A Response to Mary Shelley’s The Sensitive Plant

It is easy to say that The Sensitive Plant is complex at best. However, some background on Mary Shelley herself can help add some illumination to the text. As a woman who suffered miscarriages, who was unable to produce a child with her husband, it might be somewhat understandable that Mary Shelley would be attracted to writing about the plant Mimosa pudica which is hermaphroditic and can reproduce all on its own, giving it a self-sustaining quality. The sensitive plant is also given the status of a kind of pariah. It is an outsider. It exists in a vibrant garden full of beautiful flowers including narcissi, lilies, hyacinths, and roses. In fact, Shelley writes about these flowers by referencing very passionate and erotic Greek myths The narcissi obviously references the famous Greek myth of Narcissus, the beautiful man who wasted away after falling in love with his own reflection. The lily of the vale if compared to Naiads which help facilitate youthful sexual experience. Hyacinths refer to the Greek myth in which a love feud catapults Apollo into Hyacinth, slaughtering him. Apollo turns his blood into a beautiful flower. And then, the wand-like lily is compared to Mæned, a devotee of Bachus, the God of Wine. The sensitive plant, being a plant with “No bright flower (Part 1, Line 75) is not a part of this botanical erotic passion. It is alone, something Mary Shelley was familiar with in her childhood. Shelley’s mother died giving birth to her, and her father remarried. Mary never got along with her step mother, and she felt like an outsider in her own house. It seems then no wonder that the sensitive plant would be the “favorite” (Part 1, Line 114) despite its lack of beauty and fragility. Perhaps it is the sensitive plant’s rarity that gives it value above the all the other beautiful plants in the garden.

Q: On line 114, the sensitive plant is described as “the favorite.” To whom?