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
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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.
