Mirror Summary & Analysis
by Sylvia Plath

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Sylvia Plath wrote "Mirror" in 1961, shortly after having given birth to her first child. Written from the point of view of a personified mirror, the poem explores Plath's own fears regarding aging and death. The mirror insists that it objectively reflects the truth—a truth that greets the woman who looks in the mirror each day as a "terrible" reminder of her own mortality. She searches the mirror for an image that reflects the way she sees herself and feels inside, yet finds only an increasingly older woman staring back. "Mirror" was first published in The New Yorker in 1963 and later appeared in Crossing the Water, which was published posthumously.

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