60 pages • 2-hour read
The Favorite Girl
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Whiteness
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, sexual violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and gender discrimination.
Whiteness is a pervasive symbol in The Favorite Girl and represents purity and conformity. Everything in the Ivory Estate is white or off-white. This includes the clothing of the staff: “white dresses” and “white pants and white, tucked-in, button-downs” (198), as well as their hair. Daphne has a variety of blonde wigs, Bradley dyes his hair blonde, and Demi is forced to do the same. When the Ivory family mentions that Demi is different from the people they usually hire, she wonders, “Were they implying that because I was Indian or had brown-skin that stuck out abnormally in their safe haven of all-white?” (61). At one point, Ian mentions skin bleaching; his obsession with whiteness extends to racist attitudes.
Whiteness and off-whiteness also symbolize the Ivory family’s homicides and torture. One wall of Ian’s office is made of “human bones” that come from the women he kills (142). His white-therapy, a method of torture through sensory deprivation, includes keeping women in white rooms and feeding them only white foods, such as “[p]lain rice and yogurt” (193). At first, Demi is horrified by how the women are treated. After being assaulted, drugged, and abused by the Ivory family, Demi begins to internalize some of the Ivory family’s rules regarding whiteness. When she is rescued, she stands on Bradley’s boat in a “white lace dress full of hope” (384). She asks for all-white food when on her rescuer’s boat before asking to go to where Bradley was taking her: the Ivory family’s second business location in the Bahamas. Demi’s acceptance of whiteness at the end of the novel suggests that she intends to take over the Ivory family business.
Birds
Birds are a symbol of imprisonment and dehumanization. Both Ian and Daphne refer to the women imprisoned in the Ivory Estate as birds. Daphne says, “Every single one of you is a precious bird to me” (202). She views the women as valuable pets; the preciousness is literal, as the women sell for millions of dollars each. Ian says that watching a marriage that he arranged be consummated is his and Daphne’s “way of coping with letting one of [their] beautiful birds fly free” (230). He believes that selling a woman is setting her free. Once the “virgin” brides are married, they are awarded more freedom. They don’t have to endure the white-therapy and can move around somewhat freely, instead of being confined to one locked room.
However, Daphne argues that women should be controlled like birds in cages, even after they are married. She says,
We let women run free and turn into dirty tramps. Men like Ian, his father, and now, Conrad, help remind us, my darling Demi, that we are not meant to live like a bird soaring through a sky alone. Those are the birds that become prey, and we are safest in the cages. We are safest when we do as we are told. Procreate, respect our men, serve their every need (350).
Daphne’s beliefs are the product of her prolonged torture and indoctrination at the hands of Ian. She equates freedom for women with dangers both physical and moral. The image of a beautiful bird in a cage stands for her conception of the ideal woman.
Flowers
Flowers in The Favorite Girl are symbolically connected to the concept of “virginity” and female reproductive organs. “Deflowering” is a euphemism for having sex for the first time, and the Ivory family sells the “deflowering” experience to their clients. The women who are not “virgins” when they are married are killed and buried in the peony garden. In this way, peonies represent death. At first, Demi thinks that the garden is “like an absolute dream. A kind of place you’d want to get married in” (111). Her opinion of it changes after she discovers a human finger in the garden’s dirt while planting her and Conrad’s wedding bush. Her wedding is not a beautiful affair in the garden but a horror that Demi has to endure after learning that Conrad and his father are abusive and murderous misogynists.
Prior to the wedding, at her bridal gown fitting, Demi is told that her only options are to be Conrad’s “favorite girl”—his bride—or die and be buried in the garden. Daphne says, “Option one, be planted in our garden and nurtured as an Ivory family member, or be buried and used as fertilizer. Either way, you’re going to bloom, sweetheart. You just have to decide how” (338). Here, the living flower symbolizes marrying into the Ivory family and being “deflowered” by Conrad. Dying means that she helps create new living flowers. The Ivory family uses the peonies fertilized by corpses for wine, perfume, tea, and lipstick. They are omnipresent alongside whiteness at the Ivory Estate.
Unlock the meaning behind every key symbol & motif
See how recurring imagery, objects, and ideas shape the narrative.
- Explore how the author builds meaning through symbolism
- Understand what symbols & motifs represent in the text
- Connect recurring ideas to themes, characters, and events