Through the glass, darkly: Femininity and the mirror in nineteenth-century France

Abstract

This article proposes an interrogation of the tropes of female narcissism with a material history of the mirror and women's accounts of looking at themselves in nineteenth-century France. Drawing from a range of sources in order to trace the introduction of the vanity into domestic spaces, I argue that the newfound availability of the looking glass, while encouraging a self-objectification in the eyes of the others, likewise allowed female subjects the fashioning of a critical eye, the ability to construct and play with femininity and imagine alternative ways of being. By historicizing the act of looking at one's reflection, I aim to turn the female gaze back on itself, providing a contextualization of women's self-understanding and perception dependent on material and embodied practices.