Book Review: The Lady and the Octopus

The Lady and the Octopus: How Jeanne Villepreux-Power Invented Aquariums and Revolutionized Marine Biology

by Danna Staaf  

Carolrhoda Books, 2022, 136pp.  

 Danna Staaf, marine biologist and science writer, has produced a gem. Rated for ages 10 and up but full of information interesting to all ages, The Lady and The Octopus gives pioneering scientist Jeanne Villepreux-Power (hereinafter JVP) the kind of overdue recognition recently given to her contemporary, Mary Anning. 

A Frenchwoman who lived from 1794 to 1871, JVP grew up in the town of Julliac and moved to Paris, where she became a renowned seamstress and dress designer. That led to a meeting with Irish merchant James Power. Her lifelong marriage to a wealthy man who supported her scientific interests gave her an opportunity few women scientists of the day could dream of, and she took full advantage of it. While the term for JVP in her own time would be “naturalist,” Staaf uses “scientist” to connect better with modern readers, so this review follows her convention.

Staaf states up front that she’s making inferences and educated guesses to fill in the many missing details of JVP’s life. We have only a fraction of her notes and papers. Sometimes I think this is stretched a bit, as with the speculation that a stay in a convent in Orléans might have led to her being inspired by Joan of Arc (the “Maid of Orléans”).

At James’ home in Messina, Sicily, she took an immediate interest in the ocean and, as a childless woman of leisure, devoted her time to learning about it.  She spent her days exploring both sea and shore. She studied fish, reptiles, mammals, invertebrates, and plants. She even put a tree in the house for her still-fierce pet martens.  (I pity the servants.)  

Jeanne was not satisfied with the contemporary approach to studying and classifying animals based on deceased specimens. She wanted to study them alive, in situ when possible.  She got to know local fishers and sometimes went to sea in search of specimens to put in the water-filled glass boxes she devised. She used these to, among other things, prove numerous snails could regrow body parts and in one case half of a head! Her next invention was a wooden cage on the seabed, sometimes with a glass box suspended inside, the size of an adult rhinoceros. (Staaf uses “Mini Cooper” as a comparison, so I had to get inventive.) As Staaf evocatively writes, “Hour after hour, year after year, Jeanne sat in her boat…watching and recording her observations.” 

JVP was one of the first scientists to record an octopus using a tool. While her carefully recorded experiments led to countless discoveries, her greatest contribution came in revelatory studies of the small, enigmatic cephalopods called argonauts. She was the first to realize a “worm” inside the shells of females was the hitherto-missing male of the species, and that argonauts’ two membrane-equipped arms were not to use as sails at the surface (universally believed despite the fact no one had ever seen this happen) but to build and repair the animals’ shells. 

Then two scientific tragedies hit. In 1837, a French scientist named Sander Rang to with whom she had shared her work on argonauts presented it as his own.  The same year, the couple moved to London, and in 1838 lost most of her work, including specimens and her gorgeous drawings (only one has survived) when the ship carrying her belongings sank in a storm.  

JVP persisted.  She fought for her primacy as the scientist who’d solved the argonaut puzzle, and enough colleagues supported her to get the injustice rectified. She gathered new specimens and repeated her experiments with argonauts. She became the first woman allowed in numerous scientific societies and befriended some of the great naturalists of her time.  JVP’s aquarium work inspired a popular craze and numerous scientific efforts, including those of Anna Thynne, who learned how to keep living corals in saltwater aquaria, and the eminent Philip Henry Gosse, who coined the word “aquarium.” Some writers including the famous Sir Richard Owen gave JVP full credit for her work: others, predictably, did not. Her work extended to developing early ideas about fish farming and repopulating overfished bodies of water. Separated from her husband by the Franco-Prussian War, she died in her hometown at 76.

Staaf does something important that many shorter biographies skip over: the type and effects of past biographies. The first postmortem writings made her a sort of princess, adding fictional details and focusing on her romance with Power. While a French writer in 2009 published a popular (if inventive)  novelization, biologist Clause Arnel had already begun the diligent work of separating fact from fiction about JVP. He wrote a short biography, co-founded (with artist Anne-Lan) the JVP Association, and even convinced NASA to name a Venusian crater after her. Today there are parks and exhibits honoring her.  

This lively biography constitutes almost everything I know about JVP. What I learned about her in previous reading on marine life could be summarized in a paragraph. Staaf fleshes out the story in asides that give us context about how species are named, the ethics of animal experimentation, and so on.   She even includes one of the very few interesting acknowledgements sections I’ve ever read. Finally, it bears repeating that this well-illustrated work is accessible to students and the adults who enjoy her other works on cephalopods.  It’s an excellent book in every sense. 

 Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

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