Plants and herbs symbolize the ability for good to triumph over evil. Tilly is characterized as a genuinely good person who’s been misunderstood, mistreated, and ostracized by the community in her hometown of Dungatar. Tilly also has a seemingly natural (and perhaps even magical) ability to grow plants, and she maintains an extremely lush garden while staying at her mother, Molly’s, house. The ability to sustain these plants even in the midst of her emotionally difficult stay in town reflects Tilly’s resilient inner goodness and ability to nurture; the garden itself acts as a symbol of resistance, positivity, and beauty that starkly contrasts the inner ugliness of the cruel townspeople who reject Tilly.
Additionally, Tilly makes herbal remedies for other people in town, which further suggests that she’s managed to remain a nurturing and kind person despite the abuse she’s faced. Whereas men like Mr. Almanac and Evan Pettyman use traditional medicine to manipulate and abuse women, Tilly uses her plant remedies to help them. For instance, she makes herbal cakes to treat Irma, who has painful arthritis (and who it’s implied was beaten by her husband, Mr. Almanac, for years). Tilly also drugs Evan using marigold water in order to weaken him and stop him from sedating and raping his wife, Marigold. In this way, Tilly is able to show solidarity to people who’ve been mistreated just as she has, and her use of plants to help others rather than to hurt them represents the ability of this kindness and selflessness to overcome evil. Rather than succumbing to the toxic environment of Dungatar and the abuse that’s rampant around her, plants enable Tilly to resist and to ensure that the town’s few good people triumph over those who hurt them.
Plants and Herbs Quotes in The Dressmaker
Tilly Dunnage had maintained her industrious battle until the house was scrubbed and shiny and the cupboards bare, all the tinned food eaten, and now Molly sat in the dappled sunlight at the end of the veranda in her wheelchair, the wisteria behind her just beginning to bud.
She eats birdseed and fruit and other things she has sent from the city. She gets things from overseas too, from places I've never heard of. She mixes things up—potions—says they're herbs, "remedial", and she pretends to be an arty type, so why would she want to stay here?
‘l used to be sick, Evan, you used to make me sick, but Tilly Dunnage has cured me.’
Then her round soft babe was still and blue and wrapped in cotton-flannel and Molly, pained and cold in her rain-soaked coffin turned stiffly to her, and Teddy, sorghum-coated and gaping, clawing, a chocolate seed-dipped cadaver. Evan and Percival Almanac stood shaking their fingers at her and behind them the citizens of Dungatar crawled up The Hill in the dark, armed with firewood and flames, stakes and chains, but she just walked out to her veranda and smiled down at them and they turned and fled.
Plants and Herbs Symbol Timeline in The Dressmaker
