1. Mirror
-Sylvia Plath
Introduction:
“Creativity is the best expression of liberty” says Bryant H. McGill. So „Man‟kind has
persisted on asserting this liberty for a long time. However the „other sex‟ or Women have
not been given much import in this art of expression until recent times. As Virginia Woolf‟s
saying goes, “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman”. Achieving this freedom of
expression has brought some major paradigm shifts in Literature and Life. These shifts came
to pass through various stages of women‟s writings where the women writers turn themselves
into the „subject in process‟ and try to rewrite the history in which they were absent for most
part and finally get accepted in this world as they are. In undertaking this enterprise, a woman
writer is in constant conflict with her creative half and the passive half of „constructed‟
femininity. At times the margins of these conflicting entities become hazy and the creative is
influenced by the „constructed‟. In this entire inconsistency, the writer struggles to find her
true self. This phenomenon is effectively brought out by Silvia Plath in her poem „Mirror‟.
Mirror – The Creative Struggle:
The poem is set in motion with the lines, “I am silver and exact. I have no
preconceptions.” Here the „I‟ represents the mirror, the poet‟s creative ability. The mirror
„swallows‟ everything it sees and produces a „truthful‟ image. It is „unmisted‟ by love or
dislike. In the same way, the poet maintains an objective view of the world around her. The
mirror becomes the „eye of a little god‟ with its ability to see reality and create exact images,
symbolising the poet‟s ability to create.
“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 part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.”
In these lines, the mirror expresses its habitual gazing of the wall. Looking at these lines, one
can equate the wall with the social construct and the so called esteem given to women, which
the poet, the mirror, observes. The poet notices every single detail of it that after some time,
she comes to think of these traditional constructs as a part of herself. However, this notion of
her‟s is often disturbed, or she is brought to reality when she also observes the „faces and
darkness‟, the problems in those constructs. Thus she is separated and brought back to reality.
In the second, the mirror becomes a lake. This shows the development in the
creative faculty of the writer. It has transformed from a shallow mirror, mere observation and
reflection to a lake with depth, a creative work with introspection and search of „the self‟.
“A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.”

2. This is the search for the self by the poet as a woman. The identity she finds is conflicting
with the social constructs to which she is accustomed. So she turns to the „candles and the
moon‟, the more acceptable versions of truth. However, she is not satisfied and so she lingers,
„comes and goes‟. On seeing the reflection, however she cries and rewards the lake with „an
agitation of hands‟. This is because she is not able to come to terms with the real self she
finds and the way she has been portrayed for so long.
“Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.”
So she takes it upon herself to clear this 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.”
In this search for the self gives the poet experiences that help her to mature, though the
realizations do not seem to produce pleasant effects, rather creates a self of „fear‟, a “terrible
fish”.
Conclusion:
This poem presents the psychological struggle of a woman writer. To sum up,
through this poem, Plath brings out the need imposed on a woman as a creative artist “to
learn to repress her impulses” and “to adopt a double character without exactly intending to
deceive any one” in order to find herself.