The Aspern Papers

While Juliana’s eyes are an important element of Aspern’s poetic representation of her, she obscures them for most of the narrative. According to Tita, she does this in order to “preserve” them in her age, but they were very beautiful in her youth. Juliana’s eyes function as a symbol of the passage of time, and the contrast between representation and reality. For example, they are obscured not by an attractive veil or other device but by what the narrator describes as a “horrible green shade” (64) that functions as a mask.

Juliana’s choice to mask her eyes is aligned with her character trait of privacy, symbolizing her impulse to protect her inner life and her memories from the hungry eyes of the public (as represented by the narrator). Her desire to hide the papers suggests that, like her eyes, there is something in the archive worth preserving and protecting from sight. Therefore, Juliana’s eyes also symbolize the Aspern papers themselves as something that is valuable and therefore worth seeing, but paradoxically not allowed to be seen.