It is important to realise how the Black Madonna has a
number of different meanings in this novel and is therefore a very important symbol.
Most prominently, however, it is clear that the Black Madonna acts as a symbol of
motherhood and the various surrogate mothers that Lily finds during the course of her
novel. Note how Lily takes a picture of the Black Madonna with her on her travels, as it
was a possession of her mother. In a sense, the picture is a symbol of Lily's mother,
and is what guides her to finding her surrogate mother, August, who is able to give her
information about Deboarah and her love for Lily. Note how this link is established in
Chapter Three:
I was speculating how one day, years from now, I
would send the store a dollar in an envelope to cover it, spelling out how guilt had
dominated every moment of my life, when I found myself looking at a pictue of the black
Mary. I do not mean a pcitrue of just any black Mary. I mean the identical, very same,
exact one as my mother's.
It
is of course significant that Lily is experiencing guilt when she realises that she is
looking at the black Mary. As the black Mary symbolises her mother, and Lily still
struggles with massive guilt issues regarding her mother's death, we can see how the two
are linked.
You might also like to consider how the statue
of the Black Madonna is also used to symbolise the importance of faith and belief in
some divine power that is bigger than the individual. The way that the Black Madonna is
used by August and the other women as almost a religious icon indicates the faith that
they place in this figure as representing a strength greater than
themselves.
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