The Language of Flowers in Henry James's In the Cage: Mrs. Jordan's Ecological Message

Against the modern industrial backdrop of the late-Victorian culture, Henry James places Mrs. Jordan in the middle of a highly technologized London society as a florist whose aesthetic work in upper-class houses encodes sharp criticism of people's negative attitude to nature and the ecological system they control and live in. Working as a florist, in other words, functions as an invitation to readers to reflect on the possible dangers and persistent horrors of the late-Victorian wasteland of prevalent industries of technological communication, here telegraphy. James employs Mrs. Jordan in his narrative to affirm and defend the transcendental ideals of a bygone eco-friendly human environment that discloses the continued conflict between the beautiful soul and old romantic image of nature and the agitations of the modern world in which relations and communication among late-Victorian individuals are becoming too rapidly technologized. By transcendental ideals, I mean the intense yearning for a naturalized life in which individuals exist in a more harmonious accord with the environment. Within the pioneering advancement of telegraphic technology, which seems to serve as the most dominant image in the plot of James's text (Haralson & Johnson 251), the flowers arranged by Mrs. Jordan signify a necessary transcendental movement to natural origins and a vital reconsideration of the environmental damage caused by industrial societies and the rapid shifts in social values and urban lifestyles. These flowers redirect the readers' attention and urge their response to the uncommon and aberrant culture of economic intimacy that is embodied in the coded messages exchanged between affluent customers at Cocker's, the place where James's unnamed protagonist works as a telegraphist. While the telegraphist always appears to fulfill certain mechanical expectations in her work at the post office, Mrs. Jordan's mobility between houses and work with flowers at her garden function as a sardonic denunciation of the former's liminal space. Mrs. Jordan, in other words, represents the natural growth of green-stuff that defies the sense of spatial restrictions. The imagery of flowers, therefore, calls into question the absurd paradoxes of modern spaces occupied by urban subjects who are beguiled by the illusions of freedom in their workplaces that offer nothing but official incarceration by technology and civilization. If James's narrative ends in the failure of both the telegraphist and Mrs. Jordan to ascend the ladder of wealth and social class as both eventually marry Mr. Mudge and Mr. Drake respectively, the metaphor of floral growth and ascendency remains an unwavering powerful discourse that subverts the logic of numbers, mathematics and words in the telegraphic landscape of Cocker's. While the codes transmitted between the aristocratic Captain Everard and Lady Bradeen is a failed capital project for the telegraphist's dreams, flowers sustain the green imaginative energy of the text, a kind of energy that underscores the abandoned ecological values in the lives of late-Victorians.

By being constantly involved in "dol[ing] out stamps and postal orders, weigh[ing] letters, answer[ing] stupid questions, give[ing] difficult change […]" (James 3), the unnamed telegraphist becomes metaphorically centralized within James's depiction of late-Victorian material waste production of technological culture. One, however, can clearly witness the growth of a powerful green discourse of flowers that always runs naturally on Mrs. Jordan's tongue. Mrs. Jordan's flowers and her use of flowery imagery bring into question the delusional validity and power of the telegraphist's army of words she employs for her own benefits. Not unlike the telegraphist's words that could signify her erotic impulses and social aspirations, Mrs. Jordan's flowers "can be used to express ideas and feelings" about the Victorians and the ecological conditions of the time (Otis 175). Here, flowers and their ecological significations, in fact, do embody James's vital artistic call for the protection of the natural green system by "fenc[ing] off the industrial cultivations of Western telegraphic civilization" (Hamdan 1). James's floral voice, as I term it, in the novella is both an intentional and stylistic choice that carries meanings of self...