Lockets have a long history as symbols of loyalty and tokens of love. They were also often used to secrete treasures, from memories to hair to poison! Here, we pay tribute to some famous lockets from books, theatre and film.
1. Catherine’s Locket in Wuthering Heights
Catherine’s locket represents the two men in her life who loved her in very different ways. When Heathcliff finds Catherine’s dead body, he discovers the locket around her neck contains a lock of Edgar Linton’s hair. Heathcliff pulls it out and replaces it with a lock of his own hair to claim Catherine as his. Nelly Dean later intertwines the two locks of hair and replaces them inside the locket.
2. Sara’s Locket in A Little Princess
When Sara Crewe’s widowed father is called up to fight in World War One he leaves her at boarding school with a doll called Emily and her mother’s locket, which he promises will keep them connected by magic. Of course, the evil headmistress confiscates the locket and Sara must retrieve it and prove that all little girls are princesses to someone.
3. Slytherin’s Locket in the Harry Potter series
This locket was enchanted so that only a Parcelmouth (a speaker of ‘Snake’) could open it. Harry steals it from Dolores Umbrage little knowing that it is one of the horcruxes he is searching for - objects that each contain a piece of the evil Voldemort’s soul. Much wizarding angst ensues.
4. Annie’s Broken Locket in Annie
Left by her parents in a New York orphanage, little orphan Annie knows nothing of her mother and father other than the fact that she was left with a note saying they would return for her and half a locket so they could prove they were her parents when they returned. And the rest… is musical theatre history.
5. Fantine’s Locket in Les Miserables
Desperate to raise money to pay for her dangerously sick daughter’s medicine Fantine sells first her locket and then her hair, before turning to prostitution and then destitution. (Personally, we’d have gone for the hair first, but desperate times call for miserables measures.)
In our February issue, our Wearing Well page is dedicated to our love of lockets. You can carefully open it and peer inside on page 59 of the issue.
Buy this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe
