Flowers in Gothic Literature

Spring is finally here in the northeastern U.S.! Magnificent magnolia trees and sunny daffodils have been bringing a smile to my face as I go on my lunchtime walks. But beautiful things can have a dark side, and if the film Midsommar has taught us anything, it’s that you can still experience intense terror while surrounded by colorful flowers. Flowers pop up in all sorts of unexpected places in Gothic literature. Here are just a few examples below:

Rhododendrons in Rebecca

“On either side of us was a wall of colour, blood-red, reaching far above our heads. We were amongst the rhododendrons…. They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic.” 

For the nameless narrator of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, these hedges precede her first glimpse of her new home, Manderley. As you might guess from the description, they are an ominous sign. Planted by Mr. de Winter’s first wife, the rhododendrons are just one of the many ways that Rebecca’s overbearing spirit still permeates the house after her death. Like Rebecca, the flowers are decadent, larger than life, and overbearing. Rebecca, who loved to manage the estate with an iron fist and flaunt her wealth, class, and beauty, is associated with many flowers throughout the book, including her favorites, azaleas, which still perfume her clothing, belongings, and favorite places. But it is the blood-red and “slaughterous” rhododendrons, also described a bit further down from the passage quoted above as “monsters … massed like a battalion,” that hint at Rebecca’s violent and combative nature, as well as the deadly secret about their relationship that Maxim de Winter has been concealing from his new wife. 

“Alice’s Posies” in The House of the Seven Gables

“The tradition was, that a certain Alice Pyncheon had flung up the seeds, in sport, and that the dust of the street and the decay of the roof gradually formed a kind of soil for them, out of which they grew, when Alice had long been in her grave. However the flowers might have come there, it was both sad and sweet to observe how Nature adopted to herself this desolate, decaying, gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how the ever-returning Summer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty, and grew melancholy in the effort.” 

A crimson-spotted flowering shrub of unknown species grows between two gables on the roof of the titular house in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Gothic novel The House of the Seven Gables. The flowers are tied, via family legend, to one particular Pyncheon ancestor: the tragic Alice, who once was a joyful beauty but eventually became another victim in the feud between the Pyncheon family and the Maules. Holgrave, secretly a descendent of Matthew Maule, reveals his own family legend involving Alice Pyncheon: Alice’s decline in health and eventual death were brought on by Maule, who used hypnosis to cause her to humiliate herself in public and expose herself to the elements. Thus, the flowers are a physical manifestation of the Pyncheon family legacy—brief moments of beauty amidst the tragedy of lives cut short, seemingly in retribution for their forefather’s sin. Young Phoebe Pyncheon is a parallel and foil to her great-great-grand-aunt Alice. She takes over the decayed and overgrown flower garden that Alice had planted, nurturing it back to its former glory. She likewise rehabilitates the Pyncheon family by marrying Matthew Maule’s descendent and helping to right the ancient wrong that had set the two families at odds.

Garlic Flowers in Dracula

“Well, here I am to-night, hoping for sleep, and lying like Ophelia in the play, with ‘virgin crants and maiden strewments.’ I never liked garlic before, but to-night it is delightful! There is peace in its smell; I feel sleep coming already.”

Television and film adaptations have popularized the image of the more-recognizable garlic bulbs being strung about Lucy’s neck and placed along the entryways, but in Bram Stoker’s original novel, it is the garlic flowers that are used to ward off the vampire. Drawing on his knowledge of obscure folklore, Abraham Van Helsing orders bouquets of the simple white garlic flowers to be delivered daily by train from Amsterdam. He wreaths the flowers about Lucy’s neck when she sleeps and rubs them on the doors and windows to perfume the air with the smell of garlic. Lucy expresses surprise that such mundane and common flowers could be an essential part of her cure, and her mother (oblivious to the doctor’s orders) makes a point to remove “those horrible, strong-smelling flowers” from Lucy’s room that first night, unwittingly allowing the vampire back in. Ultimately, the garlic flowers are not strong enough protection to save Lucy from Dracula, but perhaps they might have been if allowed to fully serve their purpose from the beginning.

Various Flowers in The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth.” 

Flowers of all types abound in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray—perhaps unsurprising from an author who adopted as his symbol the unorthodox green carnation. Dorian himself is repeatedly described as “flowerlike” throughout the novel, as are his two female love interests. Dorian and Lord Henry wear flowers in their button-holes, decorate with them on their dining tables, and pepper floral metaphors into their speech. And indeed it is one of Lord Henry’s flower speeches, partially quoted above, which hints at the significance of all this floral imagery. The conversation takes place during Lord Henry and Dorian’s first meeting, as Dorian takes a break from sitting for his portrait. Sitting amidst the fragrant lilacs of Basil’s garden, Lord Henry expounds upon the importance of youth and beauty. Flowers, from the common hill-flower to the clematis, represent the ephemeral nature of youth and beauty, yet also a type of immortality that humans lack—as they die and return again each year. It is this speech which prompts Dorian’s ill-fated oath in the next scene, when he inadvertently trades his soul for eternal youth and beauty. 

Who would have thought flowers could be so closely associated with the dark and macabre? And that’s not even getting into all the poisonous and deadly flowers like those discussed in my post on pernicious plants. What other examples of flowers in Gothic literature can you think of? Let me know in the comments below!