Women and violets in France (1800-1920) – a visual journey

Abstract

Violets were an important trade plant, sold in the streets and markets of European and North America cities throughout the nineteenth century up to the 1920’s, when they began to be out of fashion. France was a major producer of violets and many activities associated with them, such as picking and selling, were commonly done by women. Here we present a selection of photos from Beja Botanical Museum's collection that represents cultural interactions between women and violets during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All commercial grown or wild gathered violets belong to the genus Viola L. (Violaceae). In Europe, the oldest records of their cultural uses, can be traced to the writings of classic Greek poets, such as in the Odyssey (5.78), where the legendary Homer (c.VIII century B.C.) describes the garden that surrounded Calipso’s grotto, in the island of Ogygia, where Odysseus was kept for seven long years, as having ‘ through beds of violets’ (Homer 1961). The VI Homeric hymn, devoted to Aphrodite, describes the meeting of the goddess