Roses in Literature: 7 Classic Authors and the Books That Brought This Symbol to Life

1. Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare uses the rose in his famous “What’s in a name?” soliloquy (Act II, Scene II). Juliet muses:

“That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Here, the rose symbolises love purified of labels—family names, feuds, social barriers. The imagery suggests that the essence of something beautiful isn’t altered by what one calls it. Already, the rose is both a marker of love and a protest against unnecessary boundaries. At the same time, Shakespeare doesn’t only think of roses as beauty: the rose’s thorns hint at love’s pain, the fleeting moment of bloom, and youth’s transience. The rose in Romeo and Juliet becomes a way to speak of love’s ideal, its fragility, and the tragedy of human divisions.

2. Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose

In The Name of the Rose, the rose becomes a complex symbol—or really, a gathering place for many possible symbols. Eco writes in his Postscript that he chose the title because the rose is “a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left”.

The literal rose in the novel is less important than what it suggests: absence, mystery, ideal beauty lost. At the end, Eco quotes the Latin verse “Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus”—“the rose of old remains only in its name; we possess naked names.” The rose becomes a kind of echo: of knowledge destroyed (the library), of lost beauty, of what remains when what was once vivid has decayed into memory and name. In this way, Eco takes the rose into the realm of semiotics: sign, signifier, ideal, the unknowable.

3. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne introduces a wild rosebush outside the prison door in The Scarlet Letter, in the very first chapter, “The Prison Door”. This rosebush seems almost accidental—a natural bit of beauty beside the harsh, punitive edifice of the prison. Hawthorne describes it as having “delicate gems … offering fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind…”

This rosebush becomes more than an ornament; it is a moral counterpoint. It suggests mercy, hope, natural grace, even in a stern society driven by sin and public shame. Pearl, Hester’s daughter, is associated with the rose-bush imagery—she is the living blossom, wild, defiant, beautiful in suffering. So the rose in Hawthorne is dual: pain and beauty, sin and grace, human law and natural compassion.

4. Oscar Wilde – The Nightingale and the Rose

Wilde’s short story turns the rose into a sacrifice. The student loves a girl, but she demands a red rose. A nightingale, moved by love and art, gives her own life to create the rose, piercing her heart on a thorn, staining the petals with her blood.

The red rose stands for the ideal of romantic love, but Wilde shows its cost when the student and the girl do not truly value what the rose represents. The student discards the rose when the girl spurns him; her love was conditional. Wilde’s rose is a moral test: beauty alone is not enough, love requires sacrifice, and often the sacrifice is ignored. It is a tragic moral allegory, suggesting that aesthetic beauty and romantic idealism are fragile in the face of human self‐interest.

5. Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, roses take on a whimsical twist. Carroll does not use them as solemn emblems of love or spirituality, but rather as playful props that expose the absurdity of appearances. One of the most memorable moments comes in the Queen’s garden, where the playing cards frantically paint white roses red to avoid the Queen’s wrath. Here, the rose becomes a symbol of arbitrary authority and surface deception: beauty is not inherent but enforced, altered to suit the demands of power.

Carroll’s roses remind us that symbols are slippery—they can be manipulated, falsified, and repainted. Unlike Dante’s transcendent rose or Wilde’s tragic blossom, Carroll’s roses are comic and satirical, challenging us to laugh at the very act of giving too much weight to outward show. Yet, even in their humour, these roses echo the broader literary tradition: they retain their allure, their power to command attention, even when reduced to objects of parody.

6. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince

In The Little Prince, the rose is both a character and a symbol. She is vain, proud, demanding—and yet deeply loved. She teaches the little prince (and through him the reader) about caring, about uniqueness, about responsibility. Because the prince has spent time watering her, protecting her behind a glass dome, the rose becomes unique among many roses.

The prince’s love for his rose shows that true love is not only about beauty but about care. When he sees a whole garden of roses on Earth that look much like his rose, he is heartbroken—did his rose mislead him when she claimed to be unique? But the fox helps him see: it is the time invested, the relationship built, that makes his rose distinct. Also, the rose shows imperfection—its vanity and its prickles—yet these do not diminish love. In this story the rose is fragile, ephemeral, beautiful, demanding—exactly the complex model of love, attachment, and loss.

7. Dante Alighieri – Divine Comedy

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the image of the heavenly rose appears in the Paradiso section. Dante envisions a grand celestial rose: a vast rose-like structure whose petals are the souls of the faithful, arrayed around God himself. It’s an emblem of divine love, of perfect order, of beauty and purity. The rose becomes a cosmic constellation of souls united in love and harmony.

Unlike some other uses of the rose—such as beauty entwined with suffering or love mixed with sacrifice—this rose is transcendent: beauty perfected, love perfected, the fulfillment of longing. Dante’s rose in Divine Comedy shows what human love, human longing, and human souls aspire to in the Christian cosmology: union with the divine. It completes the arc from earthly rose → ideal rose → divine rose.

Reflection: Why Do Writers Return to the Rose?

Walking through these seven works, certain patterns emerge. The rose often:

• symbolises love in its many shades: ideal, romantic, spiritual, burdensome
  
• carries with it duality: beauty & danger, appearance & truth, joy & pain
  
• embodies individual significance: what makes one rose (one love, one grief) different from another
  
• serves as a connector between the human and the divine, the temporal and the eternal
  

Each author adapts the rose to the questions of their time and philosophy. Shakespeare hints at labels and identity; Hawthorne at sin, guilt, natural grace; Eco at the ambiguity and absence; Wilde at sacrifice and the cost of beauty; Saint-Exupéry at responsibility and uniqueness; Dante at cosmic salvation.

Also read: Editor’s Picks: 10 Soulful Classics to Savour — Curated by Cuppa Classics

Blooming Insights

The rose isn’t just a flower in literature—it’s a prism. Through it, authors refract love and loss, nature and culture, self and divine. From Shakespeare’s lovers in Verona to Dante’s souls in paradise, from Hawthorne’s moral wilderness to Eco’s library maze, the rose appears again and again, asking us to consider: what makes something beautiful, what makes love real, what survives when petals fade?

Next time you see a rose in a poem or novel, pause. Think of Juliet, Hester, the nightingale, the little prince — and ask: where in this rose are its thorns, its sacrifice, its identity? Because in literature, as in life, the rose almost always does more than it first seems.

Also read: Emily Brontë’s Forgotten Genius: Why Her Poetry Deserves More Attention