The Dearly Beloved

The cloister rosary beads symbolize the intricacy that Charles perceives in Lily during their courtship. He compares her to the rosary beads at the cloisters, describing the beads with carved “eyelashes and fingernails almost too small to be seen” and notes, “They must have taken years to carve, the monks hunched carefully over every movement, still and precise and attentive” (80). He sees Lily as “like both the beads and the carvers: intricate and patient, closed and waiting to be seen” (80). This highlights Charles’s desire to better understand Lily’s introverted and guarded demeanor. He desires her to open up to him and show more of herself to him. This foreshadows Lily becoming more vulnerable during their marriage, her pregnancy with the twins, and their mission to help Will.

Nan’s gardens are a motif that appears after Nan marries James and helps convey Faith Versus Doubt and The Search for Meaning and Purpose. Nan plants gardens at the flat in Kensington and the manse near Third Presbyterian. She takes great comfort in this, hoping that like Vita Sackville-West, she can “grow anything anywhere” and “[a] whole life could be created and made meaningful around doing so” (136).