Flowers Symbol Analysis

In Agnes Grey, flowers represent the difference between Agnes Grey’s beliefs about love and those of her flirtatious student Rosalie Murray: whereas Agnes believes that love derives from shared values and mutual support, Rosalie thinks of love as the result of a struggle in which a woman “conquers” a man with her charms. When Agnes is missing her loving, religious home while working for the status-obsessed, superficial Murray family, she sees primroses that remind her of home blooming high up in some tree roots. When Agnes tries and fails to reach the primroses by herself, the village curate Mr. Weston stops, picks them for her, and asks her about her favorite flowers. Agnes tells him that her favorite flowers are those that remind her of her loving home. This explanation makes explicit the symbolic link between flowers and love while also foreshadowing that Mr. Weston—with whom Agnes falls in love and eventually marries—will give Agnes a new loving home based on shared moral and religious commitments. In contrast, Rosalie Murray later flirts with the lovesick village rector Mr. Hatfield by toying with a sprig of myrtle (a flowering plant) while he detains her with conversation. When he asks her for the myrtle—symbolically asking for her love—Rosalie refuses to give it to him until he begs for it. After he takes the flower and goes, Rosalie immediately criticizes him to Agnes, revealing that she is only interested in “conquering” Mr. Hatfield, not in loving him herself. Love is, to Rosalie, a game. The different ways Agnes and Rosalie exchange flowers with men thus illustrate their divergent beliefs about what romantic love should be.