Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Prompt 10: The Vegetational Fatherhood
While reading The Vegetational Fatherhood, I thought the whole story was ridiculous. Now, I am able to really play with the ideas presented and can kind of see where the author is coming from. In the introduction, it is clearly stated that plants have a direct effect on humans and animals. The first section supports this claim by telling the story about a young woman who is essentially raped by a rose. The author uses language that conveys the greatness of the impact the rose has on the girl. For example, the woman tries to find the rose "involuntarily" after waking up with a weird feeling. This shows how the woman was not planning for this to happen and seems almost like a puppet in the plant's life. The daughter that is born due to this event is described as "wondrous." She doesn't talk, she is pretty, and is quite an artist...I'm thinking a typical fairy tale Beauty. Later, however, we find out that the seemingly perfect child transforms into a rosebush when praying. The mom and daughter keep this a secret and seem to be ashamed of her appearance as a shrub. When the fiance finds the rosebush and not his Beauty, he carelessly throws it to the maid and asks her to put it on display as something nice to look at during breakfast. This represents how the average human treats flowers. We pick them and never consider that they might have feelings, or a life. Personally, I understand where Mynona get this idea, but I do not think that this has to change. People enjoy looking at flowers and if we didn't pick them, they'd be overwhelming in mass! Finally, in the end of the story, the mother and fiance ("murderer") are treated as crazy people for seeing a rosebush in what others thought was obviously a human. I think this presents the typical reaction recieved when someone tries to convince another that plants have feelings just like us. I have to say, although I enjoyed reading the story through a few times, I can understand the argument, but I can't imagine actually treating plants like I treat my best friends. Overall, the author tries to convince the audience that plants and animals are very connected, my question then is why is there no apparent punishment for picking flowers?
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I think your interpretation of the tale is interesting- a commentary about how humans treat plants. While I can't quite grasp the meaning of this strange story, I see the author trying to convey something a little broader. Maybe Mynona was getting at the ultimate power of nature- the bride was overcome by roses each night and this transformation ulitmately led to her death....but again, I think the meaning of this tale is hard to grasp.
ReplyDeleteI find your comments about the woman being the object of the gaze to be interesting. I like how you related the girl and flowers as things for display. This is an idea that was being toyed with in one of my other film classes. Here is a quote from the reading...
ReplyDelete"They (women) are usually decorations without real reasons of being. If the men are finely fired porcelain vases, then the women are casually picked wild flowers. They are put in the vase only to complement the vessel, which remains spectacular even if the flowers are discarded." (The Mysterious Gayness in Chang Cheh's Unhappy World, Michael Lam, pg 178).
Like what you said, other tales we have read and the quote tries to say women like flowers are put on display as decorations or symbols of greater wealth, power or masculinity. Like you said. We pick them and never consider that they might have feelings, or a life. We content with the silence of the female and nature. Maybe like the active female or (wicked stepmother in the Gubar essay) the power of nature is something that we find threatening. Nature is destroyed when it decides it doesn't want to be objectified any longer. I think that my associating this story with the Gubar essay is a stretch but I agree that flowers and women share the same small space in the world of men.