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Sasha’s tendency to retreat to the bathroom in restaurants or bars and cry in front of the mirror represents her morbid obsession with her own unhappiness. Not only does she remove herself from public settings so she can fully indulge her emotional breakdowns, but she also watches herself cry, noting the way she looks in these moments of sorrow. Her interest in her own face as she weeps aligns with her inability to stop thinking about her discontent, as she constantly ponders the nature of her sorrow instead of simply trying to live in the moment and enjoy her life. Rather than taking life “as it comes” (as Delmar encourages her to do), she incessantly analyzes the things that make her sad, thinking about what it feels like to lose herself in deep pits of emotion.
Furthermore, her habit of crying in front of mirrors also relates to her self-consciousness about her appearance, since she spends a lot of her time and energy worrying about how other people perceive her. Consequently, she often tries to hide behind new hairstyles or clothes, desperately trying to mask her sorrow. By openly weeping in front of the mirror, then, she allows herself a rare moment of emotional honesty—a moment in which she doesn’t have to hide her unhappiness. The mirrors themselves thus come to represent her strange and private relationship with her own emotions.
Bathroom Mirrors Quotes in Good Morning, Midnight
The Good Morning, Midnight quotes below all refer to the symbol of Bathroom Mirrors. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part One
Quotes
I stayed there, staring at myself in the glass. What do I want to cry about?....On the contrary, it’s when I am quite sane like this, when I have had a couple of extra drinks and am quite sane, that I realize how lucky I am. Saved, rescued, fished-up, half-drowned, out of the deep, dark river, dry clothes, hair shampooed and set. Nobody would know I had ever been in it. Except, of course, that there always remains something. Yes, there always remains something....
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Bathroom Mirrors Symbol Timeline in Good Morning, Midnight
The timeline below shows where the symbol Bathroom Mirrors appears in Good Morning, Midnight. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part One
...she removed herself to weep in the bathroom, where she stared at herself in the mirror.
(full context)
Looking at herself in the mirror, Sasha asked herself why she was crying. She felt pretty good before breaking down. She’d...
(full context)
Part Four
...familiar to her—yet another Parisian bathroom in which she has cried. She wonders if the mirror recognizes her and, if so, what it thinks about how she has changed.
(full context)
