The Looking Glass Analysis

Anton Chekhov's short story, The Looking Glass, is about a vision that the main character, Nellie, has when she looks into a looking glass. The vision starts with Nellie seeing a man that she is in love with and is married to. At first, everything in the vision is happy and Nellie feels complete with her husband but things then take a turn when Nellie's husband becomes ill and she realizes that her marriage is not all that she hoped it would be. The story ends with Nellie waking up relieved that it was all just a dream.
In this story, the looking glass is used to be a metaphor for the fact that things aren't always how they appear to be. The term looking glass can be defined as being or involving the opposite of what is normal or expected. On her initial look into the looking glass, Nellie sees the happy marriage she has always dreamed of having, but the vision ends very differently than she expected it to. During this time period, it was normal for women to depend on men and marriage for their happiness, but Nellie learns that that might not always be the case and marriage is not everything she thought it would be just as what you might see in a looking glass might not be what is actually there. Finally at the end of the story Nellie drops the looking glass that she was looking into originally and finds that there is a new one in front of her. This symbolizes her dropping the idea that marriage is the only way in which she will find happiness and her new outlook on what life and marriage mean.

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