Stories of Ourselves: "The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection" by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf investigates the nature of existence in this character study of a self-possessed woman named Isabella Tyson.

Here are links to our lists for the short stories in Stories of Ourselves:
The Hollow of the Three Hills, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Signalman, The Happy Prince, The Yellow Wall Paper, The Son’s Veto, The Open Boat, The Moving Finger, The Door in the Wall, Sredni Vashtar, How It Happened, Her First Ball, The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection, The Fly in the Ointment, The Custody of the Pumpkin, An Englishman’s Home, The Phoenix, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Prison, The Destructors, Meteor, Billenium, The Lemon Orchard, The People Before, The Enemy, Five-Twenty, A Horse and Two Goats, Report on the Threatened City, The Rain Horse, Ming’s Biggest Prey, The Village Saint, Secrets, The Stoat, Games at Twilight, The Taste of Watermelon, Journey (Patricia Grace), The Bath, My Greatest Ambition, To Da-duh, in Memoriam, Of White Hairs and Cricket, Elephant, Sandpiper, Journey (Shirley Geok-Lin Um), The Third and Final Continent, Tyres, At Hiruharama, Real Time, On Her Knees, The Contest
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. naturalist
    a biologist knowledgeable about botany and zoology
    The house was empty, and one felt, since one was the only person in the drawing-room, like one of those naturalists who, covered with grass and leaves, lie watching the shyest animals – badgers, otters, kingfishers – moving about freely, themselves unseen.
  2. nocturnal
    belonging to or active during the night
    The quiet old country room with its rugs and stone chimney pieces, its sunken bookcases and red and gold lacquer cabinets, was full of such nocturnal creatures.
  3. allusive
    characterized by indirect references
    They came pirouetting across the floor, stepping delicately with high-lifted feet and spread tails and pecking allusive beaks as if they had been cranes or flocks of elegant flamingoes whose pink was faded, or peacocks whose trains were veined with silver.
  4. suffuse
    cause to spread or flush or flood through, over, or across
    And there were obscure flushes and darkenings too, as if a cuttlefish had suddenly suffused the air with purple; and the room had its passions and rages and envies and sorrows coming over it and clouding it, like a human being.
  5. perpetual
    uninterrupted in time and indefinitely long continuing
    Meanwhile, since all the doors and windows were open in the heat, there was a perpetual sighing and ceasing sound, the voice of the transient and the perishing, it seemed, coming and going like human breath, while in the looking-glass things had ceased to breathe and lay still in the trance of immortality.
  6. transient
    lasting a very short time
    Meanwhile, since all the doors and windows were open in the heat, there was a perpetual sighing and ceasing sound, the voice of the transient and the perishing, it seemed, coming and going like human breath, while in the looking-glass things had ceased to breathe and lay still in the trance of immortality.
  7. gilt
    having the deep slightly brownish color of gold
    Half an hour ago the mistress of the house, Isabella Tyson, had gone down the grass path in her thin summer dress, carrying a basket, and had vanished, sliced off by the gilt rim of the looking-glass.
  8. presumably
    by reasonable assumption
    She had gone presumably into the lower garden to pick flowers; or as it seemed more natural to suppose, to pick something light and fantastic and leafy and trailing, traveller’s joy, or one of those elegant sprays of convolvulus that twine round ugly walls and burst here and there into white and violet blossoms.
  9. tremulous
    quivering as from weakness or fear
    She suggested the fantastic and the tremulous convolvulus rather than the upright aster, the starched zinnia, or her own burning roses alight like lamps on the straight posts of their rose trees.
  10. tendril
    slender structure by which some plants attach to an object
    The comparison showed how very little, after all these years, one knew about her; for it is impossible that any woman of flesh and blood of fifty-five or sixty should be really a wreath or a tendril.
  11. idle
    silly or trivial
    Such comparisons are worse than idle and superficial – they are cruel even, for they come like the convolvulus itself trembling between one’s eyes and the truth.
  12. spinster
    an elderly unmarried woman
    As for facts, it was a fact that she was a spinster; that she was rich; that she had bought this house and collected with her own hands – often in the most obscure corners of the world and at great risk from poisonous stings and Oriental diseases – the rugs, the chairs, the cabinets which now lived their nocturnal life before one’s eyes.
  13. obscure
    remote and separate physically or socially
    As for facts, it was a fact that she was a spinster; that she was rich; that she had bought this house and collected with her own hands – often in the most obscure corners of the world and at great risk from poisonous stings and Oriental diseases – the rugs, the chairs, the cabinets which now lived their nocturnal life before one’s eyes.
  14. audacity
    aggressive or outright boldness
    ...if one had the audacity to open a drawer and read her letters, one would find the traces of many agitations, of appointments to meet, of upbraidings for not having met, long letters of intimacy and affection, violent letters of jealousy and reproach, terrible final words of parting – for all those interviews and assignations had led to nothing...
  15. upbraid
    express criticism towards
    ...if one had the audacity to open a drawer and read her letters, one would find the traces of many agitations, of appointments to meet, of upbraidings for not having met, long letters of intimacy and affection, violent letters of jealousy and reproach, terrible final words of parting – for all those interviews and assignations had led to nothing...
  16. assignation
    a secret rendezvous (especially between lovers)
    ...if one had the audacity to open a drawer and read her letters, one would find the traces of many agitations, of appointments to meet, of upbraidings for not having met, long letters of intimacy and affection, violent letters of jealousy and reproach, terrible final words of parting – for all those interviews and assignations had led to nothing.....
  17. indifference
    the trait of lacking enthusiasm for or interest in things
    ...she had never married, and yet, judging from the mask-like indifference of her face, she had gone through twenty times more of passion and experience than those whose loves are trumpeted forth for all the world to hear.
  18. hieroglyphic
    resembling writing using picture symbols
    Under the stress of thinking about Isabella, her room became more shadowy and symbolic; the corners seemed darker, the legs of chairs and tables more spindly and hieroglyphic.
  19. strew
    spread by scattering
    A large black form loomed into the looking-glass; blotted out everything, strewed the table with a packet of marble tablets veined with pink and grey, and was gone.
  20. altered
    changed in form or character without becoming something else
    But the picture was entirely altered.
  21. irrational
    not consistent with or using reason
    For the moment it was unrecognisable and irrational and entirely out of focus.
  22. crude
    not carefully or expertly made
    There they lay on the marble-topped table, all dripping with light and colour at first and crude and unabsorbed.
  23. confer
    present
    And then it was strange to see how they were drawn in and arranged and composed and made part of the picture and granted that stillness and immortality which the looking-glass conferred.
  24. chisel
    an edge tool with a flat steel blade with a cutting edge
    They lay there invested with a new reality and significance and with a greater heaviness, too, as if it would have needed a chisel to dislodge them from the table.
  25. profound
    coming from deep within one
    Isabella would come in, and take them, one by one, very slowly, and open them, and read them carefully word by word, and then with a profound sigh of comprehension, as if she had seen to the bottom of everything, she would tear the envelopes to little bits and tie the letters together and lock the cabinet drawer in her determination to conceal what she did not wish to be known.
  26. exquisite
    delicately beautiful
    Like everything she wore, they were exquisite.
  27. mocking
    expressing contempt or ridicule
    The sun would beat down on her face, into her eyes; but no, at the critical moment a veil of cloud covered the sun, making the expression of her eyes doubtful – was it mocking or tender, brilliant or dull?
  28. indeterminate
    of uncertain or ambiguous nature
    One could only see the indeterminate outline of her rather faded, fine face looking at the sky.
  29. distinguished
    standing above others in character or attainment
    She was rich; she was distinguished; she had many friends; she travelled – she bought rugs in Turkey and blue pots in Persia.
  30. futility
    uselessness as a consequence of having no practical result
    Yes, and at the same time the fall of the branch would suggest to her how she must die herself and all the futility and evanescence of things.
  31. evanescence
    the event of fading and gradually vanishing from sight
    Yes, and at the same time the fall of the branch would suggest to her how she must die herself and all the futility and evanescence of things.
  32. reticent
    not inclined to talk or provide information
    Without making any thought precise – for she was one of those reticent people whose minds hold their thoughts enmeshed in clouds of silence – she was filled with thoughts.
  33. pirouette
    rapidly spin the body, usually as part of a dance
    Her mind was like her room, in which lights advanced and retreated, came pirouetting and stepping delicately, spread their tails, pecked their way; and then her whole being was suffused, like the room again, with a cloud of some profound knowledge, some unspoken regret, and then she was full of locked drawers, stuffed with letters, like her cabinets.
  34. penetrate
    come to understand
    She came lingering and pausing, here straightening a rose, there lifting a pink to smell it, but she never stopped; and all the time she became larger and larger in the looking-glass, more and more completely the person into whose mind one had been trying to penetrate.
  35. pliable
    capable of being bent or flexed or twisted without breaking
    To talk of ‘prizing her open’ as if she were an oyster, to use any but the finest and subtlest and most pliable tools upon her was impious and absurd.
  36. impious
    lacking due respect or dutifulness
    To talk of ‘prizing her open’ as if she were an oyster, to use any but the finest and subtlest and most pliable tools upon her was impious and absurd.
  37. derange
    throw into great confusion or disorder
    She came so gradually that she did not seem to derange the pattern in the glass, but only to bring in some new element which gently moved and altered the other objects as if asking them, courteously, to make room for her.
  38. superficial
    of, affecting, or being on or near the surface
    At once the looking-glass began to pour over her a light that seemed to fix her; that seemed like some acid to bite off the unessential and superficial and to leave only the truth.
  39. enthralling
    able to capture and hold one's interest or attention
    It was an enthralling spectacle.
  40. pitiless
    without mercy or sympathy
    Here was the hard wall beneath. Here was the woman herself. She stood naked in that pitiless light. And there was nothing.
Created on Mon Mar 05 12:11:05 EST 2018 (updated Tue Mar 27 14:02:15 EDT 2018)

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