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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Betty Crocker’s Cookbook
The first edition of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook was published in 1950 and it quickly became a national bestseller, defining what the American family ate for decades. For Marilyn’s mother, Doris, the book is like a bible: Doris marks important passages and lives by its precepts. When Marilyn cleans out Doris’s house after her death, the only thing she keeps is this book—a symbol of everything she hates about the values by which Doris lived and raised her only child. Finding the cookbook is a catalyst for Marilyn, who abandons her family to again pursue her career in medicine. When Lydia finds the cookbook, it serves as a tie across generations. Lydia hides the book, lying to her mother, and it reappears later in the novel, as Marilyn once again evaluates the values that have organized her life.
Harvard University
Academic achievement is important to members of the Lee family and is represented most fully in the novel by Harvard University. James and Marilyn meet at Harvard, where he is a graduate student completing a PhD in American history and she is a student at Radcliffe College, the university’s women’s college. They meet when she enrolls in his class on the figure of the cowboy in American culture, so academic excellence forms the basis of their initial connection. The young couple expect to be able to remain in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but when James isn’t hired by Harvard, they move to Ohio. They view the move as a form of exile, and neither Marilyn nor James can achieve their ambitions at Middlewood College. Nathan’s acceptance to Harvard shows that the university remains central to the family’s sense of belonging, even if James himself never felt at home within its ivied walls.
The Lake
The Lee family live in a house near a lake, a setting that suggests an idyllic American childhood. Yet, even though they go there for picnics and to watch fireworks, the lake is also a source of danger. Lydia is terrified of swimming, and when they were children, Nathan pushes her into the water in a fit of anger. He immediately saves her, but the experience alters their relationship, transforming him into her protector and instilling in her the sense that there is a release to being submerged in water. It is this sense that draws her back to the lake on the night of her death. Dangerous yet idyllic, the lake is the scene of many of the important interactions between the Lee children, and it symbolizes the instability of their childhood world.
