In Virginia Woolf's "The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection," Woolf writes on knowing her friend, Isabella Tyson. She opens with the comment that people should not leave mirrors hanging in their rooms "any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessin some hideous crime." The idea is that mirrors, or as she uses it as a narrative device to tell of her reflection on Isabella, reveal everything about a person. In the third and fourth paragraph, she tells us the house is empty, and she feels like a hidden researcher, seeing in the house all the natural changes in light and movement because of open doors and windows. She sees through to the outside garden path, and notices that the path is both reflected completely still, as no wind blows, and cut off, "sliced" by the mirror's reflection. Even the noise of the house, and that which comes from outside, does not exist in the reflection. This sounds nearly magical, and the juxtaposition of views in the mirror versus the realities reflects something maybe ominous and unnatural.

Woolf begins to muse on how to "know" Isabella completely, imaging going through her private things to reveal a deeper person than she is ever able to know. It is through this reflection that I also began to imagine what it is to really "know" someone, and realize it is impossible. She studies Isabella in the garden through the mirror, but she is distant and small, hard to make out; this view runs parallel to the idea of not fully understanding someone. It seems as if Isabella has moved into a different world by seeing her leave the house by her reflection, also reinforcing the idea that no one can be fully known. The mirror reminds us that we are only seeing a piece of her life.

Woolf, in contemplating Isabella through the looking glass, looks around the room, and it becomes "more shadowy and symbolic." After discussing Isabella's things and the metaphoric cabinets and drawers that make her up, her physical belongings take on the weight of Isabella's character and of Woolf's intense longing to know her. Maybe the room seems to come alive because only a person's things can know him or her as well as herself because they are imbued with the purpose and understanding of their acquisition, so by studying her things she feels she is studying the person. Even this poses problems, and Woolf is suddenly startled by the view in the mirror being "blotted out." It is the postman, leaving the mail. Looking at the mail gives us the impression of knowing Isabella.

Soon Woolf looks in the mirror to see Isabella returning from the garden. She enters the house and picks up the mail. As she does so, the mirror casts light upon her, and it seems she becomes part of the looking-glass world, frightful and still--"light seemed to fix her; that seemed like some acid to bite off the unessential and superficial and to leave only truth." The reflection of Isabella reveals that she is "perfectly empty," without thoughts or friends, the letters were all bills. She becomes a plain, if not ugly, woman showing her age.
The mirror has stripped her of all character; she was caught in a world (the mirror world) where everything is revealed, and Isabella, alone, is shown to be nothing but a shell. While this may not really be the truth that Woolf is looking for, I am reminded that the mirror offers only a part fo her life, and what is true in the mirror doesn't take into account the entire picture (forgive me). It reflects not only images it catches, but is is also a symbol of Woolf's perception of her. Because she does not know Isabella entirely, then what she sees in the mirror also can not be the whole truth that makes up Isabella.