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No, not Harry’s maiden aunt, but Beatrix Potter the author of Peter Rabbit and other charming tales. I rented this movie after a lady called Doris suggested at one of my readings that it fitted the six archetypes rather well. I’d been intending to keep up on John Adams after having invested so much time on two 90 minute episodes late on Sunday nights, only to discover that the lords of programing have relegated him to odd one-hour slots here and there, with far less advertising than was given to him erstwhile. This means I’ve now missed at least one episode. I’m sure that the lords of TV know that the best way to ensure viewer loyalty is to have programs at regular timeslots on specified nights. But they haven’t cared to do that here. Connect the dots.

So I viewed “Miss Potter” instead, which tells the story of the very shy Beatrix who found a champion in the equally shy Mr Warne, wrote books at a time period when women of her class were expected to do nothing at all, and broke free of her family.

Renee Zellweger played the lead looking about as quirky and unattractive as any repressed Edwardian lady could. While this may seem like a criticism it in fact helped us not to identify with or glamorize her role, but rather to see her as a real eccentric, who spoke to her drawings and who had constructed this world of animals as an escape from her parents’ tyranny (this was played down in the movie: read her biography to get a more brutal view). Again, this is not a criticism, but it’s hard to beat the British film makers and actors when creating any movie that has to do with class in Britain. They know it so well. I wonder if a British actress might have been more subtly tortured, and perhaps a little more interior?

What we saw was excellent, even so. We viewed a Beatrix who was truly an Innocent, who finds an ally and a lover in Mr Warne, who is an sort of Orphan in his family, and as two Orphans working together they do very well. But when Warne dies shortly before their planned wedding Beatrix is propelled into despair and rebellion. She finally leaves her parents’ home and buys a farm in the Lake District. Once there she sees that farms are being broken up to be developed for holiday homes. So she sets out to save the landscape she loves, one farm at a time, with the help of Mr Heelis. By the time of her death she had 4000 acres of farmland to bequeath to the National Parks Commission to be preserved forever, with the farms as working farms that helped support and strengthen the communities of the area.

After starting this work she gave up her painting and children’s books entirely.

We see her, therefore, as someone who was moved out of comfortable Orphanhood by twin forces - love and loss - and that when she began her pilgrimage she found a cause waiting directly in front of her. Her rebellion against the class system her parents endorsed led her to champion those of the very lowest classes. And as she became a Warrior-Lover and gathered more support she became a Monarch. The magic? Well, take a walk through the Lake District today and you’ll be wrapped in plenty of that, I promise you. And you’ll give profound thanks it wasn’t turned into row upon row of Edwardian villas.

It’s what we should be thinking of here in New England, as Macmansions gobble up every last piece of nature around us.

Thank you for this, Doris. Thank you.