Susanna Weighs Her Reflection, a Tale of Self-Examination at Love Days

Susanna wakes up early, eats breakfast, and catches a street car for college. That is the plot. The story is about what happens inside her head while she sits still and looks at herself.

The Morning Daze

Susanna spends most of her morning in a daze. She gets out of bed, bathes, fixes her hair, and sees herself look well in the mirror over the dressing table. Then she steps into a small room and stands before a second mirror. There, suddenly, she becomes beautiful.

But she is not happy about it. She suspects the mirror has coincidentally transformed her into someone else entirely, a simulacrum that is not her at all. She knows her face is irregular, she tells herself, and only interesting. She is not sure what she actually looks like.

Whitney’s Compliment

One evening, Susanna sat out a dance with Mr. Whitney, a man aged thirty-three who admired her. He said her features were perfectly regular and her countenance was entirely charming, but not, as yet, unusually interesting. Susanna recalled this conversation with unpleasant persistence, especially at that mirror, and it brought a blush along with it.

She wondered whether she deserved the liberty he took. She had been personal herself, and that was against the rules of purely social intercourse. But she felt natural jumping into a personal conversation, as a child feels natural playing with fire. The burn was pleasant, she thought, until she was told otherwise.

Two Faces

Susanna examines her reflection in detail. Her face is oval, pale ivory, with copper hair, wide open grey eyes, straight brows that rise at the inner ends, bow-shaped lips, and an ordinary straight nose. She thinks the face is even, regular, almost classical, a little like a passport face, but she thinks it very low because she dislikes the strange self-face overhearing her thoughts.

Then she considers the side view. The oval becomes pointed. The nose is springy and uplifted. The lips develop dimpled corners. The eyes are chiefly lashes. The general air is frivolity. When she smiles, she gives up trying to find a whole from incongruous aspects. She decides to adopt the full face and ignore the rest, which only appears if she arranges the mirrors in a certain way, an operation that takes time.

The Practical Decision

Susanna concludes that she is goodlooking enough for all practical purposes, and far better looking than most people. If she turns out to be very wonderful looking, so much the better. If she is not, it is just as well not to know it now.

She also resolves the matter of being personal. Even though it entails some embarrassment and real and potential blushes, she decides it is worth finding out.

Key Facts

• Susanna is eighteen years old
• Mr. Whitney is aged thirty-three
• Susanna suspects the mirror has coincidentally transformed her into a simulacrum
• The side view differs from the front view

Susanna’s effort to see herself truly is a careful weighing of appearances. She looks at herself in a mirror, in a dance partner’s words, and in her own doubts, and she cannot hold any of them steady.

Source material: “Love Days,” Literary Hub.

comedy · fiction · introspection · literature · mirror