Sawyer 1

Ronnie Sawyer

Doctor Kristina Quynn

E277.001

27 October 2014

Mary Elizabeth Coleridges The Other Side of a Mirror

A docile, doe-eyed, porcelain doll with long lashes and bright red lips was the ultimate

picture of Victorian feminine perfection, which every woman was expected to strive toward. No

matter how unrealistic such a standard may have been, sociably respectable young ladies were

given the idea that if they could obtain that picturesque image they would be perceived as an

enviable paragon. However not every woman of the Victorian era found such standards to be

agreeable, and there were even some who decided to write poems and stories to bring attention to

the topic. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge plays with the idea of domesticity, debunking its lofty

admirable appearance, writing that with such shallow aspirations a womans inner beauty

withers, bleeding into her outer appearance, consequently transforming her into something

frighteningly grotesque, in her poem The Other Side of a Mirror.

The woman looking into the mirror is the narrator of the story, she is the guiding voice

describing the ghastly figure staring back at her in the mirror. The proper woman is staring into

the mirror only to a disgusting creature staring back at her. Though after a spark of realization the

narrator has when shes distracted, suggesting that it required the woman to step back for the

briefest moment to get an outside opinion on the situation to realize that the image is herself. The

womans process represents what Mary Elizabeth Coleridge is trying to make all women do, to

take a look and see the absolutely horrific and ugly state theyve allowed themselves to fall into.
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The narrator of this poem seems to be trapped within her own body, horrifically trying to

voice her distress but has found that shes unable to even scream to summon help, discovering

there is no escape from her situation. This dread the woman is feeling is well presented in the

third stanza:

Her lips were open- not a sound

Came through the parted lines of red.

Whate'er it was, the hideous wound.

In silence and in secret bled.

No sigh relieved her speechless woe,

She had no voice to speak her dread (13-18).

Noticeably her mouth has been painted red, and it seems where the image in the mirror has

attempted to maintain the ideal image of beauty is where the image is finding difficulty

controlling herself. The place where feminine beauty was once so prominent is now a gapping

wound. The silence is important to note, because this is a battle that women had primarily

remained silent. It is the silence that the red lips had been keeping that has driven the read lines

to begin to bleed, because by staying quiet and not acknowledging the problem, it has been able

to fester and grow to its current state of permanent disfiguration.

When the domesticated proper woman narrator was focused entirely on her own

appearance while looking into the mirror she was able to truly see the disgusting person residing

on the inside masked behind cosmetics and a placid acceptance of her current station. Mary

Elizabeth Coleridge is giving her harsh critique of the idea of domesticity through her narrators

eyes. When Coleridge writes She hsad no voice to speak her dread (18). Coleridge is
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commenting how women arent really able to protest their position, and are instead forced to sit

by in helpless horror witnessing their current predicament without feasible escape.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridges poem The Other Side of a Mirror, is speaking towards the

poisonous nature of domesticity. The frightening image conjured by Coleridges words is

purposefully meant to shock readers into wanting to fix the ruined image of the woman in the

mirror. The point was to spur women into wanting to kill Coventry Patmores image of the self

sacrificing Angel in the House. The image had been ruined because of the unrealistic

expectations placed upon her by a stubborn society resistant to change. The narrator has been too

focused on molding herself into societys ideal woman to take care of her inner wants and

desires. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge was ultimately trying to illicit a reaction to create a change.