Mirror, Mirror
A mirror embodies the life and soul poured into it by the person who opens their heart and prepares themselves for the unbiased truth that waits. An object with a soul can be as dangerous as it may seem magical.
In the book Mirror, Mirror, the mirror could be seen as an embodiment of Lucrezias vain insecurities, nurturing her paranoia and worries about Biancas beauty someday surpassing her own. The mirror symbolizes the insecurity within Lucrezia, and her insecurity drives her nearly to insanity which is evident in her speaking to a mirror. The paranoia can be historically linked to the bathing conditions of the time. Renaissance princesses were known to bathe in tub painted with mercury, which can be ingested through the skin, which would account for Lucrezias paranoia. In the poem, the mirror is an indiscriminate spectator. The mirror is personified as an all-seeing object, symbolizing god, or one of many eyes of god. The mirror is honest, whether that honesty may seem caring or harsh. The mirror is portrayed as an all-seeing object in its transition from being a mirror hung on the wall of a room to viewing the world from a lake as everything is reflected in it (or perhaps the mirror was thrown to the bottom of the lake and then saw the world form there).
In the poem, the mirrors affects on those it comes into contact with, as well as the people it comes into contact with are very vague. What can be gathered from the poem is that the mirror is indiscriminate and unbiased. Its affect on people is widely ranged depending completely on the person and what they gain from looking into it. The only person that came into contact with the mirror whom was specified was a girl who continued to look into the mirror as she aged into a woman (lines 10-18). In the poem, the woman had as much of an effect on the mirror as the mirror had on her. Before she came to look into it, the mirror had simply shown people the truth without any remorse or empathy for what they may feel by what they see. The woman can symbolize a light or a guiding light in line 15 Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness The mirror seems to gain qualities associated with human emotions in knowing that it was important to her. In the book, the mirror most strongly affects Lucrezia Borgia. It embodies her vanity and within it her jealousy manifests. Her paranoia and delusions that lead her speaking to a mirror are just the magnifications of her evolving insanity.
In the poem, the mirrors effect on those that come into contact with it are not greatly specified other than the particular woman mentioned; however, in the novel the effect the mirror had was centered. The effect was not really an effect more that it was a reflection of Lucrezias evident and already expressed jealousy of Bianca as she comes into her womanhoods beauty. In this, while an object with a soul indeed can be magical, as seen in the poem, it can also be just a dangerous embodiment of the darkness lurking within the person it may serve at that time. Magic and tragedy may seem opposite but the line separating them is so thin that they can be looked upon as going hand in hand.
Tragedy, which is the darkness and cruelty lurking within Lucrezia in the novel was her true nature. What she saw in the mirror, which may have been her fading beauty in comparison to what Bianca would soon become in her womanhood, was nothing more than the reflection of her insecurities. In the novel the mirror merely embodied the person that looked into it and reflect the unaltered truth. No more. No less. In the poem; however, the mirror was given certain magical qualities and importance to the woman that relied on it. So yes, an object with a soul can be as dangerous as it can be magical, but that object can only be given a soul if the master it serves has a soul to be embodied within it.
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