How does Mecca symbolize freedom for Helen?

After Helen's husband dies unexpectedly, her church community seems to expect her to play the role of the pious little widow who goes to church, mourns her husband, and does not do much else. However, Helen, realizing that she did not love her husband nor find spiritual fulfillment in the church, completely ignores social expectation and convention: she stops going to church. When the inspiration to sculpt comes to her, she follows it, shaping her sculptures, her garden, and her home in the way that feels most satisfying and fulfilling for her. The choices that contribute to Helen making her Mecca, such as choosing not to attend church, alienate her from her community and free her from it at the same time. In choosing to do what inspires her, Helen abandons the community, a community that compelled her to marry when she did not love and expected her conform religiously when the services did not inspire her. Mecca, her sculpture garden, comes to represent her freedom because it is the physical manifestation of her separation from this restrictive community and its expectations.

I want to clarify that Helen's Mecca is not the Islamic holy city located in Saudi Arabia. Helen's elaborate sculpture garden is her Mecca. The sculptures in the garden are her own creation and that is one way she finds freedom in and from her Mecca. She sculpts what she wants to sculpt or feels like sculpting. She has complete artistic freedom to create the figures and the space itself in the way that she wants to create. What's interesting is how Helen's Mecca is also symbolic of her religious freedom. She has each piece in the garden facing east—toward the real Mecca. She's not Islamic, but she is symbolically showing a break from the Christian church in her community. Helen no longer finds spiritual fulfillment from the church. Instead, she finds spiritual and emotional wholeness through her artistic freedom. Her creations are her acts of worship. The sculpture garden is showing religious freedom, as well as artistic freedom, and Elsa does a nice job explaining it to Marius.




Those statues out there are monsters. And they are that for the simple reason that they express Helen's freedom. Yes, I never thought it was a word you would like. I'm sure it ranks as a cardinal sin in these parts. A free woman! God forgive us!