SOURCE: "Marivaux: The Mirror and the Mask," in L'Esprit Créateur, Vol. 1, No. 4, Winter, 1961, pp. 167-77.

In the excerpt below, Rogers argues that Marivaux uses images of mirrors and masks to "probe the reality that lies behind appearances. "

In the first number of Le Spectateur français, Marivaux recounts an incident supposedly drawn from his own life. The passage, perhaps more frequently quoted than any other in Marivaux's prose writings, tells how, at the age of seventeen, he fell in love with a charming and beautiful young lady whose principal attraction for him resided in her indifference to her own beauty, her lack of coquetry, her complete naturalness. One day, after leaving her presence, he discovered that he had left behind a glove which he returned to retrieve. Unnoticed, he came upon his lady-love studying herself in her mirror. She was rehearsing all the facial expressions, all the...