24 pages • 48 minutes read
Bernard MaclavertySecrets
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Letters
The letters symbolize Great Aunt Mary’s repressed emotions. The letters initially center on the physical loss of connection between Aunt Mary and her soldier while the latter is at war, but their focus slowly shifts to emotional distance—not between Mary and John so much as within each character. The trauma of war has a numbing effect that John describes explicitly: “I have lost all sense of feeling. […] I have no pity or sorrow for the dead and injured. I thank God it is not me but I am enraged that it had to be them” (31). Although John’s conversion suggests that he works through these feelings to some extent—he seems content in his decision to become a monk—Mary undergoes a parallel trauma but never processes it. Her decision to store the letters in her bureau’s interior space represents how she compartmentalizes these troubling feelings of sadness, loss, and anger.
For the protagonist, the letters come to symbolize his guilt over having pried into his aunt’s secrets. When his mother burns them, it symbolically releases him from this guilt (or at least allows him to begin to heal), allowing him to cry “for the first time since [Mary] died” (33). The act also suggests that Mary herself is now free from the emotionally “frozen” state in which she lived most of her life. On the other hand, the mother’s decision to burn the letters suggests her commitment to preserving the secrecy that surrounded Mary and, more broadly, to repressing rather than giving vent to one’s feelings.
Stamps
The stamps that the protagonist collects come from Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. Even as a young child, the protagonist can see that his Great Aunt Mary had a flourishing life prior to his own, as well as a deep connection to the mysterious soldier who visited these countries. This symbol supports the theme of Secrets, Trauma, and the Limits of Emotional Intimacy because the exotic locations spur the protagonist’s imagination and further his interest in Aunt Mary’s past. The removal of the stamps metaphorically represents the protagonist attempting to peel back the secretive layers of his aunt while also learning about the history of World War I, the widespread fallout of which is suggested by the range of represented countries. His collecting of the stamps also represents the transfer of generational trauma in the postwar decades.
Irises
Irises appear twice in the story, both times in connection to Great Aunt Mary. The protagonist recalls her keeping a vase of irises in her room when he was a young boy, and when she is dying, he notices a similar bouquet, now wilting. This detail suggests they symbolize Mary herself, and the description deepens the parallel: “They were withering from the tips inward, scrolling themselves delicately, brown and neat. Clearing up after themselves” (26). The personification of the irises as determined to leave no trace suggests Mary’s tidiness and reserve and foreshadows the burning of her letters at the story’s conclusion; the “brown” petals evoke the sepia photographs and “khaki-coloured” papers, and the description of them “withering from the tips inward, scrolling themselves delicately” suggests the way paper catches fire.
