Mirror

--Sylvia Plath

About the Poet

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. She was
married to British Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes until 1962 when Ted Hughes separated from her
to start a relationship with her friend Assia Wevill. Plath is credited with advancing the genre of
confessional poetry and is best-known for her two collections The Colossus and Other Poems
and Ariel. Mirror was privately and posthumously published by the Tragara Press in 1961.

Read
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
 
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Learner’s Tip: The poem works with two images that initially at least seem distinct from one
another. The first is the image of “silver”. A mirror is silvered on one side owing to which it is
able to reflect. The poet seems to be comparing herself to an inert and absorbing surface such
as silver. In saying that she has “no preconceptions”, there seems to be a helplessness and
sense of loss that she seems to be communicating. A diffidence that women feel because of
the contradictory expectations that man and society have from them is communicated in the
assertion that she “swallow[s] immediately” whatever it is that she is required to see or
experience.

Her assertion that she is not cruel, but only truthful, says that she sees herself as the eye of the
Cross--the four-cornered god. Note that she does not spell god with a caiptal g. Perhaps, god
too has been belittled by man’s inability to give a woman her due, to recognise her equality
with man. The helplessness and sense of pain are evidenced again in her blank contemplation
of the wall—it seems as if the woman in her has been driven up against a wall. The only
colour she is able to see is spotted pink—perhaps the colour of her skin. Having been reduced
to no more than mere skin and flesh for eons, it is natural that she sees herself as such, but in
having lived with such a perception, it has also been transformed into a cocoon. Therefore, it
is close to her heart. This identification and closeness does not last—the intrusion of darkness,
of men in this darkness estranges her own skin from herself.

The second image the poem moves to is that of a “lake”. It is what the poet sees herself as. In
being a lake, she again works as a mirror for the woman who seeks to gauge and understand
herself by trying to comprehend the depth of another. The woman who comes to the poet for a
reflection of herself sees the woman in the poet as the only viable origin of the meaning of her
own existence.

The candle and the moon are liars, for by their light woman may only see her appearance, but
in the lake and in the mirror that promise to be truthful and honest she may see “what she
really is”. The relationship described between herself and the woman who seeks to find herself
in her is symbiotic—the poet too feels “important” and wanted with her. Therefore, it is the
woman’s face that is the true sun to her. It is that which dispels the darkness of the night for
her.

The young girl that the woman was and the old woman she will be are all absorbed in the
amniotic comfort another woman provides. Here, she is the poet herself. In her, the silver of
the mirror and the lake come home.
Read and Answer
Answer the following questions based on the poem.

1. Why do you think the poet says :

I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Is it only because she compares herself to a mirror? If so, then why do you think she
makes such a comparison?

2. A mirror is seen as an inert reflecting surface. What does the comparison with the mirror
with the poet then imply?

3. As a mirror, she also calls herself the “eye of a little god”. If the mirror is only an inert
object with which she finds some similarity, why does she call herself the eye of a god?
Is it because, as a mirror, she has access to a point of view, and has the power to reflect,
and even invert?

4. Women come to the poet who is both the mirror and the lake. She reflects them truthfully
and they reward her with their tears. Why is this relationship of such importance to both
the poet and the women?

Or

In the first stanza, the speaker is ‘silver’, a part of a mirror. In the second stanza, the
speaker is a ‘lake’. Both of these things are reflecting surfaces. Why do you think the
poet chooses these symbols? Why does she shift from one symbol to another?
Is there any change in diction as we move from one stanza to another? Look at the choice
of words the poet makes and point out the change in diction and tone? Why do you think
this change occurs?
Find lines from the poem which reveal the identity of she who comes to the lake and to
the mirror

5. The poet has called herself the eye of a god and in the second stanza she compares the
woman’s face with the sun that dispels the darkness of the night every morning. Do you
see an inversion of power makeup here? Although she is just a silent mirror and a placid
lake, she has the power to give identity to he/she who looks into her. The agitated woman
may be in tears, she may be confused about who she is, but she is yet the sun who is far
greater than the liar that the candle and the moon can be. What sort of empowerment do
 you see taking place here? What is the poet fighting, on behalf of herself and of the other
women who seek her?

6. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Brought up to believe that being beautiful in a certain way is a duty, women have been
led to dread age and the physical alterations that accompany it. The myth and the fabled
figure of the mermaid, youthful and beautiful, have always been cherished by women. Do
you think the “terrible fish” is the aged mermaid that every woman, torn by society’s
standards, dreads being reduced to?

Working with Words

Metonymy and Synecdoche
Read this line, taken from the poem, carefully.

I am silver and exact.

In the above sentence, silver stands for a mirror. This association is brought about by the use of a
reference to a part for a reference to the whole. Here, silver, which is used for purposes of
coating in order to turn glass into mirror, is part of the mirror. Therefore, the reference to silver is
clearly a reference to a mirror. Thus, here in this line, there is a use of a synecdoche.

Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which part represents whole—

For example, hands for workmen,

wheels for car.

Less commonly, the whole is also used to represent a part.

For example, police for a handful of officers,

India for the Indian team or its members playing a certain sport.

There is, however, another figure of speech that a synecdoche is closely associated and
sometimes confused with. It is a metonymy.
A metonymy is a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of
another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated.

Following are some examples of metonymy.

The Crown for the monarch,

Tongue for a language or dialect.

Read the following sentences carefully and identify which of them has a metonymy and
which a synecdoche.

1. Homer’s Helen is referred to as the “face that launched a thousand ships”.

2. He has many mouths to feed and no income to do it with.
3. Silence, the bench will now announce its decision!
4. At the end of this life, you and I will probably have been friends right from cradle to
grave.
5. We prayed to the Lord to give us this day our daily bread.
6. Some of the best brains in India have qualified this examination that you plan to take.

Language in Practice
Stress Implementation
Mark the stress in the following words taken from the poem.

1. preconceptions
2. immediately
3. opposite
4. flickers
5. separate
6. agitation
7. replaces
8. terrible
Activity

This poem describes women’s anxieties at being annihilated from the realm
of meaningful intellectual and emotional communication to be reduced to
mere means of exchange for power and monetary alliances. In an eighteen-
line long poem, however, there are eleven occurrences of the personal
pronoun I. There are also multiple references to a she and a her.

Discuss with your teacher how Plath attempts to inverse existing power
hierarchies by using language to access this power.