Recurring references to food and cooking throughout the collection act as a motif representing domesticity, caretaking, and maternity. In “Antarctica,” the woman is deceived by her lover’s seemingly harmless front; the repeated images of him buying and preparing her food make her feel safe with and cared for by him. These images shift, however, when the lover ends up feeding her while she is chained to the bed at the story’s end; on its surface, the action is nurturing but is in fact a sign of his power over and manipulation of the woman. In “Men and Women,” the narrator and her mother are constantly in the kitchen cooking, often while the husband and son entertain themselves with other games or pastimes; the women are assuming the assigned roles as housekeepers and caregivers. In “The Singing Cashier,” images of food and cooking abound—as in the “cod or lemon sole or whiting wrapped in newspaper” (84), the remaining “two eggs, a tub of Flora margarine, a wilted head of lettuce” (85) in the fridge, the “Oatmeal boiled over” (86) on the stove, and the runny egg yolk the narrator serves Cora at the story’s end. Because such imagery is so prominent, it suggests abundance, but in truth, the sisters’ reality is much like the stinking fish wrapped in the newspaper filled with bad news. The sisters remain consigned to their limiting circumstances, struggling to survive and narrowly escaping death.

In other stories like “Sisters” and “Passport Soup,” the symbolic meaning behind the culinary imagery similarly mutates over the course of each story. In “Sisters,” the images of the vegetables, jams, milk, and fruits conjure notions of a pleasant, bountiful homestead. Later, Louisa eats Betty’s plums, in effect devouring her self-endowed sense of fertility and health. Later still, Betty cooks a lavish dinner for the family but the meat bleeds “on the serving plate” and “the carrots are rubbery and overcooked” (123). What appears homey and comforting is in fact dissatisfying, tasteless, and ruined. In “Passport Soup,” the same phenomenon surrounding food occurs when Frank Corso returns home one night to find “a big pot of soup simmering on the stove, warm bread in a basket on the table” and his wife “setting the table” (159). He immediately reads these as signs of forgiveness and acceptance, but soon discovers the images of his missing daughter in the soup. The wife’s culinary display is in fact a ruse; she lures her husband in so she can confront him for his role in their daughter’s disappearance. Throughout the collection, food and cooking operate as archetypes for the proverbial “home and hearth,” but always have a more sinister undertone, which proves these archetypes fraudulent.