ABSTRACT
The Lie Tree (2015) is the story of a Victorian girl’s battle with a supernatural plant, in which gender nonconformity plays a central role. Rather than centring the transgression of gendered expectations, however, this chapter considers the role played by the tree. The hermaphroditic, shapeshifting plant works a bizarre, semi-erotic fascination on the characters, triggering deviant desire and corruption. But while The Lie Tree troubles the male/female binary, it does so at the cost of the human/non-human binary it at first appears to queer; its long-term subversion ultimately remains unspeakable. Quite ironically, protagonist Faith pushes her vegetal adversary into the very role of voiceless irrelevance she herself has just broken free from. Far from the feminist victory it appears to present on the surface, The Lie Tree thus paints a bleak picture of a society that reallocates rather than transgresses its restricting binaries.
