51 pages • 1-hour read
Freaky Friday
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Symbols & Motifs
Marshmallows
Annabel loves sugary treats, and one of her favorites is marshmallows. These become a symbol of her desire for adult freedoms without corresponding adult responsibilities and help to develop the theme of The Responsibilities That Come with Adult Freedoms. Marshmallows first appear in the narrative when Annabel, on the night before the body swap, accuses her mother of eating marshmallows for breakfast whenever she wants to. It is a ridiculous accusation, because it is actually Annabel who loves marshmallows, not Ellen. In fact, Annabel has “never in [her] life seen [Ellen] eating a marshmallow” (13). What Annabel’s accusation actually indicates is that she longs for the freedom to make her own choices—as adults do—because she imagines that she would use this freedom to eat all the sugary treats she can get her hands on.
On the morning of the body swap, ironically, she sees the person in the Annabel body actually eating marshmallows for breakfast. This “Annabel” uses being full of marshmallows as an excuse for skipping the healthy breakfast the real Annabel offers her—ducking the responsibility of caring for her own health while enjoying the freedom of eating the marshmallows. Later, when Annabel is arguing with Mrs. Schmauss, Mrs. Schmauss points out a marshmallow stuck onto a colored pencil in Annabel’s room as evidence of Annabel’s lack of maturity and self-discipline. Although Annabel does not yet see it, this demonstrates that Annabel already has significantly more freedom than she appreciates—and that everyone can see how she misuses this freedom.
Annabel’s Braces
Annabel’s braces represent the stage of life she is in—the difficult “tween” transition between childhood and later adolescence. Braces are generally associated with late childhood and early adolescence and mark a person as being in this stage of development. They are both a cosmetic and functional preparation of a child’s teeth for adult life, making them a necessary but sometimes painful and awkward part of growing up. Annabel certainly considers her braces a nuisance—she does not even bother to take care of her teeth by brushing them, because her braces make it very difficult. Similarly, the tween years can be emotionally painful and awkward, and, preoccupied with her own negative emotions, Annabel does not bother to do other kinds of basic “maintenance” in her life: keeping her room clean, tending to her relationships, and getting her school work done.
Braces are “guides” that pull the teeth into an alignment that will serve a child well in adulthood. Just as Annabel’s teeth still need this constraint and guidance, Annabel herself still needs the rules and norms enforced by her parents. At the beginning of the story, she is not quite ready to be her own guide, to position herself in a way that will serve her as an adult.
Annabel’s braces are not just a literal, physical constraint. They impact how others see her—particularly Boris, who proclaims that her braces are the only thing he ever notices about her physical appearance. Her braces define her for Boris, symbolically reflecting the way Annabel is “stuck” in her tween identity even as she should be emerging into a more mature stage of development. Significantly, Annabel’s braces come off on the day she swaps bodies with Ellen; even as Annabel is working herself free of her internal limitation, Ellen is symbolically freeing Annabel from an exterior limitation. Annabel’s brace-free teeth at the end of the novel signal her readiness to emerge into later adolescence and begin taking responsibility for herself.
Cooking
In this novel, cooking stands in symbolically for the larger act of caring for others. Ellen is so well-known for this kind of attention to her family that Bill invites clients home for dinner without even consulting her, sure that her usual loving kindness will make itself felt in a delicious dinner for anyone invited into the Andrews home. Ellen makes her husband and children the kind of eggs they like best each morning and insists that her children eat nutritious meals. She makes Annabel eat a full breakfast and hot lunch at school instead of letting Annabel eat “a jelly sandwich […] and a Coke,” as Annabel would prefer (4). Ben is young enough to be home from school at lunchtime, and Ellen makes him things like a “lamb chop or baked potato or string beans” (55).
Neither child appreciates the significant amount of effort Ellen goes to, but she does it because she loves them and feels responsible for their health. When Ellen is acting as Annabel early in the morning and rejects breakfast in favor of marshmallows, she is illustrating for Annabel how frustrating and hurtful it can be to have this kind of loving attention misinterpreted as a desire for control. This helps to show how much Annabel needs to grow in her Appreciation for Family Bonds.
Because cooking is a sign of attending to others’ needs, not just one’s own, Annabel of course cannot cook. She cannot even make coffee: Bill has to make do with instant on the day of the body swap. She feeds Ben cold leftover macaroni for lunch, along with “last night’s damp salad and a couple of cold meatballs” (55). She arranges for Bill to take her out to dinner—intending to pay a sitter to feed the children and enjoy a restaurant meal cooked by someone other than herself. When Bill invites the Framptons for dinner, Annabel panics, because she is simply not up to this adult responsibility. This suggests that, while Annabel has made real progress during the time she has been living as her mother, she is still not ready to take full responsibility for taking care of other human beings.
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