The Velvet Unhappiness of Lena and Corinthians

The red velvet roses are arguably the symbolic object most associated with Milkman's sisters, Magdalene called Lena and First Corinthians. While they are not incredibly well-developed characters in the novel, I think their relation to these roses holds a lot of truth about the nature of their hidden lives.

Lena and Corinthian's velvet roses represent the sheltered artificiality of everything in their lives. The velvet aspect of the roses in particular points to their privileged middle-class-ness - the velvet is referred to as “costly” on page 5 of the book, but Lena mentions that they weren’t for money as much as leisure during her conversation with Milkman. Corinthians also mentions the roses in her section of the book, recalling that due to her cushy, educated middle class status, she was “unfit for any work other than the making of red velvet roses”. There are also various allusions to the secluded artificiality of their lives throughout the book – the girls are portrayed as having no lives outside of their family and home, especially in the Packard scene where they stare out the window, separated from the rest of the world. There is no aspect of realness or nature allowed in the home, seen through Macon II’s criticism of Ruth when she placed flowers and the like on the table.

I think the artificiality of the flowers also points to everything they had hoped for but were not allowed to have, especially in their youth. In Corinthians’ case, this means love. Real flowers are short-lived, and generally represent femininity, youth, and beauty. Roses in particular are meant to represent love, especially romantic love (or the hope for one). Their artificial roses, then, are a representation of the real romantic love that they did not experience. In their prime, they portrayed femininity, youth, and beauty, but as their roses had no substance did not really engage in any sort of romance whatsoever. In her section of the book, First Corinthians mentions that both Ruth (as well as the girls themselves) had always expected marriage for them, as they were the top of the black social class in Michigan. However, neither of them finds love or marriage as they expect to, as all the men perceive them as too uppity and comfortable (artificial) to support them. Their lives remain loveless, especially in the home, where no sort of lively authenticity is allowed to bloom. First Corinthians only develops some sort of "realness" when she stops making these velvet roses – she gets a job, finds love, and is able to leave the lifeless house forever. In this way, these roses are a somewhat macabre way of representing the inauthenticity and therefore loveless reality of their lives.

For Lena, I think the roses represent the way she hides her seclusion and unhappiness. Roses, being pretty and sweet, are meant to represent her youth and femininity in life. The disturbing aspect of these roses comes in their artificiality – rather than authentically portraying her vibrancy, she has to fake it, in order to hide the ugly quality of her life. Through her conversation with Milkman, Lena acknowledges that they were never a source of money – rather, she made them because it kept her from growing crazy, because it kept her from doing “something terrible”. She also mentions that Milkman, who they had cared for tirelessly, only saw them as rose-makers – “we made roses; that’s all you knew about us”. Here, Lena highlights the role her brother played in running her and her sister’s lives, and how her faked happiness and prettiness through the roses symbolically kept everyone from realizing their frustrations. Through the forced cover of the roses, they were to able to hide all the secret sufferings she and her sister faced while caring for the men in the family. They were even able to partially fool themselves, in Lena's case, which kept them from going crazy and acting on their unhappiness.