Mirrors|Portals

Sophia Featherstone

Principles of Literary Studies

Professor Sinowitz

05/12/20

Mirrors|Portals

            A mirror is a silent witness. No matter its form, a mirror will instantaneously record and relay every momentary image within its view--even when we are not around to perceive this; a mirror cannot help but continue to reflect. For this reason, mirrors can never be seen for what they are, but are invariably perceived as a vessel for their surroundings. Despite the mirror’s simplicity and virtual invisibility, it is incredibly difficult to define exactly what a ‘mirror’ is. It is dual, simultaneously tangible and intangible--defined as a physical reflective surface and by the entity that it reflects. It can reflect in a literal sense or in a metaphorical sense, in the way that a person can act as a mirror for another person, a painting can reflect a person’s image or emotions, or a house can be reflective of a person’s personality. Of course, mirrors reflect much more than merely people, but they are ubiquitous in our histories, our daily lives, our psychology, and cultures. In this way, mirrors are portals into humanity.

Mirrors are shapeshifters, not just because of their reflective nature, but because of the myriad of forms in which they exist. The most common form of mirror rests on walls and in cars, above sinks in homes, or restaurants, or office buildings. These mirrors bookend my days. Looking in the mirror is one of the first things I do when I wake up and one of the last things I do before I go to sleep. It shows me what could otherwise never be seen: myself. The reflective surface, a sheet of glass thinly lined with silver, is man-made, and yet to some extent it also ‘makes man.’ Self-image, or our conception of our own appearance, which helps inform a sense of identity, may be largely constructed from the relayed images of a mirror’s reflection. 

Portals into History

Mirrors first manifested as water, however water does not exist purely for reflection--its purpose and significance flows far beyond the boundaries of a manufactured frame. Mirror History’s article titled ‘Broken Mirror--Is Breaking a Mirror Bad Luck’ considers the possible source of the superstitions surrounding mirrors. These superstitions began “when the first humans saw their reflections in a pool of water, [they] believed that the image in a water was their actual soul and to endanger it would mean risking injury to the other self” (Broken Mirror). The reflections that silent waters make possible, therefore, represent more than the images that they depict. Images in water were also manifestations of a person’s inner characteristics--reflection represented a person’s essence. Mirrors appear to reveal a sort of truth that others could not perceive about each other; they served as a window into the soul. An inherent connection to the soul existed within the image created by water’s reflection, with harm of the reflection being mirrored in harm to the soul. 

Though water acted as the first mirror, manufactured mirrors have a long and global history. A Live Science article written by Joseph Castro outlines the complex history of mirrors. Mirrors as we understand them today “may have originated in the 19th century, but mirrors in general have actually been around for much longer” (Castro). The first mirror is said to have been made 8,000 years ago out of obsidian (Castro); however, it is difficult to determine exactly when the first mirror was constructed, and by who, as “different cultures independently created reflective mirrors at various times throughout history” (Castro). Multiple cultures and groups of people at many different times, therefore, have been infatuated with the idea of reflection, each devising a way in which to make mirrors more accessible, and creating an object with the sole purpose of reflecting. 

Remnants of various cultures' creation of mirrors have been recorded in art and  mythology. For example, in ‘Mirrors as Portals: Images of Mirrors on Ancient Maya Ceramics,’ Julie Roberts discusses the mythology of Ancient Maya, which situated mirrors as portals between worlds, and as a means to communicate with gods. These portals were also placed within some Mayan burial chambers, signifying their role as portals from “the ‘earthly’ world [to...] the ‘spiritual’ worlds” (2). Mirrors, therefore, served as a means to connect with the self, as the early still-water mirrors highlighted, as well as with something far beyond the self--the divine--and with this connection, they also became transcendent. Not only did mirrors transcend human experience, but through their stitching together of different worlds, mirrors overcome the limits of space. 

Whether water or glass, early forms of mirrors had a significance far deeper than their superficial facade suggests, in some ways harboring magical properties. Ancient Greek Mythology, however, was one of the first to explore the dangers of a mirror’s superficiality. The famed myth of Narcissus, for example, warns of the perils of staring at one’s own reflection. Narcissus gazes at his reflection in a spring after being “told by the blind seer Tiresias that he would have a long life, provided he never recognized himself” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). He becomes so enamored by what he sees that he cannot leave, slowly wasting away as he stares, a small flower growing in his place. The use of water as a mirror makes another appearance in this story, but with a much different message. Rather than acting as a manifestation of the soul, a still-water mirror becomes something superficial and murderous. Though the object itself did not change, the implications of its reflection are completely opposing--the duality of mirrors becomes evident. Considering this duality, are the impacts of mirrors determined by the person it reflects? Do mirrors really show us the truth? Are reflections representative of the self, or are they representative of another entity/being?

Portals into the Mind

These questions may be answered when asking “mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” Mirrors are, and have been, seemingly omnipresent in literature, art, and film. In Walt Disney’s animated Snow White, for example, the magical, omniscient mirror provides the source of conflict in the story when it reveals that Snow White is the fairest in the land, fairer even than the Evil Queen. This superficial comparison is what drives the entire plot of the story--the queen attempts to kill Snow White for being more beautiful and youthful, symbolically attempting to reobtain her own youthfulness, though Snow White is saved by Prince Charming, defeating the Evil Queen. The mirror in this story is magic only to the extent of telling the queen the truth (no matter how problematic this ‘truth’ is)--the mirror cannot lie to anyone, whether the Evil Queen, Snow White, a soldier, or a servant. The ‘truth’ would remain unchanged, but the implications of this truth would be different for each person, and there is something eerie and terrifying within this as well. 

Every mirror, however, has a frame. It is only able to reflect as much as it can contain within this frame. Mirrors, therefore, also precipitate distortion. The truth that a mirror supposedly depicts is severely limited. It cannot show the world as it really is, as it cannot reflect or contain the world within its frame. This spatial limitation is expressed in a similar way through superstitions about mirrors breaking. The common superstition is that breaking a mirror will bring seven years of bad luck. This was believed to begin with the very first natural mirrors and the way in which damaging a person's reflection also damaged their soul. 

In Snow White, though the mirror is omniscient, it is also limited by the Evil Queen’s understanding of the world, as it only provides information in response to her questions. This acts in the same way when considering a movie. The single screen on which a movie is played, and the way in which it reflects cultural values, marks movies (as well as TV, photography, and paintings) as a sort of mirror as well. Snow White, for example, creates a sort of meta-reflection of the cultural and racial beauty standards for women, as well as the heteronormative expectations present in the late 1930s. This reflection occurs in relation to the movie as a whole, as well as the magic mirror. The implications of mirrors for the Evil Queen illustrates the way in which the subject of a mirror’s reflection, as well as the culture, determines its implications. When comparing the Evil Queen’s struggle with the loss of beauty and youth with Narcissus' infatuation with his overabundance of these traits, the cultural and gendered nature of a mirror’s distortion begins to emerge.

The seven years of bad luck associated with a shattered mirror stemmed from the Romans’ belief “that it took seven years for life to renew itself” (Broken Mirror). This renewal of life, and the way in which a mirror breaking brings on a sort of death, connotes that what is depicted in a reflection is life itself. After the seven years, however, the “life would be renewed” (Broken Mirror). Today this superstition carries on in a less literal sense, but there is still something disturbing about breaking a mirror, not only because its reflection is also destroyed, but because in breaking a mirror it becomes more (or arguably less) than merely its reflection. We are reminded of its fragility, simplicity, physicality. A mirror is so often defined by its reflection, that when it breaks, the leftover fragments, though constructed of the same materials, are dangerous, both in a physical sense and in their indication of a broken future. 

The duality in the mirror’s ability to reflect truth as well as distort reality, especially as it does so through time and space, also serves a source of great human anxiety. In the 2008 horror movie Mirrors, the characters’ reflections begin to have a life of their own. When the characters look at themselves in the mirror, it is someone else that stares back. Their reflections then begin committing violence, except whatever harm the reflections do to themselves manifests itself in the real-life person. Similarly, in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the handsome Dorian Gray wishes that his newly painted portrait begins to age instead of him--so that he remains forever young. After this, each time Gray commits a sinful act, his image in the painting becomes twisted, slowly ageing and distorting. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Dr. Jekyll’s mirror in human form, Hyde begins to terrorize the city. Uncontrollable and purely evil, Hyde is a reflection of all of the bad that exists within Jekyll. The fear in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mirrors, and Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde is that reflections represent the worst of us, and further, that they are physical beings that have the ability to control us. This seems to be a fear of both a mirror’s ability to reflect the truth, as in Snow White, as well its potential to distort our understanding of the world. In this way, mirrors also act as portals into our own unconsciousness. 

A mirror’s reversal of images is also an indicator of its distortion. When I was in middle school, my friend and I opened Photo Booth on her laptop during our lunch period and started playing around with all of the different effects--the dizzy blue birds circling around our heads quickly becoming our favorite. When we finally took a picture (or a bunch) and started to look through, giggling at our expressions, I couldn’t help but notice that I looked different in the final picture than I had when we were looking at ourselves on the screen. I later found out that this is because Photo Booth flips the orientation of its images after they are taken. In the space of a few seconds, I had witnessed both the perception of myself that I was used to--my mirror self--and the one that other people were used to seeing. 

The properties of distortion associated with mirrors also greatly influence what we think of ourselves. Who we are in the mirror is not necessarily how we appear to other people. This duality in the role of the mirror also creates a duality in the self. The reversal may serve as a reversal of the self in the same way that Hyde is a reversal of Dr. Jekyll. In this way, mirrors may show us the distorted view of what we do not want to be, or who we could become. The backwards nature of reflections also separates what we think we look like with how we look to others, and beyond this, it separates who we think we are with who we are to other people. It is impossible to say which one of these perceptions is ‘true’ to each individual person, but it remains that the truth of a mirror is not absolute, in that the truth of a mirror is merely the truth as it relates to that mirror. Mirrors, therefore, are historical, literary, mythological, spatial, temporal, and psychological, as each of these factors influence the perspective, and therefore the truth, of a mirror. 

In ‘Mirrors as Portals: Images of Mirrors on Ancient Maya Ceramics,’ Julie Roberts describes the connections between mirrors and eyes in Mayan art and culture, highlighting the psychological and historical components associated with mirrors. With perception being an influencing factor of reflections as well as a factor influenced by reflections, the connection between our eyes and our reflections informs us about the ways in which they influence each other. Roberts explains how “with modern science we now know that eyes function in a very similar fashion to mirrors. Eyes show people images of the world the way mirrors show people the world. Perhaps, if the Maya believed what they saw with their eyes was a reflection, then looking at a mirror would show them a reflection of a reflection, which would in fact be the true world which, for them, included the gods” (18). The way in which eyes operate like mirrors connotes that humans and mirrors are inexplicably intertwined. Human perceptions through sight, in this sense, are almost as flawed as reflections of people depicted by mirrors--I say ‘almost’ because when you look in the mirror, as Roberts outlines, you see a ‘reflection of a reflection.’ Because of this, the entire visual perspective a person may have of the world is a reflection--a reflection of what they see, when, how, and with who. 

This question of ‘who’ is also important to consider in relation to the viewer and their gender. In Snow White, though the mirror is omniscient, it is also limited by the Evil Queen’s understanding of the world, as it only provides information in response to her questions. This acts in the same way when considering a movie. The single screen on which a movie is played, and the way in which it reflects cultural values, marks movies (as well as TV, photography, and paintings) as a sort of mirror as well. Snow White creates a sort of meta-reflection of the cultural and racial beauty standards for women, as well as the heteronormative expectations present in the late 1930s. This reflection occurs in relation to the movie as a whole, as well as the magic mirror. The implications of mirrors for the Evil Queen illustrates the way in which the subject of a mirror’s reflection, as well as the culture, determines its implications. When comparing the Evil Queen’s struggle with the loss of beauty and youth with Narcissus' infatuation with his overabundance of these traits, the cultural and gendered nature of a mirror’s distortion becomes clear.

Portals into Humanity

Looking back at the mirror’s history, from silent pools, to the reflective portals of the Mayans, to the Greeks’ myth of Narcissus, to Snow White--mirrors seem to mean something different in each period and culture--they metaphorically reflect the past. They also impact our psychology, serving as a way in which to construct our identity. This construction begins in the ‘mirror stage’ of development when humans are infants. The mirror stage is categorized as the period during which children are able to recognize themselves in the mirror, and in the recognition, a differentiation between their physical being and their reflection (or symbolic being) occurs (Lacan:The Mirror Stage). The University of Hawaii’s ‘Lacan: The Mirror Stage’ overview describes the implications of this process, as when a child identifies with their reflection, “the image of a unified body does not correspond with the underdeveloped infant's physical vulnerability and weakness, this imago is established as an Ideal-I toward which the subject will perpetually strive throughout his or her life” (Lacan: The Mirror Stage). In other words, the child’s reflection becomes a symbolic ideal, one that is wholly separate from physical reality. In this way, reflections have a control on both who we are and who we strive to be. 

As Lacan outlines, mirrors are pivotal in understanding ourselves, but mirrors may also be symbolic of who we are scared of becoming, as in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde. Not to mention, mirrors play a major role in storytelling--whether an archetype of mythology or a character in fairy tales, mirrors are central facets of many different tales. Mirrors cannot be separated from their reflections, however, because of their distortions, they are also inextricably separate from what we view as reality. Though reflecting a superficial image, mirrors also represent a deeper understanding or purpose, whether that be a manifestation of the soul, a portal to communicate with the gods, an evil doppelganger, or an omniscient truth-teller. The object itself is simultaneously all of its manifestations and definitions and none of them. 

Mirrors are also inextricably tied to humans. Throughout history, across cultures, in literature, films, art, and in our everyday lives, mirrors are somehow a source of fascination, terror, and normalcy. The definition of a mirror may be associated with its reflection, but the same could be said about the definition of a person. Despite a mirror’s embodiment of duality in relation to truth versus distortion, superficiality versus deeper understanding, real versus reflected, and much more, a mirror is a symbol and reflection of the duality of people--a portal into the complexity of humanity.

“Broken Mirror - Is Breaking a Mirror Bad Luck?” Breaking a Mirror - Meaning of Broken Mirror, www.mirrorhistory.com/mirror-facts/broken-mirror/.

Castro, Joseph. “Who Invented the Mirror?” LiveScience, Purch, 28 Mar. 2013, www.livescience.com/34466-who-invented-mirror.html.

Rogers, Julie. Mirrors As Portals: Images of Mirrors On Ancient Maya Ceramics. Hood College, 2010, etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFE0007857/Mirrors_as_Portals_Images_of_Mirrors_on_Ancient_Maya_Ceramics_Julie_Rogers_MA_Thesis.pdf.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Narcissus.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 8 May 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/Narcissus-Greek-mythology.

Disney, Walt, et al. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Distributed by Buena Vista Film Distribution Co., 1937.

Aja, Alexandre, et al. Mirrors. Mirrors, 2008.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Jekyll and Hyde. Firestone Books, 2015.

Wilde, Oscar, et al. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Pearson Education, 2008.