Orwell's Roses

Solnit discusses the sociopolitical importance of gardens. While gardens aren’t often considered political, she posits, they reflect their custodians—and identity itself is always entangled with political questions and cultural markers. She examines the contrast between the highly ordered gardens of Europe and the increasing trend toward naturalness that emerged in England in the latter half of the 18th century. This trend underscored the claims that the aristocracy made on the land. Coupled with the enclosure acts, which turned previously public spaces into privately held areas, these land claims made nature less accessible to most of the English population. Thus, many people within the lower classes moved to urban areas and provided the labor necessary for the Industrial Revolution.

Symbolically, the aristocratic claims to nature had the effect of naturalizing the unequal social order. Solnit acknowledges that during Orwell’s lifetime, nature was not widely considered a political subject; she counters that even if it wasn’t seen as such, nature was certainly a point of political tension—even ignoring its political significance is, in a sense, taking a particular political stance. This is reflected in current trends wherein privileged (usually white) people yearn to return to their rural roots: “[T]he yearning to be more rugged, more rustic, more rough, more scruffy, is often a white and a white-collar yearning” (155).