Free The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas Page A

should be finding instances of metafiction in the text. Helen, dreadlocked, dungareed, bisexual,argumentative, thinks it’s
highly
insulting that Henry Tilney tells Catherine Morland what flowers she should like, and finds him, and in fact the whole novel,
highly
condescending. Grant, the big-chested American scholarship student, says that in his opinion Henry is trying to liberate Catherine, and other women, by getting them to see beyond the simply domestic. Helen thinks women don’t need liberating by annoying toffs, thank you very much. And so on.
    Bryony doesn’t join in. She simply reads the lines again. ‘But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible. Besides, a taste for flowers is always desirable in your sex, as a means of getting you out of doors, and tempting you to more frequent exercise than you would otherwise take. And though the love of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once raised, but you may in time come to love a rose?’ Bryony sighs. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a man who teased you as gently and sweetly as that? Who wouldn’t fall in love with a man who could see such different things in a hyacinth and a rose? Henry Tilney knows that loving a hyacinth and loving a rose are two entirely different things. He’s really talking about two different seasons, not just the indoors and the outdoors. He’s really talking about darkness and light and . . .
    But Bryony would rather die than join in one of these discussions. Sometimes she imagines herself saying something, and it’s like when you give yourself vertigo by imagining falling off something very high. Everything fizzes up – her heart, her legs and, for some reason, embarrassingly, even her sexual organs – and in a way it’s almost enjoyable because she knows that this is a private fantasy, like throwing herself off a cliff, or sleeping with Ollie, and she would never do anything about it. Bryony tells herself that she doesn’t really want to sleep with Ollie. It’s just because he’s her seminar leader. She always wants to sleep with anyone in authority; it’s fine. She never does it.Although of course they did sleep together once, a long time ago, when she and James had a bad patch and before Ollie and Clem were together. Long before the children, or anything that really mattered. But no one knows about that, and it could never happen again. She’s too fat, for one thing. And he’s married to Clem.
    And of course there’s still James. James knows the difference between a hyacinth and a rose. James would understand this passage. For a moment, Bryony aches for him, his too-sweet curries and the way he stirs his penis into her as if she were just another concoction bubbling in one of his cast-iron pans – not that he puts his penis in the pans of course – and how that is also too-sweet, as if he’d once read that this is the way women really like it and does it to please her. Bryony can’t bear to tell him that she hates it, that she wishes he would just pin her down on the bed and fuck her like a real man. Would Ollie fuck her like a real man? Unlikely. He’d probably do that stirring thing now too. Clem probably likes it. Does Henry Tilney fuck Catherine Morland like a real man? Now there’s a seminar discussion. Bryony thinks that he would. He wouldn’t be too dominant though; he would simply be assertive, although possibly a little brisk. And as for Darcy . . . To be properly fucked by a real man you’d need Darcy who, to be honest, would probably go down on you as well. First, of course. In his damp shirt. Oh . . .
    Bryony stays behind after everyone else has gone. She stays behind most weeks to ask Ollie something or other, even if it’s just how Clem is. She hasn’t seen Clem much lately and is worried about her. Is she working too hard? But Ollie never says much. Ollie