I think the flower metaphor is used to show how differently flowers (and the properties and powers vested in it by Mynona) are seen by men and women. While a flower is something hypnotizing to the later mother-in-law, enough to put her in a dream daze, enough power to eventually get her pregnant, for the male, there is a different connotation. Dr. Rosenberger
(I am sure there is a pun on that name) is scared of the flower when he sees the flower bush on his bed. Enough so that he tosses it down to Emma. Men therefore are threatened by flowers and woman are infatuated by them.
A flower is something a woman wants and a male can never embody. Everything a flower stands for is emasculating and yet it is something hypnotizing to woman.
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I'm not quite sure how a flower can be a metaphor for how someone views a flower... so maybe the flower is a metaphor for the seductive powers of beauty? A woman will desperately give herself to the powers that be to become the enbodiment of beauty (just as in the story how the young woman gives herself fully to become pregnant with a beautiful girl.) Men, on the other hand, are not as concerned with being beautiful as with owning beauty (like in the story when all the men want to marry the rose child.)
ReplyDeleteI understand you interpretation and think it is very interesting. It is hard to see how this metaphor could exist, but also, I think that Marion's interpretation is confusing as well, only because when Dr. Rosenberger sees the rose bush, he doesn't want to own it, he wants to get rid of it.
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