58 pages • 1 hour read
The Stillwater Girls
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Symbols & Motifs
Sage’s Doll
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, child death, and child abuse.
The doll that Sage holds to soothe herself as she and Wren slowly starve in the isolated cabin is a symbol of Sage’s arrested development and The Psychological Impact of Extreme Isolation. Kent emphasizes Sage’s childlike quality through the maternal protectiveness Wren adopts toward her younger sister as a result. Even though the two are separated by just a year, Wren feels responsible for comforting Sage and guiding her behavior because Sage is still innocent and naive in many ways. The text shows the two reacting very differently to the unusual conditions in which they are raised: while Wren takes on adult responsibilities, taking care of many of the chores required to survive on the homestead, Sage retreats into a childlike state. She uses her charm to get out of work, and even when work is expected of her, she often neglects it. Like a child, she is reluctant to face reality: she talks about making candy when the two are on the verge of starvation, and she clings to her beliefs about Maggie long after Wren has faced the truth of who Maggie really was. Because Sage has had no other influences aside from Maggie, Wren, and Evie, she has not been encouraged to mature as she might have in other circumstances. When the tracker invades their cabin—the physical embodiment of the outside world—one of the first things he does is mock Sage for playing with her doll. Wren’s immediate angry defense of Sage’s behavior demonstrates the ways in which this immaturity has long been accommodated on the homestead, making Maggie’s control over Sage easier.
The Empty Graves
All her life, Wren has been told that the bodies of her father and older sister, Imogen, are buried beneath the willow tree near the cabin. The story of these lost family members is an important part of Maggie’s manipulative construction of family lore. Wren and Sage do not understand much about human reproduction, but they can observe from their reading that many families contain a father—and so Maggie gives them a conveniently deceased father figure. In her story, the man was killed by an intruder, who shot him for no reason and left him for dead. This story reinforces Maggie’s portrayal of the outside world as dangerous and chaotic. In Chapter 19, Wren decides to dig beneath the willow to find out whether all of this is true. When she realizes that there are no bodies there at all, she knows that Maggie has lied to her—not just about the graves, but about her entire life. These empty graves become a symbol of Maggie’s lies, supporting the text’s thematic interest in The Distinction Between Manipulation and Protection. When Wren finds no bodies beneath the willow, the fictive family that Maggie has constructed symbolically vanishes, as well.
Wren’s Haircut
Wren’s new haircut symbolizes her rejection of Maggie’s world and her embrace of the modern world outside the homestead. In Chapter 27, Nic takes Sage and Wren to the salon. Wren, who has been observing Nic’s open and easygoing approach to life, has realized how closed-minded and controlling Mama is by contrast. She notes that she and her sisters “never had any kind of a say in what [they] wore, what [they] ate, what time [they] went to bed, or how [they] kept [their] hair” (148). As Wren sits in the hairdresser’s chair, she imagines challenging Mama to explain her reasoning for insisting that the sisters wear their hair long. Wren suspects that there never was a good reason, aside from Mama’s preference. She knows by this point that Mama has lied about their supposed father and sister, Imogen, and has seen first-hand that the world outside the homestead is not the ruined and corrupt place Mama portrayed it to be. Wren marvels at the modern conveniences in Nic’s home and very much appreciates how comfortable and free life can be in the outside world. When she tells the hairdresser to “Cut it off,” she is announcing her readiness to accept a place in this outside world, evidencing her Resilience in the Face of Shifting Personal Identity (147). Kent notes the unfamiliar feeling of lightness Wren has as the first strands of hair begin to fall, emphasizing the haircut as an act of defiance and independence.
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