] For the later Victorians anyway, there were entire books devoted to the "Language of Flowers" and among the many meanings of hyacinths were "constancy" and "unobtrusive loveliness". Both of which Eleanor's friendship, in contrast to IT's, have been teaching Catherine to value properly. I can certainly see Catherine taking the hint when Henry suggests he'd like to teach her more about the meaning of a rose...

What a wonderful post! Welcome to Pemberley from another notorious lurker!! Your post made a great deal of sense to me for the following reason. When studying Hamlet at school, I was always terribly confused by Ophelia's seemingly lumatic ramblings about flowers and herbs because if seemed just that: silly and rambling. However, I set about trying to discover the significance of all the flowers and herbs she gave Hamlet and once I had found that out, the scene made complete sense. In fact it added another dimension to the play and revealed huge depth.

I never even considered the significance of the flowers in this scene until now and have always wondered what on earth Catherine had to be embarassed about, so thank-you for bring this up!