Roses

The rose flower shows up as an object in "The Snow Child" and "The Bloody Chamber". The rose shows its beautiful petals in a more violent way in "The Snow Child." The young girl pricks her finger on a rose bush and dies, but then her body disappears as she dies and a red rose is left behind.

There are many flowers that are mentioned in "The Bloody Chamber" but roses are mentioned several times. They are mentioned in different colors as well. The colors I found were different from the staple of a red rose. There were mentions of pink roses and white roses which often have a different secondary meaning behind them than red roses. Now you might be thinking, why the rose of all flowers?

Roses have always been a symbolism of love and passion, but the symbolism of these beautiful flowers in the fairy tales seem to have a deeper meaning.

History & Mythology

Greco-Roman religion

The rose is seen mentioned in many Greek and Roman texts. For example, Aphrodite in the Illiad, Ibycus's works, and additionally The second-century AD Greek travel writer Pausanias associates the rose with the story of Adonis Book Eleven of the ancient Roman novel The Golden Ass by Apuleius. In each of these pieces of literature, the rose is mentioned and used in a different context, but roses are most commonly associated with Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love, beauty, passion, pleasure, and protection.

Christianity

Christianity gave the rose a more religious context than the Greeks and Romans because the rose was associated with the Virgin Mary and eventually led to the creation of rosary beads for worship and religious practice. There are also famous paintings that depict the Virgin Mary with or around roses. For example, Albrecht Dürer's painting The Feast of the Rosary which was created in 1506 (see image below on the left).

England

The rose stands for a symbol and representation of many cultural aspects of England. The rose is the national flower of England, a usage dating back to the English civil wars of the fifteenth century (later called Wars of the Roses), in which a red rose represented the House of Lancaster, and a white rose represented the House of York. The Tudor dynasty created the Tudor rose, which united both the white and the red roses (but not in the way that they became pink roses). Even the England national rugby union team and Rugby Football Union adopted the red rose as their team symbol in 1871. The red rose is additionally the symbol for the UK Labour Party.

United States

In 1986, the rose was adopted as the national floral emblem of the United States. It is the state flower of five U.S. states and the District of Columbia. These states include Iowa, North Dakota, Georgia, New York, and Oklahoma. The red rose is also part of the official logo of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), being a symbol of socialism generally.

Canada

In 1930, the wild rose or prickly rose was adopted as the official provincial flower of the Canadian province of Alberta. The Wildrose Party, a now-defunct Albertan political party, was named after the province's official flower.

Allegorically in literature

The rose in an allegorical sense appears many times in literature, apart from fairy tales. In William Blake's poem "The Sick Rose" the rose is a symbol of love or passion. The rose in the popular 13th-century French poem "Romance of the Rose" is a personification of the woman, the object of the lover's attention, and his plucking of the rose represents his conquest of her. In the title of William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily", the rose has a number of possible meanings: as Emily's lover now dried and preserved, or a secret as per sub rosa. In a postscript to The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco discusses the reason behind the title to his 1983 novel: "because the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left".

Relationships

A red rose is a gift primarily given to a love interest, symbolising a marital or romantic relationship. A white rose is gifted when the gifter's intention is friendship and there are no romantic feelings involved. Red is traditionally seen as a symbol of passion, while white is a symbol of purity and innocence.

Conclusion

"The Snow Child" mentions a red rose, more associated with the color of blood. The connection to the red rose is not like that of romance or love in this story. It has a much more ominous meaning due to the actions of both the child, Count, and Countess. Since the rose was mostly known for "biting" or pricking the women with its thorns, the meaning of the rose is not focused on the beauty or color of the petals. The romance or love that the rose stands for may only be seen when the Count hands the red rose to the Countess in the last few sentences of the tale. However, the thorniness of the rose is important symbolism. The thorn to the Snow Child represents how she has been harmed physically by love or something has been taken away from her. This can mean literally as in the thorn pricked her finger and it hurt, or it can be taken more figuratively as in the Count took her woman-hood away and committed a sexual assault which stole herself, as to why she disappeared into the snow leaving behind a rose. The rose represents removing the flower from the woman or deflowering her. In the perspective of the Countess, the thorns are a tear or thorn to the romance or love between the Count and the Countess. The actions that occurred between the child and the Count permanently caused damage to their relationship or her love for him.

The pink and white roses that were given to the woman who married Bluebeard in "The Bloody Chamber" matched perfectly with the symbolism above. The pink roses were given to her as a token of romance, admiration, and in a collection of other flowers which were representing the love or affection from Bluebeard to her. The white roses were mentioned during the wedding, which is a common Western tradition now since the Christain belief is that a bride is to marry in a state of purity and virginity. They represent the innocence of the bride, which in turn is preserving her the woman and child inside of her, just like "The Snow Child".