Fire
Fire is the symbol and emotional trigger of Eleanor’s existential condition. The trauma of a fire which killed her sister and left one side of her face heavily scarred as a result of a failed attempt to rescue her also left scars on her heart and her soul. The fire symbolize the memories burned into her consciousness.
Mummy
Mummy, on the other hand, symbolizes the another kind of fire. Mummy is the symbolic incarnation of the repressing memories in Eleanor’s subconscious with a burning ambition to be unleashed into her conscious mind so that she can finally face harsh trusts and work her way out of the nearly two-decades long engine stall of an existence. Of course, her pet name also carries symbolism of an entire different sort, but to explain it fully would require a spoiler alert. The connection between Mummy and mummies deepens upon a re-reading equipped with all the knowledge which is only revealed later in the story.
Marianne
Marianne is Eleanor’s young sister who dies in the fire. Her failure, despite a truly heroic attempt, to save Marianne from being consumed by the flames is never allowed to be viewed logically by Eleanor. Instead, she compulsively fixates on the sole fact that she failed to protect Marianne and this intensifies from a single failure under exceptional circumstances into a defining characteristic of personality: she is worthless and because she is worthless she is also underserving of being loved. The failure to save her sister becomes the symbol for the comprehensiveness of Eleanor’s low self-esteem.
Polly
Polly is the ironically funny name of Eleanor’s plant, a Congo cockatoo. She describes it as the only link between her life before the fire and her life after the fire. When she talks to herself, she frames it for the reader as talking to Polly, a state of affairs which is symbolically more significant that it seems. Polly is a complex symbol of Eleanor’s link with her past in more ways than just talking creating a façade of talking to herself. She also can’t recall the origin of the plant despite knowing she had it before the fire. This blurring of details of the past also represents more than it seems. And, finally, Polly’s death coincides with Eleanor finally facing the repressed details of her past full-on and being able to move forward with her life at long last.
The Phoenix
The allusion to the mythological bird which rises anew as a result of being consumed by fire is probably the mot obvious symbol of the novel, but also its symbolic foundation. This is the story of a woman faced the ravages of the crucible but had to wait prolong period of time for that fire to complete its job of regeneration.
