What metaphors are used in The Ring by Karen Blixen?

Over the course of the story, Sigismund is too preoccupied with his farm to give his wife much attention, in contrast with Lovisa's musings on wedded bliss. Her entry into the glade has been taken by some as a metaphor for sexual penetration, and her encounter with the thief contains a variety of sexually suggestive elements, such as the unsheathing and resheathing of the bloody knife and the criminal's taking her handkerchief (a hymeneal symbol).