62 pages • 2 hours read
Nora RobertsThe Mirror
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Power of Love and Courage
Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of death by suicide, physical and emotional abuse.
Throughout The Mirror, characters practice courage and love to keep the forces of evil at bay. Cleo tells Sonya early in the novel that they must fill the house with solidarity and laughter. The manor is meant for “living, working, planning” (24), just like Sonya and Cleo are doing. If they were to stop doing these things, Hester Dobbs, the manor’s resident evil spirit, would gain an advantage over them and take ownership of the house. The novel sets up a binary between love and hate, friendship and isolation, and courage and fear, the positive emotion in each case the antidote to its bleak counterpart.
While Dobbs feeds on fear and grief, the characters use their friendships and love to fight their fears and Dobbs. Sonya and Cleo support each other unconditionally in their personal and professional lives, as when Cleo helps Sonya with her work presentation. Owen rushes into the mirror after Sonya without a thought for his well-being, because he is concerned for her. Trey is dependable and supportive not just of Sonya and his loved ones but even of his clients like Marlo. On the other hand, Dobbs purposefully isolates herself, locking herself in the Gold Room. Just as she rejected others when she was alive, as a ghost too she keeps away from the spirits of the manor. The contrast between connection and isolation illustrates how much stronger Sonya and her friends are as a result of their relationships.
The novel also sets up a contrast between Dobbs’s fear, fueled by her isolation, and the friends’ courage. The novel suggests that Dobbs herself is afraid, which is why she frightens others. Dobbs fears the loss of Poole Manor to such an extreme degree that she dies by suicide to bind herself to the house. Whenever she senses Sonya’s presence in past timelines, she freezes in fear. By contrast, Sonya, Cleo, and the others hold onto their courage, even while they are confronted with frightening events. For instance, Sonya holds back from immediately calling her friends after she witnesses Clover’s life events. When Cleo asks her why, Sonya tells her she wanted to act courageously, without giving Dobbs “another ounce of [her] grief and fear” (122). Characters like Sonya and Cleo do experience fear; however, they refuse to act on that fear. Courage therefore is not the absence of fear, but its acceptance, and the determination to keep living despite being afraid.
The novel also considers how love and friendship cast their own spell, illustrated by the way that even the spirits of the manor support Sonya and her friends. Clover warns Sonya about Dobbs whenever she can by playing songs; Molly helps with household chores; and Jack plays with the pets so Sonya and Cleo can work. In Owen’s dream, Collin emphasizes how central love and friendship are to the fight against Dobbs, calling the brotherhood between Trey and Owen a “precious thing,” much like the sisterhood between Sonya and Cleo. The friends will need this very precious thing “to face what’s coming” (260). As the novel progresses, this connection between the manor, its spirits, people, and animals builds the bulwark against the tide of evil, highlighting how the forces of love and courage have their own, mightier power through the friends’ small victories against Dobbs.
The Importance of Bearing Witness
Bearing witness means to witness an event, but it is also linked with the act of giving true testimony that counts as evidence, similar to a witness in a trial. In the novel, the manor’s spirits show Sonya their memories so that Sonya can bear witness and validate or testify their truths, keeping their stories alive. Sonya’s testimony is important for the spirits because of the mysterious circumstances of their death—no one knows the complete truth about what happened to them. In addition, because their deaths involve the paranormal, they are further obfuscated through legend and superstition. Sonya’s act of witnessing the spirits’ lives and deaths keeps their memories and identities alive and defeats false narratives with the truth, a positive act central to defeating the forces of evil.
Sonya, Cleo, and other characters often underscore the importance of bearing witness. Early in the novel, a frustrated Sonya wonders why she is being shown the terrible deaths when she can do nothing to stop them. Cleo reminds Sonya of her own words, spoken a few pages before: “You’re bearing witness. Just like you said outside Molly’s room. And I think that’s important” (22). After Sonya witnesses the birth of her father and his twin and Clover’s heartbreaking death, she tells Clover that she will make sure to remember everything she witnessed. Clover shows her approval by playing Marvin Gaye’s “Can I Get a Witness” on Sonya’s phone. Throughout the novel, Sonya also assures the spirits that she will not forget the truths she has witnessed. When she finds Marianne’s portrait, she assures it, “I’m not forgetting any of you” (411). Bearing witness is also an act of empathy and solidarity: While it is difficult for Sonya to see her ancestors die painful deaths, by watching and remembering, she honors that pain. Although bearing witness to their tragic deaths isn’t easy, Sonya accepts the responsibility, knowing that keeping their memories alive is central to both their peace in the afterlife and her victory over Dobbs.
The novel also links memory and forgetting with the theme of bearing witness. It suggests that it is easy to forget individual truths for the sake of larger, mainstream narratives. However, this act of forgetting fosters a power imbalance, as one narrative is established as the “truth.” For instance, Patricia Poole knew the truth about Dobbs but kept it to herself in a misguided attempt to save the family’s reputation. By keeping the truth a secret, she erased the stories of those who died, both burying the truth and potentially condemning future brides to the same gruesome fate. With the help of the manor itself, Sonya and her friends break the curse of forgetting because they accept each uncomfortable truth they are shown. By bearing witness, they restore the spirits’ stories to the manor’s history and honor the truth, no matter how difficult.
The Interplay Between Past and Present
In The Mirror, author Nora Robers erases the boundaries between past and present as Sonya and her friends interact with the manor’s spirits. Clover, the music-loving spirit of Sonya’s grandmother, often plays songs to suit the occasion. Clover died in the mid-1960s, but her playlist includes Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love.” Although Clover’s role as house DJ and her eclectic song choices are a humorous bit of whimsy, they also signify the interplay between the past and the present. Clover may be a ghost, but she is not stuck in the yesterday. Similarly, her son Collin is aware of Owen’s current work. These two spirits, and their interactions with Sonya and her friends, subvert the trope of ghosts as frozen in time or locked in the past. Unlike in many ghost stories, in this novel, the dead are not just aware of the present but also participate in it actively. With this genre convention twist, Nora Roberts shifts the traditional representation of spirits. The willingness of the spirits to engage with the living illustrates their openness, showing that ghosts are not just always scary entities jealous of life—they can also be benevolent guides and adaptable beings.
By portraying the spirits in this fashion, the novel suggests that the past is never dead; it lives on in the present and must be accepted and honored. Sonya and her friends also subvert ghost story tropes in their reactions to and relationships with the ghosts. Just as the good spirits of the novel embrace the living, the living embrace them back. Sonya quickly accepts that the manor is haunted, and the ghosts become a part of her daily life. For instance, the thud of a ball reminds her that Jack is playing with Yoda. On such occasions, she announces her presence before entering the hall so Jack can hide if he wants. She also speaks to the portraits of the brides and Molly, acknowledging and thanking them when appropriate. Instead of viewing the spirits with suspicion, Sonya and her friends see them as indispensable to the house’s context. Acknowledging the spirits also becomes a metaphor for accepting a place or a person’s entire complex history. Part of the manor’s power rests in its deep, layered history, and by fully recognizing that, the friends ensure its full legacy.
The novel also addresses the personal legacies of the characters, showing the influence of their origins and pasts on their present. For Cleo, understanding her legacy means acknowledging her Creole roots. For Sonya, it is about learning a family history from which she has been separated. This acceptance of the past also involves accepting its full complex reality. Early in the novel, Sonya notes that the manor is bound to have seen its share of sadness because “it’s just what happens when people live and work and plan in a house for over two hundred years” (26). By accepting the complex and layered history of the manor, even the sad or evil parts, Sonya accepts the nature of reality. By doing so, she can deal with the present in a more healthy empowered way. The novel ties the successes of Sonya and her friends to their ability to confront and accept the full, complicated history of Poole Manor, facilitated by the permeable boundaries between past and present in the house.
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