"Behavior of Hawkweeds, The" in Ship Fever (1996)
By Andrea Barrett
Short story that blends an account of Mendel's experiments into the history of a contemporary couple's marriage.
“The Behavior of Hawkweeds,” a short story from Andrea Barrett’s National Book Award winning collection Ship Fever (1996), interweaves the stories of three relationships: Gregor Mendel and Carl Nageli, Antonia and her husband Richard who is hexadactylic (born with an extra finger and/or toe), and Antonia’s Czech Grandfather, Tati and his German boss, Leiniger. As a boy, Tati grew up in the same village as Mendel, and at the age of ten begins to work with Mendel in the monastery’s garden. Mendel, seeking scientific approval and praise, asks for advice from Nageli, who tells Mendel to study the heredity of Hawkweeds not knowing that they have a different pattern of genetic transfer from pea plants. Pea plants, Mendel’s original research vehicle, follow a straightforward complete dominance inheritance pattern with a dihybrid cross between dominant yellow/smooth peas and recessive green/wrinkled peas resulting in only dominant yellow/smooth peas. Hybridization of hawkweeds is much more complicated because hawkweeds replicate by making exact genetic copies, self-cloning. The misleading suggestion to study hawkweeds caused Mendel to become discouraged about continuing genetic research. Antonia shares this story along with a letter written by Mendel to Nageli, which she inherited from her grandfather, with Richard and Sebastian after she becomes fed up with Richard telling the story improperly.
Evaluation: This brilliant story raises complex issues of genetic, cultural, historical, and narrative legacies.