The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald: A Conversation

with Kira Bruce and Lindsay Sherman

A first in a series of book club conversations. The inaugural book is The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, a book set in the Romantic era highlighting the all too familiar historical negation of women’s voices.

KB: Well, I’m going to dive right into opening remarks, Lindsay. It feels appropriate to inaugurate the ADONE book club with a novel that celebrates a longing for the unreachable, a striving for the transcendental beyond, for what are books but imagined windows onto great unknowns and worlds just beyond our reach? Stemming from within the dawn of the Romantic period, the blue flower was, and remains, a symbol of aspiration towards intellectual creativity. Giving voice to a persistent reaching for the stars and beyond, The Blue Flower is a fitting title for Penelope Fitzgerald’s final novel, which was written when she was already seventy-nine. Despite beginning her writing career later in life, Fitzgerald is now included amongst the greatest authors of the century and The Blue Flower is regarded as a literary masterpiece. Reflecting on her own interpretation of the blue flower’s symbolic significance, Fitzgerald said once that it is what you want of life, “even if there’s no possibility of reaching it, you must never give up.” Like the protagonist of her novel, eighteenth-century German Romantic writer Novalis, Fitzgerald led a life of diverse interests and roles: mother of three, breadwinner, houseboat dweller, teacher, and celebrated novelist. In response to Fitzgerald’s atypical biography, James Woods of the New Yorker described her talent as having been buried, “discovered only just in time — the late achievement less a measured distillation than a lifesaving decoction.” While perhaps not a measured distillation, Fitzgerald had evidently held onto her own blue flower — a longing that propelled her forward along an unconventional path towards literary renown. Though in considering the musings of the capable young women within the novel, our guess is that the literary genius evident within The Blue Flower was cultivated long before Fitzgerald began writing her first book…isn’t that right, Lindsay?

Bust of Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg , German poet, philosopher and writer, sculpture by Fritz Schaper .

LS: Kira, I think we would both agree that Fitzgerald appears to deploy her own voice through two characters: Frau Leutnant Mandelsloh, the elder sister and counterpart of Sophie von Kuhn, Novalis’s young betrothed, and Karoline Just, the niece and household caretaker of Novalis’s teacher, Coelestin Just. Sidonie von Hardenberg, the younger sister of Novalis, displays similar affectations to some degree, as she begins to manage her family’s household and gains a more authoritative voice within that confine. These women are utilized as the voice of reason, logic and understanding against their more facetious male companions. As characters, their complexity arises through the altruism they display towards Sophie von Kuhn, which is externalized through the Mandlesloh’s devoted care for Sophie during her critical illness, and through Karoline Just’s analysis of her friend Novalis’s love for the young girl. Our understanding of these two women is largely formed through how they are observed by others. Mandelsloh’s primary traits are connected to her familial ties as well as her husband’s employment in the military, as Fitzgerald states: “in spite of her brusque semi-military manner, developed since she married at the age of 16, her china-blue eyes suggested her mother’s assurance.” (pg. 128) By contrast, Karoline’s foremost traits are that she remains unwedded at the age of 27, considered an advanced age at the time, and her role as a “very steady young woman who keeps house for him [her uncle, Coelestin Just].” (pg. 60) Both are perceived as having wisdom and insight, yet their intelligence is either taken for granted or passed over by their male counterparts. Erasmus, the younger brother of Novalis, even misinterprets Mandelsloh’s acumen as something gained through age rather than internally cultivated when he states, “the years have taught you philosophy,” only to learn they are in fact, the same age. (pg. 267) When Novalis recites the introduction of The Blue Flower, Karoline and Mandelsloh are the only two characters who perceive its true significance. Although never voiced aloud, Karoline conveys an immediate understanding of the non-physical entity that is the blue flower. These two women are perhaps best understood when brought into dialogue with the relationship between Novalis and his youthful paramour, Sophie von Kuhn.

Plaque for Sophie von Kühn in the wall of the village church of Gruningen

KB: You can say that again, Lindsay — What may perplex the reader of The Blue Flower is the question of what Novalis sees in the vapid little girl that he falls in love with on first sight, twelve-year old Sophie von Kuhn. Fitzgerald makes clear that Sophie is neither intelligent nor particularly attractive, yet Novalis is not the only male to be bewitched by the young girl. His brother and father similarly fall under her spell, but what magic is this? There is undoubtedly something alluring in her very presence, and perhaps we are being cynical, but it seems likely to be some combination of her incredible naïveté along with the ethereal nature of her physical fragility. In many ways, Sophie appears as a blank slate, onto which Novalis projects his own ideas of her. Affectionately referring to her as his “Philosophy,” Novalis, through Fitzgerald, reveals Sophie to be an entity through which his very real belief in the “art of using the sense world at will” is embodied. (Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia: Das Allgemeine Brouillon, Novalis) In other words, Sophie serves as an extension of Novalis and his philosophy, an object of nature that he as subject transforms into a work of art through thought. It is here that we see the Romantic philosopher’s romantic tendencies at work. The idea of Sophie as object is further suggested through Novalis’ treatment of the two women in the novel who convey the strongest sense of subjecthood, Karoline and the Mandlesloh. Despite the convivial understanding Novalis shares with the two women, he persistently brushes off their intellectual receptiveness in favour of obsessively doting on the young Sophie. Novalis’s singular pursuit in cultivating his own genius blinds him to the clever contributions made by the two women. We are left slightly frustrated, wondering what could have been had Novalis not prematurely ended his conversations with these clever women. It is here that Fitzgerald takes us out of the novel, prodding us with that nagging question: what other voices have been silenced in the great writings of history? With this thought in mind, we return to the epigraph with which The Blue Flower begins…. I’ll let you take it from here, Lindsay.

LS: Well said Kira, I think we can safely say that in the end we both felt that The Blue Flower was undoubtedly a love story that culminates in tragedy, yet the unrelinquished love is not what captivates the reader. It is the unabsolved failure of Novalis’ recognition of Karoline and Mandelsloh as equals. The tragedy is the intellectual rejection and silencing of their understanding of, and contributions to, Novalis’ ideas. As previously mentioned, this tendency is neither limited to the Romantic era, nor is it a singular event. While she works in the style that would have been used by the characters she embellishes, Fitzgerald conscientiously chose to research and write this novel during the early 1990s. As a reflection on the past, the novel’s focal point lingers on those who are overlooked. With this in mind, no one was more suited as an author than Fitzgerald herself, who did not publish her first book until she was 58. Drawing from her chosen inspiration, Novalis, she opens with an epigraph that both sets the tone and ultimately effectively summarizes the entire novel: “Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.” (The Blue Flower, exerted from Fragmente und Studien, 1799–1800) With The Blue Flower, Fitzgerald evidently suggests that the historical negation of women’s voices is one such shortcoming. This quote effectively brings to mind Novalis’ introduction of his own story of the blue flower and its subsequent interpretation by the two women. Similar to the Mandelsloh and Karoline, Fitzgerald contributes something to Novalis’ life and work that the philosopher will never see, and it is ultimately an awareness of this that brings the book full circle for the reader.

Caspar David Friedrich, Woman at Sunset, 1818, Essen, Museum Folkwang