The Monster in Plath’s ‘Mirror’

Critic: William Freedman
Source: Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 108, No. 5, October, 1993, pp. 152-69. Reproduced by permission
Criticism about: Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), also known as: Victoria Lucas, Mrs. Ted Hughes
The Monster in Plath’s ‘Mirror’,

[(essay date October 1993) In the following essay, Freedman discusses Plath’s use of the mirror as a symbol of female passivity, subjugation, and Plath’s own conflicted self-identity caused by social pressure to reconcile the competing obligations of artistic and domestic life.]

For many women writers, the search in the mirror is ultimately a search for the self, often for the self as artist. So it is in Plath’s poem “Mirror.” Here, the figure gazing at and reflected in the mirror is neither the child nor the man the woman-as-mirror habitually reflects, but a woman. In this poem, the mirror is in effect looking into itself, for the image in the mirror is woman, the object that is itself more mirror than person. A woman will see herself both in and as a mirror. To look into the glass is to look for oneself inside or as reflected on the surface of the mirror and to seek or discover oneself in the person (or non-person) of the mirror.

The “She” who seeks in the reflecting lake a flattering distortion of herself is an image of one aspect of the mirror into which she gazes. She is the woman as male-defined ideal or as the ideal manqué, the woman who desires to remain forever the “young girl” and who “turns to those liars, the candles or the moon” for confirmation of the man-pleasing myth of perpetual youth, docility, and sexual allure. As such, she is the personification–or reflection–of the mirror as passive servant, the preconditionless object whose perception is a form of helpless swallowing or absorption. The image that finally appears in the mirror, the old woman as “terrible fish,” is the opposite or “dark” side of the mirror. She is the mirror who takes a kind of fierce pleasure in her uncompromising veracity and who, by rejecting the role of passive reflector for a more creative autonomy, becomes, in that same male-inscribed view, a devouring monster. The woman/mirror, then, seeks her reflection in the mirror/woman, and the result is a human replication of the linguistic phenomenon the poem becomes. Violating its implicit claim, the poem becomes a mirror not of the world, but of other mirrors and of the process of mirroring. When living mirrors gaze into mirrors, as when language stares only at itself, only mirrors and mirroring will be visible.
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In the poem “Daddy”, Sylvia Plath describes her true feelings about her deceased father. Throughout the dialogue, the readercan find many instances that illustrate a great feeling of hatred toward the author’s father. She begins by expressing herfears of her father and how he treated her. Subsequently she conveys her outlook on the wars being fought in Germany. Shecontinues by explaining her life since her father and how it has related to him.

In the first stanza the reader realizes that Sylvia Plath is scared of her father. It is quite clear that she never spoke upto him to defend herself. In the first line it is apparent that something is ending. “You do not do, you do not do any more,black shoe,” this shows that she feels that her father cannot hurt her anymore. Also, she knows that she has to let him knowhow she feels. “In which I have lived like a foot for thirty years, poor and white, barely daring to breathe or achoo,” thisexpresses her fear of her father, and illustrates the fact that she has remained silent, unable to speak up or even breathany words against him. “Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time,” this portrays the extent of her hatredtoward him. That she was so appalled by his character that she would end his life if only she had the strength. But he diedbefore she grew strong enough to stand up to his horrible countenance. The next portion of the poem, “Marble-heavy, a bagfull of God, Ghastly statue with one grey toe big as a Frisco seal,” shows how large she sees his presence. Comparing him tothe weight of marble with the powers of God. However the one grey toe, which was injured, and allowed for sickness to set in,brought him to nothing. Something she had not the power to do, and something as insignificant as a tiny sore could.”
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