Alternative interpretations of "The Sick Rose"

In class on Tuesday we spent some time talking about the rose as a symbol of purity or virginity, and it sparked my interest to find out how it came to represent those things. I did a not-so-scientific Google search, and found out the following:

The rose took on symbolic meaning in Ancient Greece. Greek mythology states that Chloris, the goddess of flowers, found the body of a beautiful nymph and turned it into a flower. Aphrodite bestowed beauty onto the flower, Dionysus made it smell pretty, and the west wind blew away the clouds so Apollo could shine on it. The rose was also associated with Venus, the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. It also apparently represented the evanescence of life, since the “Rosalia” feast was the feast of the dead.

The rose also had meaning in the Christian tradition. In the Old Testament, red roses represented martyrs. Jesus was called “the Rose of Sharon”. After the poet Sedulius drew a comparison between the rose and Mary (“As the delightful and very gentle rose springs forth from a thorny bush without injuring the mother that it hides with delightful charm, so Mary, from the race of the guilty Eve, could as the second virgin wash away, with the coming sacred light, the fault of the first virgin”), the rose took on connotations of purity and regality.

In our discussion of the poem, the most prominent idea symbolized by the role was that of purity or innocence. The rose also took on a feminine connotation in class, especially when we contemplated it as a symbol of maternity. I think many of the other meanings of roses could be used to interpret the poem. For example, the red rose as a symbol of martyrdom fits with an interpretation of the worm sacrificing its life so the fly could live. Similarly, the rose as a symbol of the fleetingness of life would be a sensible interpretation, especially given the title of the poem. And it would be interesting to envision the rose as a masculine symbol, as Jesus was compared to a rose in the Bible. How might our interpretations differ if we considered the rose as either a symbol of Jesus or as a masculine object?

Sources

http://suzannehill.suite101.com/christian_flower_symbol-a69020

http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/rosarymarkings36.html

http://www.bible-knowledge.com/jesus-as-the-rose-of-sharon/