Earlier today Rowling tipped us off that she would be changing her header and, as she promised, it was worth the wait. There are orchids behind her new author photo and a picture of Freud’s desk as the new header. This desk, now housed at the Freud Museum in London, is a positive cornucopia of classical allusion and symbolism. Eros is there flanked by many more from Freud’s private collection of over 2000 Greek, Roman and – on the desk it seems mainly – Egyptian antiquities (For more see: Janine Burke’s – any relation? – The Sphinx on the Table: Sigmund Freud’s Art Collection And the Development of Psychoanalysis). The Freud Museum website writes of this table and its figurines:
Though these figures did not share their dreams and neuroses with their observer, they certainly contributed to his work. Many of these characters from antiquity appear in Freud’s theories: Athena, Oedipus, Eros, Venus. They inspired him in his exploration of psychoanalytic theories and in his writing process. Some objects on the desk relate to the act of writing itself: a jade scholar screen designed to inspire calm in the scholar; the baboon Thoth, lunar god and patron of all things intellectual, particularly writing; and Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, balancing sound intellect and decisive action.
We already knew Rowling was interested by Freud as the photograph of her bookshelf behind her author picture on the adult version of Deathly Hallows shows a 1976 Pelican edition of Freud’s Jokes and their relation to the Unconscious and the dreamworlds of Harry Potter, in particular, are clearly influenced by his ideas. Freud, in his The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) (and its abridgement On Dreams (1911)) laid out his theory that the interpretation of dreams unlocks the door to the unconscious. Just as Harry’s psychological and literal imprisonment in the beginning of Chamber of Secrets plays out in dreams in which he is caged in a zoo to be gawped at, so does his residual guilt at impersonating Neville on the Knight Bus lead to him dreaming that it is Neville who has, in fact, displaced him: ‘he dreamed that he had overslept, and that Wood was yelling, “Where were you? We had to use Neville instead!”’ (Azkaban). Both the real event (in which Harry pretends to be Neville) and the dream event (in which Neville replaces Harry) are minor-key clues to the importance between the parallels between Harry and Neville, which will become central in Order of the Phoenix, a novel in which Harry’s labyrinthine dreams echo the self-involved solipsism of his Freudian teenage angst.
Harry’s self-preoccupation becomes a literal examination of what is inside his head, in his dreams and during Occlumency training, where we find dreams of deep, black, windowless underground corridors leading to locked doors. These dark corridors are the objective correlative of his tortured self-involvement, but they are also a literal place which Harry has seen and remembered.
Freud is the most important modern exponent of the long-accepted idea that the quotidian mystery of dreams is susceptible to, and indeed demands, interpretation. So I think we can be pretty certain that this header points not only to Robin’s new therapist (on whom so many of us are pinning our hopes) and provides further evidence of the continuing importance of classical myth to the series, but also that the dreams of Sleep Tight, Evangeline (as the name might suggest) will be the most significant of the series so far.
While in Harry Potter the students study dream interpretation (Oneiromancy) with Trelawney, it does not play any therapeutic role. Sleep itself, however, is therapeutic in Harry Potter and this creates a link between the flower-symbolism post I was writing when Rowling announced her header change, and that Freudian header. For Poppy Pomfrey’s Christian name in Harry Potter is a nod to both her healing powers and her prevailing obsession: ‘This boy needs rest… Out!’ The Latin name of the opium poppy (Papaver sominiferum) points to their sleep inducing qualities (think of what fields of them do to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz) and the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius used to opium to help him sleep (as well, in large quantities of honey, to elevate his mood at the start of the day). While we think of opiates primarily as pain-relieving, Culpepper’s Herbal (a herbal Rowling uses in her writing and owns two copies of) stresses how good they are at procuring rest:
The garden Poppy heads with seeds made into a syrup, is frequently, and to good effect used to procure rest, and sleep… the empty shells, or poppy heads, are usually boiled in water, and given to procure rest and sleep: so doth the leaves in the same manner… It is generally used in treacle and mithridate, and in all other medicines that are made to procure rest and sleep.
Poppy Pomfrey’s Christian name relates to the pain-relieving aspects of the latex of poppies, but I think it primarily references her belief in the healing power of sleep and rest: ‘Headmaster!’ spluttered Madam Pomfrey. ‘They need treatment, they need rest.’
Now there is a very tempting link between poppies – the flower of sleep – and the Demeter/Persephone myth we’re expecting to see in Sleep Tight, Evangeline (I wrote about Persephone and why we might be seeing her in Strike 9 here). In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the reader is taken to Hypnos’s cave of sleep around which ‘lush poppies grow’ and ‘Around him everywhere in various guise lie empty Somnia [Oneiroi, Dreams], countless as ears of corn at harvest time or sands cast on the shore or leaves that fall upon the forest floor.’
— OVID, METAMORPHOSES 11. 585 (TRANS. MELVILLE)
Poppies are part of Hypnos’ domain but their healing power is also intimately connection with Demeter for, when she lost Persephone, the gods created the poppy to heal her pain. Its juice was made to heal her grief through sleep and dreams, and after she awoke from her poppy-induced sleep the flowers sprung where her feet touched the ground. The poppy became the sacred flower of Demeter – a sign that her dream-filled sleep had indeed helped her heal.
And so poppies, a flower created for Demeter which brings the dreams that so fascinated Freud, is my link to the post I was planning to write about floral symbolism in Strike.
As those of you who follow me on Twitter will know, I love the natural world. It is a particular pleasure when my literary critical interests and love of green and growing things come to together – as in Strike’s unintentionally revealing gift of a philodendron, which has both heart-shaped leaves and a heart-shaped name. ‘Philo’ means love and Robin answers this silent declaration which she names the plant Phyllis – a pastoral name meaning not only, fittingly, green leaf but (also fittingly) ‘sweetheart.’
There is very early Irish poem, from the 8th or 9th century, which describes the particular pleasure nature has held for writers throughout time:
The woodland thicket overtops me, the blackbird sings me a lay, praise I will not conceal: above my lined little booklet the trilling of birds sings to me. The clear cuckoo sings to me, lovely discourse, in its grey cloak from the crest of the bushes; truly – may the Lord protect me! well do I write under the forest wood.1
I love this image of someone sitting with his ‘lined little booklet’ writing under trees over a millennium ago, but I also love it because Rowling wrote one of the best moments of Philosopher’s Stone, the scene in which Harry’s holly wand chooses him, while sitting under a tree. Wand woods in Harry Potter are perhaps the most important role played by plants in the series, and I like to think that this outdoor writing seeped into the pages of Harry Potter. And although nature symbolism is less important to Strike, it remains a crucial part of the way Rowling writes. I have another post in the works about bird symbolism (specifically that raven/crow on the clue-bearing charm-bracelet header) but as it is June, and the countryside is awash with colour – and poppies! – this post will be about flowers.
The Flowers of Oxfordshire
When Strike and Robin come into my county of Oxfordshire, we get some particularly flowery descriptions of the countryside: ‘milk parsley and wood avens speckled the dark green with white and yellow. The long thorny branches of wild roses curled like barbed wire everywhere she trod’ (Lethal White). So, I thought I’d post for you some pictures of these flowers blooming in Oxfordshire – these are photos from my regular local walks:
Wood avens is a very common and once popular medical flower – its other name, ‘Herb Bennet,’ is a corruption of ‘herba benedicta‘ (the blessed herb).
Wild dog roses do indeed throw out long spikey stems and are the quintessential English rose (Queen Elizabeth I used them as an emblem).
Milk parsley, unlike the other two flowers, is a relatively rare and not particularly well-known flower (very few English people could correctly name or ID this flower). Choosing not to use the ubiquitous cow parsley, a more obvious choice, and choosing milk parsley instead suggests that Rowling is quite knowledgeable about wildflowers.
As Robin and Strike drive down into the Oxfordshire countryside, they park up by another flower: ‘a country road that wound down into the valley where the tiny village of Woolstone lay nestled. Robin parked beside a hedgerow full of Traveller’s joy’ (Lethal White). Traveller’s joy is one of my favourites, with a deeply honeyed, sherberty scent. It is not only a flower widely found in Oxfordshire, but it also has a meaning in the Language of Flowers which seems suitable for this road trip. Probably due to the strong twine once made by its stems, traveller’s joy represents ‘safety’ in the Language of Flowers. This is perfect for Robin at the wheel, as the only driver with whom Strike feels safe, and perfect also for Strike, who represents true safety to Robin (rather than the false safety she has found with Matthew).
In keeping with the well-known symbolic flower names of Harry Potter, such as Lily, Petunia and Poppy Pomfrey, one such name becomes vitally important in The Hallmarked Man. Tyler’s gift of violets to Chloe are a sign that he knows her true name and wants her to know that she is known. Jolanda means ‘violet,’ with its roots in the Greek io (violet) and anthos (flower). But there is also a brilliant little clue from the Language of Flowers at the very beginning of the series. In Cuckoo’s Calling, Strike needs to be able to read a witness called Tansy Bestigui. Tansy is an edible (but very unpleasant tasting) flower, and any consulter of Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers would know that Tansy is obstructing justice in this novel. Her flower-name means ‘I declare war against you.’
Say it with Flowers
Flowers also form more literal clues in the Strike novels. In Career of Evil, the killer-clue slots into place for Strike at the sight of a bunch of daffodils. They fall from a mother’s bag onto the pavement, and she gives them to her son to carry, successfully deflecting him from running off. ‘The little boy walked meekly beside his mother now, proud to have a job to do, the stiff yellow flowers upright in his hand like a sceptre.’ But Strike is suddenly transfixed by these flowers in the cold air, thinking ‘Daffodils… lily of the valley… flowers out of season.’
The lily of the valley should have been in Robin’s wedding bouquet and now that the wedding date has shifted, they will no longer be in season. There is a literal clue here (about the sea holly blooms and the alibi they reveal to be fake), but there is also a subtle one in the mis-match of lily of the valley. Lily of the valley is a contender in the (hotly contested!) category of my favourite flower, and they have one of the purest perfumes to exist, but they are nonetheless symbolically odd as a marital flower, as they are named after the Virgin Mary. Edith Wharton used this symbolism in her Age of Innocence – the OG novel of romantic pining (which, as I have written here I thought might have left traces in The Hallmarked Man). In The Age of Innocence, the hero repeatedly buys lily of the valley for his virginal wife-to-be but when he sees some yellow roses, there is something too powerful in their fiery beauty for her, and he sends them to the woman with whom he is actually in love.
In Career of Evil, the blooming of the sea holly is a flower-clue which is spelt out for the reader. But this is not the first time flowers have lead Strike to the killer-clue, although last time it happened subconsciously for him (and is not pointed out to us). Evan Duffield goes to visit Lula’s mother carrying a large bunch of white flowers in his hands. It is a gift, but it also a prop to screen him from press intrusion – a daytime version of his signature wolf’s head. It is a hint – for him and for us – about how the killer could have got in to see Lula by obscuring his face. And if, like Evan, he did so with a large bunch of white flowers, then it makes sense that he was hiding out in Deeby Mac’s flat all along. It could, in fact, have been a thought about what use those white roses might have been put, which set the explanation in motion in Strike’s head. These white roses are as important in their way for revealing the killer as the yellow daffodils were in Career of Evil.
Magnolia
I have written about the symbolism of magnolia before (here) for when Strike reaches Lucy’s house in The Running Grave we are met with a very odd sentence about the non-flowering of a tree:
The large magnolia tree in Lucy and Greg’s front garden was, naturally, sporting no flowers on this cool March day.
Even given the author’s understandable desire to use trees to remind us of the time of year, this explicit attention (‘sporting’) drawn to non-flowers is a little startling. But I think it is there for a reason. This magnolia tree is reminiscent of Little Whinging in Harry Potter where Magnolia Crescent runs near to Privet Drive and ‘Magnolia Road, like Privet Drive, was full of large, square houses with perfectly manicured lawns, all owned by large, square owners who drove very clean cars similar to Uncle Vernon’s.’ Throughout the Strike novels, likewise, this magnolia tree has functioned as a shorthand for our hero’s dislike of the suburban conformity of his sister’s homelife:
A large magnolia tree stood in the front garden of Lucy’s house in Bromley. Later in the spring it would cover the front lawn in what looked like crumpled tissues; now, in April, it was a frothy cloud of white, its petals waxy as coconut shavings. Strike had only visited this house a few times, because he preferred to meet Lucy away from her home. (Cuckoo’s Calling)
Strike’s aversion to Lucy’s domesticity is symbolised by this tree, so beloved of London’s suburbs, and his mental rejection of Marguerite in Silkworm is his rejection of Lucy’s magnolia-conformity (‘this was the sort of woman she imagined him falling for, and living with for ever in a house with a magnolia tree in the front garden.’) The tree has become tainted, in part, by the ubiquity of the paint-colour known as ‘magnolia’ which likewise crops up in suburban homes – both Kathryn Kent’s flat & Robin’s unsatisfactory attempt at domesticity are painted magnolia (‘their magnolia sitting room was far too tiny to accommodate a couple in such a state of fury’ [Career of Evil]). But the name of this insipid paint has led Strike to overlook that far from being boringly suburban, magnolia trees are rock stars of the arboreal world! They are over 100 million years old and existed before bees. A flower that existed before bees is something quite difficult to get one’s head around. Something that looks conventional but is in fact extraordinary.
The flowerless magnolia tree is a hint that Strike is about to confront that he has been wronging his sister all this time. We discussed at The Three Broomsticks what Strike might discover via a revelation from Lucy about what has really happened at the Norfolk Commune. Sophia’s hunch was right on the money when she said that Lucy would reveal abuse she suffered there that would transform Strike’s understanding of her. Kathleen left a perspicacious comment about this in the podcast comments – noting the magnolia tree in Cuckoo’s Calling and its promise of ‘crumpled tissues’ later in the season as an ominous sign and that Lucy’s ‘past with Leda, which certainly may have included sexual abuse that Strike didn’t see (more of the “open your eyes” theme).’
Strike needs to recalibrate his relationship to the women in his life – this happened with Joan in Troubled Blood, with Charlotte in Ink Black Heart, and in Running Grave it finally happens with Leda, Lucy and Robin (though obviously we hope that the final and total recalibration there will come in Sleep Tight, Evangeline). This early chapter sets the tone for the transformations to follow: Strike is decisively honest with Lucy about Leda and Prudence, and comes to the realisation that Lucy’s response to her traumatic childhood is just as courageous as his own: ‘and for the very first time in their adult lives, it occurred to Strike that his sister’s determination to cling to stability and her notion of normality… was a form of extraordinary courage’ (102). I’ve written ‘FINALLY!’ in the margin. Strike has finally come to the realisation that he needs to resist the easy cliché of that magnolia tree. It was not, perhaps, his most important break-through in this book, but his realisation about Lucy’s courage and his honesty with her in this early chapter was a decisive step towards his honesty towards Robin in the closing pages of the novel.
Fugitive Scents
One of the places that flowers turn up in Strike is as scents – perfuming the air of the Denmark St office either as unloved stargazer lilies (‘lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds’ as Shakespeare reminds us in Sonnet 94) or as the heart notes of perfumes.
I have recently discovered The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard (an author I met once although, sadly, prior to reading her novels) and I can highly recommend them if you’re looking for something to read in the wait Sleep Tight, Evangeline! (Hilary Mantel calls them ‘panoramic, expansive, intriguing as social history and generous in their storytelling.’ The Cazalet Chronicles include a comic character called Neville whose views about perfume are reminiscent of Strike’s struggles with ‘Shaggable You:’
‘If I had a scent, I’d choose one called Fried Bacon’…
‘Neville, you can’t choose scents like that. You can only choose from what there is.’
‘Not if I was a scent inventor, which might be a very good way of getting rich; they must have used up all the soppy flower smells by now. Also, sometimes people might like a scent that puts people off. Essence of Grass Snake would be good for that…’
‘Essence of Grass Snake,’ as we know, would hardly have put Strike off – indeed, a gift of this perfume might have been the perfect way to tell Robin how he felt about her (‘yet he was close to feeling about her as he had felt towards a grass snake that he had succeeded in trapping in Trevaylor Woods when he was eleven, and about which he had had a long, pleading argument with his Auntie Joan: ‘Please let me keep it… please…’).
In 2001 Christopher Little, the agent who ‘discovered’ Rowling, had a lavish 60th birthday party, with over two hundred guests, at the Chelsea Physic Garden. His most important client would certainly have been invited, and, either then (or at a later date) she picked up a flower-brochure there called ‘Captivating scents: fresh floral fœtid.’
Chelsea Physic Garden makes a brief cameo in Lethal White when Strike does some surveillance there (all we hear is that ‘the long hike to and around Chelsea Physic Garden the previous day had not benefited Strike’s hamstring injury’) but I wonder if the reason that this pamphlet made it onto Rowling’s website is that her interest was caught by its emphasis on plants for perfume. The brochure (many thanks to Nick Jeffrey for getting me the unobscured text!) notes that ‘the people of Mesopotamia were the first to “capture” scent for their own means using plant oils in religious ceremonies or for perfume’ over 5,000 years ago and goes on to detail sections of the garden which concentrate on perfumery – in particular the ‘Perfumery Amphitheatre’ and ‘Scents of the Tropics.’ The brochure notes how you can read about the plant oils used in popular perfumes such as ‘Poison’ and ‘Eternity’ on boards in the garden, and perfumery’s use of tropical plants, such as Vanilla, Cardamom, Patchouli and evanescent but luscious scent of the Stanhopea orchid.
Harry’s attraction to Ginny is signalled early in Half-Blood Prince by the fact that the smell of Amortentia – ‘one of the most seductive scents Harry had ever inhaled’ – includes her scent: ‘something flowery he thought he might have smelled at The Burrow’ (Half-Blood Prince). This fugitive, flowery scent is very close to the way Strike thinks about Robin – who, when he hugs her, smells ‘of roses and the faint perfume that he had missed when she was no longer in the office’ (Lethal White, prologue). Flower-based perfumes play a large role in Troubled Blood in which Robin is seduced by the ‘heady, luscious, oily tuberose’ of new perfume symbolising a sophisticated version of herself, who would be immune to the foolishness which fell for Matthew. In Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers, tuberose means ‘dangerous pleasures’ and its dangerous aspect returns in Running Grave when worn by Noli Seymour, who is certainly playing with fire. Here, it is the scent of someone whose apparent sophistication in no way stops her, wittingly or un, from being a front for a baby trafficking rape cult – no wonder Robin instinctively disliked it.
Robin tended to rate perfumes according to how well they reproduced a familiar flower or foodstuff, but this wasn’t a smell from nature. There was a ghostly rose there, but also something strangely metallic. Robin, who was used to fragrances made friendly with fruit and candy, set down the strip with a smile and a shake of her head and walked on.
So that was how Margot Bamborough had smelled, she thought. It was a far more sophisticated scent than the one Matthew had loved on Robin, which was a natural-smelling concoction of figs, fresh, milky and green.
Wittgenstein famously describes the impossibility of describing the smell of coffee: ‘Describe the aroma of coffee. Why can’t it be done?’2 Rowling has a brilliant stab at describing smells here – and I suspect I was wasn’t the only reader to remember with that ‘fragrances made friendly with fruit and candy’ a deep teenaged love of Body Shop Dewberry, knowing in my heart that its mouth-wateringly fruity smell wasn’t quite ‘the thing,’ and unabashedly loving it anyhow. This is clever writing because we are glimpsing Margot’s sophistication through Robin’s naivety – Margot’s fully assured sexuality presents itself through the prism of someone still negotiating her way to a fully chosen, self-actualised ownership of her own desire.
In the crucial final scene of Troubled Blood in which Strike buys Robin her birthday perfume the two of them reject one that smells of vanilla, a plant explored on the Chelsea Physic Garden leaflet, and fix on Narciso, with its ‘suggestion of bruised flowers’. The flowery perfume has come full circle in Rowling’s writing and the fugitive scent of Robin, the ‘faint perfume that he had missed when she was no longer in the office,’ will be flowery, just like the smell that reminds Harry of the Burrow. This new floral scent is also hopeful because, as we know, the scent of flowers evokes the romance of hope: ‘The dirt and heat of a London afternoon, with the smell of stocks in the air, seemed suddenly full of beauty. It was a glorious thing, to be given hope, when all had seemed lost’ (Lethal White).
1‘Dom-farcai fidbaide fál (‘the Writer in the Woods’), translated by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, cited in Della Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010), 87.
2Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p.610.