68 pages • 2-hour read
The Rose Bargain
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Symbols & Motifs
Roses
Roses have myriad symbolic meanings throughout the narrative, and the most notable example lies in the title itself, which refers to the bargains that the debutantes make to render themselves “beautiful, fragile, sweet—perfect English roses” (19). These bargains between Queen Mor and her subjects revolve around women’s efforts to mold themselves into better candidates for marriage. In this case, roses represent marriageability and the Societal Limitations on Victorian Women. The image of roses also reappears frequently, especially when Mor uses the flowers in her magical trials. For example, when the debutantes’ friends and family members are enchanted to tell the truth at a tea party, “[t]he ballroom has been transformed with rosebushes” (275) whose literal thorns reflect the figurative “thorns” of the dangerously frank conversations that ensue. This event exposes Greer’s secret relationship with the stable boy, a revelation that leads Mor to kill Greer and engineer Joseph’s disappearance.
Dancing
Dancing acts as a motif that sometimes supports the theme of Societal Limitations on Victorian Women and sometimes subverts it, depending upon the context of each specific scene. Because upper-class women are expected to know how to dance properly and perform waltzes and solos, the act of dancing in this context represents conformity and a performative version of acquiescence to patriarchal limitations. However, this cynical view is contrasted by the fact that Smith also employs dance to highlight moments of intimacy between key characters. For example, although the debutantes are only allowed to dance with Bram at balls, Emmett and Ivy grow closer when he teaches her how to dance, showing her a degree of tenderness that she does not find in the company of other male characters.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that Faith’s chosen profession as a ballerina allows her to defy social conventions restricting women in Mor’s England from working outside of the home. For Faith, dance itself offers mental clarity and identity, “calm[ing] [her] racing thoughts” (300) by giving her something that she can fully control: the movement of her body. Performing ballet is a transcendent experience for Faith, and when her father demands that she quit, she thinks, “The idea of it felt like dying” (303-4). Her identity as a living person is as a dancer, and ballet is her truest expression of herself.
In yet another strategic reversal, however, Smith contrasts Faith’s choice to make ballet her entire life with the enslaved, enchanted humans who are forced to dance in the Otherworld. Faith chooses to dance “until [her] feet [are] bloody” (300), but when the fae inflict a similar injury upon the humans they have enslaved, the same act of dancing becomes a gruesome image of torture.
Jewelry
Like dancing, the appearance of specific pieces of jewelry hold different levels of symbolic significance throughout the text. When Faith wears Marion’s tiara and necklace, this public demonstration represents her embrace of Marion as her romantic partner. However, in other instances, jewelry is sometimes used to simulate a sense of intimacy while actually representing something far more sinister. One example of this occurs when Bram gives Ivy a pearl ring during the competition, telling her that the ring symbolically allows him to touch Ivy, even when they are apart. However, the pearl is implied to have come from Ivy’s necklace. When Lydia returns to the Otherworld, she discovers that Ivy’s “small charm, made of pearls [is] missing one stone, a tiny golden crater, right in the center” (366). This detail suggests Bram’s magical acceptance of a deal that Ivy wanted to make when she was a child: to one day marry a faerie king.
However, although this dream does come true after a fashion, Ivy discovers that marrying a faerie king holds more drawbacks than advantages, and the use of jewelry once again symbolizes the novel’s more sinister undercurrents. Although Bram gives Ivy an engagement ring and a wedding band, neither of these tokens represents love. Instead, they represent his control over her, and his use of her to overthrow the queen and reopen the gateway to the Otherworld.
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