☙ Orange

In Fabre d'Églantine's 1793 rural emblem annex to the French Republican calendar, Orange is the emblem of 24 Brumaire (14 November).

🜱 On sentiments: The sentiment of generosity, given early by French authors to the orange flower, and later by English authors to the tree itself, or a branch of such with both fruit and flowers, rises from the observation that oranges (and indeed Citrus at large) flower and fruit at the same time, and all year round in ideal, stabilised conditions.

The various sentiments gesturing to virginity, chastity, purity, et cetera, are harder to pin-point in origin, and this section will be expanded when I am able to write authoritatively on this matter. As a woman's worth is inarguably more than her inexperience in sexual intercourse, writers are advised to not repeat this once-removed sentiment in contemporary works without remark on its history.

The use of orange flowers to symbolise marriage and bridal festivity either gives rise to the sentiments regarding virginity, or vice versa. I note that in my research, at least in England, the bride wearing orange flowers at a wedding was not widespread until Queen Victoria chose to don them at her wedding to Prince Albert on 10 February 1840, a ceremony of immense celebrity that encoded many of the new marriage norms of the Victorian era, many of which - including the bride wearing white, and multi-tiered wedding cakes - we continue today. It is interesting therefore that the O&B source predates this ceremony, and this will be the subject of further research on my behalf.

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