The Indigo Girl

The oak shoots that Eliza plants represent her burgeoning ambitions for her father’s land and the eventual success that she will have as an independent horticulturist. As she assiduously cares for the oak shoots, they represent the long-term investment upon which she is gambling the financial future of her family since “they take fifty years or more to reach a size that can be harvested” (28). Oak shoots also signal her intent to nurture her family’s legacy in South Carolina, especially since she is growing the oaks herself and intends to nurture them from seed to shoot to an eventual well-grown tree. Oak shoots also represent Eliza’s forward-thinking mindset, for Eliza forecasts the need for more ship fleets in one of her letters to Miss Bartlett, stating, “I am making a large plantation of oaks […] and therefore I design many years hence when oaks are more valuable than they are now, which you know they will be when we come to build fleets” (191). Although Eliza is as yet unaware that the American Revolution will begin within the next few decades, Boyd uses Eliza’s endeavor to hint at the near future, when sea warfare would become crucial to American independence. Boyd also implies the effects of Eliza’s long-lasting agricultural impact through oaks, as Eliza hopes that the oaks she plants will mimic the “live oak near Lord Fenwick’s land across the creek that, rumor ha[s] it, [i]s a thousand years old” (198). Oaks therefore represent her hopes for the longevity of her family’s legacy, which she makes possible through her own efforts.