In order to recognize Perry’s early awareness and appreciation of the bond between flowers and women, we must first examine her poetry completed prior to her studying with Monet. As a poet, Perry constantly uses flower imagery to explore the contrast between the pains of childbirth and the joys of child rearing experience, showing her familiarity with the different symbolic usages of flowers long before her Giverny years. For example, following the birth of her first daughter, Perry experienced significant depression and was even isolated from her family (Owen). In 1887, Perry published her first volume of verse, The Heart of Weed, in which she writes one self-referential piece on the experience, “To a Sick Wife”:
My love dost see this little pale blue flower?
I plucked it where the summer fields stretched wide,
Sun-kissed, embraced by hills on every side,
In purple distance stretching to the sea.
There sprang my tears at the swift thought of thee,
Prisoned by walls, upon thy couch of pain!
(Perry, The Heart of the Weed. No page numbers)
In this poem, Perry compares her plucking of the flower for her daughter with her personal sacrifice and suffering while giving birth. The “pale blue flower” is an essential symbol in the poem as it represents a certain female freedom that Perry has now lost by giving birth (Owens, pg 7). Flowers certainly were not an uncommon allusion to women of Perry’s times, but in her verses, she utilizes the imagery invariably to describe her personal experiences as a woman.
As Perry progressed as a mother, she strengthened the connection between flowers and her emotions in her poems. As her suffering gradually faded away over the years, her poems began to emphasize quite a different attitude towards children, but this new warm maternal state is represented and symbolized by specific flowers. In the first stanza of “Cherry Blossoms” from Impressions from 1898 Perry writes:
The blossoms white have covered the tree,
The blossoms that crowd when comes the spring.
These blossoms white are my songs to thee,
All, all my songs, that to thee I sing
From the deepest heart of me.
(Perry, Impressions, 70)
With these verses, Perry displays deep love and affection for her children, a sentiment that is directly linked to the gift of cherry blossoms, which represent filial devotion. As compared to the solemn pale blue flower of summer in “To a Sick Wife”, the white spring blossoms of this poem express a warmer and caring mood from “the deepest heart”. This contrast and progression made in her poetry illustrates Perry’s awareness of the subtle symbolic subtleties of different flowers and her appreciation of the power that the symbolism of flowers can have. This demonstrates how before coming an artist, Perry had already decided that the most effective tool in describing her different emotions as a mother was the traditional imagery of flowers.