**THIS BOOK REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS**
Katy Simpson Smith, ingeniously uses plant taxonomy as the story structure of her book, The Weeds, to contrast the lives of two women living in different centuries, but joined by place and profession. They are connected in the same task—to catalog the weeds of the colosseum. Their stories are a sharp commentary on women’s societal roles, marginalization in academia and the sciences, and the historical (mostly negative) association of women to plants/nature.
Smith does not name the two women. During the first few chapters the reader must figure out the pattern and rhythm of the two voices and also place them in their separate times and circumstance. The first botanist (Rome in the 1800s) has been placed as an assistant to a famous botanist to keep her out of ‘trouble’ until her family can marry her off. Bored and intelligent, she has become an accomplished cat burglar, secretly taking small personal items from the upper and middle classes in her Roman neighborhood. She also has an illicit love affair with another young woman around her age, who marries and moves away leaving the main character heartbroken. Meanwhile, in the present day, a young woman is trapped in academia trying to gain the support of a misogynistic adviser and struggling with romantic entanglements.
The weeds (wildflowers) both women are charged with tracking down in the colosseum often have folklore and myth that relate to the two women’s situations. The botanist’s assistant writes her own lyrical entries for each plant, placing them into folklore and medicinal context. She remarks that she is the “worst kind of weed — troublesome…sprouting in ill-cultivated places.”
My Favorite Quotes
Both characters fight to find their way within patriarchal structures where misogyny is the norm. The first botanist recalls how trapped in conformity she is and says,
“Awake, I was ever conscious, moving my lips in patterns to make meekness, womanliness, seduction, ignorance; I had performed my way out of myself.”
Later when she is in church, she notes,
“Surrounded by women of good repute, all weeping like cut stems. How many married, how many turning from their husbands in the night to shield their soil, to keep from making more girls who would catch sick and die, girls who if pretty would be touched and if plain would wither? A church of women, all looking down, no longer waiting for Christ.”
Towards the end of the book, the modern-day botanist likens the loss of the Elasmotherium, an ancient rhino referred to as ‘Siberian unicorn,’ to the eradication of weeds. And remember, weeds are women. She says,
“I like to think we would’ve wanted to keep them, the unicorns, if we’d had a say. Could’ve made a Unicorn Fund, hosted benefits on yachts. But it was the grasses that mattered. The weeds. And the weeds we cut and strip and shave and vanish.”
In the end the botanist in the 1800s is able to exact a certain amount of revenge, which I will leave as a surprise. But neither character receives credit for their botanical work. The first botanist has all her notes published in the famous botanist’s field guide, but it is under his name. The modern-day botanist is denied credit for her work on the colosseum project, as well as, the opportunity to create a thesis on the weeds of her hometown. The book leaves the reader very much aware of how much women have and continue to contribute to the knowledge-base of nature and natural history, but are marginalized and unacknowledged.
V. Bray is the author of the cozy mystery A Strawberry to Die For, featuring a strong-willed ecologist working to save nature and solve crimes along the way. Sign up for V. Bray’s newsletter and receive a free gardening tips sheet.
