The pier-glass symbolizes Della’s delight in her hair, which she decides to give up out of love for her husband.
Della and Jim are very poor. Della is upset because she can’t raise enough money to buy her husband a present. She looks at herself in the pier-glass often, we are told. This is because she loves her hair.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Although Della’s hair is her most prized possession, she loves her husband more. Some things are more valuable than hair. Hair grows back, after all. Christmas comes but once a year, and it is an opportunity to show her husband how much she loves him.
Della seems to already know that selling her hair is an option because she grabs her coat and takes off out the door after looking at her hair in the pier-glass. She goes immediately to Madame Sofronie and asks if she will buy her hair.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Della does not hesitate. She doesn’t need to, because she already decided before she came in. She will trade her most prized possession for money. All she is interested in is getting as much money as she can so that she can buy her Jim a present worthy of him. She buys him the watch-fob, and he probably would have loved the gift if he hadn’t sold the watch to buy her a comb-set for her hair.
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