What does “the cracked lookingglass of a servant” mean?
“The cracked lookingglass of a servant” is Stephen Dedalus's bitter description of Irish art in Episode 1. Holding Mulligan's cracked shaving mirror, stolen from a maid, he says Irish art can only reflect itself in a broken mirror owned by someone in service to another nation.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Episode 1, Telemachus. Stephen, looking into the shaving mirror Mulligan took from the room of the tower's maid.
It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant.
What it means in plain English
Mulligan holds up his cracked mirror for Stephen to look into and admits he took it from the skivvy's room. Stephen, seeing his face split by the crack, turns it into a judgement on Ireland.
Ireland in 1904 was ruled from London. Stephen means that Irish art sees itself only in a borrowed, damaged mirror: the artist is a servant, and the image is broken.
Literary context
Wilde's essay “The Decay of Lying” (1891) mocks the idea that art holds a mirror up to nature, an idea that goes back to Hamlet. Mulligan mentions Wilde a moment earlier, so the echo is deliberate.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 1, “Telemachus”
- Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying (1891)
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
Who says “the cracked lookingglass of a servant”?
Stephen Dedalus, speaking to Buck Mulligan on the roof of the tower.
Whose mirror is it?
Mulligan says he took it from the room of the maid who works at the tower, so it literally belongs to a servant.
Related terms
Stephen Dedalus
The young writer who opens the novel — brilliant, grieving, and adrift. Joyce's Telemachus, the searching son.
Buck Mulligan
Stephen's witty, blasphemous flatmate, a medical student. He opens the novel parodying the Catholic Mass at the tower.
Haines
Haines is an English student from Oxford staying at the Martello tower in Episode 1. He studies Irish folklore and language, and kept Stephen awake raving in his sleep about a black panther. To Stephen he stands for the English conqueror who finds Ireland quaint.
Non serviam
“Non serviam” is Latin for “I will not serve”, the words traditionally given to Lucifer when he rebelled against God. Stephen shouts it at his mother's ghost in Circe, refusing again to kneel and pray. It is his defiance in its purest form.