So I have to say that "The Vegetational Fatherhood" is one of the weirdest tales I have ever read. As I was reading it one of my friends came in and I tried to explain it to her and she just gave me a quizzical look and said "I'll leave you to reading then..." Yes - this story is strange.
I thought it was interesting to read in conjunction with "Eckbert the Blond" though. In the same way that we, as the readers, do not exactly know what the truth is in Eckbert and Berta's story, we do not quite know the truth in this story either. Was the mother absolutely crazy? Was the flower rape all in her imagination? A child was born, so I would say probably not, but it is still confusing. Did the flower actually turn into a man or did it remain a flower? It's hard to tell because the woman ends up pregnant, but then there are rose petals covering her lap when she wakes up. Was the rose just a symbol for everything that is appealing about men? Why wasn't the girl able to talk? Was it because she was part flower? To be honest, I don't really have a clue.
However, I would like to use this post to think about the symbology of the rose. We all know that a gift of a single red rose is seen as a declaration of love. During the Roman times, the red rose was seen as a symbol of the goddess Venus, the goddess of love. However, especially in light of the flower rape, it is interesting to note that an anagram of the word 'rose' is 'eros' or lust. I think the rose in this story represents the human feelings of lust and sexuality, not actual love. After all, the woman simply took a nap under a rose bush. It was the rose - the lust of men - that made her have a child.
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Do you think that the rose represents the lust of men, therefore having "raped" the young woman, or the lust of women, therefore having impregnated her? Or is it an androgynous symbol for both the lust of men and women -- the rose representing all that a man should be, and the recipient of roses being what all men would like women to be?
ReplyDeleteI think that eros idea is very interesting and agree that the rose could symbol lust. Do you think this could also tie into the end when the lust of Dr. Rosenberger is what kills the "rose" or his new wife?
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