#kim todd

Survival of the Friendliest, by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods

Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis

I remember in college encountering Milton’s Eve, with her hair that waved “as the Vine curls her tendrils, which impli’d / Subjection,” and Duessa from The Faerie Queene, with “her neather partes misshapen, monstruous.” At eighteen, I didn’t read with cool intellectual distance. I read like I ate—for joy, for sustenance, for fuel to make me into the person I wanted to be. The women in those pages were not recognizably human, just forces to be diminished so they could be controlled. My friends and I did endless feminist analyses, but it didn’t help with the sick feeling. The stories were not for me, and that realization was its own very dismaying, very female coming-of-age. The sense of betrayal, of being thrown out of the text, like being tossed from a boat, was acute. The shock of icy water made it hard to catch my breath.

At first, this book made me love her, then it made me very angry. I'm not that interested in insects, but the way Kim Todd describes Maria Merian's enthusiasm is captivating. But then she talks about what happened after Merian's death. So many shitty men who used her work and discredited her at the same time. Merian was the first person to document the metamorphosis of butterflies like this, but to this day, she's rarely credited when talking about the history of Biology.

Kim Todd

🐛 Wishing all of you undergoing this mad metamorphosis that is living and changing day by day the most gorgeous wings in the most pleasing patterns - whether anybody else can see them or not! 🦋

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd