Mirrors

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? All right, so the mirrors in the brothel don't talk to Lakshmi, but they sure reveal a lot to her and us as readers.

Traditionally in literature mirrors are connected to the concept of the self or the soul, and one of the first times we see this is in the Greek myth about Narcissus, the guy who fell in love with his reflection and died. When we look in the mirror, we see that they reflect reality… to some extent, anyway—sometimes they distort reality, like in a fun house.

And when we look in mirrors, well, we usually do it for a reason: perhaps we want to confirm our existence, perhaps we want to connect to our soul, or perhaps it's a way for us to see who we really are (think Dorian Gray except with a mirror). Okay—and sometimes it's just to make sure there isn't any lettuce in our teeth.

With this all in mind, the moments when Lakshmi looks in mirrors throughout the novel are pretty important. Before her rape—before she realizes the true purpose of the Happiness House—Lakshmi is made up and looks in the mirror.

I see my face reflected in a silver glass on the wall. Another Lakshmi looks back at me. She has black-rimmed tiger eyes, a mouth red as a pomegranate, and flowing hair like the tiny gold-pants woman in the TV.

[…] I smile at this new Lakshmi. And she smiles back. Uncertainly. (68.ACityGirl.11-12)

This is a moment of Lakshmi meeting her new self—the self she is being forced to pretend to be at Happiness House. And though this leg of Lakshmi's journey is just getting started, the uncertainty of the smile that Lakshmi exchanges with her reflection infuses the moment with a bit of foreboding while also drawing our attention to the fact that this is a bit like a girl playing dress-up. The girl doesn't recognize this sort of grown-up version of herself and the uncertainty with which she smiles at her is similar to how we might smile at someone we think we recognize but can't quite place.

The next time Lakshmi sees herself is after Mumtaz shaves her head:

I stay very still, looking at the girl in the silver glass. Soon she has the shorn head of a disgraced woman and a face of stone. (70.Sold.28)

Who is looking back at Lakshmi? Is this a reflection of her spirit? Instead of seeing the young girl she came to Happiness House as staring back in the mirror, now Lakshmi sees someone much older, someone labeled as shameful, and someone emotionally frozen. So much has changed, right?

And then Lakshmi finds herself in the mirror again, right after Habib rapes her:

She has blackened tiger eyes and bleary chili pepper lips.

She looks back at me full of sadness and scorn and says, You have become one of them. (81.OneofThem.4-5)

Compare this to when Lakshmi first sees herself made up in the mirror, paying close attention to the descriptions of herself and think about what has been lost. Did you notice that while the first time she sees her reflection she smiles, here she scolds? What might this tell us about how Lakshmi's sense of self has shifted?

Every time Lakshmi looks at herself in the mirror, we see a progression and a reflection of her self-opinion: first she's a movie star, then a disgraced woman, then a prostitute. There are more instances—and pretty important ones at that—of Lakshmi confronting her appearances in mirrors. Check out the chapters "Am I Pretty" after the hugging man comes and "An Old Woman" after Lakshmi's illness to figure out how Lakshmi's perspective of herself continues to change.