Welcome to Roses without Thorns

Is a rose still a rose without her thorns?

Granted it's been a little while since I was philosophical, but this question has been bothering me for nonsensical reasons.

Roses are known for their beautiful flowers, delicate fragrance, and nasty thorns. Giving a bouquet of roses is often done between lovers - especially if the color of the roses is dark or deep red. In magic, roses are used to attract love (of many different varieties) and occasionally lust.

They are the flowers of Aphrodite and Venus, goddesses of love, and can convey messages without words (if one were to learn the language of flowers - yes this is a real thing, no I don't feel like getting into it now). They are the preferred flowers for weddings and represent the month of June (which is the month for weddings).

I happen to love the  smell of roses and often have some rose oil around for my hands. I'm also fond of it's fragrance in candles and delicate dried petals in tea blends.

I grew up with roses growing all around me. My grandfather had a rose bush which grew over the front porch of this house. Occasionally the roses would grow too low and it was scary ducking under them to reach the front door. My hair got caught a couple of times in the vines and thorns and had to be carefully removed.

I remember my other grandparents had a huge rose bush in the back yard. If I remember right, it had lovely light pink blossoms that took up a small area of the fence near the back door. I remember once or twice reaching my hand in to pick one of the blossoms and accidentally hitting one of the thorns. I learned quickly not to try to pick the roses without a adult around to help.

Because despite the delicate beauty of the rose blooms, the stems are strong and the thorns sharp. All are meant to defend the plant from animals that might otherwise harm it, like us humans.

Roses may be fragile, but they can defend themselves. Which brings me back to my previous question: is a rose still a rose without her thorns?

Many times when I go to the flower shop, the roses have had their thorns filed down to the point of nonexistence. It makes a bouquet easier to handle and there's no damage to the blossoms or fragrance. The loss of the thorns shouldn't bother me, but it does.

We focus so much on the beauty of the rose, that I feel a loss when it's thorns have been removed.

Most pop culture references are in regards to the beauty and attractiveness of the rose. The famous words uttered by Juliet, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet", might be talking about who Romeo is, but the love symbolism isn't lost on the audience. Then there's the visual symbolism found in American Beauty, with deep red rose petals symbolizing the sexual fantasies of a middle aged man towards an under-aged teenager. Honestly I found that comparison incredibly creepy.

And I can't talk about roses without mentioning Beauty and the Beast, where the rose is meant to symbolize both inner and outer beauty. I think in the Disney version, the rose does indeed have thorns, but the blossom itself is the focus of the story. Because the Beast will remain a beast forever once all of the beautiful petals are gone and only the prickly thorns remain (okay I added that last part, but I think it's implied symbolism).

The references to a rose's thorns, though, aren't as frequent, but when they do pop up, they show another side to that beauty. There is the famous Poison song "Every Rose has It's Thorn" and I will forever love Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon throwing a rose with thorns as an awesome weapon. Speaking of anime, in Yu Yu Hakusho the character Kurama has a rose whip that slices and dices people with the rose's thorns built into the wipe. The character even compares himself to Tuxedo Mask at one point in the manga (fun fact: the manga writer of Sailor Moon and the manga writer of Yu Yu Hakusho were married).

One particular instance of roses and their thorns being important to a story's symbolism is in the book Like Water for Chocolate. The main character, Tita, is given a bouquet of white roses by her sweetheart (who also happens to be married to her older sister for a variety of reasons I won't go into here). Tita clutches the roses so tight to her chest that the thorns pierce her skin and her blood turns the roses deep red. She then uses the roses in a chicken recipe (I found this to be a little *cough* lot *cough* on the gross side), which then causes her oldest sister - the one not married to the sweetheart - to burst into pink flames, run naked across a field, and hop on to a horse with a guy to ride off into the night (how I wish this book were about the oldest sister, but I digress).

My favorite part of that book would not have happened if roses didn't have their thorns.

We want our roses to be pretty delicate blooms, easy to handle with a lovely fragrance. We don't want the thorns.

But a rose's thorns are a part of the rose. Taking away the thorns leaves the rose defenseless and sometimes not treated with the same careful respect a rose with thorns might receive.

So I leave you readers with my first question: is a rose still a rose without her thorns?

Until next week!

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