Jane Austen’s garden and landscape

Jane Austen’s use of garden and landscape in her novels


One of the finer points of Jane Austen’s novels is her use of landscape.
It makes an interesting study as to how landscaping can work to shed light on the nature of her characters.
Not only do we inhabit the minds of these characters, but we also experience the physical world through which they move.
“It is said that Vladimir Nabokov would begin a lecture by drawing a plan of Mansfield Park in order to illustrate the way in which Austen invokes a sense of place and space. She inhabited her imaginary houses and set them within imaginary landscapes, introducing us to the architectural fashions of her day.”
(David Robson in his essay “Jane Austen in her space)


Chawton House, where Jane lived for quite some time, had plenty of wilderness around. The landscape garden here is well made use of in her fiction.
Wilderness plays a big part in her fictions. We find wilderness both in Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park.
What is wilderness? It is seen as a symbolic space in which one imagines his or her relationship with God. It is suitable for contemplating higher life. But these were not the motives for having wilderness around a large estate. They were meant for men to hunt deer or horse riding. This is usually found beyond the pleasure grounds consisting of flower gardens or walled gardens or shrubbery.


Let’s see the ways and motives of Jane Austen’s depiction of landscaping in some of her novels.


In Mansfield Park, at Sotherton Fanny warns her cousin Maria not to run off into the garden with Henry Crawford, and she also warns her against slipping into the ha-ha. A ha-ha serves a very practical purpose. It’s literally a sunk fence. The point about it is that it forms a barrier between the pleasure grounds close to the house and the park landscape beyond. And because it’s sunken, when you look from a house out across the landscape, you don’t see that fence. They’re clearly seen as symbolic as much as they are purely as practical features. And so that notion of a sunk fence is way of claiming a certain kind of liberty, of freedom within certain bounds. So you’re bounded, but you don’t feel that boundary because you don’t see the boundary.



Marianne in Sense and Sensibility is very fond of nature, and she says she has a real “passion” for nature.
Not everyone shares her views. So Eleanor says to her at one point, not everyone “has your passion for dead leaves.”
As explained Stephen Bending in his “Walking with Jane Austen” the use of “passion” is variously seen. According to William Gilpin, a writer who dealt with his observations on “picturesque” in the late eighteenth century, felt that it didn’t mean as seen by the people of Hampshire as merely a side screen or a foreground or a background. In some of her works, Jane Austen makes fun of these observations of her countrymen of her times. For Gilpin, however, looking at nature is looking at God. This is what Marianne might have meant. It wasn’t merely a passion for “dead leaves” as assumed by Eleanor. It was more to know her connection with nature and the world around. There is a sense of divinity attached to her use of the word “passion” for nature.


Jane Austen seems to indicate unlike in a garden, behaviors change in a larger landscape like a field.

For instance, in Pride and Prejudice, she hints at the suggestion that men are freer in a large field, whereas, women aren’t.
When Elizabeth Bennet marches across the field to Netherfield Park, and gets her boots muddy, we get different reactions from men (Darcy) and women, (Bingley sisters)
To Mr. Darcy, she appeared sexy but to Bingley sisters, it was a “vulgarity, countrified and to be laughed at.”
The above observations wouldn’t have been possible in a kitchen garden.


These moments when Jane Austen talks of gardens or landscape bear a really rich meaning and possibility.
Both Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth enjoy the natural landscape, taking pleasure in nature and especially in Pemberley. Each of their characters is greatly enhanced through their love and relationship of the picturesque. It is their shared love and understanding of the picturesque and all that it represents that ultimately brings them together and helps them to overcome their pride and prejudice.


Some of the descriptive passages like those from Emma, are meant to serve to develop characters as well as the story line.
“It was hot; and after walking some time over the gardens in a scattered, dispersed way, scarcely any three together, they insensibly followed one another to the delicious shade of a broad short avenue of limes, which stretching beyond the garden at an equal distance from the river, seemed the finish of the pleasure grounds.– It led to nothing; nothing but a view at the end over a low stone wall with high pillars, which seemed intended, in their erection, to give the appearance of an approach to the house, which never had been there. Disputable, however, as might be the taste of such a termination, it was in itself a charming walk, and the view which closed it extremely pretty.–The considerable slope, at nearly the foot of which the Abbey stood, gradually acquired a steeper form beyond its grounds; and at half a mile distant was a bank of considerable abruptness and grandeur, well clothed with wood;– and at the bottom of this bank, favourably placed and sheltered, rose the Abbey Mill Farm, with meadows in front, and the river making a close and handsome curve around it. It was a sweet view–sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive.”


My opinion of the above passage is as follows.


The first part describes the pleasure grounds around the manor and it is finished with “a broad short avenue of limes." From this point onwards we see the Abbey and the Abbey Mill Farm around which lay the woods, the meadows and a winding river. Most charmingly natural. It is such a soothing sight to the eye as the beholder lets his or her glance take in the sight.
It is these natural surrounds to which Jane Austen could be referring to when she talks of "English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive." It is not the artificial constructed gardens that indicate the English ethos, but the woods and meadows and the river that thrive naturally.


Andrew Saunderson, has the following opinion to offer on landscaping in Jane Austen’s .


“Austen cleverly uses landscape in this section of the novel, not only to demonstrate the ongoing competition by landscape improvement in order to have a garden that was the envy of upper class society, but more as a means to reveal the nature of the characters. For example, we witness the restraint of doing something we want in the form of the gate, where Henry, Rushworth and Maria want to get through; with no key, Rushworth is sent to fetch it and while doing so, Henry sets forth to seduce Maria. Symbolically, the gate is cleverly used by Austen to represent the chastity of Maria, presumably from her father's religious influence, in relation to the Garden of Eden. The gate represents the same in the character of Julia; she seems to be eager to get through it, but is somewhat hindered by the older ladies taking their time. Austen, as the brilliant writer she was, subtly shows us society's restraints in place; she shows us mimetic fascination and uses the landscape as an extension, where she daringly takes us to test its boundaries - She uses nature as a way to express something that is wild and free, that can move these limits.”



According to Ruth Peters, my fellow member of the study group on an online course on Mansfield Park,


“I think Austen uses landscape in these two chapters to highlight contrast between different characters. Fanny, on her part, seems to be mostly bossed around by other characters and is always somewhat the presence absent from others' consideration (even from Edmund's, when he leaves her behind in order to spend time alone with Miss Crawford), whereas she herself is mostly considerate of others' wishes, as when she urges Mr. Rushworth to follow the party out into the park, even if that leaves her alone without company.
Miss Maria Bertram seems quite an indomitable spirit, a lady who does not care for decorum, as when the "ha-ha gives [her] a feeling of restraint and hardship", of confinement, which she will not tolerate. Her finding her way across the fence without waiting for the key that will unlock the door, seems to me a sign of her rebellious nature, her resistance against rules of decorum imposed upon women, whereas Fanny seems much more impressionable, as she feels "all this to be wrong".


I think that from these examples it can be concluded that landscape creates an opportunity for Austen to develop her characters and to elaborate on contrasting attitudes and personalities.


The Picturesque nature


In Pride and Prejudice Austen uses Elizabeth Bennet to articulate her own preference for a more naturalistic landscape. Elizabeth set out on a tour of the wilder parts of Derbyshire, inspired by the writings of Gilpin. This took her by chance to Pemberley, the estate of her rejected suitor Darcy. Austen describes Elizabeth’s visit to the house and her walk through its park in some detail. “The handsome stone house stood on rising ground, backed by a ridge of high woody hills. In front a stream of some natural importance was swelled into a greater (stream), but without any artificial appearance – its banks were neither formal nor falsely adorned."


Elizabeth admired Pemberley because its owner has rescued it from the sterility and artificiality of mid-eighteenth century fashion without succumbing to the excesses of Reptonian ‘improvement’.

(The Reptonian improvement was a shift in landscape design from artificial, linear vistas to a more natural, irregular formality.)


Over the course of a few pages she produced what amounts to a manifesto for picturesque naturalism and walks us through a virtual parkland as if it were a real place. In all likelihood Jane Austen created its plan on paper and there is a suggestion that her sister Cassandra produced ‘fictional’ sketches of its various vistas.


Let us focus on Jane Austen's use of Shrubberies for a moment.


Shrubberies crop up throughout Austen’s novels.

Shrubberies were places for intimate conversations and assignations. The ideal shrubbery would incorporate extensive winding pathways with arbours and sudden views of surrounding countryside.


Knightly proposes to Emma in the shrubbery:
“Emma resolved to be out of doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm been more attractive to her ........ she lost no time in hurrying into the shrubbery.. where... having taken a few turns, .... she saw Mr. Knightly coming towards her”.


In Sense and Sensibility Marianne Dashwood “explores the winding shrubberies, now just beginning to be in beauty, to gain distant eminence, where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering over a wide tract of country, could fondly rest on the farthest ridge of hills”.


Let me conclude on a note that Jane Austen had successfully nurtured her characters to love the landscape for numerous reasons like walking the plains and pastures for exercise, to conduct a love affair, to carry on with a private conversation, which possibly couldn’t take place within the constraints of a house and most importantly for the appreciation of the blessings of nature.


Word Count: 1961