Italy (symbol)
This country is depicted uncertainly, it is both good and bad place. From the one side, Italy symbolizes “the school as well as the playground of the world”, it is a country with magnificent culture and history, but at the same time Italy is a country with deeply traditional approach to marriage and family, when Lilia was forbidden to leave the house alone, she was shocked, because in England she could do whatever she wanted, but Gino, her Italian husband just answers “This is Italy”, so she has to do what her husband says.
Inlaid box (Symbol)
Harriet, Lilia’s sister in-law, lets her borrow the inlaid box, where she keeps handkerchiefs and gloves. But when Lilia married the Italian and disgraced Herritons, Mrs. Herriton asks her to send it back, because it was “lent but not given her”. And, after the terrible accident, where the child dead, Harriet goes crazy and keeps saying about the inlaid box , repeating that it was “lent – not given”. This box is not valuable itself, but Herritons are obsessed with it, they found it a symbol of their nobility and belonging to the upper class of society, because at that time (Edwardian period) only rich people could afford to keep such staff as gloves and handkerchiefs in a special box. At the same time, handkerchiefs and gloves also are symbols, the one thing helps to keep your hands from getting dirty and the other to clean the dirt of ones face.
English society vs Italian society (Motif)
The opposition English and Italian is one of the main motifs of the story. These cultures are extremely different in many aspects of human life: family relationship, money, the role of woman in the society, marriage, children and so on. England is more modern and developed country, while Italy kept patriarchal traditions, where the husband is the head of the family and woman cant make a step without his approval. This contrast is vivid and we can see in the text the evidence of it, Herritons consider Gino and all Italians people with poor manners as well as Gino is shocked with English frivolity.
Life in a box (Motif)
This motif has the analogy with Chekhov’s short story “Man in a case”, as the main character of this story, Lilia also lives in a kind of “case” or we may say “inlaid box”, where she have to live the life she doesn’t want to. Since she married Charles Herriton and after his death, his family tried to “raise” Lilia so she could be the representative of the upper class and other people wont talk dirty staff about her. And when Lilia marries Gino, she thinks that she is finally free and she do what she likes and no one will tell her what to do anymore. But she was terribly mistaken, because her husband was cruel and even didn’t let her to go for a walk alone. Lilia was cursed to live in a box, and there she died, miserable and unhappy, giving a birth to her child.
