Last Friday I saw the movie Miss Potter, with Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor – both among my favorite actors. 
The movie is very beautiful. It is about Miss Helen Beatrix Potter, an English book author and illustrator, born in Kensington, London in 1866.
The best thing in this movie is that it captures the perfect atmosphere of Miss Potter’s world and the point of view of a child. I saw myself having some thoughts that I used to have when I was a child - giving names to all the animals, imagining them at their “homes” and “families” like they were humans.
“I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense…” Beatrix Potter’s Journal, 17 November 1896.
Beatrix was a lonely rich child. She loved animals, and had lots of pets. Among her pets were rabbits, inspiration for the sketches and stories, the most popular character was Peter Rabbit, a rabbit that wears a bright blue coat and clogs.
She never wanted to get married and dedicated all her time to observe and draw things from nature, sometimes in a very scientific sense, like her numerous drawings of lichens and fungi. Most of then were drawn in the English Lake District, a place in the countryside where she used to go with her parents during the summer.
Miss Potter was very discouraged by her parents to do any intellectual development and was rejected as a student at the Royal Botanical Gardens school for being a woman. Even though she wrote some technical papers, one was about the germination of spores and was presented by her uncle, as women were barred from attending meetings.
It’s impossible not to admire this woman.
By the age of 36, she was encouraged to publish her stories by Frederick Warne & Company and felt in love with the publisher, Norman Warne, played by Ewan McGregor.
The love story is very innocent and beautiful but very tragic as well.
Norman and Beatrix became secretly engaged and Norman dies right after that.
After his death, Miss Potter found strengths to be an independent woman and bought a farm in the Lake District, leaving her parents house. She began to buy pieces of land, and became a very respected farmer, engaged with environmental causes.
Beatrix got married at the age of 47, but I must confess I was not very excited with the idea. Actually I was a bit disapointed… I was expecting to see her alone, after Norman’s death - perhaps I’m very much romantic.
It’s a very good movie and I recommend everyone to see it.
7 Comments
Amiga, Beatrix Potter está para os ingleses como Monteiro Lobato está para nós. Pena que aqui não seja tão famosa e que o filme não tenha feito muito sucesso. Eu não vi, tenho curiosidade. beijocas.
Amiga, obrigada pelo comentário inteligente.
Achei ótima a analogia entre os autores e espero que vc veja o filme, porque estou certa de que vai gostar muito.
caramba Anna! vc viu o filme com a Renée e com o Ewan !?
Claro que vi. E li a historia tb! Vc viu?
Quite sad that brilliant women like her are denied fair chances on science.
Weren’t the case of these brave girls that face society to do their thing, science and society would be very much in retard.
Take Marie Curie, for instance, how much would radioactivity advanced back them without her.
And she had to be a governess to make a living, even though she could study math, physics and chemistry at Sorbonne and is one of the only two people in history who won nobel prizes in different areas (being Linus Pauling the other one).
In fact, I wonder how much in retard we actually are because there aren’t more girls like these.
Thanks for the comment Guilherme! Quite unusual to find a man that truly understands such issues.
I’m far from being a feminist, but I think even nowadays, women are not respected by society as men are. Specially on emerging countries, like Brazil.
Of course society has changed a lot and women has much more freedom, but even though, we still don’t have the same chances.
A very cliché and ordinary argument is that it’s not quite common to see a woman president of a country or even president of a big corporation.
I very appreciated you reflexion “I wonder how much in retard we actually are because there aren’t more girls like these”. Very good point!
This makes we all reflect not only on women’s case, but also on all other minorities - gay people, for example.
After all, it’s good to see that society is evoluting on these matters. Your comment is a good example.
I’ve read somewhere (I can’t remember where) that girls lose their interest in math around the 5th grade because they are not properly encouraged to like it.
Today Reuters published a study showing the impact of sexual discrimination on the subject.
Of course, when talking about this subject, it must be clear how men also suffer not to be encouraged with other things, and that society as a whole pays the price for it as well.