Thursday, March 5, 2015

The Language of Flowers March 2015

March 2015 Book Selection

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, March 12th at 7 p.m. to discuss our March book The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.


Discussion questions prepared by NoveList are below.

Here are some links for additional background and information:



A song that played in my head while I read this book

Info and statistics about California foster care





Coming up, we have the following books to look forward to reading:



Thurs. Apr 9              At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón (OBOM choice)

Thurs. May 14           The Good Lord Bird by James McBride


Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of the Fairfax Library




NOVELIST DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

What does the quote that precedes The Language of Flowers add to the novel?
Diffenbaugh’s novel opens with a quote from Henrietta Dumont’s 19th century classic, The Floral Offering: Moss is selected to be the emblem of maternal love, because, like that love, it glads the heart when the winter of adversity overtakes us, and when summer friends have deserted us.” Although the language of flowers is generally perceived as a vehicle for romantic communication, Diffenbaugh uses this quote to remind readers that a central theme of her novel is maternal love. Diffenbaugh constructs several parallel maternal relationships in her novel. Elizabeth and Catherine’s own mother was cold and distant, and Catherine thus took on the role of mothering Elizabeth (p. 40). The relationship between Catherine and her son, Grant, suffers considerably from the tension between Catherine and Elizabeth. Although Catherine and Elizabeth fail to repair the bond between themselves and between themselves and their mother, Victoria and Grant learn from their mistakes. Throughout the novel, Victoria is learning to accept maternal love by mending her relationship with Elizabeth; at the same time, she must also learn to give maternal love by building a relationship with Hazel. In order to do so, Victoria must learn to love herself and to accept romantic love from Grant. Repairing her relationships, both with herself and with Grant, ultimately prepares her to receive Elizabeth’s love and gain the confidence necessary to provide for her own daughter. Through Victoria and Grant, maternal love at last finds its place in the Anderson-Hastings-Jones family tree.
What is the significance of the novel’s structure?
Victoria’s story unfolds in parallel story lines. In roughly alternating chapters, Victoria’s first-person narrative describes her relationship with Grant and her relationship with Elizabeth.
The novel is furthermore divided into four parts: “Part One: Common Thistle,” “Part Two: A Heart Unacquainted,” “Part Three: Moss,” and “Part Four: New Beginnings.” In the language of flowers, common thistle is associated with “misanthropy;” fittingly, the first part of the novel details Victoria’s misanthropic relationships. In part two, Victoria begins working on her flower dictionary by photographing white roses, which denote “a heart unacquainted with love.” This section also describes Victoria’s fledgling forays into love, as her relationships with both Elizabeth and Grant deepen. Moss, meanwhile, symbolizes maternal love in the language of flowers. The third part of the novel likewise describes Victoria’s past rejection of Elizabeth’s love and her preparation for the birth of Hazel. In part four, Victoria uses postage stamps bearing daffodils—representing new beginnings—on the letter of apology that she sends to Elizabeth. New beginnings abound in this section of the novel, as Victoria is reunited with Elizabeth, Hazel, and Grant. In this way, the four parts of the novel correspond with four flowers that come to have special meaning to Victoria, and the events within each section embody the spirit of these meanings.
How does the foster care system shape Victoria’s personality?
Victoria has difficulty developing close relationships. She is strong-willed and defiant because, as she observes, “Doing as I was told had never been a guarantee that I would get what I was promised” (p. 38). These characteristics make Victoria difficult to get along with. In addition, Victoria can recall having lived in 32 homes by the time she is ready to be emancipated (p. 39). As a result of this lack of consistency and of her transient upbringing, Victoria has difficulty forming close ties with others. She keeps others at a distance, both physically and emotionally. When Elizabeth tries to arrange a playdate for Victoria with Perla, Victoria confides to the reader that she has “never, in nine years, had a friend” (p. 65). This inability to form close ties with others continues to plague Victoria throughout the string of group homes that comprise her adolescence. Upon being emancipated from the foster care system, Victoria has no close friends.
Furthermore, Victoria has difficulty maintaining the relationships that she does have. When faced with a complicated relationship, such as her relationships with Elizabeth and Grant, her instinct is to give up on the relationship and “let go” of the connection altogether. As she listens to the problems of her customers in Bloom, Victoria is thus moved to observe, “if it were me I would have let go: of the man, of the child, and of the women with whom I discussed them” (p. 166).
Elizabeth urges young Victoria to reconsider these actions. “I believe you can prove everyone wrong . . . Victoria,” Elizabeth says. “Your behavior is a choice; it isn’t who you are” (p. 41). But years of living according to this pattern have already caused Victoria to internalize a sense of isolation. Victoria carries this need for emotional distance with her into adulthood, inspiring Renata to observe that she believes herself to be “unforgivably flawed” (p. 278).
Victoria ultimately learns, however, that change and growth are possible. Although Victoria builds walls around herself, her desire to be unattached and independent is challenged by her relationships with Elizabeth, who tries to mother her, and Grant, who tries to love her. Elizabeth is the first to bridge this divide, pulling nine-year-old Victoria into her lap for a tearful embrace (p. 133). Later, Victoria allows herself to get physically close to Grant, and is surprised to admit, “I not only permitted his touch, I craved it, and I started to wonder if, perhaps, change was possible for me. I began to hope my pattern of letting go was something that could be outgrown, like a childhood dislike of onions or spicy food” (p. 166). Psychological closeness follows in time, as Victoria at last allows herself to be emotionally vulnerable with Elizabeh and Grant  by telling them the truth about the fire (pp. 275, 296).
What do Victoria’s relationships with others imply about her personality?
Victoria’s relationships with others are driven by a fear of intimacy, which is manifested in both physical and emotional detachment.
Keeping herself physically separated from others is one way that Victoria expresses her fear of intimacy. We learn early on that Victoria dislikes being touched. Touch, in fact, often produces physical illness in Victoria. As she recalls:
As a child I had vomited from closeness: from touch or the threat of touch. Foster parents towering over me, shoving my uncooperative arms into a jacket, teachers ripping hats from my head, their fingers lingering too long on my tangled hair, had forced my stomach into uncontrollable convulsions. Once, shortly after moving in with Elizabeth, we had eaten a picnic dinner in the garden. I had overeaten, as I did at every meal that fall, and, unable to move, I had allowed Elizabeth to pick me up and carry me back to the house. She had barely set me down on the porch before I threw up over the side of the railing. (pp. 176-177)
As an adult, Victoria maintains a physical distance between herself and others by “living in a closet with six locks” and always “working on the opposite side of the table from Renata” (p. 166). When speaking with customers at Bloom, Victoria makes a point of “standing behind the cash register” (p. 166). “Whenever possible,” she confesses, “I separated my body from those around me with plaster walls, solid wood tables, or heavy metal objects” (p. 166).
In addition to literally holding the world at arm’s length, Victoria maintains emotional distance in her relationships. She carries her secrets in silence, failing to divulge the meanings behind her actions and allowing Catherine to take the blame for a fire she set. Most importantly, she severs contact with individuals who threaten to break down the walls she has built around her, cutting ties with Elizabeth in her youth, abandoning Grant and Renata (by quitting her job at Bloom) when she becomes pregnant, and subsequently deserting her child after birth. Occasionally Victoria goes to extreme lengths to break these ties, as in the case of Elizabeth, where false accusations of abuse and arson terminate the relationship.
As her relationship with Grant intensifies, Victoria is incapacitated by inner conflict. She is falling in love with Grant, awakening both physically and emotionally to his affection, but she does not feel worthy of the deepening relationship. Victoria expresses this by responding unpredictably to Grant’s advances.
After dinner he would kiss me, only once, and wait to see my reaction. Sometimes I kissed him back, and he would pull me to him, and we would stand intertwined in the doorway for half an hour; other times my lips remained cold and unmoving. Even I didn’t know how I would react on any given day. About our deepening relationship, I felt fear and desire in equal, unpredictable parts. (p. 164)
This fear is induced by guilt. Victoria alone knows the truth about that long-ago fire at Elizabeth’s: the flames originated from her hands, not Catherine’s. She is responsible for the pain and misery that consumed Catherine in the final years of her life; she, not Catherine, is responsible for ruining her own life as well as that of Elizabeth and Grant. Victoria believes that revealing these truths to Grant would eradicate his affection for her. As she confides, “Grant loved me. His love was quiet but consistent, and with each declaration I felt myself swoon with both pleasure and guilt. I did not deserve his love. If he knew the truth, he would hate me. I was surer of this than I had ever been of anything in my life” (p. 174).
Through her work at Bloom and Message, Victoria has a precious opportunity to do something she has never given herself an opportunity to do before: she has a chance to build relationships and help them flourish, in direct opposition to the destructive nature of her past actions. The notion that she is making the world around her a better place by sharing her knowledge of flowers with others is a difficult concept for Victoria to embrace. “. . .I tried to take solace in this small, intangible contribution to the world,” Victoria reflects. “I told myself that someone, somewhere, would be less angry, less grief-stricken, because of the rampant success of Message. Friendships would be stronger; marriages would last. But I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t take credit for an abstract contribution to the world when in every tangible human interaction I’d ever had I’d caused only pain: with Elizabeth, through arson and a false accusation; with Grant, through abandonment and an unnamed, unsupported child” (p. 270).
What does the language of flowers tell us about Victoria?
At eighteen, Victoria is bitter because of the events in her past. She knows she is responsible for the fire that devastated Elizabeth’s vineyard, and she knows that she wrongly accused Elizabeth of having abused her. Although she had her own reasons for committing these acts, this does not change the fact that she is ultimately unhappy with the outcome and with having to tote around the burden of these secrets. She feels stuck and helpless to make amends. Likewise, although Victoria is well-schooled in the language of many flowers, she finds herself communicating the same messages over and over again. As she recalls:
For most of a decade I’d spent every spare moment memorizing the meanings and scientific descriptions of individual flowers, but the knowledge went mostly unutilized. I used the same flowers again and again: a bouquet of marigold, grief; a bucket of thistle, misanthropy; a pinch of dried basil, hate. Only occasionally did my communication vary: a pocketful of red carnations for the judge when I realized I would never go back to the vineyard, and peony for Meredith, as often as I could find it. (p. 5)
The red carnations, symbolizing “my heart breaks,” communicated Victoria’s displeasure with the judge’s ruling. The peony, symbolizing anger, communicated Victoria’s displeasure with her own situation.
As Victoria grows older, she comes to believe that thistle summarizes her personality (p. 83). Victoria first made this association in her youth, when she was living with Elizabeth. Elizabeth asked her to describe exactly how she was feeling, so that she could find just the right flower to convey the message. 
“I don’t like you,” I said. “I don’t like you locking me out of the house or throwing me into the kitchen sink. I don’t like you touching my back or grabbing my face or forcing me to play with Perla. I don’t like your flowers or your messages or your bony fingers. I don’t like anything about you, and I don’t like anything about the world, either.”
“Much better!” Elizabeth seemed genuinely impressed by my hate-filled monologue. “The flower you’re looking for is clearly the common thistle, which symbolizes misanthropy. Misanthropy means hatred or mistrust of humankind.” (p. 77)
As Victoria enters adulthood, her relationships with others are plagued by these negative perceptions and emotions.
Later, Victoria uses the language of flowers to build relationships rather than to destroy them. She does this first and foremost through her work at Bloom and Message, and then applies her knowledge to her personal relationships by preparing a special bouquet for Elizabeth to celebrate their reunion at the end of the novel. The bouquet contains flax (I feel your kindness), forget-me-not (don't forget me), hazel (reconciliation), white roses (a heart unacquainted with love), pink roses (grace), helenium (tears), periwinkle (tender recollections), primrose (childhood), bellflower (gratitude), moss (maternal love), and sage (good health and long life) (pp. 299-300).
What does the language of flowers offer Victoria?
The language of flowers presents Victoria with a unique opportunity to communicate with others, develop close relationships, and help others do the same.
Through the language of flowers, Victoria gains insight into herself and learns to be emotionally vulnerable with others. Flowers soon become Victoria’s sole connection to the world. After a lifetime of guarding herself against closeness to anybody, Victoria finds communication with others to be difficult. She is initially drawn to the precision of the language of flowers, and like Elizabeth she comes to appreciate the clandestine nature of this language. Working with flowers challenges Victoria to understand her own emotions from the inside out in order to communicate the correct message.
And because Victoria’s education in the language of flowers is dependent upon Elizabeth’s instruction, learning the art of floral communication challenges Victoria to let down the walls she has built to protect herself. Over time, she learns to communicate her feelings to Elizabeth. “I can teach you the flower for hate, if you like,” Elizabeth says to Victoria early on in the novel, “but the word hate is unspecific. Hate can be passionate or disengaged; it can come from dislike but also from fear. If you’ll tell me exactly how you’re feeling, I’ll be able to help you find the right flower to convey your message” (p. 77).
Gradually, Victoria discovers that the language of flowers has limitations. Elizabeth’s message-laden flowers fail to bring Catherine back to her, and Victoria is surprised to learn that the language itself is not as consistent as Elizabeth had taught her. The meaning of each flower varies widely from one dictionary to another. She and Grant work together to create a special dictionary of agreed-upon meanings in order to prevent misunderstandings. In this way, the language of flowers once again challenges fiercely independent Victoria to develop a close relationship.
Initially, Victoria believes the messages of the flowers to be imbued by the sender’s intent. But after working with Grant and learning more of the history and biology of the blooms, Victoria finds herself wondering if there isn’t a bit of magic in the language of flowers after all. After sharing passionate kisses with Grant between pots of jonquil (which symbolize desire), Victoria concludes: “Maybe I was wrong, I thought, watching the clusters sway in the breeze. Maybe the essence of each flower’s meaning really was contained somewhere within its sturdy stem, its soft gathering of petals” (p. 158).
Victoria’s apt understanding of the magical language of flowers is a gift that enables her to help others build and maintain relationships. Through her work at Bloom and Message, Victoria helps others find the flowers that transform their lives.
Why does Victoria lie to Meredith and claim that Elizabeth abuses her?
Victoria knows that Elizabeth is her last chance to find a permanent home. When Elizabeth fails to bring Victoria to court for her adoption hearing on the appointed date, the hearing is rescheduled. Victoria, however, destroys this opportunity by falsely accusing Elizabeth of abuse. As a result of Victoria’s accusation, the judge rules that Elizabeth is unfit to adopt Victoria, and Victoria is placed in the first of many group homes.
Although it is Victoria’s own lies that determine this outcome, she is not happy with the judge’s ruling. Victoria expresses her unhappiness at being separated from Elizabeth through flowers, giving the judge “a pocketful of red carnations” that denote the sentiment “my heart breaks” (p. 5). But if Victoria’s heart breaks at the thought of being separated from Elizabeth, why does she accuse Elizabeth of mistreatment in the first place?
Victoria’s pride lies at the heart of these decisions. After Elizabeth fails her on the adoption hearing date, she finds herself doubting that Elizabeth truly wants to adopt her, love her, and mother her:
“I’m really sorry,” Elizabeth said quietly. She had said it hundreds of times in the previous weeks, and I believed her. She seemed sorry. What I didn’t believe, though, was that she still wanted to be my mother. Pity, I knew was different from love. From what I’d heard of their conversation in the living room, Meredith had made my options clear to Elizabeth. I had her or I had no one. It was out of a sense of obligation, I decided, that Elizabeth hadn’t given notice. (pp. 196-197)
Not wanting to be rescued only for the sake of pity and obligation, Victoria creates a situation that liberates Elizabeth from this duty.
Why does Victoria give Grant the baby?
Victoria becomes overwhelmed by the needs of her infant, and believes that she does not have what it takes to raise the child well. “Good mothers did not let their babies cry,” she observes. “Good mothers put the needs of their babies first, and I wanted, more than anything, to be a good mother” (p. 233). Victoria, however, does let her baby cry, prompting her to conclude, “I had failed my daughter. Less than three weeks after giving birth and making promises to us both, I had failed, and failed again. The cycle would continue. Promises and failures, mothers and daughters, indefinitely” (p. 250). In order to break this cycle, Victoria resolves that she must surrender her role as Hazel’s mother; by doing so, she hopes to protect her daughter. As she confesses, “I had hurt every person I had ever known; I wanted, desperately, to save her from the dangers of being my daughter” (p. 254).
Victoria leaves the baby in her basket on Grant’s bed when he is not home. Although she is physically separated from her daughter, Hazel is never from far Victoria’s thoughts: “Miles and miles away, I felt my daughter changing, each day growing and developing, without me. I longed to be with her, to witness her transformation. But as much as I wanted to be reunited, I would not go to her. My desire for my daughter felt selfish” (p. 271).
Because she believes herself to be unfit for motherhood, she comes to perceive the abandonment of her child as the ultimate act of love. “Leaving her with Grant had been the most loving act I had ever accomplished, and I did not regret it,” Victoria reflects. “Without me, my daughter would be safe. Grant would love her like he had loved me, with unearned devotion and tender care. It was everything I wanted for her” (p. 271).
What does Victoria learn about the nature of love?
As Victoria becomes fluent in the language of flowers, she finds that love has many subtle facets, each symbolized by a different bloom. “Victoria’s Dictionary of Flowers,” which appends to the novel, captures the various flavors of feeling. Love can be humble (as the fuchsia) or secret (as the acacia). It can bind lovers (as symbolized by the linden tree) and mothers to children (as symbolized by the moss). It is an emotion too large to be expressed by a single flower, being denoted by the dogwood and the myrtle, as well as the ever-famous red rose.
Victoria learns that love, as it relates to families, is stable, though the people within these trees of relationships may change and grow over time. As Elizabeth reflects upon her relationship with Catherine, “People change. . . . Love doesn’t. Family doesn’t” (p. 199).
Fittingly, it is maternal love, not romantic love, which is the central theme of the novel, as implied by the quote that prefaces The Language of Flowers. Over the course of the novel, Victoria learns to accept love from a mother figure (Elizabeth), and to give love as a mother (to her daughter, Hazel). Having neither flowers nor fragrance, moss is not the most desirable plant. And yet it flourishes in unexpected places and harsh terrains, and its soft web accentuates the beauty of other buds. These qualities render it an apt symbol of maternal love in general, and Victoria’s maternal love in particular. As Victoria learns from Grant, “moss grows without roots” (p. 291). The love that binds a mother to a child is therefore not confined to a place, a location, or a home. It reaches beyond time and space, drawing people together with a softness that can sustain the heart through Dumont’s “winter of adversity.” Through this example Victoria comes to acknowledge, “Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else” (p. 308).
What tasks lie in Victoria’s future?
The Language of Flowers concludes on a hopeful note, with a warm scene that reunites Victoria with Grant, Elizabeth, and Hazel. "Elizabeth’s hand inched toward mine on the table. She offered it to me, and in doing so it felt like she was offering me a path back into the family, the family in which I was loved, as a daughter, as a partner, as a mother. I reached for her hand. Hazel slipped hers, sticky and warm, between our palms" (p. 303).
Victoria also begins to make plans for the future, noting, “It would be possible, someday, to have a business and a family, both” (p. 306). In the meantime, she has made arrangements to take a temporary leave from Message in order to focus on her family. The challenges that loom on her horizon are daunting; as she explains, “I needed to accept Grant’s love, and Elizabeth’s, and earn the love of my daughter” (p. 306). Victoria knows that this will not be easy, but as she prepares to spend her first night alone with her daughter, she voices a willingness to work hard to achieve this goal. “Maybe she [Hazel] would be scared, and maybe I would feel overwhelmed,” Victoria admits, “but we would try again the next week and the one after that. Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots” (p. 308).
About the Author
Vanessa Diffenbaugh was born in San Francisco in 1978 and grew up in Chico, California. In her youth, Diffenbaugh aspired to be a writer and began telling stories at an early age. She went on to study creative writing and education at Stanford University. After receiving her degree, Diffenbaugh took a job teaching art and writing to young people in low-income communities. At the age of 23, she began mentoring foster kids. Ultimately, she and her husband, PK, became foster parents themselves.
These experiences informed the plot of her first novel, The Language of Flowers, which was published in 2011.
“Though Victoria [the protagonist of The Language of Flowers] is entirely fictional, I did draw inspiration in bits and pieces from foster children I have known,” Diffenbaugh explains. “One young woman in particular, whom my husband and I mentored many years ago, was fiery and focused and distrusting and unpredictable in a manner similar to Victoria. Her history was intense: a number on her birth certificate where a name should have been; more foster homes than she could count” (qtd. in “First Fiction 2011: Vanessa Diffenbaugh: Say It with Flowers,” Publishers’ Weekly, 01 July 2011).
Diffenbaugh began drafting the novel that was to become The Language of Flowers in September of 2007. With two babies and two teens at home, finding time to write was a challenge, but the initial draft of the story came out, in her words, “quickly and easily.” The Language of Flowers was originally written in chronological order, and then refined and restructured to smooth out pacing and character development.
In addition to writing fiction, Diffenbaugh has published nonfiction essays, including a piece for Good Housekeeping about her personal experiences as a foster mother. She is also a passionate advocate for young adults. Shortly before the publication of The Language of Flowers, Diffenbaugh joined forces with friend and brand strategist Isis Dallis Keigwin to found the Camellia Network. The network strives to instigate a national movement to support young adults who have recently been emancipated from the foster care system. “[Starting a nonprofit]’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” comments Diffenbaugh, “but so worthwhile.”
Diffenbaugh resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and their children. A second novel is in the works.
The quotes from the author come from an interview conducted directly with her by Ms. Amirante.