24 pages • 48 minutes read
Marriage a la Mode
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Symbols & Motifs
Food
The motif of food is pervasive in the story and represents greed. This begins with the pineapple and the melon William buys for his children, Paddy and Johnny, hoping to provide them with something more substantial than the candy he normally brings them. Opting for fruit over candy signals William’s desire for a healthier connection with his family, but the fruit is co-opted by Isabel and her friends, showing that his desire will remain unfulfilled. Meanwhile, Bobby Kane takes an armful of candy from the sweets shop without paying for them—Isabel must finance his greed, a metaphor for the way her friends take advantage of her and William’s hospitality. Isabel, too, cannot be emotionally sated, and this is represented through hunger: “We are all starving,” she says (5). Hunger affects each character differently: William is hungry for a tender love and close intimacy with his wife; Isabel is starving for another life; her friends are greedy, devouring all the food they can find. Moira Morrison has a hat that looks like a strawberry, in keeping with her vacuous, theatrical character. Thus, the recurring motif of food supports a sense of physical, emotional, and moral hunger in the face of vacuity, vanity, unfulfillment, and parasitism.
Laughing
Another key motif is laughing, which represents Isabel’s new way of being. Laughter generally signals happiness, but the laughter in this story is rarely lighthearted; more often, it is mocking or derisive. Isabel and her friends laugh together as their conversation flits about, but they never engage seriously with each other. For William, Isabel’s new way of laughing is a bad sign, an omen of an ongoing change he is helpless and powerless to prevent. For Isabel, it is a mask she uses to hide herself and her feelings, even from herself. When she reads the first lines of William’s letter, she is so confused and overwhelmed that she begins laughing uncontrollably. Her friends join in, and their laughter becomes a mean-spirited chorus in contrast with William’s earnestness.
Isabel’s laugh contrasts with the motif of “the dull, persistent gnawing” in William’s breast, which repeats three times in the story. These two biological responses reflect each character’s reaction to their strained marriage; Isabel is happy to skirt along the surface and never engage with her unhappiness, represented by deciding not to write back to William. By contrast, William feels his anxiety and loneliness deeply—without the distractions that Isabel has, he cannot laugh away his misery.
The London House
Isabel and William’s old house in London is a symbol that represents the Tension Between Tradition and Modernity. As such, it means different things to each of them. For Isabel, the London house represents a bygone era she’d like to leave behind, like her children’s old donkey and train toys. She longs for a sophisticated life and calls their old home a “poky little hole” (3), not large or modern enough for the life she envisions for herself and her children. These ambitions are likewise symbolized by the new foreign toys she buys for her children, a luxurious and worldly possibility in the aftermath of World War I. As Isabel leaves the old house behind, so too does she abandon William, choosing the company of her bohemian friends instead.
By contrast, William reflects positively on their old home, recalling memories of the children playing in the drawing room—the sort of playful scene that is completely absent in the new house. William reveals the house wasn’t a cramped flat but a standalone house in London, and this luxury is reinforced by possessions in the house, like a leopard skin draped on the sofa. For William, who admits he is sentimental, the old house embodied his traditional values and desire for a loving family, things he cannot find in his new country life. This likewise parallels discussions of toys, where William reflects fondly on the rag toy he used to sleep with—a detail Isabel dismisses as unserious.
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