1. MIRROR
ASIF ABBAS X
ROLL NO. 19

2. SYLVIA PLATH
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4. Sylvia Plath
( )

6. Sylvia Plath
( )

7. Sylvia Plath: Who was she?
20th century American poet
Wife of the famous English poet Ted Hughes.
Troubled by unresolved psychological problems throughout her life.

8. Sylvia Plath: Who was she?
Some of these problems were personal, while others arose from her sense of repressive attitudes toward women in the 1950s
Beliefs that women should not show anger Or ambitiously pursue a career and instead find fulfilment in tending their husbands and children

9. Sylvia Plath: who was she?
Committed suicide by gassing herself in her kitchen.
The first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize after death.

10. What kind of poems did she write?
Plath wrote intensely personal poems – poems in the confessional mode
Her poems were collected in the volume Ariel (1965), two years after her death.

11. What kind of poems did she write?
Nearly all her poems convey a sense of melancholy, gloom and death
The Bell Jar (1963), her semi-autobiographical novel was published under the pseudonym, Victoria Lucas. 

12. Major Works

14. MIRROR
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. What ever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

15. MIRROR
I am not cruel, only truthful--- The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

16. MIRROR
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.

17. MIRROR
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.

18. MIRROR
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.

19. Mirror: What is it about?
A poem written through the perspective of a mirror, which is personified.
The images the mirror reflects are truthful, exact, in contrast to the moon or candlelight images.

20. The mirror says it is not cruel, though it might appear to be; instead it is only being truthful.
The woman who looks in the mirror has grown old. The reflection in the mirror makes her sad; she realizes that her youth and beauty are gone for ever.

21. CONTRASTS The poem sets up contrasts between the following:
The “mist” of preconception which may obscure the “silver” of exactness

22. CONTRASTS
Truth (the mirror, like the lake, reflects truth) and Dishonesty (represented by the “liars” – candle and moon)
Youth and Old Age (The woman is old but pines for youth)

23. “I am not cruel, only truthful”
That the woman turns away from the mirror to candles and the moon and “rewards” the mirror with “tears and an agitation of hands” are evidence that she does not want to face truth.
Still the mirror is “important to her”.

24. “I am not cruel, only truthful”
The mirror feels sad that, by being truthful, it has to hurt people’s sentiments and cloud their hopes.
The poem captures the sadness of the mirror as well as the sense of loss of the woman at the passing of youth and beauty.

25. Youth and Beauty are Ephemeral
“What ever I see I swallow immediately,” says the mirror in the second line of the poem.
This line is connected to the last but one line: “In me she has drowned a young girl”

26. Youth and Beauty are Ephemeral
The mirror, like a lake, has swallowed the young girl and throws up, like a terrible fish, an old woman.
The fish – the old woman in the lake of the mirror- is considered terrible because the woman is not happy about this image which confronts her day after day.

27. IMAGES The poem is short and simple.
Its suggestive richness is the result of the images and figures of speech it employs.
The “silver” surface of the mirror represents exactness in contrast to the “mist” of emotions - “love or dislike” – or preconceptions.

28. Figures of Speech The poem employs three major figures of speech:
Personification: The poet invests the mirror with human attributes. In other words, the mirror is personified.
Metaphor: The mirror imagines itself as a lake, which has drowned out the youth of the woman
Simile: The four-cornered, seemingly cruel mirror, is conceived as “a little god”, because like god, it represents truth, which it expresses with exactness, unlike humans, who out of personal prejudices, likes or dislikes tend to obscure or falsify truth.
The old woman who rises from the lake is compared to a terrible fish.

29. Questions
1. What is the poetic device used when the mirror says “I swallow”?
Personification. The mirror is personified, shown as swallowing or absorbing images people and objects cast.

30. Questions
2. Why does the mirror appear to be a lake in the second stanza? What aspect of the mirror is referred to here?
The mirror appears to be a lake because it reflects an image as truthfully as it is reflected in the clear water of the lake. The mirror appears to be a lake also because of its depth. It drowns out an image just as a lake swallows the objects thrown into it.

31. Questions
3. How does the poet convey the fact that the woman looking at her reflection in the lake is distressed?
The woman turns away from the mirror to candles and the moon. She has tears in her eyes; an agitation of hands also expresses her distress.

32. Questions 4. What makes the woman distressed?
The woman is distressed by the realization that she has lost her youth and beauty.
5. What does the terrible fish in the last line symbolise? What is the poetic device used here?
The unpleasant truth shown by the mirror is described as terrible fish. The poetic device used here is simile.
6. Why does the poet call candles and the moon liars?
Candles and the moon are called liars because they hide the blemishes and make people look beautiful in their soft glow.

33. Further References For a beautiful rendering of the poem log on to:

34. Further References
To learn more about the life and poetry of Sylvia Plath log onto: