Abstract:
Like the Victorian woman herself, the Victorian garden has often been sentimentalized by British historians and literary critics as a retreat from urbanization, a lush, verdant escape from the pressures of modernity, or sensationalized as a space of sexual promiscuity and danger where natural forces have their sway. To counter these representations, my dissertation explores in women's "domestic" novels and the nonfiction writings of Jane Loudon and Octavia Hill how the garden and gardening function as a dynamic space and medium for the middle classes to respond to the challenges of industrialization and modern life. In particular, the project examines how women in both practical literature such as gardening and landscaping manuals and domestic fiction use the garden as a site for the cultivation of subjectivity, as a productive extension of the domestic sphere, and as a means to claim a tutelary relationship to the working-classes.
