“Cut it, woman”: Masculinity, Nectar, and the Orgasm in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley (1849) (2022)
This paper identifies the theme of honey gathering in Charlotte Brontë's fiction and places it within the context of Romantic and early Victorian representations of the nectarium's role in insect-flower relationships. Brontë's novels often invert the conventional use of botany to represent female sexuality by representing men as flowers and endowing her protagonists with an ulterior form of entomological agency. These insects work to express Brontë's desire for greater economic and erotic mobility, but it is argued that this mobility is problematized by the self-absorbed nature of the masculine nectarium, a dulcet gland in flowers originally believed by botanists to ooze sugar to serve a plant's own needs. This is particularly evident in Brontë's industrial romance Shirley (1849), as the theme of honey gathering is pathologized to visualize a crisis in the plotting of Victorian femininity. This paper may be helpful to scholars interested in Brontë's fiction, representations of sexuality, botany, entomology, ecology, and early Victorian pest discourse.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Kelley, Theresa M.;
(2012)
Clandestine Marriage: Botany and Romantic Culture
Book
Sha, Richard C.;
(2009)
Perverse Romanticism: Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750--1832
Chapter
Bertonèche, Caroline;
(2011)
Women of Science Fiction: Romantic Mythologies and Female Emancipation from John Keats to Dan Simmons
Thesis
Strovas, Karen Beth;
(2011)
Sleep and Sleeplessness in the Victorian Novel, Jane Eyre to Dracula
Chapter
Shteir, Ann B.;
(2007)
Sensitive, Bashful, and Chaste? Articulating the Mimosa in Science
Thesis
Malane, Rachel Ann;
(2004)
“Sex in Mind”: The Gendered Brain in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Mental Sciences
Book
Page, Judith W;
Smith, Elise Lawton;
(2011)
Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England's Disciples of Flora, 1780--1870
Book
Christina Harrison;
(2020)
The Botanical Adventures of Joseph Banks
Book
Holway, Tatiana M.;
(2013)
The Flower of Empire: An Amazonian Water Lily, the Quest to Make It Bloom, and the World It Created
Chapter
Perletti, Greta;
(2010)
“As from a Dark and Troubled Sea”. The Light of Memory in Charlotte Brontë's Mature Fiction
Thesis
Coriale, Danielle;
(2009)
The Naturalist Imagination: Novel Forms of British Natural History, 1830--1890
Article
Sam George;
(2014)
Carl Linnaeus, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward: Botanical Poetry and Female Education
Article
Lindsay Wells;
(2020)
Proserpina Unbound: John Ruskin, Maria La Touche, and Victorian Floriculture
Article
Thomas Bullington;
(2020)
Analogies from the Vegetable Creation: The Botanical Logic of Edgeworth's Belinda
Book
Ashley Elizabeth Kerr;
(2020)
Sex, Skulls, and Citizens: Gender and Racial Science in Argentina
Chapter
Tuana, Nancy;
(2008)
Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance
Article
David A. Pearman;
(2018)
Chronicling the Discovery of the British and Irish Native Floras – Richard Pulteney's Overlooked Contribution
Article
Carstens, Lisa;
(2010)
Unbecoming Women: Sex Reversal in the Scientific Discourse on Female Deviance in Britain, 1880--1920
Article
Schatz-Jakobsen, Claus;
(2008)
Wordsworth as Scatterbrain: Deconstructing the “Nature” of William Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes
Book
Gigante, Denise;
(2009)
Life: Organic Form and Romanticism
Be the first to comment!