For reference, this is "Christina's World" painted by American painter Andrew Wyeth in 1948.
Some background information...
Without taking too much historical context into consideration (e.g. post-WWII, polio, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), I think talkingdeads brings up a fair point about similarities in imagery and positioning between "Christina's World" and "Croatoan."Wikipedia wrote:The woman in the painting is Anna Christina Olson (3 May 1893–27 January 1968). She is known to have suffered from polio, a muscular deterioration that paralyzed her lower body. Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when he saw her crawling across a field while watching from a window in the house. Wyeth had a summer home in the area and was on friendly terms with Olson, using her and her younger brother as the subjects of paintings from 1940 to 1968. Although Olson was the inspiration and subject of the painting, she was not the primary model — Wyeth's wife Betsy posed as the torso of the painting. Olson was 55 at the time Wyeth created the work.
The house depicted in the painting is known as the Olson House, and is located in Cushing, Maine. It is open to the public, operated by the Farnsworth Art Museum; it is a National Historic Landmark, and has been restored to match its appearance in the painting. In the painting, Wyeth separated the house from its barn and changed the lay of the land.
I agree that the Faberge egg can symbolize womanhood. As such, the egg and carriage pair can be personified as Christina. To strengthen the argument would be to look at where the egg and carriage are positioned relative to the decomposing building: physically, it is on the left side of the painting; contextually, it seems to be resting lower than the building on a hill.talkingdeads wrote:The egg symbolizes fertility and woman. It is on a dilapidated carriage, that has lost its function to carry her onward in the enjoyment of life and children and barn dances and young love and maturity, she succumbs to this realization while she is gazing at an edifice similarly struggling to survive in the industrialized world, to be sold off piece by piece until there is nothing left and its replaced by a cheap housing development or small mall...there is a beauty in their shared paralysis and breakdown as life moves on beyond them to another time they can not be a part of
I like the point you bring up about paralysis; however, I think your other thoughts may need to percolate some more. Your humanization of the egg and carriage pair may be a bit too far on a limb. Although an egg can symbolize fertility, the use of a Faberge/jeweled egg may twist your interpretation given its historical significance and artificialness.
dunno it's a 7 or a 9 though
X5 Hodor 
