Bread Symbol Analysis

This is Mother’s final piece of advice and the second instance in which the girl speaks. Again, Mother insists that there is a proper way to do things—this time, buying bread—but, the girl questions, for the first time, whether Mother’s way of doing things is “always” reliable. The girl’s “what if” question raises the possibility of something that Mother might not have considered—that the baker might not want her to feel the bread. However, to Mother, the fault for this would lie with the girl. If he (given his right to judge, the baker is presumably a “he”) does not want her near the bread, it is only because he has “recognized” her as the “slut” that she has warned the girl “against becoming.” “The kind of woman the baker won’t let near the bread” becomes the only workable definition of “slut” that readers get in the story. Mother never addresses any sexual behavior and never describes any particular action or movement that signifies slutty behavior, but the reader does have this image of a baker not allowing a woman to touch bread. There is, thus, something about her—a low hemline or an unladylike walk—that makes her too soiled to touch the bread.