The Phoenix Crown: A Novel

This flower shares its name with a song from Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), and it represents the bonds between Alice, Gemma, Suling, and Reggie. Its scientific name is Epiphyllum oxypetalum. Alice rescues Henry’s Queen of the Night flower after he sets his house on fire. At the boardinghouse where she lives, the four women watch the flower bloom as the city of San Francisco burns. This is a special event, a “miracle” (3), because this particular type of flower only blooms once a year. It offers them “beauty and grace amid so much destruction. Such balm for their tired souls” (268). The flower represents nature’s beauty and resiliency. After it blooms, Alice makes clippings of the flower for her friends. They take their Queens of the Night to other countries, and the flowers serve as reminders of the bonds between them. At the end of the novel, when they reunite in 1911, Suling and Reggie’s clipping of the flower blooms in Paris. This time, they are able to fully enjoy its beauty. Its blooming corresponds with the day that they defeat Henry and decide to move back to San Francisco. At the end of the novel, the flower symbolizes how they will be physically and emotionally closer in order to continue to develop their friendship.