Ceramics function as a prominent symbol for Gus’s self-perception. Her work often expresses the things about herself she either cannot say directly or struggles to articulate in words. In Chapter 2, Gus describes her ceramic style for the first time, contrasting them against the “dainty teacups” that Anna usually makes: “I never make dainty teacups, but mugs the size of tankards, with their surfaces roughly hewn. The texture of cauldrons, as a teacher once put it” (10). Where Anna’s dainty ceramics suggest a performance of delicacy, Gus’s ceramics project the crude and coarse way she sees herself, which has its own charm and character in the form she has chosen for her work.

Gus’s work goes on exhibit in Chapter 18, where she sculpts a work inspired by an Olympic gymnast whose flight over a vaulting horse evokes the defiance of gravity and the laws of nature. This piece represents Gus’s own desire to transcend her nature, especially her self-perception as a fundamentally flawed human being whose true nature may scare others away. When Mary misinterprets the depiction in Gus’s work, Gus begins to realize that Mary fails to really understand her.

Gus’s ceramics feature one more time near the end of the novel. In Chapter 32, Gus is inspired by a photograph Jean took of her, which she uses to sculpt plaster casts of her hand onto various ceramic pieces. According to Gus, the inspiration of the photograph is important to the work as it signals her attempt to distance herself from Jean’s influence: “Winding these casts of my hands around my own work made me feel as if I was giving myself a layer of protection that Jean had never provided. The certainty that what I loved would be held safely, and not broken” (323-24).