Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
A Major Award
The leg painting in She's Come Undone might be the most famous disembodied leg ever since the leg lamp from A Christmas Story. When Ma is in the hospital, she mails Dolores a painting of a woman's leg floating in the clouds: "On the foot was a red high-heeled shoe and from the thigh grew parakeet-green wings, strong ones, of a size that might keep an angel airborne" (3.65). The shipping charge to mail that thing must have been astronomical.
Money aside, though, we can see the painting as a gesture of love from her mother—she may be distant and flawed (she's in a mental hospital at this point), but she still cares, she still thinks of her daughter. And despite Dolores's ongoing anger toward her mother, that she accepts the gift and comes to cherish is reveals that, underneath it all, there is also some love for her mom.
Dolores thinks the painting is pretty, and she keeps it with her even when she moves to college. There it gets torn up by Eric, marking a low-point in Dolores's life, though she manages to save a scrap of it. When she finally decides to let Thayer marry her, she looks at the painting and touches it "wingtip and sky" (28.120). Insofar as marrying Thayer is only possible because Dolores has let go of a whole lot of emotional baggage, here we can see the painting as symbolizing Dolores finally starting to fly—it's a bit of wing and the sky, after all.