The Lovatts’ bed symbolizes the conflation of sexuality with reproduction. Harriet and David inherit a large, custom-made bed from the previous owners who “had seen a home as they d[o]” (9), i.e., as the site of possible domestic perfection. At first, the bed is a symbol of the Lovatts’ domestic bliss, and the children play games and cuddle together in the “family bed.” David happily remarks on how “progenitive” their bedroom is in fulfilling their wishes for a large family. However, when Harriet becomes pregnant despite their efforts to wait on having a fifth child, David uneasily jokes that the bedroom is a “baby-maker,” deflecting his own responsibility for the unexpected pregnancy.

As the novella continues, the bed’s mysterious origins render it a cursed object, contributing to the tone of horror evoked by Harriet’s numerous pregnancies and the burden of motherhood. The bed has an imposing, sinister presence in the couple’s bedroom; because of its enormous size, “[t]o take it away, so sa[ys] the agent, would […] mean[] dismantling it” (9). Its physical permanence echoes the restrictive institutional and social pressures of reproduction and fertility that are so heavily ingrained as expectations for women that only radical “dismantling” could bring about reproductive freedom. Despite Harriet’s private hesitations, she repeatedly conceives and delivers all her children in the bed—all except for Ben, the child who embodies her repressed doubts about motherhood and domesticity.

At the end of the novella, the bed no longer symbolizes intimacy and ease but instead struggle and estrangement, where Ben rejects Harriet’s nurturing and David no longer sleeps in the same room with her. The bed, like the constraints of motherhood, is a cumbersome, heavy piece of furniture that weighs Harriet down.