Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Aspidistras are a common houseplant that became widespread in Victorian England because they grow well indoors with little sunlight. Because of their popularity among English homeowners, they became a symbol of the English middle class. This is explicitly true for Gordon, who reads about a bankrupt carpenter who sells everything except an aspidistra: “The aspidistra became a sort of symbol for Gordon after that. The aspidistra, flower of England!” (44). As an ornamental object suited to those with relatively little property (i.e. no outdoor garden), the plant encapsulates the pointless scramble to accumulate cheap goods that capitalist consumer culture encourages.

However much Gordon rebels against money and the middle class, he is always overshadowed by a sickly aspidistra. His room at Mrs. Wisbeach’s tenant house has a sickly aspidistra that Gordon deliberately tries to kill to no success. Likewise, the dining room of Mrs. Wisbeach, who keeps up a pretense of middle-class respectability, is covered with aspidistras. Gordon rails against the plants at various points throughout the novel. For example, enraged by his supposed snubbing by the Dorings, he says, “I’ll beat you yet, you b—” to the aspidistra before making the very un-middle-class move of writing a letter telling off the Dorings.

Even when Gordon moves into a less respectable tenant house, his new landlady gives him an aspidistra. This suggests that even in Gordon’s “ghost-kingdom” (203), where everyone is supposedly equal and has no ambition left, people still aspire to middle-class respectability. In the end, when Gordon marries Rosemary and gets an apartment with her, he actually insists on getting an aspidistra. His surrender to the aspidistra represents not only his acceptance of marriage and a well-paying job, but also his realization that middle-class life could include “something nobler” than he has previously acknowledged (239).