India Cabinet Opened

In this interlocutor gesture a child points to her mother's cabinet, looking up to her mother for permission to open it, while her mother reaches forward to encourage the daughter. Including this illustration at the beginning of the book as a frontispiece suggests an analogy between reading and collecting, and between natural history books and curiosity cabinets. The story reinforces these comparisons as the girl switches between collecting specimens in the countryside and exploring the curiosity cabinet, eventually adding her specimens and notations to it. The concept of owning knowledge is suggested by the negotiated permission to access and study the cabinet, with the mother eventually welcoming the girl as a co-collector, as well as the enclosures for holding, labeling, and organizing. The cabinet is a metaphor for the girl's mind, which stores the knowledge she owns as the product of her labor.