. And out of her there rises, from the
(emotional) depths, a hagfish, a monstrosity.

11. i. The critic Jo Gill writes that the mirror straightforwardly describes itself as "silver and exact," it
feels compelled to immediately qualify itself.
ii. Gill further writes, "as the poem unfolds we see that this hermetic antonym may be a deceptive
facade masking the need for communion and dialogue."
iii. The mirror actually dominates and interprets its world, and thus has a lot more power than it
seems to suggest. It does not merely reflect what it sees, but also shapes those images for our
understanding.
iv. The poem is catoptrics, i.e. it describes while it represents its own structure; this is down
through the use of two nine-line stanzas which are both symmetrical, and indicative of
opposition.
v. The second stanza is significant because, “exposes...the woman's need of the mirror [and] the
mirror's need of the woman.”
vi. When the mirror has nothing but the wall to stare at, the world is truthful, objective, factual, and
"exact," but when the woman comes into view, the world becomes messy, unsettling,
complicated, emotional, and vivid.
vii. Thus, the mirror is no longer a boundary but a luminal and penetrable space.
viii. It reflects more than an image - it reflects its own desires and understanding about the world.
ix. Overall, "Mirror" is a melancholy and even bitter poem that exemplifies the tensions between
inner and outer selves, as well as indicates the preternaturally feminine "problem" of aging and
losing one's beauty.
A Study between the lines

12. i. “Mirror” is a short, two-stanza poem written in 1961. Sylvia Plath was living in England with
her fellow poet and husband, Ted Hughes, and she had already given birth to their first child,
Frieda.
ii. This was a stressful time for Plath. As a first-time mother, she was on the way toward
fulfilling her love for her partner, but deep inside she dreaded the idea of ever growing old
and settling down.
iii. As a teenager, she wrote in her journal: "Somehow I have to keep and hold the rapture of
being seventeen. Every day is so precious. I feel infinitely sad at the thought of all this time
melting farther and farther away from me as I grow older.”
iv. And again, later: “I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from
cooking three meals a day–spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote.”
v. “Mirror” is an exploration of this uncertain self and was probably influenced by the poem of
James Merrill under the same title.
vi. 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.
A Study beyond the lines

13. What are the Literary Elements Used in “Mirror”?
“Mirror” consists of two stanzas that reflect each other, contain no obvious end
rhymes or steady beat, no closure, certainty or order in the stylistic choices. The poet has made
features that are perhaps reflective of her emotional state, end each line with a different word,
virtually unrelated in sound or texture. It's free verse, yet with so many periods (end stops, full
stops) and limited enjambment, that the text almost resembles dialogue from a play.
Personification
“Mirror” is a personification poem, the poet has given the mirror a first-person voice.
It is direct, objective and open. It has personality. This device allows the mirror to address the
reader at a personal level. Remember a similar mirror in the fairytale Sleeping Beauty, where the
vain, Wicked Queen looks in to her mirror to ask, “Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest
of them all?” In a sense, Plath is asking the same question, but never receive a flattering answer.
Metaphor
In the first stanza the mirror declares, The eye of a little god, four-cornered. So the
mirror becomes the eye of a little god, metaphorically speaking. And at the second stanza (Now I
am a lake) the poet uses metaphor again, as the mirror becomes deep, reflective water.
Simile
The final few words (like a terrible fish) constitute a simile.

14. Why Was the Poem "Mirror" Written?
While it is impossible to say exactly
why Plath wrote “Mirror”, there's no reason
to believe her motive for writing this poem
was any different from that of her other
poems: to express abstract emotions and a
state of mind that cannot easily be captured
in prose.
While "Mirror," written in 1961,
just two years before the poet's suicide,
likely contains many autobiographical
elements that have to do with her difficult
life, the poem has merit beyond a mere
confessional. It is a compelling work of art,
and a remarkable piece of literature.
"Mirror" was not published for
another 10 years after Plath's death, when it
appeared in Plath's book Crossing the
Water, published by Ted Hughes
posthumously.