What is the significance of the topic in this story?

Carter uses juxtaposition between contradictory symbols in order to create an atmosphere of fantasy. One example of this is the “irises” (246) growing in the gutter. Gutters connote filth and squalor, while irises represent beauty. Therefore, the fact that something beautiful grows out of something filthy creates a contradiction. Another example is when Carter describes some flowers as “bubbles of blood” (246). Until this point in the story, flowers and scenery have been described as peaceful and beautiful. However, Carter now describes tulips using imagery of blood, which connotes violence.

The story's juxtapositions of positive and negative elements of life seem to assert the utility of fantasy as a way of reinterpreting life in one's own imagination. At the beginning of the story, Carter uses negative imagery to describe the summer, using words like “cholera” (245). However, she describes the spring as beautiful because the flowers douse the “whiff of cesspits” (245). These uses of juxtaposition bring objects of opposing characteristics together, which creates incoherence, thus introducing the notion that the narrator’s recounting of the city’s environment may not be grounded in both reality and imagination.