SOURCE: Kurtz, Marilyn. “Glass Breaking: Later Fiction.” In Virginia Woolf: Reflections and Reverberations, pp. 115-23. New York: Peter Lang, 1990.

In the following excerpt, Kurtz considers the symbolism of windows and mirrors in Woolf's later short fiction.

Windows and mirrors play as compelling a part in the later fiction of Virginia Woolf as they do in the earlier works. Even the short stories are infused with images of glass, for here, as in the novels, Virginia Woolf makes explorations into personal identity and the human condition through vehicles of glass in a quest for meaning.

Because of their power to separate and divide (as the self split from its image in the mirror or the external and internal division at a window), mirrors and windows are often used by Virginia Woolf as barriers or distancing devices. On the other hand, they are, paradoxically, symbols of unification since revelations or...