# The Mirror explained — Lilith

> Chapter companion for Lilith by George MacDonald.

## What happens

Mr. Vane, having resolved to inspect the books in the library closet, sees a shadowy figure of an old librarian and follows him through the house up into the garret. There he discovers a tall mirror with an ebony frame and a black eagle. Looking into it, he sees not his own reflection but a wild landscape, and stepping closer, he stumbles through the frame and finds himself standing face to beak with a raven on a desolate heath.

## Themes in this chapter

### Illusion and Reality

The mirror does not reflect the room but reveals a wild landscape, blurring the boundary between the real and the imagined.

### Innocence and Growth

Vane's childlike curiosity and lack of astonishment at the impossible mirror suggest a naive openness to wonder, marking the beginning of his transformative journey.

## Character check-ins

### Mr. Vane

The protagonist who follows a shadowy figure and discovers the mirror, ultimately stepping into another world.

### Mr. Raven

The shadowy figure Vane follows through the house, later appearing as a raven in the other world.

## Key lines

> I saw the old librarian moving from the door of the closet toward the farther end of the room.

Vane spots a shadowy figure resembling the librarian walking away from the closet.

_This figure leads Vane on his journey to the mirror._

> I was in the main garret, with huge beams and rafters over my head, great spaces around me, a door here and there in sight, and long vistas whose gloom was thinned by a few lurking cobwebbed windows and small dusky skylights.

Vane finds himself in a vast, dusty attic with beams overhead and dim light filtering through dirty windows.

_The garret is depicted as a forgotten, mysterious space._

> I saw before me a wild country, broken and heathy. Desolate hills of no great height, but somehow of strange appearance, occupied the middle distance; along the horizon stretched the tops of a far-off mountain range; nearest me lay a tract of moorland, flat and melancholy.

Through the mirror, Vane sees a bleak, hilly landscape with distant mountains and a flat, sad moor.

_This is the first glimpse of the other world._

> I was in the open air, on a houseless heath!

Vane suddenly finds himself outdoors on an empty moor.

_He has crossed from his world into the mirror's landscape._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/lilith_se/chapters/ii-the-mirror
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/lilith_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/lilith_se/chapters