Filled with caustic statements on artificial plant breeding and florist flowers, John Ruskin's botanical essay collection, Proserpina (1875–86), advances a cogent argument against commercial floriculture and, by extension, the commodification of vegetal life. However, the eco-political stakes of this text have received limited attention. Past studies have primarily interpreted Proserpina as a testament to Ruskin's disquiet about Darwinism and as a memorial to his late love, Rose La Touche. In this article, I argue that beneath these scientific and personal imperatives, Proserpina urges readers to resist the consumption of floral commodities engineered by Victorian nurserymen and florists. My reading draws together the history of nineteenth-century flower breeding with recent inquiries from the field of critical plant studies in order to illuminate how Ruskin's botanical prose dovetails with present-day debates on vegetal ethics. Flower-breeding motifs figure prominently in a series of letters written for Proserpina by Rose's mother, Maria La Touche, whose contributions to this book have long been overlooked. Analyzing Proserpina's floricultural subtext will not only recover La Touche's letters from the shadow of Ruskin's love life but also underscore an unexplored facet of Ruskin's antipathy toward Darwin, who celebrated florist flowers in his own botanical writings.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Holway, Tatiana M.;
(2013)
The Flower of Empire: An Amazonian Water Lily, the Quest to Make It Bloom, and the World It Created
(/isis/citation/CBB001202297/)
Book
Purton, Valerie;
(2013)
Darwin, Tennyson and Their Readers: Explorations in Victorian Literature and Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001421851/)
Article
Christopher Harrington;
(2022)
“Cut it, woman”: Masculinity, Nectar, and the Orgasm in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley (1849)
(/isis/citation/CBB352493959/)
Article
Frost, Mark;
(2011)
“The Circles of Vitality”: Ruskin, Science, and Dynamic Materiality
(/isis/citation/CBB001213084/)
Article
Aleksandar Shopov;
(2022)
Flower Breeding in Early Modern Istanbul: A Science of Seeds
(/isis/citation/CBB945357298/)
Article
Murphy, Ruth;
(2012)
Darwin and 1860s Children's Literature: Belief, Myth or Detritus
(/isis/citation/CBB001213305/)
Book
Holmes, John;
(2009)
Darwin's Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB000954782/)
Article
Hale, Piers J.;
(2010)
Of Mice and Men: Evolution and the Socialist Utopia. William Morris, H. G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw
(/isis/citation/CBB000933103/)
Book
Richter, Virginia;
(2011)
Literature after Darwin: Human Beasts in Western Fiction, 1859--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001033151/)
Book
Shuttleworth, Sally;
(2010)
The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001033221/)
Book
Brown, William;
Fabian, Andrew C.;
(2010)
Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB001023129/)
Chapter
Stott, Rebecca;
(2010)
Darwin in the Literary World
(/isis/citation/CBB001023131/)
Article
White, Paul;
(2010)
Science, Literature, and the Darwin Legacy
(/isis/citation/CBB001022440/)
Chapter
Wilmer, Clive;
(2013)
“No Such Thing as a Flower […] No Such Thing as a Man”: John Ruskin's Response to Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB001422077/)
Book
Mahood, M. M.;
(2008)
The Poet as Botanist
(/isis/citation/CBB000952173/)
Chapter
Smith, Jonathan;
(2010)
Domestic Hybrids: Ruskin, Victorian Fiction, and Darwin's Botany
(/isis/citation/CBB001201870/)
Article
Anirudha Dhanawade;
(2020)
Crystals, Crystallization, and Crystallography in Hegel, Stendhal, and Ruskin
(/isis/citation/CBB600283159/)
Thesis
Richardson, Joseph Earl;
(2002)
John Ruskin, Cultural Authority, and the Scientific Imagination
(/isis/citation/CBB001562483/)
Book
Woof, Pamela;
Harley, M. M.;
(2002)
The Wordsworths and the Daffodils
(/isis/citation/CBB000501826/)
Chapter
Trowbridge, Caroline;
(2006)
“Speakers Concerning the Earth”: Ruskin's Geology after 1860
(/isis/citation/CBB000741920/)
Be the first to comment!