97 pages • 3 hours read
Alan BradleyThe Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Chemistry
Flavia’s passion is chemistry. Her interest began when she found Harriet’s book An Elementary Study of Chemistry, which helped Flavia feel close to her mother. When she was introduced to the chemistry laboratory in Buckshaw, with its advanced equipment and shelves of books, it opened a new world for Flavia. Chemistry symbolizes the stability and assimilation that Flavia craves but does not receive from her family. Chemistry makes sense to Flavia in a way that people do not, particularly because it abides by comprehendible scientific rules. The results of Flavia’s experiments are predictable, unlike the actions of people, and even when they are not, they can be explained through logic and deduction. Flavia longs for bonds with her family members, like the chemical bonds she observes in her experiments, but she cannot make them form.
Chemistry allows Flavia to shine, to show her personal expertise, and symbolizes her self-esteem and self-identity. Her scientific pursuits shaped her into a critical thinker, which is how she successfully solves the twin murder mysteries.
Rolls Royce Phantom
The story frequently references things that had belonged to Harriet. Books, the kimono that Flavia wears in her bedroom, pearls that Flavia stole from Ophelia—these are all reminders of Harriet because they were her possessions. Harriet’s Rolls Royce Phantom is the most significant of these, because both Flavia and Laurence go to the broken-down car when they are feeling sad and need to think. The car wraps around them like a cocoon or a womb, comforting them and symbolizing Harriet’s love and affection.
Laurence forbid anyone to touch the car after Harriet died, which shows his inability to accept her death and let her go. This persists to the story’s start, so Flavia must hide the fact that she uses the car as a surrogate source of comfort.
The car also symbolizes Harriet’s ancestral wealth and the family’s social class. Ophelia says that only lower classes would call it a “Rolls,” so it is never referred to in that way. That the car belonged to Harriet, not Laurence, shows how she had been the de Luce with genuine wealth, not Laurence.
Gladys the Bicycle
Another of Harriet’s possessions that Flavia found and took for her own is Gladys, the bicycle. Gladys symbolizes freedom for Flavia, since she can take off and ride anywhere she pleases. Gladys is also a symbol of friendship and loyalty to Flavia, who thinks of the bike in terms one would use for a beloved horse. As she rides down the country lanes, Flavia talks of letting Gladys have her head. In another passage, she leaves Gladys “to graze” in a bicycle stand outside the Hinley police station.
Riding Gladys also stokes Flavia’s vivid imagination, as when she imagines that she is the pilot of one of the Spitfires that skimmed the hedgerows just five years before. Flavia rides so fast that she feels like she is flying (another example of how Gladys embodies freedom).
Locked Doors
Flavia encounters many locked doors throughout the story. The novel begins with her in a locked closet, and she is later stopped by locked doors at the library, the confectionary shop, her father’s study, and the clock tower. These locked doors symbolize Flavia’s frustration, her inability to do what she wants to in life. She is a child and a girl, so the expectations of others often prevent her from living her life as she wishes.
Her ability to unlock these doors and achieve her goals symbolizes Flavia’s ingenuity and intelligence, as well as her stubbornness. If she cannot get through a door, Flavia finds a way around or fashions a key out whatever is at hand. In the clock tower at Greyminster, Flavia comes up with the radical idea of using her braces to pick the lock. Flavia learned to pick locks, plus several other interesting and useful things, from Dogger. This demonstrates their close relationship and the primary importance Dogger holds in her life.
“Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie”
The novel’s title is also a line that Inspector Hewitt recites when he and Flavia are discussing the case: “Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie, Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?” (223). Inspector Hewitt comments that his grandmother used to say this quote. The lines, from The Art of Cookery by William King (1709), mean that if the bottom, the filling, of the pie is not sweet, the crinkled crust is worthless. It is what is inside that matters most.
In Flavia’s case, this symbolizes her family. The de Luces live in a stately mansion and appear to be wealthy and accomplished. They have an attractive outer crust, but inside they are empty. There is no sweetness in their relationships to each other. Each family member hides behind some solitary pursuit: Laurence with his stamps, Ophelia with her crushes and movie magazines, Daphne with her novels, and Flavia with her chemistry experiments. They do not blend together into a sweet pie. The missing ingredient is Harriet, who could have brought them all together but died too soon.
