Doors and Gates
The novel contains 100 references to doors or gates, effectively situation the symbolic of passages from one place to another and the concept of the option between enclosure and escape as a powerful and dominating imagery reflecting the narrative of Charity’s life.
Fall
Charity’s story commences on a June day in which the promise of spring still lingers, but tells a story of her fall. The title of the novel becomes ironic as the imagery associated with autumn—or Fall as it is otherwise known—comes to reflect Charity’s fall from that summery optimism. This imagery is expressed in more obvious means like the descriptions of the weather turning colder and the arrival of snow, but also in more intimate and subtle ways such as the jar filled flowers that have turned the autumnal colors of red and purple.
The Library
The library in which Charity works not by choice is an example of imagery attaining power primarily through its opposition. The scenes in which Charity is show happiest and at her most comfortable and hopeful all connect her with the natural world outside. By contrast, the library is the ultimate example of the imagery of a door as a symbol of enclosure. She is trapped and out of place amongst the dusty volumes and the musty interior.
Sea Imagery
The setting of the novel takes place near a lake and a few scenes of significance take place there but, but it is a hardly a novel that can be easily situated within a genre associated with the sea. Nevertheless, imagery associated with water is almost as pervasive as in a Melville novella. Charity feels the suffocating summer heat in “smothering waves” on her face. Behind storefront windows “waves of silk and ribbon broke over shores of imitation moss from which ravishing hats rose like tropical orchids.” Distant hills are described as eddying away to the sky like the waves of a receding tide.” All these images of serve to delineate a world surrounding Charity which is as uncertain as that of a sailor on deck of a ship at the mercy of an uncontrollable and insecure foundation beneath.
