What is Tulip Bulbs

Tulips commonly symbolize love, but Betty (and her death) are associated only with tulip bulbs, suggesting that Betty's love is hidden or unable to bloom fully. She dies amongst her tulip bulbs, thinking that she would never now get any closer to Filth, her husband of many years; she dies without children, having just hidden the pearls Veneering gave her, the evidence of her affair, in the garden. She never gets to watch her tulips bloom, just as perhaps she has never had the chance to fully allow her love to bloom in a full, open and reciprocal relationship. Filth thinks that “it was the tulips [...] that got her in the end” (109), suggesting that the they contributed to her death in some way.