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Esther Doesn't Recognize Herself in a Mirror

 For this blog post, I want to explore Esther’s confused perception of reality as the novel progresses and she watches her life change for the worse. We talked about the dreamlike quality to Esther’s narration and her disconnection from other characters in class, but we never really got to talk about Esther’s disconnect from herself. I think it is important to highlight how much Esther changes as a narrator from beginning to end (although I’m only talking about the first half of the book), and what those changes signify. The first time the reader is shown Esther feeling disconnected is right after her strange outing with Doreen and Lenny which left her feeling completely disconcerted. She says

I noticed a big, smudgy-eyed Chinese woman staring idiotically into my face. It was only me, of course. I was appalled to see how wrinkled and used-up I looked
,

and then later in her room proclaims

I thought of crawling in between the bed-sheets and trying to sleep, but that appealed to me about as much as stuffing a dirty, scrawled-over letter into a fresh, clean envelope (18-19).

It is clear from these statements that Esther feels changed by her strange encounter and uncomfortable with the direction her life is going, and already starts to feel that her experiences are changing her as a person.


This is not the last time that Esther sees her identity as a reflection of her experiences. For example, after spending an exhilarating night with Constantin, she thinks

If I looked into the mirror tomorrow I'd see a doll-size Constantin sitting in my eye and smiling out at me (82).

Although she never ends up doing anything with Constantin (not “crossing that boundary line”), I think Esther’s feeling of empowerment comes from the knowledge that she could have lost her virginity. This moment in the novel is one of the happier ones for Esther, but we can still see her perception of her changing identity, from innocent schoolgirl to a woman taking charge of her own sexuality.  


I would also like to examine the pivotal photoshoot scene which ends in Esther falling apart over her uncertain ability to write poetry. After breaking down in tears, Esther says

the face that peered back at me seemed to be peering from the grating of a prison cell after a prolonged beating. It looked bruised and puffy and all the wrong colors. It was a face that needed soap and water and Christian tolerance (102).

While in this scene Esther is clearly able to recognize and connect with her own reflection, I interpret the “needed soap and water and Christian tolerance” as a cry for help, meaning that she still feels recognizable as her former self, but needs a lot of help to heal from the emotional trauma she is experiencing. But her wording, namely talking about her reflection as a face separate from herself (“the face that…” and “it was a face” instead of saying “my face”) calls to attention the disconnect in Esther’s mind between who Esther thinks she should be, and who she thinks she is now.  


But when we truly start to see Esther dissociate from herself is after she is sexually assaulted by Marco, during the train ride home. She has thrown all of her New York clothes away to try and regain a sense of normalcy, but is then forced to borrow even more clothes that are even more alien to her from one of the girls. Her clothing combined with streaks of blood made “the face in the mirror look like a sick Indian” according to Esther (112). This image is in stark contrast to the innocent schoolgirl the reader has known Esther to be before traveling to New York, which is again the difference between who she “should be” and who she thinks she is now. It is worth noting the language that Esther uses in the quote, because Esther chooses to refer to her reflection as “the face in the mirror” rather than claiming the reflection as one of herself, just as she did before. She even specifically acknowledges her detachment from her reflection later on in the novel, while she is attempting suicide:

If I looked in the mirror... it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play (148).

Not only does Esther feel separate from the life that she now finds herself living, but by using examples of “in a book or a play” the reader can see how completely detached and out of control Esther feels at this moment. It also reveals how terrifying the experience of feeling both out of control and forced to watch as she and her sense of identity slip away must be.



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