I’m going to go ahead and call the “looking glass” image a symbol rather than metaphor. It becomes clearer when Antoinette’s husband uses the mirror to watch a confrontation between his wife and a servant who obviously harbors prejudicial hatred and disdain against her white mistress.
No one was about. The kitchen door was shut and the place looked deserted. I went up the steps along the veranda and when I heard voices stopped behind the dodor whic led into Antoinette’s room. I could see it reflected in the looking-glass. She was in bed and the girl Amelie was sweeping. (p. 99)
There are so many secrets, so many hidden emotions between all these people that I see the looking glass as a chosen point of view of these characters. There is a distance that a mirror brings; a wall that no matter how close one gets, one cannot get beyond, even as we see ourselves and others beyond that wall. I may be that wall that is their preferred way of seeing things, clearly and yet untouchable.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology