54 pages • 1 hour read
My Dark Romeo
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Symbols & Motifs
Dallas’s Rose
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of emotional abuse and gender discrimination.
The rose that Dallas Townsend keeps on her nightstand throughout the novel is a recurring motif that symbolizes love. When Dallas first arrives at Romeo Costa’s Potomac mansion, the groundskeeper Vernon gives her a Venus et Fleur. This is “a type of rose that lasts a year” (64). Dallas is determined to keep the rose alive despite her ignorance about plant care. She appreciates flowers and feels sad when they die. The rose is particularly important to her because it marks the start of her life with Romeo. In keeping the rose alive, she hopes that she can keep herself alive and enliven Romeo’s seemingly icy heart.
The rose in My Dark Romeo is a literary allusion to the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast and connects to The Transformative Power of Love. In the original story, the Belle’s rose slowly withers. She must soften the Beast’s heart before it dies. The same is true in My Dark Romeo. Throughout the novel, petals gradually drop off the flower, alarming and upsetting Dallas. She worries that the rose’s death is a sign that she’s failing and that Romeo still hates her. Contrary to her expectations, the last petals ultimately drop off when she and Romeo realize and profess their love for each other. The rose is gone, but Dallas and Romeo’s true love replaces it.
The rose also captures the simultaneous beauty, fragility, and strength of true love. Like the rose, Dallas and Romeo’s connection is both hardy and in need of protection. Over time, they learn to care for each other in the same way that Dallas once cared for the rose.
Romeo’s Photo Album
The photo album that Dallas finds in Romeo’s old bedroom is symbolic of the past and connects to The Challenges of Overcoming Past Trauma. The album contains countless images of Romeo and his ex-fiancé, Morgan Lacoste. The photos evidence the love that the former partners shared. At the start of her marriage to Romeo, Dallas is convinced that Romeo is heartless and incapable of love. The emotionally abusive way he treats her appears to be evidence of his callousness. However, the photo album complicates his actions. The artifact shows Dallas that Romeo not only had an authentic connection with Morgan but also that he is still heartbroken over what Morgan did to him. When she finds the album, she begins to understand Romeo better. The images offer her a window into Romeo’s past and thus into his true self; through it, she understands the heartbreak he has not fully processed and instead used to fuel his cruelty and aggression, including toward her.
Chapel Falls
Chapel Falls symbolizes innocence. Dallas grows up in this conservative Georgia town with her parents and younger sister. When Romeo demands that she marry him, he takes her from her home in Chapel Hills and brings her to his home in Potomac. Dallas’s move away from Chapel Falls effectively ends her childhood. In leaving, she is crossing the proverbial threshold between innocence and knowledge, youth and maturity.
Furthermore, Dallas’s life in Chapel Hills was defined by her fraught relationship with her father, Shepherd Townsend, and her church community. In Chapel Falls, Dallas was expected to be demure, quiet, and obedient, following men’s expectations of her without question. She didn’t have a choice about where she went and who she interacted with, and she was powerless to choose her future for herself. After Shepherd gives her to Romeo, she realizes that she hadn’t chosen to be with Madison Licht either and only agreed to the arrangement “to avoid upsetting” her father (234). Because he “never [gave her] a voice” (234), she felt powerless to express herself. Life in Chapel Hills is thus entrapping and limits Dallas to an insular realm. Leaving this small town allows her to explore and discover life in new ways and to claim her authentic self.
House Renovation
The renovation that Romeo does on his and Dallas’s Potomac house is symbolic of dreams. When Dallas begins to share her heart’s desires with Romeo, she reveals her deep longing to have a house that entirely resembles a library. She imagines that “[e]very room would have shelves, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. No matter where you walk. Kitchen. Dining room. Bathroom. Everywhere” (291). Dallas wants this dream to come true because of her love for reading and literature. Romeo realizes the dream on her behalf after they profess their love and return from another honeymoon. The former Potomac house was all beige and filled with expensive but bland furniture that didn’t feel homey. Romeo sacrifices this cold aesthetic to enliven his home with books and give Dallas what she wants. The renovation proves that Dallas’s dreams can come true because they are fueled by love.
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