Coping with Jane Austen and Anne Brontë: It's all in the Shrubbery

Painting above: Le paysage (Brittany landscape) by Emily Carr, 1911

Coping tactics and ideas for self care have been everywhere lately. What ails us now (elections! pandemic! holidays approaching!) may be a a bit different from what our gals of old were stressing about, however, I have noticed a common coping technique in the writings of both Jane Austen and Anne Brontë.

I'm just about done reading Emma by Jane Austen for the first time (I really enjoyed Autumn de Wilde's recent adaptation) and there is a part near the end where our titular heroine needs a breather, so what does our gal do?:


"[...] she lost no time in hurrying into the shrubbery."

-from Emma by Jane Austen


In Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall things are perhaps a bit more serious (I won't specify what happens to avoid spoilers of course),  causing our heroine to do much the same:


"I flew to the shrubbery."

- from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë


If it's good enough for Austen and a Brontë, it's good enough for me! So next time you see me hitting the panic button, you'll find me taking some grounding breaths in the shrubbery.




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