Moonlight
Moonlight is quickly established as a symbol of sentimentalist cliché romance novels with the scene that has Miss Postlethwaite to tears in the novel she’s reading: “he’s just gone off to India, leaving her standing tight-lipped and dry-eyed in the moonlight outside the old Manor.” This is then juxtaposed for ironic effect with the imagery accompanying Egbert and Evangeline as he is nervously poised to ask an important question that is naturally expected to be a proposal. Subverting the cliché, however, he instead asks if she has ever written a novel.
Trombone Player
Part of that clichéd romantic moment setting up expectations that Egbert will be asking Evangeline to marry him is music drifting in from a nearby band. The predominant tune is from a romantic opera, but it is undercut by the miscue of a trombone player who has mixed up his sheet music. This incongruity is symbolic of the entire narrative as a subversive satire on conventions and expectations of romance novel that will be mirrored by certain equally incongruous revelations.
Dogs
Dogs are also quickly established as symbols of femininity, romance and sentimentality in the very same scene which describes moonlight. The heroine left in the moonlight outside the old Manor is accompanied, says Miss Postlethwaite, by a little dog which “has crawled up and licked her hand, as if he understood and sympathized.” Soon thereafter, Egbert’s unhappy six-month long assignment interviewing the women who write these types of novels is connected with their always being in their boudoirs “being kind to dogs.” After their argument causes them to temporarily part ways and Egbert’s first contact with Evangeline is a formal interview on behalf of his publication, the symbolism is cemented with his queerly distant question: “Are you fond of dogs. Miss Pembury?”
“Parted Ways”
The name of the novel Evangeline writes is a complex symbol. Most obviously is its status as a symbolic foreshadowing of how her romance with Egbert will results in a temporarily separation. It is also an ironic symbol in that the parting is just a temporary one that will eventually reintegrate. More intricately, the title also symbolizes the future of their relationship; one that makes them both separate parts of a single entity. While Egbert will be the actual writer of all future novels, Evangeline will play the public part of the celebrity author.
"Offal"
“Offal” is also complex in its symbolism. “Offal” is the title of the novel by another writer which Evangeline’s publishers were planning on being their best seller because it met the public’s taste for sexier fare and, besides, they had concocted a clever marketing ploy in which a serious essay raising questions about sexuality in fiction becoming “menace” was actually part of a concerted effort to raise awareness of the sexuality of “Offal.” Instead, however, the public ignored the essay and suddenly switched their taste away novels like “Offal” toward more innocent romantic stories like Evangeline wrote. Ultimately the central symbolism of “Offal” is as a pun: the publishing industry is populated by some pretty awful people.
