56 pages • 1 hour read
Holly RinglandThe Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Relationships with the Natural World
Content Warning: This section of the guide references family trauma and grief, child abuse, domestic violence, and suicidal ideation.
This novel relies heavily on Australia’s natural setting as a symbolic place that mirrors the characters’ feelings. This theme is fundamental to the use of floriography, setting as character, Ringland’s language choices, and Alice’s growth.
The author highlights the relationship between the natural world and the novel’s characters by naming each chapter for a specific plant whose meaning matches the content and setting of the chapter. For instance, the chapter in which Alice meets Dylan is named for spinifex: “Spinifex. Meaning: Dangerous pleasures. [...] Tjanpi is a tough, spiky grass dominating much of Australia’s interior red sand country, thriving on the poorest, most arid soils the desert has to offer” (261). Spinifex relates to Alice’s initial feelings for Dylan, and the plant’s description foreshadows that Dylan will take deep root in her life and become a “dangerous pleasure.” When Alice befriends Oggi and develops her crush, the chapter’s flower is River Lily, which means “love concealed” (120). Because she’s experiencing her first secret, romantic feelings for a boy within that section, the flower’s meaning coordinates with the conflicts and feelings she’s facing. Throughout the novel, floriography gives a voice to emotions, natural landscapes, and wilderness in each stage of Alice’s life. As Alice grows into a more confident woman and heals from her past traumas, each setting and flower tracks her progress with a suitable meaning.
Besides Alice, many other characters feel a kinship with the land. June and all the Flowers, including Clem and Agnes, appreciate gardening and floriography. Flowers give them a language to communicate what can’t be spoken in words. Oggi is attracted to roses due to his Bulgarian roots, showing his connection to a specific flower and its cultural meaning. Ruby in particular has a spiritual relationship with nature. In fact, Ruby and her fellow Aboriginal people have a special bond with the desert, illustrated through their oral tradition of the goddess’s story and the site of the desert pea flowers as a sacred palace of mourning. The setting is a living character in Ruby’s eyes, a friend and magnetizing force that should be honored. Alice feels a similar pull to nature, first about the sea and then the desert: “[T]hings in the desert [...] brought her such comfort, they felt almost medicinal” (215). Like Ruby, Alice finds a home in the desert and feels attached to the setting. She’s moved to tears and inspired to protect the land for the Aboriginal people. Her beloved flowers—and at a larger scale a culture’s sacredness—are at stake, relating this theme to a major conflict. The protection of the flowers even becomes a proxy for protecting herself, as evidenced through Alice’s act of physically tackling a tourist who is taking the flowers during her turmoil with Dylan.
The frequent presence of natural settings and elements creates a sense of nature being a background character in the story, functioning as a companion of sorts for characters like Alice and Agnes. With the setting as a character, the author uses sensory imagery and figurative language to bring settings to life. For instance, Ringland describes the coast as “the golden seam of the horizon, where the sea was sewn to the sky” (18). She describes Alice’s internal feelings using similes of nature often too, such as “Although they weighed on her mind, Alice’s questions remained stuck, lodged in her windpipe as painfully as if she’d swallowed a seedpod” (16). This literary language offers metaphorical messages about the land and its effects over Alice and others. Imagery and figurative language often feature prominently in literary fiction, and in this way, the novel adheres to genre conventions.
Each character is affected by the land’s flora, fauna, and overall setting, which fills them with certain emotions that help them find deeper meanings, inspiration, healing, and purpose.
The Long Process of Overcoming Trauma and Grief
Trauma and grief are present in almost every character’s storyline. This theme is necessary for Alice, June, the Flowers, and others to change. Through tragedy, they find themselves.
One of Alice’s main conflicts is overcoming trauma since Alice endures more hardships by age nine than many do in their entire lives: She’s physically abused, survives a fire, and loses both her parents as a child. Alice experiences physical manifestations of her trauma, including muteness, bedwetting, panic attacks, and nightmares, some of which recur as an adult during times of high stress, such as her inability to speak after Dylan betrays her. Alice overcoming her anxiety, fear, guilt, and loss of speech gives her internal strength and higher self-worth. Her voice is a tool she can use to control her life, though it takes her years to fully harness it and put herself and her needs first.
Alice’s trauma is compounded by grief for her losses, including Agnes, Oggi, June, and Dylan; notably, each of these losses is complicated by layers of betrayal—perceived, in Oggi’s case—or control. After letting go of her perceived abandonment by Oggi, she endures Dylan’s traumatic abuse, which is reminiscent of her father’s behavior. Alice also misses June, which is complicated by June’s controlling nature and secrets. Alice also has a tough relationship with the loss of her father due to his mistreatment. Through it all, Alice misses her beloved mother, Agnes, more than anyone. There is never time in her life that she doesn’t remember Agnes or long for her. Alice’s countless thoughts of Agnes and the fact she always wears the necklace with Agnes’s picture highlights the depths and enduring nature of her grief. In the conclusion, Alice lets go of the guilt over her parents’ death, but she will never stop mourning Agnes.
Secondary characters, such as June, Candy, and Sally, also experience grief and trauma, followed by long healing processes. In June’s lifetime, she loses her father at a young age and is left by her lover to raise Clem alone. When Clem leaves her, June becomes stubborn, callous, and mournful and drinks to cope. Unlike June, Candy filters her sorrow over her abandonment as an infant into baking, but she carries with her the grief of never knowing her roots, family, or why she was cast away. Lastly, Sally highlights this theme through the revelation of her unreciprocated love for Clem and the death of their five-year-old daughter. To lose a child so young broke Sally’s heart, but with therapy, she healed enough to mentor Alice through her grief later.
Each of these women illustrate to Alice that grief and trauma can be overcome; they each come out stronger, mentoring and comforting Alice through her own hardships. Through characters like Candy and Sally, Alice learns that people can overcome even terrible pasts and live full, happy lives again.
The Impact of Secrets
Throughout the novel, secrets withheld from other characters cause trauma and pain for others, especially Alice, June, and Charlie. The narrative structure, in which chapters are narrated from the points of view of multiple characters, contributes to the maintenance of secrets by exposing information to the readers that other characters aren’t privy to.
For her entire life, Alice questions June about her parents and their past, but June refuses to answer her. June tries to appease Alice and even promises Alice that if she finds her voice, June will too—but her stories are too painful for her to discuss, as Candy says: “[S]he probably thinks that if she tells one story, she’s got to tell ten that are connected. Pull one root up and the whole plant is at risk. The thought must terrify her” (197). By her twenties, Alice can’t stand June’s secrecy; June reporting Oggi is Alice’s breaking point. Though June thought she was protecting Alice by not telling her about her family’s history or that she didn’t want Oggi to take her to Bulgaria, she was actually harming Alice by controlling information. Keeping secrets leads to Alice abandoning Thornfield and June’s heart attack, which Candy and Twig imply was triggered by her grief over Alice leaving. These monumental events change the characters’ lives forever: June loses her granddaughter as a result of harboring secrets, and Alice misses out on knowing her family heritage, meeting her little brother, connecting with Sally, and staying safe at Thornfield. June’s secrets push Alice into both positive and negative experiences—finding comfort and meaning in the desert work, but also experiencing Dylan’s abuse.
June’s secrets also impact Charlie, who is cut off from Alice by June’s refusal to acknowledge him. Keeping Alice and Charlie a secret from each other denies them the sibling relationship they could have fostered their entire lives. The author plants clues regarding the secrets through exposition from multiple points of view, such as Sally’s comment that “[Clem] always had that effect on her. He was her darkest secret” (42). June also exposes the Hart family history through her own reflections, including how Ruth asked her to “ensure Thornfield was never bequeathed to an undeserving man” (140). Importantly, Alice is never privy to any of these realities until after June’s death. The sustained use of secrets drives both plot and character growth because characters like Alice are looking for answers and trying to make sense of their pasts.
Even minor characters, such as Lulu and Moss, highlight the impact of secrets by withholding key information from Alice. Lulu, for instance, attempts to warn Alice about Dylan, but doesn’t fully inform Alice of her actual history with Dylan. Moss is unable to share the news about June’s death with Alice due to his own trauma and grief over losing his family. In this way, these characters—like June—illustrate that secret-keeping is often motivated by one’s own pain and discomfort with disclosure, rather than malicious intent—nonetheless, the lack of knowledge removes Alice’s agency to act.
Importantly, secrets can have a positive impact and serve as a point of connection. The secret language of flowers Alice’s family develops gives the characters delight and meaning and connects Alice to her heritage in one of the few ways available to her: “Each flower is a secret language. When I wear a combination of flowers together, it’s like I’m writing my own secret code” (64). Thanks to June and Candy’s role modeling, Alice wants to learn this hidden language. She values speaking through nature, rather than using words, especially when she is unable to speak.
The Thornfield Dictionary is a revered book that contains all the meanings of flowers—and later, the family secrets. Thus, this dictionary full of secret language paradoxically becomes a means of revelation and closure because it bares all the information once hidden from Alice.
