This characterization echoes Tan's own rejection of her mother and her heritage. "I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way," Tan said in an interview in the Los Angeles Times. By the time that Tan was an adolescent, she rejected everything Chinese. It was only after she matured that she returned to her heritage, much like her fictional creation, Rose. "It was only later that I discovered there was a serious flaw with the American version," Rose says. "There were too many choices."
Tan uses two important symbols to represent Rose's maturation. The first is the flower and herb garden that Ted had been cultivating. A garden is a traditional symbol for growth and rebirth, and as in the Bible, this garden will serve as a backdrop for betrayal. When Rose and Ted were happily married, Rose loved the house and the manicured garden. She thought that it was an outward manifestation of the healthy flowering of her marriage. It was their Garden of Eden, perfect and without sin. In reality, it was little more than another sign of her husband's obsessive nature. Every weekend, he sorted and pruned the plants, much as he controlled Rose's life. He rejected anything that could not be categorized — like the cutting of aloe vera that Lena gave Rose: There was no room for this stray, single succulent in Ted's garden. Everything had its ordained place in Ted's orderly world view. Like a god, he controlled it all. With Ted's departure, the garden went to ruin, much as Rose's life fell into disarray. The calla lilies languished, the daisies drooped — much like Rose, who felt defeated by the sudden loss of Ted's emotional support. Like the flowers, she was unable to hold up her own head and face the world. Her very name — Rose — reinforced her place within Ted's garden. And, as in the Garden of Eden, there was a snake in Ted's garden: Ted himself. As Rose's mother suspected, Ted has been "doing monkey business" for quite some time. Now he wants a divorce so that he can marry his lover. And Rose would probably have given him, dutifully, what he wanted — had she not strolled into the garden and looked closely at it.
