The Red Dress
A red dress worn by Cary is a perfect example of the way that director Douglas Sirk subverts the mechanics of melodrama to transform a story barely rises to the level of soap opera into social commentary on gender expectations and conventions. The red of the dress is make all the starker through lighting and cinematography for the purpose of situating its shocking and vivid hue into a symbol of middle-age female carnality. Expected to just wither and die following the death of her husband, the red dress is an expression of the still simmering sexuality within Cary.
Steps
A ladder and staircase serve as potent symbols for Cary’s desire to subvert societal expectations in the face of a decades of having that very social propaganda hammered into her soul. Within a very short span of time, Cary first begins climbing a ladder only to have her intention diverted and her actions changed so that she descends the steps. Then a staircase serves essentially the same symbolic function when she at first moves to quickly climb them only to be halted after being startled by a pigeon. Both encapsulate her position with a societal framework working literally “to keep her down.”
The Great Big Gaudy Trophy
Cary’s husband dies at a most inopportune time: right around when Rock Hudson became the biggest movie star in the world. With Rock Hudson playing the new kid in town, why wouldn’t she want to defy society’s disapproval of older women/younger men romance? Even though he’s not around anymore, however, the husband is still quite notably around. In the form of his great big gaudy gold trophy on the mantlepiece. Or, more precisely, in the form of Cary removing it from the mantelpiece and discharging into the archives of her past which many people simply call storing in the garage.
The Red Lumberjack Shirt
Ron isn’t really a lumberjack, but he’s okay with dressing up like one. For much of the film, Ron is pictured wearing a flannel red plaid shirt, otherwise known as the official shirt of the movie lumberjack industry. If you want to see it, you don’t even need to watch the movie, just look up images of the movie’s poster. The significance cannot be denied: Ron becomes the girl in the relationship as Cary stops wearing red once Ron shows up in his lumberjack shirt. He actually runs a nursery so one way to view it is that Ron is the hot young lumberjill in this relationship between an older and younger partner.
The Television
The single most jarring use of a symbol—devastating in its meaning and execution—is the arrival of a brand new television for Cary as a Christmas present from the kids. The set, it is literally promised, provides Cary the opportunity to live out her old age—all forty or fifty years of it, potentially—by forgetting all about romance and just sitting back in the sofa to soak in the flicking images of “life's parade at your fingertips.” The full significance of what is going on here is punctuated by the camera’s lingering shot of the reflection of Cary staring dumbfounded back at herself from her own face being reflected on the television’s screen.
