As Gertrude Stein once said, “A rose, is a rose, is a rose.” But what’s in a rose? From red to yellow, hybrid tea to climbing, this paper will examine, in depth, the psychology behind this feminine flower.
A flower, in scientific terms, is the reproductive system of a flowering, or blossoming, plant. The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs. What is seen as so beautiful is actually quite gross and intrusive of a living being, since we do in fact kill them in order to give as a sign of affection or to decorate our home.
Because it is in fact a set of reproductive organs, a flower is known to commonly represent a woman’s vagina, and with this, life and fertility. The size of a blossom can relate to how fertile the flower is. According to Freud, the rose specifically represents the female genitalia. On the other hand, according to C.G. Jung the rose is always a symbol of entirety, or the higher spiritual world order.
Coming from this idea of flowers representing a woman’s vagina, “deflowering” is a word used to describe the action of taking a woman’s virginity. Deflowering also means to destroy the innocence, integrity, perfection, or beauty of.
In addition to facilitating the reproduction of flowering plants, flowers have long been admired and used by people to decorate their environment, as well as objects of romance, ritual, religion, medicine, and as a source of food. Studies have found that flowers have an immediate impact on happiness, help alleviate feelings of depression and anxiety, and increase emotional bonds and connections between couples, friends, and families.
Flowers accompany us in every major event in life--birth, marriage, holi...
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...Noble Kinsmen) and “When I have plucked the rose, I cannot give it vital growth again” (from Othello).
Roses are emblems of England and New York City. Napoleon gave his officers bags of rose petals to boil in white wine to Cure lead poisoning from bullet wounds. Rose water was successfully used to cure all kinds of ailments, such as trembling, constipation, drunkenness, skin and throat infections and insomnia. We know that the bases of rose petals contain high levels of Vitamin C, so this could in fact have some truth to it. Rosehip tea is often recommended in pregnancy and rose oil can reduce high cholesterol levels. Roses are used in face toners and perfume and are one of the most effective anti-ageing ingredients. The essential oils from roses used for perfumes are more expensive than the oils of any other flower. The rose is, indeed, the queen of all flowers.
As John Muir said, ”I found beautiful Calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung.” Muir lets us know how beautiful that moment was; he exclaims how everything ugly and painful around the flower didn't really seem to matter when he saw the a flower named calypso. A famous poet named William Wordsworth also shows his encounter with a flower. Unlike Muir’s encounter, it was with several flowers. Everything around Wordsworth was indeed beautiful but he did not feel very pleasant. He felt lonely, but the flowers seemed to lighten him up. John Muir’s story “Calypso Borealis” and William Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” expressed their relationship with nature by telling readers about their encounter with the marvelous flower/s: Although Muir saw one single calypso flowers, and Wordsworth saw a whole field full of daffodils.
Lehner, Ernst, and Johanna Lehner. Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees. New York: Tudor, 1960.
Alan Nadel in May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson states “August Wilson’s female characters are represented as nurturers” (6-7).This is exactly how August Wilson presents Rose to his readers. A key element is that Wilson names her after a flower just as his own mother; whose name was Daisy. It is apparent that through Rose, August Wilson wants us to see his mother. He intentionally portrays her as the caring, ideal woman, and one who stands by her man no matter how difficult this may be.
Klein, Maxwell. The Images and Metaphors of Flower Children. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1988.
The main symbolic image that the flowers provide is that of life; in the first chapter of the novel Offred says “…flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive.” Many of the flowers Offred encounters are in or around the house where she lives; it can be suggested that this array of floral life is a substitute for the lack of human life, birth and social interaction. The entire idea of anything growing can be seen as a substitute for a child growing. The Commander’s house contains many pictures; as they are visual images, “flowers are still allowed.” Later, when Serena is “snipping off the seed pods with a pair of shears… aiming, positioning the blades… The fruiting body,” it seems that all life is being eradicated, even that of the flowers.
The rose often represents love and ever-lasting beauty. Roses are often preserved after they die. Emily was denied a rose. Her father denied her suitors when she was young. Her town denied her suitors later. Homer Barron also denied her love because he saw himself as not the marrying kind of man. She refused, however, to give up her "rose" when she fell in love with Homer. She kept him in the only way that she could. She isolated herself from the world to keep him. The room she kept him in was rose colored. There was an indentation in the pillow where her head had lain. On the pillow was a long strand of iron gray hair. Her deep feelings and longings indented her heart like the indentation in the pillow. She controlled them the only way she knew how. She kept the man she loved from moving forward in time. She kept him in the past with her.
The roses in the garden are something the serving-man remarks on “roses occasionally suffer from black spot . . . It is always advisable to purchase goods with guarantees…” (Aldiss 450) Here Teddy reports directly to the need for replacement of such false reality in order to omit imperfections. The rose is initiated earlier as a symbol for Monica, when she plucks one and shows it to David, and at the end he picks one as a reminder of her. And Teddy senses the importance of the roses for the mother and the child as he tries to bond
It doesn’t take hours of research to find the typical symbolism behind the most basic colors, white, and red among them. Brides wear white to symbolize purity or virtue. People give white roses as a token of the purity of the heart or the purity of their feelings. Red is associated with passion or love. Men buy the woman he loves, or wants to woe for the evening, red roses to...
These definitions of this age old symbol, the rose, evolved over time as cultures came into contact with what has now called the Language of the Flowers. This “language” first appeared in the East and was used as a form of silent communication between illiterate women in harems. During the Victorian era this form of communication began to move towards Western Europe. The first compilation of this language was written in French and then was later translated into English. (Seaton, ).The Victorians used this new method of communication to express love, sorrow and much more through the flowers that they cultivated and bought. This language of flowers or rather the use of flowers to symbolize different messages can certainly influence a story if one has knowledge of this method and chooses to interpret it in this manner.
Because of flowers’ popularity in Victorian England, Wilde’s use of floral imagery was purposeful and had some effect on the audience as a whole. Even stylistically, the language of the novel is flowery and dream-like. The question is why did Oscar Wilde use floral imagery in The Pic...
Next, consider the text trying to express her frustration with life: “She wants to live for once. But doesn’t quite know what that means. Wonders if she has ever done it. If she ever will.” (1130) You can sense her need and wanting to be independent of everything and everyone, to be truly a woman on her own free of any shackles of burden that this life has thrown upon her. Also, there is an impression that her family does not really care that she is leaving from her sisters to her disinterested father. “Roselily”, the name is quite perplexing considering a rose stands for passion, love, life; while the lily has associations with death, and purity. Still at the same time the name aptly applies to her because the reader knows she is ultimately doomed to wilt away in a loveless marriage in Chicago. Even though she is convincing herself that she loves things about him it is all just a ploy to trick herself into believing that this marriage could be the answer to all her problems. Now on to the men of Roselily’s past most of which are dead- beat dads that could not care about what happens to their children, or where they go.
Concerning the contextualization of A Rose of Family as a sign of the times of women at that point, where cultural norms of women lead to a life in domestication. The recognition of the rose here as it is carefully placed in the title of the piece as well bears significance to the physical rose and what it meant to the young women in the South during the 1800s (Kurtz 40). Roses are generally given as tokens of love and affection by males to females. There are even remnants of it today where young lads also profess their love to women with roses; women still see it as an act of endearment towards them.
Beauty can be defined in many ways. Though, regardless of its definition, beauty is confined by four characteristics: symmetry, health, vibrancy and complexity. Michael Pollan, in the book The Botany of Desire, examines our role in nature. Pollan sets out to discovery why the most beautiful flowers have manipulated animals into propagating its genes. Most people believe that humans are the sole domesticators of nature, although, beauty in some sense has domesticated us by making us select what we perceive as beautiful. In flowers, for example, the most attractive ones insure their survival and reproductive success; therefore the tulip has domesticated us in the same way by insuring its reproduction. Whether it is beauty or instinct humans have toward flowers they have nevertheless domesticated us.
Roses are present in the garden, as they are “the only flowers that impress people” (Mansfield 2581). Mrs. Sheridan orders so many lilies that Laura think it must be a mistake, saying “nobody ever ordered so many” (Mansfield 2584). Satterfield says, “the flower imagery throughout the story serves to keep the reader reminded of the delicacy of Laura’s world. The flowers are splendid, beautiful, and-what is not stated- short-lived.” He goes on to say that Laura “can see only the beauty and not the dying of the flower, and she cannot see that, in many ways, she is very much like a flower herself.” The delicate life of the Sheridan’s is one that must come to an end. It is beautiful like the flowers, but also like the flowers, it will eventually die. As Darrohn puts it, “the Sheridans operate under the illusion that their easy life is natural… rather than produced through others’ labor.” This idea too can be illustrated by the flowers in the story. The roses that fill the gardens are the work of the gardeners who have “been up since dawn” (Mansfield 2581). It seems to Laura that “hundreds, yes, literally hundreds [of roses] had come out in a single night… as though visited by archangels” (Mansfield 2581). The reader can see through the flowers that the Sheridans have a rose-colored view of how their lifestyle
In today’s music, we see ballads such as Burns being played over the radio. When I see Burn’s ballad It reminds me of how Aretha Franklin uses a rose, in her song “A Rose is still a Rose”. They both have similar style, being that love songs are still sung in a ballad format. The differences in Burn’s ballad and Aretha’s song is their symbolism of the rose. Burn’s symbolism is the rose as new found romance; and Aretha’s symbolism of it is a young girl when she states, “Cause a rose is Baby, girl, you’re still a flower”. (Franklin,