Second Glance: The Peacock Continues!

To continue with the discussion of the peacock:

I googled "peacock symbolism" and found it, again, to represent resurrection, but I found it also stands for immortality.

I find the opening scene an extremely interesting display. We are shown a peacock walking directly behind Mrs. Shortley up to the hill where they could see the entire countryside. Mrs. Shortley-- before we have any clue to her personality--is described as in "nature terms." She is mountainous in confidence, her strength comes from her "bulges of granite" that are her legs, and her eyes are compared to "icy blue points of light." Mrs. Shortley's character seems powerful and dominate over the landscape. She seems natural, a part of nature. When the two figures reach the top of the hill, however, it is the peacock who has the ability to see "something in the distance no one else could see." He doesn't have the blazing eyes--symbols of truth-- that Mrs. Shortley has, yet he can see what is unseen, a metaphorical instance of his ability to see the truth.

Funny then, that the peacock follows behind Mrs. Shortley, as if he knows she is incomplete, that her human nature, even her connection to the earth, is not natural, but falls short (oh the names...). The peacock symbolizes resurrection and immortality, two features that remain absence in Mrs. Shortly. In his procession behind her, he seems to mock her in the same way a person who knows of a pothole in the road would mock his enemy who he gave the privilege of being the "line leader."

The peacocks in this story, however, may not be as symbolically immortal as we thought. Mrs. Shortley used to have "twenty or thirty of those things on the place but [she] let them die off." Mrs. Shortley controlled their lives and their deaths.

Additionally, the priest, the very person who reveres the peacock for having so many "spots of sun" on its feathers and compares it to Christ, is described as naiive and almost incompetent. Who would be so ignorant as to leave the displaced person--a person, I still believed to have suffered through the Holocaust--in the hands of a xenophobic, discriminatory, unjust woman? The priest-- in the same way he is bewitched by the peacock-- seems bewitched by the idea that every person must have some kind of hospitality/altruistic ideal in him/her.

Maybe then, the peacock in this story symbolizes our naiive desires/ natural instincts to support the preconcieved notions we have already contrived about the world around us. Maybe the peacock really symbolizes our eagerness to conform to patterns set out for us....