White
The colour white as recurring image - most often a marker of purity, innocence, or ceremonial cleanness that the song then sets against a contradicting register. In Taylor's writing white frequently appears not as straightforward positive symbol but as a contested or destabilising surface - innocence asserted where the song knows none is left, ceremonial dress against a betrayal, the bridal/Woman-in-White tradition reframed as haunting or warning. Sits in deliberate symbolic opposition to Black.
White carries the charge of imposed or claimed innocence - what the speaker (or others) want her to be, set against what she actually is or what the song lets the listener understand alongside it. The Woman-in-White / White Lady folklore tradition (a woman returning to address what was taken from her) sits behind several of Taylor's whitewear passages, giving the colour a doubled register of purity and accusation that resists single readings.
Appears in 4 songs
“The ties were black, the lies were white In shades of gray in candlelight”
White as the color of lies, 'the lies were white', creating a moral register where white does not signify innocence or purity but rather the socially acceptable falsehoods of a formal setting. The contested innocence reading of White is active here: the white lies are the surface performance of the gala.
“I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress”
The white dress functions as a traditional symbol of purity and bridal ceremony, Uncle Jerry identifies it as the most traditional possible image of the fairy-tale ending, representing the idealized vision of romantic fulfillment.
In the Eras Tour performance, the speaker wears white while everyone else wears black, Uncle Jerry reads this as an image of purity that juxtaposes with her witchery, and connects it to the Woman in White / White Lady folklore tradition.
White appears in the discussion of Emily Dickinson as the ghost of Amherst, who 'would frequently wear white' and was called 'the ghost of Amherst.' Uncle Jerry connects this to Taylor Swift's Eras Tour imagery in a white dress. While not a direct lyric motif, it informs the Dickinson biographical reading.