Herself Beheld The Literature of the Looking Glass

What happenes when a woman looks into a mirror? Does she see her face or does she see herself? Jenijoy La Belle finds that women--both in literature and in life--interact with their reflected images for reasons that far transcend the gratification of vanity. In this thought-provoking account of the role played by the mirror in women's self-conceptions, La Belle focuses attention on literature of the last two hundred years in which a woman confronts her looking glass, and through her perception of how she looks, begins to consider who she is.