weloveperioddrama:

edith cushing + butterflies

This whole movie is completely ciphered around butterflies and moths: Edith is the fragile butterfly of daylight, and Lucille a powerful, ugly moth of the dark. – Guillermo del Toro

We talked a lot about who the main characters were, what symbolic elements they represented. Lucille is a creature of the house and that presents immediately a stark contrast with the world of Edith, the world of Buffalo. Allerdale is bleak, stark, winter, snow, blues and cyans, a world barren, a world of starvation, of nothing. The world of Buffalo is the opposite – modern, the world where the industrial revolution is in full bloom, a world of prosperity, and Edith personifies that, she is abundance, the cornucopia, wealth, golds, yellows, rich tones. Edith is the Sun and Lucille is the Moon. Edith is the butterfly, the canary in the mine. Lucille is the moth. There was no other way to obtain this mixture of frailty and strength that represents the very soul of the character. The longer Edith stays in the house, the more she fades, and she loses her bright sunny colors and becomes this sort of captive butterfly. But she never loses her inner strength – so her wings, the sleeves of her clothes, are bold, expressive. – Kate Hawley

(requested by anonymous)