The Behavior of the Hawkweeds

The Behavior of the Hawkweeds is a 1994 trio of related short stories by American author Andrea Barrett. First published in The Missouri Review, the stories are told by Antonia, a second-generation Albanian immigrant who recalls being the victim of a sexual molestation attempt as a young girl. After being rescued by her immigrant grandfather, Tati, her assailant dies of accidental injuries sustained during the attempt. The young Antonia watches helplessly as a case against Tati unfolds, witnessing firsthand Americans’ xenophobia and relentless scapegoating of immigrants. The other two stories reflect on similarly difficult moments in Antonia’s life. The Behavior of the Hawkweeds has been hailed as a prescient example of the subtle consequences of anti-immigration sentiment and the fragility of identity in the modern United States, resonating strongly with the twenty-first century.

The first story in The Behavior of the Hawkweeds chronicles Antonia’s marriage to her husband, Richard. They meet shortly after the end of World War II, when Richard is finishing graduate school. Enamored by Richard, Antonia does her best to court him. After learning that Richard’s intellectual hero is the mathematician and geneticist Gregor Mendel, Antonia tells him the true story of her grandfather’s friendship with Mendel. She tells him that Mendel lost faith in his research due to the influence of a haughty botanist more famous than him, Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli. After Richard finishes his thesis, he becomes a professor. In his first class, he tells the story of Mendel to his students as an example of the insecurity inherent in their profession. Thinking that Richard has distorted the meaning of the story, Antonia finds him more like Nägeli than his idol.

The plot shifts forward into the 1970s. Richard invites young German scholar Sebastian Dunitz to live with him and Antonia. In her boredom, Antonia finds him intriguing and tries to start a friendship. Sebastian rebuffs Antonia, believing that she is trying to make a sexual advance. Antonia retorts that he is a German pig, appropriating an insult her grandfather once used against his boss—the same man who tried to molest her.



The second and most famous story takes place when Antonia is five. While living in Niskayuna, New York, she helps her grandfather, Anton, or Tati, with his job at a nursery. One day, Tati comes to the nursery and finds his boss, Otto Leiniger, looking down Antonia’s dress. He calls Leiniger a German pig and stabs him in the hand with a gardening knife. Leiniger falls, and on the way down, strikes his head on a heating pipe, then spends the following days dying painfully in the hospital. Tati dies before ever going to trial. Antonia keeps this story a secret until meeting Dunitz in the 1970s.

The third and final story in the trio is told by Tati; it is the same story about Mendel that Antonia later retells to Richard. The Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel, having conducted years of strenuous research on the genetics of the edible pea, tries to spread his findings to the scientific world, but is ignored. He sends his ideas to Nägeli, a botanist famous for his expertise on hawkweeds. Nägeli tells Mendel to focus on hawkweeds instead of peas. Mendel follows his direction, studying hawkweeds for many years. The irregular hybridization patterns of the hawkweeds frustrate and delay the development of the theory he would become famous for after his death. At the end of the story, Mendel gives up his genetics work, believing that he has contributed little to science. The Behavior of the Hawkweeds shows how intergenerational stories are connected in subtle but powerful ways, and how social and romantic forces can interact with scientific discovery.