The narrator’s hair
At the beginning of the novel, the narrator presents a long list of restrictions that are imposed on her. One of these restrictions concerns her hair, which thus becomes a symbol of her lack of freedom. Unlike her brother, whose hair is short but allowed to grow freely, she must groom it twice a day. When she eventually has it cut off at a barber shop, her hairstyle becomes a symbol of her defiance and independence.
The kitchen
According to the narrator, the kitchen is a place where women spend their entire day cooking meals for the men. Therefore, the place and particularly the smell of garlic and onions, which envelopes most women, are a symbol of servitude and inferiority. It is for this reason that the doctor loathes kitchens.
The naked bodies in the dissecting room
During a dissecting class, the narrator sees the dead bodies of a man and a woman lying side by side. She realizes that both are equal in death; therefore, the naked bodies represent the arbitrary expectations and gender rules of society.
The woman dying during childbirth
When a woman dies during childbirth, the doctor loses her faith in science. Even though she is able to explain many biological and chemical processes that take place in the human body, she is unable to understand why a baby lives on while the mother dies. Therefore, the dying woman symbolizes the doctor’s shattered trust in science and the fragility of life.
The ordinary man
After having lived a life of extremes—from being “imprisoned” by her family to freedom in solitude—the woman doctor is attracted by a man who she describes as ordinary in every way: “An ordinary man wearing ordinary clothes and standing in an ordinary way. He was neither short nor tall, thin nor fat, but I felt that something out of the ordinary hung about him. Perhaps it was that his expression was natural and relaxed, unlike the tense, starched features of those around him... perhaps that he was elegant in spite of his simplicity.” The man, therefore, symbolizes a sense of stability and security, which is precisely what the doctor longs for.
