Orwell’s Roses

Both sides of the conservative/liberal divide claim George Orwell for their own, but the left has a better claim. Orwell fought against the fascist Franco revolt in Spain. He sided with the poor and powerless in labor (labour!) disputes and opposed colonialism. He called himself a democratic socialist, so there you go.

His name is bandied about in our current blustery political climate, because, whichever side you’re on, Orwell opposed totalitarian regimes. Many readers are picking up Animal Farm and 1984 these days, some other people are banning them, and Orwell’s essays, especially the great “Politics and the English Language,” are having their day.

Hence, it is an ideal time to read Orwell’s Roses, Rebecca Solnit’s 2021 discursive study of the man and the writer. The roses are on the one hand literal. Eric Blair (Orwell’s real name) planted some by his little house in Wallington, England, and wrote about tending them in his extensive journals. He sought refuge in his garden and in the countryside frequently. Many of Solnit’s chapters begin with this sentence, “In 1936, a writer planted roses.” Solnit made a pilgrimage to his house in order to see if the flowers are still there. They are.

As an aside, you may be familiar with Rebecca Solnit through her connection to the term mansplaining. She didn’t invent it, but it grew out of her 2008 essay “Men Explain Things to Me.” At a party, a man begins discoursing to Solnit and her friend about a “very important” book recently published about Eadweard Muybridge, the 19th century photographer. Both Solnit and her friend try to tell the guy that Solnit herself wrote the book he’s referencing, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, but he won’t stop talking long enough to listen. Her essay references many more such men, and she’s probably encountered plenty more in the intervening years.

Anyway, roses also take on a metaphorical dimension, as in the leftist slogan “Bread and roses!” Roses stand for the beauty and pleasure of life and for relief from life’s travails. Humanity does not live by bread alone. In January of 1944, Orwell wrote, “A correspondent reproaches me with being ‘negative’ and ‘always attacking things.’ The fact is that we live in a time when causes for rejoicing are not numerous. But I like praising things when there is anything to praise, and I would like here to write a few lines—in praise of the Woolworth’s Rose.” And then he praised his roses, purchased at Woolworth’s.

Solnit is so good at just meandering, following the paths that her mind takes her. She writes about the history of the earth and the creation of fossil fuels, the damage wrought by totalitarian regimes, coal mining, poetry, language and nature. She’s trying to present an alternative view of Orwell–the gardener, the tough-minded journalist who found solace and beauty in nature.

We don’t have to spend all our energy fighting injustice. We can do small good things. Solnit finds comfort, as can we, in Orwell’s advice: “The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.”