Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall: The Mirror Effect in Jean Anouilh’s Le voyageur sans bagage

Widely regarded as Anouilh’s first mature play and first critical success, Le voyageur sans bagage features Gaston, a World War I amnesia victim who, after almost two decades in an asylum, is pressured by a philanthropic Duchess to find his family. She escorts him to the family she prefers, whose missing member was an unsavoury character bearing no resemblance to the person Gaston believes himself to be. The plot centres on Gaston’s struggles to come to terms with a past that horrifies him. The play has garnered little scholarly attention; the few existing studies look broadly at Anouilh’s generic categories, the play’s anti-war theme, or its final plot twist. What has not been explored is an element informing the play at every turn: mirroring or dédoublement. This article shows how the myriad instances of mirroring or doubling highlight the duality inherent in Anouilh’s protagonist.