Victorian Flower Oracle: Tuberose and Daffodil

Tuberose and Daffodil
Love

A Tuberose woman inside of a greenhouse embraces a male Daffodil who leans inside her window. Insects and a bird watch from outside.


Daffodil "Chivalry", "Vanity"
Tuberose "Dangerous pleasures, Voluptuousness"

I see yearning/wanting, should I or shouldn't I, a forbidden love. The whole Romeo and Juliet routine. I don't see much else.

*edit Thinking on the flowers themselves, a daffodil is a rather common flower and the tuberose is more expensive... a hot house flower. Daffodils will more or less grow wherever they are planted.

A yearning that is deep, not wanting to control it, let it run amok. In the heat of the night. Not caring for anything except to feed its own.

I tried to come up with something meaningful on the big gray bird behind his back... to no avail. Can someone guess what kind of a bird is it?

moderndayruth said:

I tried to come up with something meaningful on the big gray bird behind his back... to no avail. Can someone guess what kind of a bird is it?

Click to expand...

A sea gull to me.

Thanks BA! Hmmm, here 'sea gulls' (galeb) are also (pejoratively) called guys who are hitting on women in the summer, like looking for summer romances or something like that... Not sure it makes sense in English, but than the couple pictured would more stand to me as having some affair, not really 'Romeo and Julia' thing...Hmmm. What do you think?
The only association that i have in English with the bird is Richard Bach's "Seagull Jonathan Livingston", but the story has nothing to do with the image here...
I'll see if i can make some sense with plants symbology, so far, i like the image, it is beautiful - but it doesn't make any sense to me.

Bird? "The ganet's a dirty bird. They wet their nests!" Sorry, too much Monty Python during my developmental years.

Ooo, I like the seagull reference to a summer player!

Might it be a turtle dove? I'm looking up British Birds (Summer Visitors).

.traveller. said:

Bird? "The ganet's a dirty bird. They wet their nests!" Sorry, too much Monty Python during my developmental years.

Click to expand...

Ok, from wiki on tuberose:
"Its a prominent plant in Indian culture and mythology. The flowers are used in wedding ceremonies, garlands, decoration and various traditional rituals...
The tuberose is also used traditionally in Hawaii to create Leis and
was considered a funeral flower in Victorian times.
Its scent is described as a complex, exotic, sweet, floral."
Daffodil/Narcissus is a symbol of vanity in Greek Mithology, 'Narcissus was an extraordinarily handsome, yet cold and vain youth from Boeotia, Greece. Narcissus didn’t love anybody but himself and believed that he was the only one worth loving.'
Lol, i knew that, but i didn't realise Daffodil was another name for Narcissus.

I'm with moderndayruth on this....an affair. It has to be an illicit affair I would think as it is being conducted through a window.....so are they barred from seeing each other.....are they so in ,ove that they don't notice that thundering great big bird at the side of them....

Yes....I'd go with an affair.....a forbidden love maybe.

Ang x

Ange said:

I'm with moderndayruth on this....an affair. It has to be an illicit affair I would think as it is being conducted through a window.....so are they barred from seeing each other.....are they so in ,ove that they don't notice that thundering great big bird at the side of them....

Yes....I'd go with an affair.....a forbidden love maybe.

Ang x

Click to expand...

That makes perfect sense. Gulls are noisy creatures, always there when shrimping. They want a freebie & will do what they can to dive in and get one. He is in it for himself & himself ONLY!

Barbara

Doesn't look like a gull to me - they are white. This one is grey. It looks like a wood pigeon, such as you might find in the countryside (not the dirty city pigeons).

I've seen this bird as "messages" because in this kind of young love, messages are very common!

I don't see illicit love so much as love that is not yet wholly committed: they are enjoying the sweetness of love. It is close to the house, however, so it is "coming home". But this is likely to be the time before any decision of "forever" is actually made.

The association daffodil/tuberose I might read as love between people of different ethnic origins, or class, or nationality, or other form of disparity.

Although the daffodil is of the narcissus family, its associations are very different. I love the Wordsworth poem - so joyful and uplifting!

There is vine above their heads, sheltering their love and also giving it pleasure and constancy. Vine clings.