Scarf
The catalogue's one major scarf image is the All Too Well scarf, left at the partner's sister's house and still kept in his drawer years later. It is a personal garment that holds the speaker's bodily presence, her scent, her warmth, and stays in his possession after the relationship ends. The hosts read it several ways at once: as a keepsake, as a possible trophy, and, drawing on the May Day tradition of red scarves standing for innocence, as a figure for something given and not returned. Its power is that it persists: he cannot wave away what he still has.
The scarf stands for the speaker's most intimate self, still in the partner's keeping, proof the relationship was real even as he tries to play it down. Whether he holds onto it as a memento or a trophy, it is evidence she can point to from outside the relationship. The May Day red-scarf custom adds a note of innocence given and not handed back, which makes the kept scarf quietly accusing.
Appears in 1 song
“And I left my scarf there at your sister's house And you've still got it in your drawer, even now”
The scarf as a personal article that carries multiple symbolic registers: a memento or trophy of the relationship, a symbol of innocence/virginity, and a metaphor for intimacy. Uncle Jerry asks whether it's kept as a memento or a trophy. Both Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss the scarf as a potential metaphor for virginity/innocence, citing traditional May Day celebrations where girls wear red scarves as symbols of purity. Community readers add two further registers. First, an inversion of a film cliche: where the classic gentleman chases a wind-blown scarf to return it to the woman, here he keeps and withholds it, shut in a drawer rather than blowing free - the courteous gesture turned on its head. Second, the scarf is protection from the cold; leaving it behind, with him keeping it, figures the speaker stripped of her warmth and left exposed, the cold that opens the song now hers to carry alone.