Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England's Disciples of Flora, 1780-1870

by Judith W. Page, Elise L. Smith

Overview

Combining an analysis of literature and art, this book contends that the ‘domesticated landscape' is key to understanding women's complex negotiation of private and public life in a period of revolution and transition. As more women became engaged in horticultural and botanical pursuits, the meaning of gardens – recognized here both as sites of pleasure and labor, and as conceptual and symbolic spaces – became more complex. Women writers and artists often used gardens to educate their readers, to enter into political and cultural debates, and to signal moments of intellectual and spiritual insight. Gardens functioned as a protected vantage point for women, providing them with a new language and authority to negotiate between domestic space and the larger world. Although this more expansive form of domesticity still highlighted the virtues associated with the feminized home, it also promised a wider field of action, re-centering domesticity outward.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521768658
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/27/2011
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture , #76
Pages:	338
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Judith W. Page is Professor of English and Waldo W. Neikirk Term Professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida, where she also serves as Interim Director of the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research.

Elise L. Smith is Professor of Art History and Sanderson Chair in Arts and Sciences at Millsaps College, Mississippi.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. Moral Order: The School of Nature: 1. 'In the home garden': moral tales for children; 2. The 'botanic eye': botany, miniature, and magnification; Part II. The Visual Frame: Constructing a View: 3. Picturing the 'home landscape': the nature of accomplishment; 4. Commanding a view: the Taylor sisters and the construction of domestic space; Part III. Personal Practice: Making Gardens Grow: 5. Dorothy Wordsworth: gardening, self-fashioning, and creation of home; 6. 'Work in a small compass': gardening manuals for women; Part IV. Narrative Strategies: Plotting the Garden: 7. 'Unbought pleasure': gardening in Cœlebs in Search of a Wife and Mansfield Park; 8. Margaret Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford and the meaning of Victorian gardens; Epilogue.

Editorial Reviews

"This volume will be useful to a wide range of readers. Scholars of the genre will delight in the richness of the textual references and use of illustrations to ground the discussions. Page and Smith deftly weave critical threads from other scholars and pull those arguments further in interesting directions. An extensive list of works cited is worthy reading in itself for those interested in further exploration of the topics covered … For readers less familiar with the genres of botanical writing and garden literature in the two periods, this text will open up surprising areas of exploration and perhaps create new points of connection with their own critical interests."
Patricia Peek, Romantic Circle

"This book equips us to textually, historically, and visually understand gardens as spaces continually central to women’s socialization over a century of restless cultural change."
Nineteenth-Century Contexts

"This beautiful, extensively researched book confers order, clarity, and critical insight on the ubiquity of gardens in women's lives and creative work from 1780 to 1870 … Seventy-two sumptuous illustrations complement the lucid and graceful writing … Page and Smith's work provides scholars a most inviting and thought-provoking resource to explore."
Mary Ellen Bellanca, Victorian Studies

"Brady examines both the history of the concept and more contemporary re-appropriations of the term. Her two chapters on the Kantian understanding of sublimity are excellent, as is the final chapter on the environmental sublime. This book deserves to be regularly included in courses on aesthetics."
R. E. Kraft, Choice

From the Publisher