Sylvia Plath: Poems
Sylvia Plath's mirror is about a woman's plight with the time discuss how the problem of again affect a woman's beauty
Mirror poem
Mirror poem
Some critics have speculated that the woman is vexed by more than her changing physical appearance. This might represent the demands that most women face as they age. The woman is observing her mind, her soul, and her psyche, stripped of any guile or obfuscation. By seeing her true self, she becomes aware of the distinction between her exterior and interior lives. In other words, she might be meditating on the distinction between a "false" outer self of appearance, and a "true" inner self. After Plath's 1963 suicide, many critics examined the writer's different facets, contrasting her put-together, polite, and decorous outer self with her raging, explosively-creative inner self. Perhaps Plath is exploring this dichotomy in "Mirror." The slippery and unnerving "fish" in the poem may represent that unavoidable, darker self that cannot help but challenge the socially acceptable self.