Erasmus Darwin's pedagogical purpose in The Loves of the Plants: reconfiguring images of women in Linnaean botany

Abstract

Erasmus Darwin, a late eighteenth-century doctor, inventor, scientist, and scholar, translated Limaeus's botanical theories into English. From the 1750s forward, botany was both an educational and recreational activity for polite British society and 9 in 1789 9 Darwin contributed a more literary work to the growing botanical discourse: The Loves of the Plants. while many critics have evaluated this text almost solely in terms of the abundant sexual tone it shares with other works based on Linnaean botany, my investigation revolves around Darwins claim that his text is pedagogical--designed to "inlist Imagination under the banner of Science." I argue that within the framework of pedagogy, Darwin tries to reconcile the social conservatism Linnaeus encoded into botany with his own more liberal social vision. Two of Loves' most prominent characteristics, (1) the parallel presentation of information in poetic.couplets linked with scientific footnotes and (2) a discontinuous narrative structure,. allow Darwin to achieve his educational goal white also opening up Limaeus's system of analogy. Limaeus recognized the sexual nature of plant reproduction and based his taxonomic-Ac structure based on counting the male and female reproductive organs in each species' blossoms. Limaeus explained his theories by likening plant reproductive processes to human ones, always describing these sexual scenarios as "marriages" and relegating the females to subordinate and passive roles. Darwin's pedagogical maneuvers allow him to, remain faithful to the Linnaean system while also broadening women's roles in his own miniature narratives. For example, Darwin's female characters enthusiastically seek, accept, or refuse sexual relations. In Loves, Darwin's greater willingness to embrace a variety of female roles can be seen in his panoramic view of female capabilities and actions, especially as his narratives are compared against Linnaeus's. Another comparison that must be made is to Darwin's own relations with his daughters and the progressive curriculum he outlines in his later volume on female education. These records support the interpretation of Loves as Darwin's attempt to reconfigure Linnaeus's more conservative images of women into a less rigid model.