‘Becoming a metaphor’

The Bee Book
by Ann Rosenberg

Toronto: Invisible Publishing, 2025
$24.95 / 9781778430794

Reviewed by Logan Macnair

“I’m the waxen mask that I wear daily; it will melt one day and leave me naked. I can build the nest and feed the brood, and clear the feces from the hive, fan the air when it’s warm, cluster with others when it’s cool, facilitate the mating of queens and drones….”
“Habella, you’re not a bee! You’re giving me goose pimples….”
“No, Renata, I’m becoming a metaphor and that is worse.”

Originally published in 1981 and since out of print, Ann Rosenberg’s The Bee Book is an anomalous and unflinching account of feminine sexuality and culturally enforced resignation that subverts the standard novel format to such an extent that to even label it a novel is a touch misleading.

In truth, as constructed by long-time Capilano Review editor Rosenberg (1940-2018), The Bee Book is less a novel and more a bricolage of visual art styles. While there are sections of standard narrative prose, they are consistently interspersed with and juxtaposed against images, photographs, scientific figures, anatomical diagrams, mathematical and chemical equations, drawings, musical scores, dance steps, handwritten notes, letters, typewriter art, and theatre scripts. When there is more traditional narrative prose, these sections often switch seamlessly between styles and points of view, incorporating dialogues, poetry, epistolary sections, mythologies, and metaphors. 

Plot-wise, The Bee Book is a novel steeped within the ideology of second-wave feminism that ostensibly tells the story of Habella Cire, a woman who from childhood is conditioned to become emotionally, sexually, and intellectually constrained by the patriarchal institutions she engages with (academia, religion, marriage, etc.) and the various restrictions they impose upon her. 

To reduce this story to its most basic plot line—that of an intelligent and insightful woman who ultimately settles for and comes to feel trapped inside her domestic life and passionless marriage—would be a great disservice to the larger ideas and experiences that are being explored here. Among the many vignettes are disturbing depictions of early sexual encounters, recollections of first periods and of subsequent feelings of confusion and disgust, and tales of failed relationships, unrequited loves, and marital complications.

Virtually all these vignettes (and nearly everything else in the book) are explored through the metaphor of the beehive and its various inhabitants. Habella Cire is shown to have a childhood fascination with the behaviour and anatomy of bees which eventually manifests in the scientific research of hives in a professional capacity via the academic institution. It is through this Apian fixation that all of Habella’s experiences are filtered. 

Human socialization, courtship, bodily functions, sexuality, and psychology—a series of buzzes, dances, and subconscious biological impulses—are all rendered bee-like and understood via comparisons to the anatomy and behaviour of drones, workers, and queens. Human genitals and reproduction are juxtaposed against diagrams and descriptions of the seminal sacs, yellow saccules, ovaries, and oviducts of bees. The fluids and residues of human sexuality are described through metaphors of flowers, honey, and treacle. 

Matthias Harp (arguably the novel’s second most important character), a gay man who shares a deep and mutual platonic love and research partnership with Habella is compared several times to the ‘queen’ bee and at one point ponders if he could one day become a ‘queen’ himself. Even the protagonist’s surname of ‘Cire’ (French for ‘wax,’ in just one of the many examples of nominative determinism in the book) is indicative of this omnipresence of bee imagery and symbolism.  

Habella’s recounted experiences often show how her innate womanhood (in the second-wave feminist interpretation of the concept) is tempered or otherwise constricted by the institutions of larger society. In one early piece of brilliant visual art, Habella’s original handwritten lab notes are presented along with the “corrections” that have been made in order to “purge her prose from the taint of imagination.” These include the deletion of words in her research notes that could be considered “emotional” (for instance, changing “the hive is meditative” to the more scientifically objective “the hive is quiet”). 

The message here is clear—to succeed within the male-dominated and male-defined world of the ‘hard’ sciences, you must learn to observe, write, and think stoically and rationally (as in, ‘like a man’), without applying any feminine subjectivity that might dare to recognize the beauty or poetry of the natural world. 

In a different example from earlier in her life, Rosenberg (Movement in Slow Time) imagines a scene from when Habella was a student in a Catholic school receiving a lesson on bee behaviour. The entire class is engaged to take on different roles (workers and drones; Habella acts as the queen) and play them out, and in this exercise the students are shown the matriarchal reverence apparent within the hive. The class learns that the first duty of a worker bee is to “revere the Queen who is the object of all energy and the source of continuance.” Yet, in her religious lessons in the very same classroom, Habella is taught that the first commandment of her God-the-father is to obey and have no other gods before Him. 

Again, the message is not particularly subtle here—the lives of bees and their innate worship of female reproductive power is a fun novelty to observe, but not one to emulate, while the laws and traditions of the masculine God are absolute. What is natural (the feminine reverence seen within the hive) is supplanted by what is created (the patriarchy, codified by institutions like religion and marriage and the obedience to men/husbands that they typically demand). 

After a string of failed relationships and romantic experiences, Habella decides to marry and have children with a man who, while decent enough, does not arouse much in the way of physical or intellectual passion or excitement (even her husband’s name, Fred Smith, is indicative of his plainness). He is a stable rock she might tie herself to in order to start a family (childbirth, it is described for Habella, was the “only pleasure of her biological life”), something that her platonic lover Matthias could not offer. From here the story moves toward a somewhat ambiguous ending—told in part via black and white photographs—that can be taken either literally or as a further extension of the bee metaphor.

Given The Bee Book’s highly experimental structure and unabashed presentation of its occasionally difficult subject matter, it was perhaps an unsurprising, if unfortunate, outcome that the book did not become more firmly entrenched within the Canadian literary landscape upon its original release. Yet now, some forty-five years later, this arcane work of Canadian feminist/postmodern fiction is being given another chance to take flight by way of a rerelease. 

No wonder, then, that Habella empathizes and identifies more with the bees than the various patriarchal systems that seek to regulate and control her—perhaps none more so than the institution of marriage (Habella’s marriage being the focus of one of the book’s most awkwardly entertaining chapters, presented in the style of a stage play). 

This new edition has taken great care to maintain the look and feel of the original, including faithful reproductions of the artwork, diagrams, photographs, and typeset that are so integral to the overall presentation. This edition also includes a short introduction by Canadian artists/poets Stephen Cain and Eric Schmaltz that acts as an excellent primer for the complex work that follows, providing some history and context for the book’s authorship, release, and thematic content.

“When The Bee Book appeared in Canadian bookstores in 1981 there was literally nothing like it,” the new introduction begins. As with many experimental, challenging, or transgressive works, sometimes art with this level of originality takes longer than it should to gain the appreciation that it deserves, but if it is not too uncouth to end this literary review with a line from Marty McFly, “I guess you guys weren’t ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it.

Logan Macnair is a novelist and college instructor based in Burnaby. His academic research is primarily focused on the online narrative, recruitment, and propaganda campaigns of various political extremist movements. His second novel Troll (Now Or Never Publishing, 2023) is a fictionalized account based on his many years of studying online extremist groups. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon reviewed Logan’s Troll in BRC. Logan has reviewed Matthieu Caron, Taryn Hubbard, Tamas Dobozy, Andrew Battershill, Kate Black, Kawika Guillermo, and James Hoggan with Grania Litwin for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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