![]() (In addition to her extraordinary achievements and far-reaching creative legacy, I have always held special affection for Potter for the absurdly human reason that we share a birthday.) Teenage Beatrix Potter with her pet mouse Xarifa, 1885 (Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections)īut no aspect of Potter’s kaleidoscopic genius is more fascinating than her vastly underappreciated contribution to science and natural history, which comes to life in Linda Lear’s altogether magnificent Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature ( public library) - by far the best book on Potter and one of the finest biographies ever written, Lear’s prose itself a supreme work of art. Her 1913 book The Tale of Pigling Bland was a childhood favorite of George Orwell’s and became one of the key inspirations for his allegorical masterwork Animal Farm. ![]() Potter’s art was a formative influence for Maurice Sendak, who collected her books, traveled to her farm, winked at her famous costumed mice in his reimagining of Nutcracker, and incorporated some of her work into his illustrations for The Big Green Book by Robert Graves. At a time when women had no right to vote and virtually no access to higher education, very rarely owned property and were themselves considered the property of their husbands, Potter became a commercially successful writer and artist, using the royalties from her books to purchase her famed Hill Top Farm, where she lived simply and with great love for the land for the remaining four decades of her life. The Tale of Peter Rabbit and her other gloriously illustrated children’s books tickle the human imagination through the fantastical aliveness of nature and its creatures, in a spirit partway between Aesop and Mary Oliver, between Tolkien and Thoreau. ![]() This is, indeed, a movie both sad and touching.Beatrix Potter (July 28, 1866–December 22, 1943) is one of the most beloved and influential storytellers of all time. Ultimately - one might say finally, because there's a point in the movie at which you desperately want Beatrix to break out of the stifling environment of her parents' home - the movie becomes uplifting, as Beatrix uses her newfound wealth to buy a farm where she can be on her own, becomes a bit of a social champion by buying surrounding properties to protect them from development and - finally - manages to fall in love and get married, although that's only told in the postscript. The strict moral standards of the early 20th century were portrayed well (it's shocking today to realize that a 32 year old unmarried woman would still have had to be chaperoned everywhere she went in that era) and the movie even manages some light humour now and then. The rest of the cast were quite solid - especially Barbara Flynn as Beatrix' mother, and Ewan McGregor as Norman. Renee Zellweger (my favourite actress who can take any role of any kind it seems and make it work brilliantly) was - well - brilliant as Beatrix Potter. Still, though, the relationships turn tragic when Beatrix and Norman are engaged but can't tell anyone because her parents insist on keeping it a secret (they felt Beatrix was marrying beneath herself) and Norman then dies before the marriage takes place. Norman - who eventually is given responsibility for publishing her books (Potter is "fobbed off" onto him by his older brothers who actually run the firm) - believes in her and eventually falls madly in love with her and his sister Millie becomes her best friend. Her original publishers don't take her work seriously, her father is loving but patronizing, her mother never appreciates her talent (at one point her father says to her mother "our daughter is famous, my dear, and you seem to be the only one who doesn't realize that!") The two exceptions are important though. Beatrix Potter (creator of Peter Rabbit among others) is depicted here as a shy, lonely, isolated and socially awkward woman who sometimes seems to live in an imagined world of her own and whose only friends are the animals she creates for her stories (her friendship with the animals being depicted by them becoming - to Beatrix only - animated creatures rather than still drawings.) All her relationships - save two - are problematic. One would like to think that the most prolific children's author of all time was a fun-loving, happy, cheerful person, and yet this movie certainly shatters that image.
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