Ode to Virginia Woolf

The writing style of Woolf is modern, and she is perhaps the greatest female wrighter of the 20th century. She also had connections such as James Joyce and T.S Elliot. She had a great mind a witty mind. In her essay The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection. Her humor can be admired, and her style makes for an interesting read. In this essay she uses a looking glass as a vice for examining another woman, Isabella Tyson’s life (1225). This peculiar because a looking glass is a mirror, and one would usually use that to examine ones own life. This leads the reader to wonder to if the woman is not a representation of Woolf herself. Perhaps a mirror image or an alternate ego of herself is who she is describing. She is describing herself; she is the lady in the looking glass. What is also amusing about her story is the very first line “People should not leave a looking-glass hanging around their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime” (1224). She is condemning people having household mirrors. She alludes to it being dangerous and self-destructive. This is humorous because what is dangerous about a mirror? It is also meaningful on a deeper level, like self-examination is a destructive behavior. She is saying that examining one’s self is dangerous because you might not like what you find out.

This looking glass can also be said to be a method of uncovering levels of character. She writes “But, outside, the looking-glass reflected the hall table, the sunflowers, the garden path so accurately, and so fixed that they seemed held there in their reality unescapably” (1225). She uses that mirror to examine the outside of the house; she is describing the external self. She is showing the self that is, well in her time, unchangeable. She describes this garden path as a type of constant, it fixed. It leads is only one path, unchangeable, the directing of the path the size of the path has been set literally in stone. This is the external body, the one thing that is constant, appearance. She then describes the interior of the house, which would be the deep interior of the self. The inner and outer images of the self are very different, just as the image the people present to others and attempt to maintain in themselves is very different. The narrator of the story examines Tyson through her looks, her dinner conversation, and faces about her life. Then Woolf examines her “larger and larger in the looking glass” (1228). This could mean that she is seeing the complete and whole person not just layers. Woolf is truly an ingenious woman; she combines Tyson, the narrator and herself and throws them into her story “The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A reflection”.