When Alma Whittaker was born in Pennsylvania in 1800, her
father ‘did not mind that the infant was not a boy, nor that it was not pretty’. Thus Alma’s journey to understand herself,
the form of natural things, and her place in the world began.
Defying the maxim that a woman’s place was in
the home, Alma’s love of botany saw her story intertwined with that of Joseph
Banks, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace and the European age of naval and
scientific exploration.
Alma was fascinated by those metaphors for human society, mosses,
whose achingly slow growth she maps. She was also enthralled by orchids, drawn
so exquisitely by Mr Ambrose Pike, an unexpected guest whose spiritualist
approach to life changed Alma forever. But
it was the orchid’s exotic cousin, Tahitian vanilla, that posed a set of puzzles
Alma followed half-way round the world.
A tribute to all scientific women, this lyrical account of Alma’s
quest for knowledge is likely to start you on your own journey for the
signature of all things.
The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert, 2013
Bloomsbury
499 pp.
ISBN 9781408841891
No comments:
Post a Comment