Mme de Noailles

Mme de Noailles appears here through autobiographical recollections used to illuminate a child's desire to encounter herself as someone distinct. Her dolls offered that imagined doubling: a separate figure to care for, identify with, and address, while the mirror later made her reflected appearance a compelling focus of self-regard.

Childhood and the Doll

The discussion frames the doll as a way for a child to picture herself as both self and other. Mme de Noailles recalls giving life, in imagination, to the dolls’ stillness, and wanting them wrapped warmly as she was. Their separation from her own body mattered: the doll could stand apart and thus make an imagined dialogue between self and self possible.

Her recollection gives this doubling an emotional purpose. In moments of distress, she wished for another little Anna beside her, someone who would embrace and understand her. She later describes finding that companion inwardly, not as the consolation she had hoped for but as a source of courage. The imagined double therefore develops from a childhood plaything into an enduring inner resource.

Reflection and the Body

A separate recollection turns from the doll to the mirror. Mme de Noailles says that she was less concerned with her intellectual gifts, which she trusted, than with the image reflected in a mirror she consulted frequently. In the book’s argument, the reflected image offers another form of separation: she can regard her appearance as an object of attention rather than experience herself only from within.

The passage also associates her attention to the image with a broader valuation of physical experience. Mme de Noailles states that physical pleasure satisfies the soul fully. This assertion places bodily experience alongside the mirror image as a significant dimension of how she describes selfhood; the evidence does not further specify the circumstances of that pleasure.

Significance in the Discussion

These memories support a distinction between an inward self and an image or figure that can be contemplated from outside. The doll makes the imagined double tangible in childhood; the mirror supplies a reflected likeness. In both cases, distance enables recognition, but the remembered companion also exceeds mere likeness: she represents understanding and courage.