The painting links the theme of a woman making her toilet with the mythical motif of Psyche.

When it was later auctioned, American painter Mary Cassatt, who felt a strong affinity with Morisot's themes and style, bought it.

She had just entered a new phase in her life, where she would try to reconcile her existence as a wife and later as a mother with being an artist, which would cost her a lot of effort.

In 1890 she wrote in her diary: "The truth is that our strength lies in the feeling, in intuition, in our gaze, which is more delicate than men's.

Art historian Whitney Chadwick wrote of Psyche in 1990: "Paintings like this normally appeal to the conventional association between women and mirrors and to the notion that vanity is 'proper' to them.

"[3] According to Wu Hung, Morisot boldly used the "woman in front of a mirror" template but dropped the voyeuristic approach and replaced it with female subjectivity.