It is the poet's metaphor, itself another kind of reconstruction, and so the reader becomes twice removed from these women who are being represented. The mirror becomes a metaphorical space in which January can appraise both physical beauty and reputation. As a series of images, these reconstructions are simultaneously physical, social, and metaphorical, and yet all fall short of giving January what he needs. In addition to being a reference to January's later literal blindness, the line calls the problem of the mirror to the reader's attention. The idea of seeing as the direct path to truth, as laid out in Genesis, becomes inapplicable here.
Vision is no longer a clear window between the subject and the truth.
Instead, it is a kind of reconstruction, as flawed as any kind of representation, especially considering the limitations of this particular subject. In addition to problematizing the relationship between vision and truth, January's blindness challenges notions of representation by stretching the limits of the fabliau genre. Second, his blindness makes the key fabliau element of clever trickery somewhat difficult. The story's use of classical and Christian myth continues the problematizing of representation. Pluto and Prosperpyna arguing like medieval Christian scholastics in the middle of a fabliau carries the destabilization of genre to a new extreme.