Orwell's Roses

Solnit returns to Orwell’s cottage in Wallington two years after her first visit; it’s summer, and flowering plants are in bloom. She plans to walk through the village in an ad hoc search for what Orwell himself might have seen. She notes the abundance of flint scattered throughout the pathways, even though the land has been ploughed for agricultural purposes for centuries, and explains that flint originates from the compacted layers of sea creatures and debris, compressed over millions of years.

She muses about Orwell’s roses and the many philosophical (and literal) places they’ve led her, comparing them to the rhizomatic networks formed by certain plants. Writing itself often grows organically from various subject matter. This leads Solnit to consider the history of genetics, and in particular, the work of geneticist Charles Chamberlain Hurst. Hurst specialized in tracking the rose family in the early 20th century, and he recommended to gardeners the best varieties for expressing specific characteristics. This line of thought leads Solnit to explore “the genetics controversies in Stalin’s Soviet Union” (129), something that provided inspiration for Orwell’s writing too.