In her posthumously published The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson, the marine biologist whose writings on environmentalism and conservation are as relevant as ever, wrote, “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”That Carson quote comes to life in the script of Janine Sobeck Knighton’s new play The Beatrix Potter Defense Society, which will receive its world premiere later this week in a Plan-B Theatre production directed by Cheryl Ann Cluff.
Knighton, who is on the Utah Valley University faculty, has created a two-hander that is rooted in the historical facts of one of the world’s most familiar authors of children’s literature. But, she also imagines how an evening encounter in October 1882 with the wife of a vicar could have galvanized Potter’s aspirations not just as a literary figure but also as a naturalist who was committed to conservation. Set on the grounds of England’s Wray Castle, Ambleside (Cumbria), in the Lake District, Potter encounters Edith Rawnsley, who lives in the nearby vicarage. Sibley Snowden portrays Potter and Flo Bravo takes the role of Rawnsley.
During her research, Knighton studied the early years in Potter’s life. Later in her life, the famed author became a farmer and sheep breeder in the Lake District. She used the profits from her books to purchase more than 4,000 acres of land that eventually would be bequeathed to the National Trust in England for preservation.
Among the figures frequently cited as instrumental in Potter’s career as an author and conservationist is Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, which set in motion their lifelong friendship. However, one line in print that mentioned his marriage to Edith — “Everything that Hardwicke and Edith did, they did as a couple” — led Knighton to a revelation that would quickly form the basis of her new play. “And yet, as is too often the case, only his activities were recorded,” she wrote in a Plan-B blog. “I kept asking myself, ‘How is it that a husband and wife could do everything together and yet the wife is rarely mentioned?’”
Knighton’s script hints at assertions that others have made. Edith was an accomplished watercolorist. She also was believed to be the principal force for establishing the Keswick School of Industrial Arts, which she and her husband cofounded. The school gave the town’s population of mineworkers free opportunities for arts and crafts training, as a hedge against the vulnerabilities of unemployment or being squeezed out by the rapid growth of mass manufacturing. The school was founded in 1884, conceived on the platform of the visionary social thinker John Ruskin’s tenet which proclaimed ‘‘There is no wealth but life’ — an ideal that suddenly has renewed its relevance as concerns grow about how AI technologies might displace millions of workers in the near future.
In her play, Knighton introduces the two characters in their proper historical context. A precocious artist whose drawings served not a high-quality standard in children’s literature but also were scientifically precise, Potter experienced a childhood of isolation, constraints and parents some have described as being tyrannical. However, that sort of constrained upbringing was not that unusual in Victorian Era families such as hers who had the means to spend summers at an estate away from their home in Kensington. Potter felt liberated during these summer visits to explore her intellectual curiosities and develop her skills as a dispassionate naturalist.
The irony in Potter’s story is that if she “had been born a man or a century later, she would have been remembered as a well-known naturalist, but in her time her observational skills in natural history and her artistic talents in mycology were not taken seriously,” Lorraine Kerslake, a well-known scholar of children’s literature and of Potter in particular, explained. Potter’s work in mycology was not given its due in the research circles of natural science. At the age of 30, she “was the first person in Britain to speculate in a scientific paper that lichens are symbiotic life forms, and recorded in detail her observations of algal and fungal properties,” Kerslake noted. However, Potter’s male peers, who were skeptical that a woman could produce such revolutionary scientific work, prevailed in blocking her paper from being published. From that point, Potter turned to writing and illustrating her books that today are canonical in children’s literature.
As for Edith Rawnsley, despite the paucity of biographical details available about her, Knighton had found the right pivot to imagine a fictional encounter on the Lake District grounds between Edith, 37, and Beatrix, 16. The 70 minutes of dialogue in her script set up a credible and blossoming intellectual symbiosis between two eminently talented women. They confront the constraints of Victorian and Edwardian social role expectations that typically did not even leave a modicum of space for women to be respected and esteemed as peers or as leaders in professional fields that often were dominated by males.
In an interview with The Utah Review, Knighton said that the play came out of her experience with isolation during the pandemic, as a precaution given the fact that she was pregnant. “While many people were going back to normal I had to stay in isolation for a couple of months,” she said. “I understood that sense of isolation and I was searching for the stories of other people.” An award-winning, nationally-produced dramaturg, playwright, screenwriter, story consultant, and educator originally from Central California, Knighton teaches playwriting and dramaturgy at Utah Valley University.
She knew the books of Potter very well but did not know about her personal life as extensively. Potter was educated by a governess at home, along with her younger brother Bertram until he went to school. However, she was allowed to maintain a menagerie in the nursery on the third floor of their home, since she was five years old, and it included rabbits, lizards, mice, newts, guinea pigs, a hedgehog and snails, which seems surprising given the other restrictions that she had to endure from her parents. Likewise, Knighton became just as fascinated with the story of Edith Rawnsley. In fact, the play features images of Potter illustrations and Rawnsley watercolors, in projections prepared by Daniel Charon.
In conceiving the play, Knighton quickly dismissed the idea of a one-actor script and thought briefly about making the second character either Potter’s governess or her brother. At one point, she thought about the vicar, who became lifelong friends with Potter and their ties in the conservation project of the Lake District, but that “didn’t feel right,” Knighton added.
However, Edith emerged as the kindred spirit needed in the script. Knighton quickly sorted out the challenge of writing a play of historical fiction that takes its bearings from her extensive background research, which includes Potter’s diaries and a visit to the “stunning and gorgeous” lands, as Knighton said, in the Lake District that serves as the play’s setting. The playwright, a mother of two small children, imagined how Edith might have articulated her thoughts about her role as the wife of a vicar and as mother. Midway through the play, Edith tells Beatrix:
I never imagined myself the wife of a vicar. And yet, from the moment we married, I knew I wanted to fill our home with people, creating a space where our parishioners wanted to spend their time. Where they could heal and mourn and laugh and love. Especially here. My soul belongs to these Lakes. At Hardwicke’s side, I learned of the audacity of men seeking to destroy this essential landscape. I knew I was meant to join my husband in the fight to preserve the wonder of this place. Especially once Noel was born. I will never forget when they placed him in my arms—I thought my heart would burst with joy. As much as I love our parish and this land—I know my greatest purpose in this life is to be his mother. He is the delight of my heart and his well being consumes me. I cherish my duty to help him discover not only the world but himself.
Knighton said that she did not expect how hearing those words at the play’s first rehearsal had struck personally in a way of recognizing her own truth and how much it still resonated in the best possible way.
The production will run from March 27 to April 13, in the Studio Theatre at the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts. Tickets are moving quickly. For tickets and more information, see the Plan-B Theatre website.