Flowers into the Breach: Women in the Care of Plants

abstract:This article considers the imagined relationship between women and plants, both in the context of patriarchal societies that fear female sexuality and in that of the feminine usage of plants to manage and improve health, and, more importantly perhaps, to escape a reproductive logic. From François Rabelais' wall of vulvas to an agricultural manual insisting on the curious plant property of inducing periods, these histories intersect with the fantasies of Céline Sciamma's film, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, as so many affordances of a liberating botany.