A Study of Bloom Narrative in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fiction

Abstract

Elizabeth Gaskell was an influential female writer in the 19th-century English literary arena. The courtship and marriage narrative almost ran through all her fiction. This paper argues that Linnaeus’ botanical system provided discourse support for her courtship and marriage narrative. From the late 18th century to the 19th century, as Linnaean classification popularized, the term “flower”(plants’sexual organ) became more commonly used as “bloom,” referring to “potential sex.” Linnaeus termed the sexual reproduction of a flower marriage, linking “sex” to marriage and rendering the natural (illegitimate) meaning of sex socialized (legitimate). In this cultural context, Gaskell introduced “bloom narrative” into her works, using “bloom” and its cognate words “garden, landscape, etc.” to represent the sexual attraction of blooming girls and reproduce their marriage and courtship, and using botanical language as a metaphor for the process of female socialization to explore the possible social consequences. It is worth noting that Linnaeus divided plants into public marriage and clandestine marriage according to whether flowers could be seen by the naked eye. Gaskell not only reproduced the sexual attraction in public marriages as traditional writers as Austen did but also discussed the sexual attraction in clandestine marriages. In North and South, Linnaeus’s “public marriage” category was represented. Gaskell linked sexual attraction to marriage and enabled the heroine to successfully exercise her feminine influence, and thus facilitate labor-capital reconciliation, demonstrating her strong desire to bridge the gap between the public and private spheres. In Ruth, by separating sexual attraction (bloom) from marriage and treating the sexual behavior of the hero and heroine as Linnaeus’s “clandestine marriage,) Gaskell presented both the heroine’s sexual charm and her innocence, thus effectively challenging the traditional narrative of depraved women. The bloom narrative meets Gaskell’s multiple requirements of conforming to secular moral values, achieving realistic effects as well as participating in the discussion of gender topics, which reveals her diverse and cross-boundary artistic creation concept.