What does Roxanne's sudden blindness make her realize in the story, Blindsided, from the collection, All Aunt Hagar’s Children?

The sudden-onset blindness that Roxanne experiences in "Blindsided" serves as a symbol for the ways in which external beauty is a shallow thing on which to base one's self-worth. Although Roxanne has coasted through life on the back of her physical beauty for years, her sudden inability to see prompts her to realize that she has little to offer outside of her looks, which she can no longer have confidence in because she is incapable of seeing herself in the mirror. Ultimately, then, the blindness serves both a fable-esque function and a symbolic one in the sense that Roxanne's blindness toward herself is externalized as a physical disability in order to reveal her shortcomings to her.