Symbols In 'The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter'

"I find that the more I write, the more fascinated I become with the idea of the land as an intricate element in the lives of the mountain people, and of the past as prologue for any contemporary narrative. This connection to the land is personal as well as thematic… I take brightly colored scraps of legends, ballads, fragments of rural life, and local tragedy, and I piece them together into a complex whole that tells not only a story, but also a deeper truth about the culture of the mountain South." – Sharyn McCrumb. McCrumb’s appreciation of the Appalachian Mountains makes it effortless for her to apply imagery to her novels. Her spiritual connection to these mountains is portrayed in the strong, vivid descriptions that she gives of the land,

She makes many references to winter throughout The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. The cold season provides a setting of painful messages. Most of these references symbolize death, old age, loneliness, or the end of something. McCrumb writes that “Christmas is supposed to make you forget that it’s the dead of winter and a long time till spring (200), which shows that although Christmas brings some joy to the season, it’s inevitable that winter is still long and lifeless. When Josh Underhill calls his younger sister Maggie, he tells her to hold on and to “’just keep on keeping on until spring, and then everything will be all right’” (262). Josh knows that as long as she makes it to spring, past the dreary winter season, then she will be fine. An example used in The Ballad of Frankie Silver is the electric chair, which symbolizes how Fate Harkyryder feels towards death. Ever since Fate was 17, he has been in jail. He has missed out on many life opportunities, being trapped in his prison cell. For him, the electric chair represents his only way out, and he just wants to get his death over with. “Even when the power is not turned on, the electric chair generates its own current of legend” (23). The chair itself holds the power to kill a man which is much more powerful than Fate’s life itself. He would rather die than be set free because he knows that he isn’t the same man he was before he got arrested. In this novel, another symbol used is flowers, as they represent the opposite of Frankie Silver. The flowers represent life, while Frankie herself represents death. In spring the flowers will be blooming while Frankie’s execution will be happening. This situation causes her to be the exact opposite of the flowers because “they will be coming alive as [Frankie] commences to dying” (117). Nancy Silver is another symbol pertaining to Frankie. Nancy