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11 Aug 2025 14:15

The Origins of the Green Man

I've been doing a lot of research into ecology in literature for my degree over the last few weeks and months, particularly in plant studies. It's not something I ever thought I'd go towards academically, as I thought I'd never want to study anything other than feminism, but actually, it seems like the environment of the storyworld shapes so much of the narrative and also tells us a lot about how our cultures interact with the natural world. I feel like it’s one of those things that you always sort of know but never put much of a finger on until something just…clicks.

I started reading Plant Horror: The Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film as part of my research this week and was quite surprised to see that the introduction started by discussing the figure of the Green Man, which I'd never really paid much attention to outside of Shared Earth. We've got a new jute bag with the face surrounded by greenery, and sell these absolutely stunning pieces of carved wood with the figure in the middle. The furthest I really knew about the Green Man was just how good he looks sculpted out of jempinis wood.

It turns out that he's actually been around for quite a while. Green Man faces were carved and painted onto Christian churches and served as iconographic images of our connection to nature. Points of view differ on whether this was a presentation of environmental harmony for humans or as a way of highlighting man's dominion over the Earth as believed to be given by God. Some also found that Green Man was a reminder of other pre-Christian religions as sinful for their reliance on the natural world, such as in Pagan lore and the uses of plant life for tinctures, spells and remedies.

Depictions of the Green Man throughout history never give him a physical body, a reminder of his non-human (but still kind of human!) nature. It makes him seem more spiritual and ethereal. We are also more inclined to see him as part of nature as opposed to one of us - his otherness works as both a perceptional blessing and a curse. Some people argue that his lack of body is a display of wisdom, with the head, naturally, containing our brains and with it all of our knowledge. I do have to wonder if his body would be just as plant-ish and green, though!

The head of the Green Man (that is to say, the whole Green Man?) is always in amongst an abundance of leaves, tendrils, flowers and the like. In many presentations, our Green Man jute being one of them, he is seen with flora and fauna leaving his mouth and surrounding the canvas. This sprawling array of natural imagery, to me, is a reminder that we will always find peace in nature. It might not be the case in terms of the history of its development, but now the Green Man has shifted away from its original intentions and purposes - we are now faced with a modern figure, whose revived meaning has been spearheaded by the environmentalist movement.

Such a shift in the history of our environment has had a profound impact on the way that we view our literature, our lifestyle, and our world as a whole. If we take the Alternative Trade movement – now known as Fair Trade - for example, we can see that its roots lie in a push towards social equality and caring for our world, and heightened by the psychedelic and hippie 'peace and love' shifts of the 1960's and 70's. Environmental awareness has moved alongside alternative trading, especially as we are more inclined to see the damage of climate change on our ecosystems and habitats. Our world is slowly becoming more damaged, but we are becoming more aware. The figure of the Green Man can remind us that actually, harmony with nature should be a crucial part of how we deal with the environmental crisis.

Now that we're finding more of the Green Man figures across pop culture and lifestyles, maybe now is the time to reflect on our relationship with nature and how we treat the world. Are we doing enough to protect the environment? Is there anything more we could do? How are we spreading awareness and making sure our ecosystems are okay? Maybe there are small changes, or maybe we're individually doing all we can. No matter what the answers are, we have to hope that we can do our best to care for the world we live in and the nature that surrounds us. Maybe in time we'll look at the Green Man in our homes and gardens, in our shopping trolleys and offices and think yes, I feel in harmony with the natural world that surrounds me – I'm doing everything I can to take care of it.

Maggie

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Created On 11 Aug 2025 14:15 - >>