The first section of the poem, "I," starts with the speaker waking up at 4:00 a.m. with an ex-boyfriend, Law, on her mind. The personal mood of the first three stanzas, the title of the section, and the immediate presence of an I suggest the work is confessional, so Anne Carson is the speaker. However, Carson is a somewhat enigmatic figure who often writes about personal matters. Men in the Off Hours (2000) includes poems about Carson’s mother and father. Her 2010 work, Nox, centers on the death of her brother. In a 2004 interview with The Paris Review, Carson replied evasively to a question about the personal nature of “The Glass Essay,” saying, “I see it as a messing around on an upper level with things that I wanted to make sense of at a deeper level.” The abstruse answer indicates that the speaker is not conclusively Carson, so the speaker should remain the speaker.

In Line 11, the speaker introduces her mom. In the next section, "SHE," the speaker talks about her mom and Emily Brontë with straightforward diction. “I feel I am turning into Emily Brontë,” confesses the speaker (Line 21).