The Botanic Garden
Encyclopedia
The Botanic Garden is a set of two poems, The Economy of Vegetation and The Loves of the Plants, by the British poet and naturalist
Erasmus Darwin
. The Economy of Vegetation celebrates technological innovation, scientific discovery and offers theories concerning contemporary scientific questions, such as the history of the cosmos
. The more popular Loves of the Plants promotes, revises and illustrates Linnaeus's classification scheme
for plants.
One of the first popular science books, The Botanic Garden was intended to pique readers' interest in science at the same time as educating them. By embracing Linnaeus's sexualized language, which anthropomorphized plants, Darwin made botany
interesting and relevant to his readers. Yet, by relying on conventional images of women when describing plants and flowers, Darwin's poem reinforces traditional gender stereotypes. In a more daring suggestion, however, Darwin emphasized the connections between humanity and plants, arguing that they are all part of the same natural world and that sexual reproduction is at the heart of evolution (ideas that his grandson, Charles Darwin
, would later turn into a full-fledged theory of evolution
). This evolutionary theme continues in The Economy of Vegetation which contends that scientific progress is part of evolution and urges its readers to celebrate inventors and scientific discoveries in a language usually reserved for heroes or artistic geniuses.
Because amateur botany was popular in Britain during the second half of the eighteenth century, The Botanic Garden, despite its high cost, was a bestseller. Nevertheless, the poem's radical political elements, such as its support of the French revolution
and its criticism of slavery
, angered conservative British readers.
Darwin's attempt to popularize science and to convey the wonders of scientific discovery and technological innovation through poetry helped initiate a tradition of popular science writing that continues to the present day with works such as Carl Sagan's
Cosmos
.
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With the importation into Britain and translation into English of Linnaeus's works in the 1760s and 1770s, botany became increasingly popular. One of the most prominent of these translations was William Withering's
Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain (1776). It went through multiple editions and became the standard text on British plants for a generation. The book delighted and intrigued experts, amateurs, and children alike.
However, Withering's book provoked a debate over the translation of Linnaeus's works. Withering aimed for an Anglicized translation of Linnaeus's Latin that also stripped the nomenclature of its sexualized language. Although he wanted to make botany widely available, he believed that women readers should be protected from any mention of sexuality. In his preface he writes: "from an apprehension that botany in an English dress would become a favourite amusement with the ladies, . . . it was thought proper to drop the sexual distinctions in the titles to the Classes and Orders."
Darwin
held the opposite position; he maintained that Linnaeus's works should be translated as literally as possible and that the sexual references in the nomenclature should be retained. In 1783 and 1787, the Botanical Society of Lichfield, founded by Darwin and several of his friends specifically to translate Linnaeus's works, issued their own English translation, A System of Vegetables, that categorized over 1400 plants. Assisted by Samuel Johnson
, they coined over fifty new botanical words; it is this work, along with the group's The Families of Plants that introduced the words stamen
and pistil into the English language, for example. By 1796 their translation had prevailed and Withering was forced to adopt their vocabulary in later editions of his work.
. Linnaeus had proposed that, like humans, plants are male and female and reproduce sexually; he also described his system using highly sexualized language. Therefore, as scholar Judith Browne writes, “to be a Linnaean taxonomist was to believe in the sex life of flowers.” In his poem, Darwin not only embraced Linnaeus's classification scheme but also his metaphors. At the same time that he was defending Linnaeus's system, however, Darwin was also refining it. Linnaeus classified plants solely on the number of reproductive organs they had, but Darwin's poem also emphasized “proportion, length, and arrangement of the [sexual] organs”.
but primarily by Anna Seward's
poem “Verses Written in Dr. Darwin's Botanic Garden”, Darwin decided to compose a poem that would embody Linnaeus's ideas. (Darwin would later include an edited version of Seward's poem in The Loves of the Plants without her permission and without acknowledgment. Seward was rankled by this treatment and complained of Darwin's inattention to her authorial rights in her Memoirs of Erasmus Darwin.) According to Seward, Darwin said that “the Linnean System is unexplored poetic ground, and an [sic] happy subject for the muse. It affords fine scope for poetic landscape; it suggests metamorphoses of the Ovidian kind, though reversed.” Darwin may have also thought of The Love of the Plants “as a kind of love song” to Elizabeth Pole, a woman with whom he was in love and would eventually marry. Concerned about his scientific reputation and curious to see if there would be an audience for his more demanding poem The Economy of Vegetation, he published The Loves of the Plants anonymously in 1789 (see 1789 in poetry
). He was stunned at its success and therefore published both Loves of the Plants and Economy of Vegetation together as The Botanic Garden in 1791 (see 1791 in poetry
). Joseph Johnson
, his publisher, eventually bought the copyright for The Botanic Garden from him for the staggering sum of ₤
800.
When Johnson published The Botanic Garden in 1791, he charged a hefty twenty-one shillings for it. Seward wrote that "the immense price which the bookseller gave for this work, was doubtless owing to considerations which inspired his trust in its popularity. Botany was, at that time, and still continues a very fashionable study." However, the high price would also have discouraged government prosecution for a book that contained radical political views. Any subversive ideas that the poem contained were therefore limited to an audience of the educated elite who could afford to purchase the book.
s. A preface to the poem outlines the basics of the Linnaean classification system. Guiding the reader through the garden is a “Botanic Muse” who is described as Linnaeus's inspiration. Interspersed between the cantos are dialogues on poetic theory between the poet and his bookseller. The poem is not a narrative; instead, reminiscent of the picaresque tradition, it consists of discrete descriptions of eighty-three separate species which are accompanied by extensive explanatory footnotes.
In The Loves of the Plants, Darwin claims "to Inlist Imagination under the banner of Science". A believer in Enlightenment
ideals, he wanted not only to participate in scientific discovery but also to disseminate its new knowledge in an accessible format. As Darwin scholar Michael Page has written, “Darwin sought to do for Linnaeus . . . what Pope
had done for Newton
and celestial mechanics in the Essay on Man”
The Loves of the Plants argues that human emotion is rooted in physiology rather than Christian theology. Darwin would take his materialism
even further in The Economy of Vegetation and The Temple of Nature, works that have been called atheistic. In describing plants through the language of love and sex, Darwin hoped to convey the idea that humans and human sexuality are simply another part of the natural world. Darwin writes that his poem will reverse Ovid
who “did, by art poetic, transmute Men, Women, and even Gods and Goddesses, into trees and Flowers; I have undertaken, by similar art, to restore some of them to their original animality”
and French revolution
s and criticizes slavery
. His celebration of technological progress in The Economy of Vegetation suggests that social and scientific progress were part of a single evolutionary process. Humanity was improving, moving towards perfection, evidenced by abolitionism
and the broadening of political rights.
Although Darwin gives plant-women the central role in each vignette (a reversal of Linnaeus's classification scheme, which focuses on the male), few of the representations stray from stereotypical images of women. When the female and male reproductive organs are in a 1:1 ratio in a plant, Darwin represents traditional couplings. The women are “playful”, “chaste”, “gentle” and “blooming”. When the ratio is 1:2-4, the female becomes a “helpmate” or “associate” to the males, who have separate bonds to their “brothers”. Once he reaches 1:5-6, however, Darwin presents women as “seductive or wanton” or, at the other extreme, “needing protection”. By 1:8+, he presents “unambiguous metaphors of power and command, [with the woman] being pictured as a saint, a reigning sovereign, a sorceress, a proto-industrialist . . . a priestess”. The images also present a largely positive view of the relationship between the sexes; there is no rape or sexual violence of any kind, elements central to much of Ovid and Linnaeus. There is also no representation of the marriage market, divorce or adultery (with one exception); the poem is largely pastoral. There are also no representations of intelligent women or women writers, although Darwin knew quite a few. The exception is the “Botanic Muse”, who has the botanical knowledge that the poem imparts; however, as Browne argues, few readers in the eighteenth century would have seen this as a liberating image for women since they would have been skeptical that a woman could have written the poem and inhabited the voice of the muse (they would have assumed that the anonymous writer was a man).
Despite its traditional gender associations, some scholars have argued that the poem provides “both a language and models for critiquing sexual mores and social institutions” and encourages women to engage in scientific pursuits.
, the invention of the steam engine
and the improvements to gunpowder
. It also advances several scientific hypotheses regarding the formation of the cosmos, the moon and the earth. Moreover, Darwin's poem represents the scientists and inventors, such as Benjamin Franklin
, responsible for this progress as the heroes of a new age; he “mythologizes” them. Although the two poems seem separated, they both endorse an evolutionary view of the world. Darwin did not see a distinction between nature and culture; industrialization and technological progress were part of a single evolutionary process.
Much of The Economy of Vegetation deals with mining and the use of minerals. For example, Darwin describes the great mining capability of the steam engine:
As such examples demonstrate, The Economy of Vegetation is part of an Enlightenment
paradigm of progress while The Loves of the Plants, with its focus on an integrated natural world, is more of an early Romantic
work.
Darwin also connected scientific progress to political progress; “for Darwin the spread of revolution meant that reason and equity vanquished political tyranny and religious superstition.” Criticizing British imperialism and slavery, he writes:
The Botanic Garden was reissued repeatedly in Britain, Ireland and the United States throughout the 1790s and until the publication of William Wordsworth
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
Lyrical Ballads
in 1798, Darwin was considered one of England's preeminent poets. His poems, with their “dynamic vision of change and transformation”, resonated with the ideals of the French revolution
. However, when the revolution entered its more radical and bloody phase, scientific progress became associated with what many started to see as a failed revolution. Anti-Jacobin
s, who were opposed to the French revolution, denounced the sexual freedom gaining ground in France and linked it to the scientific projects of men like Darwin. George Canning and John Frere published a parody of The Loves of the Plants in the Anti-Jacobin Review
in 1798 (see 1798 in poetry
) titled “Loves of the Triangles”, suggesting just these connections.
Darwin's poems were not published during the first two decades of the nineteenth century as the conservative reaction solidified in Britain. However, bowdlerized and sentimentalized
poems imitating Darwin's became increasingly popular and the analogy between plants and humans lasted well into the nineteenth century, with Alice in Wonderland one of the many books to employ the image.
Darwin's unique poetic style impressed some while it revolted others. Wordsworth called it “dazzling" while Coleridge said, “I absolutely nauseate Darwin's poem”. Darwin's “visionary temperament” became an integral part of popular science writing and one can see a modern manifestation of it in Carl Sagan's
Cosmos
series.
Naturalist
Naturalist may refer to:* Practitioner of natural history* Conservationist* Advocate of naturalism * Naturalist , autobiography-See also:* The American Naturalist, periodical* Naturalism...
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
. The Economy of Vegetation celebrates technological innovation, scientific discovery and offers theories concerning contemporary scientific questions, such as the history of the cosmos
Timeline of cosmology
This timeline of cosmological theories and discoveries is a chronological record of the development of humanity's understanding of the cosmos over the last two-plus millennia. Modern cosmological ideas follow the development of the scientific discipline of physical cosmology.-Pre-1900:* ca...
. The more popular Loves of the Plants promotes, revises and illustrates Linnaeus's classification scheme
Linnaean taxonomy
Linnaean taxonomy can mean either of two related concepts:# the particular form of biological classification set up by Carl Linnaeus, as set forth in his Systema Naturæ and subsequent works...
for plants.
One of the first popular science books, The Botanic Garden was intended to pique readers' interest in science at the same time as educating them. By embracing Linnaeus's sexualized language, which anthropomorphized plants, Darwin made botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
interesting and relevant to his readers. Yet, by relying on conventional images of women when describing plants and flowers, Darwin's poem reinforces traditional gender stereotypes. In a more daring suggestion, however, Darwin emphasized the connections between humanity and plants, arguing that they are all part of the same natural world and that sexual reproduction is at the heart of evolution (ideas that his grandson, Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, would later turn into a full-fledged theory of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
). This evolutionary theme continues in The Economy of Vegetation which contends that scientific progress is part of evolution and urges its readers to celebrate inventors and scientific discoveries in a language usually reserved for heroes or artistic geniuses.
Because amateur botany was popular in Britain during the second half of the eighteenth century, The Botanic Garden, despite its high cost, was a bestseller. Nevertheless, the poem's radical political elements, such as its support of the French revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and its criticism of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, angered conservative British readers.
Darwin's attempt to popularize science and to convey the wonders of scientific discovery and technological innovation through poetry helped initiate a tradition of popular science writing that continues to the present day with works such as Carl Sagan's
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
Cosmos
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers, David...
.
Historical background
William Withering
William Withering was an English botanist, geologist, chemist, physician and the discoverer of digitalis.-Introduction:...
Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain (1776). It went through multiple editions and became the standard text on British plants for a generation. The book delighted and intrigued experts, amateurs, and children alike.
However, Withering's book provoked a debate over the translation of Linnaeus's works. Withering aimed for an Anglicized translation of Linnaeus's Latin that also stripped the nomenclature of its sexualized language. Although he wanted to make botany widely available, he believed that women readers should be protected from any mention of sexuality. In his preface he writes: "from an apprehension that botany in an English dress would become a favourite amusement with the ladies, . . . it was thought proper to drop the sexual distinctions in the titles to the Classes and Orders."
Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
held the opposite position; he maintained that Linnaeus's works should be translated as literally as possible and that the sexual references in the nomenclature should be retained. In 1783 and 1787, the Botanical Society of Lichfield, founded by Darwin and several of his friends specifically to translate Linnaeus's works, issued their own English translation, A System of Vegetables, that categorized over 1400 plants. Assisted by Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, they coined over fifty new botanical words; it is this work, along with the group's The Families of Plants that introduced the words stamen
Stamen
The stamen is the pollen producing reproductive organ of a flower...
and pistil into the English language, for example. By 1796 their translation had prevailed and Withering was forced to adopt their vocabulary in later editions of his work.
Linnaean system
The reliability and usefulness of the Linnaean system was a subject of much debate when Darwin was composing The Loves of the Plants, leading scholars to conclude that one of his intentions in publishing the poem was to defend the Linnaean classification schemeLinnaean taxonomy
Linnaean taxonomy can mean either of two related concepts:# the particular form of biological classification set up by Carl Linnaeus, as set forth in his Systema Naturæ and subsequent works...
. Linnaeus had proposed that, like humans, plants are male and female and reproduce sexually; he also described his system using highly sexualized language. Therefore, as scholar Judith Browne writes, “to be a Linnaean taxonomist was to believe in the sex life of flowers.” In his poem, Darwin not only embraced Linnaeus's classification scheme but also his metaphors. At the same time that he was defending Linnaeus's system, however, Darwin was also refining it. Linnaeus classified plants solely on the number of reproductive organs they had, but Darwin's poem also emphasized “proportion, length, and arrangement of the [sexual] organs”.
Writing and publication
Inspired by his enjoyment of his own botanical gardenBotanical garden
A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...
but primarily by Anna Seward's
Anna Seward
Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield.-Life:Seward was the elder daughter of Thomas Seward , prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author...
poem “Verses Written in Dr. Darwin's Botanic Garden”, Darwin decided to compose a poem that would embody Linnaeus's ideas. (Darwin would later include an edited version of Seward's poem in The Loves of the Plants without her permission and without acknowledgment. Seward was rankled by this treatment and complained of Darwin's inattention to her authorial rights in her Memoirs of Erasmus Darwin.) According to Seward, Darwin said that “the Linnean System is unexplored poetic ground, and an [sic] happy subject for the muse. It affords fine scope for poetic landscape; it suggests metamorphoses of the Ovidian kind, though reversed.” Darwin may have also thought of The Love of the Plants “as a kind of love song” to Elizabeth Pole, a woman with whom he was in love and would eventually marry. Concerned about his scientific reputation and curious to see if there would be an audience for his more demanding poem The Economy of Vegetation, he published The Loves of the Plants anonymously in 1789 (see 1789 in poetry
1789 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Ireland:* Charlotte Brooke, Reliques of Irish Poetry, anthology published in the United Kingdom...
). He was stunned at its success and therefore published both Loves of the Plants and Economy of Vegetation together as The Botanic Garden in 1791 (see 1791 in poetry
1791 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* William Bartram's Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country...
). Joseph Johnson
Joseph Johnson (publisher)
Joseph Johnson was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
, his publisher, eventually bought the copyright for The Botanic Garden from him for the staggering sum of ₤
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
800.
When Johnson published The Botanic Garden in 1791, he charged a hefty twenty-one shillings for it. Seward wrote that "the immense price which the bookseller gave for this work, was doubtless owing to considerations which inspired his trust in its popularity. Botany was, at that time, and still continues a very fashionable study." However, the high price would also have discouraged government prosecution for a book that contained radical political views. Any subversive ideas that the poem contained were therefore limited to an audience of the educated elite who could afford to purchase the book.
Structure and poetic style
Suggesting the passing of a single day, The Loves of the Plants is divided into four cantos, all written in heroic coupletHeroic couplet
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines. The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in...
s. A preface to the poem outlines the basics of the Linnaean classification system. Guiding the reader through the garden is a “Botanic Muse” who is described as Linnaeus's inspiration. Interspersed between the cantos are dialogues on poetic theory between the poet and his bookseller. The poem is not a narrative; instead, reminiscent of the picaresque tradition, it consists of discrete descriptions of eighty-three separate species which are accompanied by extensive explanatory footnotes.
In The Loves of the Plants, Darwin claims "to Inlist Imagination under the banner of Science". A believer in Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
ideals, he wanted not only to participate in scientific discovery but also to disseminate its new knowledge in an accessible format. As Darwin scholar Michael Page has written, “Darwin sought to do for Linnaeus . . . what Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
had done for Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
and celestial mechanics in the Essay on Man”
Personification
In one of the interludes of The Loves of the Plants, the voice of the Poet, which would seem to be Darwin's voice as well, argues that poetry is meant to appeal to the senses, particularly vision. Darwin's primary tool for accomplishing this was personification. Darwin's personifications were often based on the classical allusions embedded with Linnaeus's own naming system. However, they were not meant to conjure up images of gods or heroes; rather, the anthropomorphized images of the plants depict more ordinary images. They also stimulate the readers' imaginations to assist them in learning the material and allow Darwin to argue that the plants he is discussing are animate, living things—just like humans. Darwin's use of personification suggests that plants are more akin to humans than the reader might at first assume; his emphasis on the continuities between mankind and plantkind contributes to the evolutionary theme that runs throughout the poem.The Loves of the Plants argues that human emotion is rooted in physiology rather than Christian theology. Darwin would take his materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
even further in The Economy of Vegetation and The Temple of Nature, works that have been called atheistic. In describing plants through the language of love and sex, Darwin hoped to convey the idea that humans and human sexuality are simply another part of the natural world. Darwin writes that his poem will reverse Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
who “did, by art poetic, transmute Men, Women, and even Gods and Goddesses, into trees and Flowers; I have undertaken, by similar art, to restore some of them to their original animality”
Themes
Evolution
In his Phytologia (1800), Darwin wrote “from the sexual, or amatorial generation of plants new varieties, or improvements, are frequently obtained”. It was this idea, that sexual reproduction was at the heart of evolutionary change and progress, in humans as well as plants, that The Loves of the Plants attempts to convey. Browne writes that the poem may be seen as "an early study in what was to be Darwin's lifelong commitment to the idea of transmutation.” But it was not only organic change that Darwin was illustrating, it was also social and political change. Throughout The Botanic Garden, Darwin endorses the ideals of the AmericanAmerican Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
and French revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
s and criticizes slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. His celebration of technological progress in The Economy of Vegetation suggests that social and scientific progress were part of a single evolutionary process. Humanity was improving, moving towards perfection, evidenced by abolitionism
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
and the broadening of political rights.
Gender
The Love of the Plants, however, while opening up the world of botany to the non-specialist and to women in particular, reinforced conventional gender stereotypes. Darwin's images “remained deeply polarized between the chaste, blushing virgin and the seductive predatory woman, the modest shepherdess and the powerful queen.”Although Darwin gives plant-women the central role in each vignette (a reversal of Linnaeus's classification scheme, which focuses on the male), few of the representations stray from stereotypical images of women. When the female and male reproductive organs are in a 1:1 ratio in a plant, Darwin represents traditional couplings. The women are “playful”, “chaste”, “gentle” and “blooming”. When the ratio is 1:2-4, the female becomes a “helpmate” or “associate” to the males, who have separate bonds to their “brothers”. Once he reaches 1:5-6, however, Darwin presents women as “seductive or wanton” or, at the other extreme, “needing protection”. By 1:8+, he presents “unambiguous metaphors of power and command, [with the woman] being pictured as a saint, a reigning sovereign, a sorceress, a proto-industrialist . . . a priestess”. The images also present a largely positive view of the relationship between the sexes; there is no rape or sexual violence of any kind, elements central to much of Ovid and Linnaeus. There is also no representation of the marriage market, divorce or adultery (with one exception); the poem is largely pastoral. There are also no representations of intelligent women or women writers, although Darwin knew quite a few. The exception is the “Botanic Muse”, who has the botanical knowledge that the poem imparts; however, as Browne argues, few readers in the eighteenth century would have seen this as a liberating image for women since they would have been skeptical that a woman could have written the poem and inhabited the voice of the muse (they would have assumed that the anonymous writer was a man).
Despite its traditional gender associations, some scholars have argued that the poem provides “both a language and models for critiquing sexual mores and social institutions” and encourages women to engage in scientific pursuits.
The Economy of Vegetation
While The Loves of the Plants celebrates the natural world, The Economy of Vegetation celebrates scientific progress and technological innovation, such as the forging of steelSteel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
, the invention of the steam engine
Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...
and the improvements to gunpowder
Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...
. It also advances several scientific hypotheses regarding the formation of the cosmos, the moon and the earth. Moreover, Darwin's poem represents the scientists and inventors, such as Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, responsible for this progress as the heroes of a new age; he “mythologizes” them. Although the two poems seem separated, they both endorse an evolutionary view of the world. Darwin did not see a distinction between nature and culture; industrialization and technological progress were part of a single evolutionary process.
Much of The Economy of Vegetation deals with mining and the use of minerals. For example, Darwin describes the great mining capability of the steam engine:
The Giant-Power [that] forms earth's remotest caves
Lifts with strong arm her dark reluctant waves;
Each cavern'd rock, and hidden den explores,
Drags her dark Coals, and digs her shining ores.
As such examples demonstrate, The Economy of Vegetation is part of an Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
paradigm of progress while The Loves of the Plants, with its focus on an integrated natural world, is more of an early Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
work.
Darwin also connected scientific progress to political progress; “for Darwin the spread of revolution meant that reason and equity vanquished political tyranny and religious superstition.” Criticizing British imperialism and slavery, he writes:
When Avarice, shrouded in Religion's robe,
Sail'd to the West, and slaughter'd half the globe:
While Superstition, stalking by his side,
Mock'd the loud groan, and lap'd the bloody tide;
For sacred truths announced her frenzied dreams,
And turn'd to night the sun's meridian beams.—
Hear, Oh Britannia! potent Queen of isles,
On whom fair Art, and meek Religion smiles,
Now Afric's coasts thy craftier sons invade,
And Theft and Murder take the garb of Trade!
—The Slave, in chains, on supplicating knee,
Spreads his wide arms, and lifts his eyes to Thee;
With hunger pale, with wounds and toil oppress'd,
'Are we not Brethren?' sorrow choaks the rest;
—Air! bear to heaven upon thy azure flood
Their innocent cries!--Earth! cover not their blood! (I.ii.414-430)
Reception and legacy
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature...
in 1798, Darwin was considered one of England's preeminent poets. His poems, with their “dynamic vision of change and transformation”, resonated with the ideals of the French revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. However, when the revolution entered its more radical and bloody phase, scientific progress became associated with what many started to see as a failed revolution. Anti-Jacobin
Anti-Jacobin
The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner was a newspaper founded by George Canning in 1797. William Gifford was its editor. Its first issue was published on 20 November and during the parliamentary session of 1797–98 it was issued every Monday....
s, who were opposed to the French revolution, denounced the sexual freedom gaining ground in France and linked it to the scientific projects of men like Darwin. George Canning and John Frere published a parody of The Loves of the Plants in the Anti-Jacobin Review
Anti-Jacobin Review
The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, or, Monthly Political and Literary Censor , a conservative British political periodical, was founded by John Gifford [pseud. of John Richards Green] after the demise of William Gifford's The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner...
in 1798 (see 1798 in poetry
1798 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* William Wordsworth begins writing the first version of The Prelude, finishing it in two parts in 1799. This version describes the growth of his understanding up to age 17, when he departed for...
) titled “Loves of the Triangles”, suggesting just these connections.
Darwin's poems were not published during the first two decades of the nineteenth century as the conservative reaction solidified in Britain. However, bowdlerized and sentimentalized
Sentimentality
Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason....
poems imitating Darwin's became increasingly popular and the analogy between plants and humans lasted well into the nineteenth century, with Alice in Wonderland one of the many books to employ the image.
Darwin's unique poetic style impressed some while it revolted others. Wordsworth called it “dazzling" while Coleridge said, “I absolutely nauseate Darwin's poem”. Darwin's “visionary temperament” became an integral part of popular science writing and one can see a modern manifestation of it in Carl Sagan's
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
Cosmos
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers, David...
series.
External links
- Full text of The Botanic Garden at google books
- Full text of The Botanic Garden at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...