thewritingpossum:

marxferatu:

I don’t want to sounds rude, but I feel like presenting Beatrix Potter’s litterary career as something she did purely because she couldn’t pursue a scientific career is innacurate and frankly disingenuous…

While it’s entirely true that Potter was bared from the kind of education opportunities that were available to men, it doesn’t mean that science was her one true love and art a boring second best she took on to pass time…Art has always been an escape for her, in all the sense of the term.

When she was a lonely, isolated child with parents who thought she was too good to play with most other children but didn’t specifically wanted to spent time with her either, she had fairy tales, folk tales and romances, especially when she was in London. As a teenager, she could spent some time in art gallery (one of the only activity she liked that was seen as acceptable for a young lady). She gained her own financial independance because of art, long before she even tried to pursue a more scientific career (by selling christmas cards, for example). Long after she had become a rich widow on a sheep farm, she was still painting and writing for herself. 

Art was always a huge part of her life and while I don’t know if she loved it as much as she loved nature, I really think that she was simply the kind of woman with diverse interests (she was also a great business woman so yeah, she had many talents)

So yeah, it’s tragic and frankly disgusting that her scientific findings were pretty much ignored, mocked and stolen from her because of her gender but acting like Beatrix Potter “really” was a scientific who “just” turned to child books (and I am the only one who sense some scorn in the words “child books” here?) is not specifically accurate imo.