Chris Jordan-Clark: Jane Austen's English Verdure, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

Why does the landscape matter in Jane Austen's novels? Horticulturist and literary scholar Chris Jordan-Clark offers a much needed and hitherto neglected context for the landscapes in Austen's fiction.

Jordan-Clark brings experience as a horticulturist to her historical, cultural, and horticultural readings of Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park , Emma , Northanger Abbey , and Persuasion . She shows that Austen's representations of landscape and setting are vitally important to a more nuanced understanding of her characters, especially regarding their gender and social status.
The author analyzes Austen's male characters-who own or use landscapes in ways suitable to their station-alongside the female characters-who are, for the most part, barred from land ownership. Jordan-Clark considers how attitudes to land ownership reveal male characters, while women use the landscape in different ways, among them privacy, thinking, exercise, and sharing secrets. Some are enraptured by the landscape, as fashion requires, while others enjoy it in ways that are deemed unfeminine; some women feel discomfort and unease in the outdoors, while others aspire to the security and privilege that land ownership brings.

Engaging with horticultural history, literary studies, and British cultural history, Jane Austen's English Verdurereveals how all of Austen's characters are figures in a meaningful landscape, providing a significant tool for further understanding of the novels.