The narrator uses multiple instances of personification in describing the transformation of the rose gifted to Dr. Heidegger by the late Sylvia Ward:
The crushed and dried petals stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber; the slender stalk and twigs of foliage became green; and there was the rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full blown; for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling.
The narrator's language personifies the dried flower at various points, likening the rose in its supernatural restoration to a person waking "from a deathlike slumber." Its petals "stir," much like a person in the earliest stages of waking from sleep. Further, in emphasizing the "deepening tinge of crimson" in its fleshy petals, the narrator invites readers to imagine the rose as developing a "blush" in its cheeks, a tell-tale sign of life in a human.
After the rose has been restored by the water from the Fountain of Youth, the narrator describes its leaves as curling "modestly" around its "bosom," language that draws from human anatomy and that ascribes distinctly human feelings—such as modesty—to the rose. The effect of Hawthorne's repeated personification here is to strengthen the connection between the rose and Dr. Heidegger's late fiancée. Her early death occurred just before they were supposed to get married, a conventional marker for "adulthood," and in this sense she is much like the preserved rose, cut off from life while "scarcely full blown" into maturity.
