Abstract: “The Value of Botany in The Wild Irish Girl”
Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl (1806) highlights the value attached to botany and larger environmental concerns. In particular, the Irish flora is often presented in economic contexts. When discussing local fashions, Glorvina educates Horatio about how certain dyes are achieved. As saffron is too expensive to be used for common people, she explains their taste for yellow dresses in the following way:
“And I believe formerly, as now, they communicated this bright yellow tinge with indigenous plants, with which this country abounds. “In short, the botanical treasures of our country, though I dare say little known, are inexhaustible. “Nay,” she continued, observing, I believe, the admiration that sparkled in my eyes, “give me no credit, I beseech you, for this local information, for there is not a peasant girl in the neighbourhood, but will tell you more on the subject.” (The Wild Irish Girl, 94)
The language Horatio and Glorvina use to describe the indigenous flora in Connaught presents the economic value of both Irish plants and the knowledge of the same. The plants for yellow dye are simultaneously cast as cheap alternatives to saffron—something to be extracted to the metropole in Britain—and something “inexhaustible” existing in abundance. Even the knowledge about these plants is ubiquitous. While the novel is often read as allegorizing the 1800 Act of Union, Melissa Bailes offers a reading of the novel’s seeming support of the Act as “strategically disingenuous” (“Cultivated for Consumption,” 529). Bailes employs a framework of sensibility and cannibalistic consumption by the English to analyzethe botanical themes in The Wild Irish Girl. Building on her work, I propose in this paper to read Owenson’s national tale as subversively employing an ethics of care within the realm of botany. This is opposed to pure extraction and exploitation that underlies the colonial aspirations of the Union between Britain and Ireland. Owenson teeters on the edge of supporting and opposing the Union in her novel; I argue that the representation of botany in the Irish context reveals a strategic depiction of value of the new kingdom to the metropole. Like other contemporary travel accounts, Owenson casts the indigenous population as knowledgeable about the environmental characteristics of the island; at the same time, Glorvina has a scientific understanding of botany and can thus communicate with Horatio on an almost equal level. After all, isn’t the question for Horatio in the example above why saffron should be imported to dye textiles when there are now local (and cheaper) alternatives available a short journey away?
Bio: Trier University, Germany
Carolin Böttcher is currently Jeanne Baret Fellow at Trier University. After receiving her PhD from UC San Diego, she has worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Universities of Munich and Jena. Her current project engages with an ecocritical approach to Irish literature and the coast.