The Duke and I

Throughout the work, flowers and gardens spur the characters into epiphanies and confidences. At the beginning of Simon’s courtship with Daphne, he brings her expensive tulips from Holland. Teasingly, Simon tells Daphne “they’re for your mother” and she is gleeful at the prospect, knowing her mother will be charmed (118). Violet is overjoyed, and Daphne realizes that this kind of personal attention has been missing from her mother’s life during her widowhood. The tulips catalyze Daphne’s discovery that Simon is a compassionate and thoughtful man, which in turn motivates Daphne to fall truly in love with him.

Simon’s emotional life continues to be presented through the natural world. Daphne and Simon’s first kiss is in a secluded garden, far away from others, where both give way to their passions beyond the bounds of propriety. After their marriage, Daphne and Simon are in the garden at Clyvedon when she truly upsets him by asking about his childhood. She changes the subject by asking about the roses, which Simon informs her were planted by his mother. Prompted by Daphne, he finally accepts that his mother’s death did shape his childhood—perhaps with two parents his life would have been different. This lays some of the groundwork for Simon’s later epiphanies.