「真正的智慧」：夏綠蒂·勃朗特《簡愛》中花園的作用 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士論文. 指導教授：陳音頤博士 Advisor: Dr. Eva Yin-I Chen. 立. 政治大. 「真正的智慧」：夏綠蒂·勃朗特《簡愛》中花園的作用. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. “True Wisdom”: Functions of the Gardens in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. 研究生：胡家瑋 Name: Hu Chia-Wei 中華民國 109 年 1 月 January 2020. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(2) “True Wisdom”: Functions of the Gardens in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. A Master Thesis Presented to Department of English, National Chengchi University. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 y. Nat. sit. n. al. Master of Arts. Ch. engchi. er. io. In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of. i Un. v. by Hu Chia-Wei January 2020. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(3) To people striving for a better future. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. iii. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(4) Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the help, support, and guidance of many people along the way. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Eva Yin-I Chen, who demonstrates great patience and constantly provides me with constructive criticism throughout my thesis writing process. She has taught me the importance of originality and the necessity of precision in academic writing. Meanwhile, Professor Chien-chi Liu’s detailed reading and invaluable suggestion greatly improve my writing and clarity. Professor Min-Hwa Wu, too, scrutinizes this work and gives me precious advice. I am also indebted to Professors Shu-Chu Wei and Jin-Tang Peng, who have been. 政治大. mentors to me since my undergraduate years. I would like to thank them for encouraging me. 立. to pursue my passion. Their warm, incisive guidance will always be kept in my mind.. ‧ 國. 學. Thanks are also extended to the following people, who inspire and help me in different. ‧. ways in my graduate career: Professors Lin Chih-hsin, Yih-Dau Wu, Yen-bin Chiou, Li-Hsin. sit. y. Nat. Hsu, Shun-liang Chao, Li-Min Yang, Thomas J. Sellari and Tsui-fen Jiang for their instruction. io. er. and guidance; and to the Departmental assistants for their help and kindness. In addition, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my parents and my little brother for. al. n. iv n C their unflagging support. My parents have effort into nurturing and educating me. h eputn sog much chi U My brother, too, has given me so much joy and love. I dedicate this thesis, in part, to them. Lastly, I am truly lucky to have the friends in my graduate years. Tank Tsai, David Liu, Ming-fang and Sophie Su help me tremendously with my schoolwork. Ariel Wu, Monica Lin, Alice Zheng, Alice Lin, Brendan Huang and Fang-Hao Yang accompany me through the best and worst times. Thank you all for the sound advice and loving encouragement. While the capstone of this particular degree, this thesis remains a step along the way to an unknown destination. I hope that you find it interesting.. iv. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(5) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要論文名稱：「真正的智慧」：夏綠蒂·勃朗特《簡愛》中花園的作用指導教授：陳音頤博士研究生：胡家瑋. 論文提要內容：物質文化理論啟發了這篇探討《簡愛》花園的論文。十八世紀起，迅速的工業化進程和科技創新潮流催生了興盛的物質文化，其對人類的影響已經引起相關領域學者的探. 政治大. 究，花園這個介於自然與文明、裡與外、自由與限制的物質空間也不例外。有一派學者. 立. 認為女性和花園空間的互動對女性自我成長有所助益，另一派學者側重於花園空間蘊含. ‧ 國. 學. 的殖民意涵。這兩派學者的理論是這篇關於《簡愛》花園論文的切入點──該主題尚未. ‧. 在學界獲得應有的重視。在第二章探討完英國花園從十七到十九世紀的轉變後，我將關. y. Nat. 注重點放在《簡愛》中座落於蓋茨黑德、羅伍德、棘園和荒涼屋的四個花園以了解簡愛. er. io. sit. 與花園的互動如何促進她的身心成長。接著，我注意到一個位處英國殖民地牙買加的花園，這發現讓我想進一步了解伯莎在英國那奴隸般的生活經驗與維多利亞時期奴隸所遭. al. n. iv n C 受的苦難之關聯。故事中兩位女主角不羈的天性受壓抑的維多利亞社會限制、約束。被 hengchi U. 視為「家中天使」的簡不被允許創立自己的學校，也不被准許與地位比她高的男子來往。伯莎這被比擬為異國花朵的女孩在英國的經歷使她枯萎失色，她的人生被她大男人且不體貼的丈夫羅切斯特摧毀。根據我對故事情節與角色發展的觀察，那如避風港的花園給予女性成長、勃發的自由。然而，如果女性本身無法適應其所處社會時代之物質文化或生活條件，那花園這象徵維多利亞時期物質文化縮影的空間於她而言便是地獄──伯莎在英國的經驗便是一顯著之例。總體而言，這篇論文試圖深究簡、伯莎與花園的關係與. 連結，期許本論文對勃朗特學派研究有所貢獻，特別是關於女性自我成長與社會偏見衝突的部分。關鍵詞：《簡愛》、夏綠蒂·勃朗特、空間、花園、女性成長、殖民理論 v. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(6) Abstract The concept of material culture inspires me to work on this thesis focusing on the gardens in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Since the eighteenth century, accelerated industrialization and technological innovation have led to a flourish of material objects, whose influences on human beings have been acknowledged by scholars in relevant fields. Garden, a material space striding across nature and civilization, exterior and interior, as well as freedom and restraints, are of no exception. One group of critics agrees that the relations between women and the garden space contribute to women’s gradual development into maturity; on the other hand, another circle of scholars values the colonial connotations of the. 政治大. garden space. These two schools of theories are the entry points of my readings on the. 立. gardens in Jane Eyre—that is, the topic of the garden space has generally not received. ‧ 國. 學. sufficient attention among the scholars. After analyzing transformations of the English garden. ‧. from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries in the second chapter, I focus on investigating the. y. Nat. four gardens located in Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, Moor House in order to delve deeper. er. io. sit. into how Jane’s relationships with the gardens contribute to her growth. Furthermore, a garden in Jamaica arouses my interest in how Bertha’s slave-like experience in England. al. n. iv n C illustrates the slaves’ general sufferingshat that period. Both e n g c h i Uwomen’s untamed nature are restrained by the stifling Victorian society. Jane, a deemed angel in the house, is forbidden from establishing her own school and having a relationship with a man of superior rank. Bertha, a woman personifying exotic flower, withers in England—her life is destroyed by. Rochester, who is more of a patriarchal owner than a caring partner. From my observation of the overall plot-character development, Brontë may suggest that the haven-like gardens give women the freedom to prosper. However, if the female subject—Bertha, a prominent instance—is unable to adapt and adjust herself to the material culture of a particular period, then the gardens, epitomizing the materialism of the Victorian society, could also be hell-like and destructive to her. All in all, with my investigation of Jane’s and Bertha’s relationships vi. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(7) with the garden space, this paper intends to shed some new light on Brontëan scholarship, especially in terms of the conflicts between women’s sense of self-progression and the societal prejudice against their self-assertion at the time.. Keywords: Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, Space, Garden, The Development of Women, Colonization. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. vii. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(8) Table of Contents. Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………iv. Chinese Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….v. English Abstract………………………………………………………………………….……vi. Chapter. 立. 政治大. I. Introduction………………………………………………………………….………….1. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. II. The English Garden from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries………………....15. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. III. “Here, Jane, is an Arbour”: Gardens and Jane’s Development…………………..….28. Ch. i Un. v. IV. “You are like a Slave-driver”: Gardens and Colonial Roots …………………..……43. engchi. V. Conclusion……………………………………………..……………………………..62. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………...65. viii. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(9) Chapter One Introduction The hometown of Charlotte Brontë, Haworth, is a picturesque town encompassed by the wild moors of West Yorkshire. The three sisters living there enjoyed nature’s serenity, tranquility and deemed the Haworth moors behind a parsonage as their natural playground (Harrison 220). Some may imagine that Haworth, a cradle for literary geniuses, must be a heaven-like utopia surrounded by lovely plants, yet that does not seem to be the case according to historical records. Once, a friend of Charlotte Brontë described the scenery on. 政治大. her way to the patronage as “wild and uncultivated, with hardly any population” (Fraser 19).. 立. In Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell depicts Haworth as:. ‧ 國. 學. a place where neither flowers nor vegetables would flourish, and where a tree of even moderate dimensions might be hunted for far and wide; where the snow lay long and. ‧. late on the moors . . . and where often, on autumnal or winter nights, the four winds of. y. Nat. n. al. Ch. er. io. beasts striving to find an entrance. (Gaskell 37). sit. heaven seemed to meet and rage together, tearing round the house as if they were wild. i Un. v. In fact, Haworth is a barren place but sublime and beautiful. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering. engchi. Heights best depicts the ambivalent nature of the moorland. On the one hand, it is a wilderness where a storm would “[come] rattling over the Heights in full fury;” a violent wind or thunder would “split a tree off . . . knocked down a portion of the east chimney stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen fire” (E. Brontë 85). On the other hand, it is a metaphorical heaven worthy of “lying from morning till evening . . . with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly” (248), as well as an open space where Catherine wishes to escape to when she falls ill in Thrushcross Grange.1 To the 1. When Catherine Earnshaw suffers from delirium, she cries, “Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were 1. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(10) Brontës, the Haworth moors can be inspiring, thought-stimulating, but at the same time, desolate, mysterious, and unpredictable. Owing to the severe weather, the Brontës’ attempt at creating a garden near the parsonage turned out to be a failure. According to Gaskell, the small grassy garden near their home was full of “bushes of elder and lilac;” “only the most hardy plants could be made to grow” in a narrow flower-border underneath the windows (Gaskell 3-4). Ellen Nussey, Charlotte’s closest friend, observes that their garden possessed no more than “a few stunted thorns and shrubs;” a few currant bushes were the mere surviving plants that Emily and Anne treasured “as their own bit of fruit garden” (qtd. in Orel 29). John Stores Smith, a young. 政治大. admirer of Charlotte, asserts that the garden near the grave-stones was filled with “various. 立. common country plants and shrubs;” its lack of care and attention caused “the exuberant. ‧ 國. 學. vegetation of autumn’s excess” that gave him “the phantom-like feeling” (qtd. in Tillotson 24).. ‧. Haworth’s low-nutrient, often water-logged soils as well as its seasonal penetrating wind and. y. Nat. suffocating snow were the culprits that discouraged the Brontës from designing a nice. er. io. sit. domestic garden with cultivated species.2. Charlotte Brontë’s boarding school experience re-shaped her understanding of the garden. al. n. iv n C and nature. In 1824, Brontë attended Cowan School but was sent back one year later h e nBridge gchi U. because of the outbreak of infectious diseases in the school. Although the school was situated “where the Leck-fells swoop into [a] plain and by the course of the beck alder-trees and willows and hazel bushes grow” (Gaskell 41), pupils there spent long hours in “prayers and out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free . . . . I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again wide: fasten it open! Quick, why don’t you move?” (E. Brontë 125). Significantly, at the moment of her breakdown, she recalls her childhood memories of “the moors” (46). This reaction reflects that the moors weigh heavily on her mind. 2 On 25th March 1844, Charlotte Brontë wrote a letter to Ellen to thank her for the seeds she sent to Emily and asked “if the Sicilian Pea and the Crimson cornflower are hardy flowers, or if they are delicate and should be sown in warm and sheltered situations” (qtd. in Robinson 111). This enquiry reveals that Charlotte was indeed aware of the impacts the geographical conditions of Haworth had on the plants. 2. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(11) other religious exercises” indoors rather than getting out to interact with nature in their daily life (Alexander and Smith 131). Having difficulties understanding “how the school” close to nature “came to be so unhealthy,” Gaskell attributes the causes of the outbreak to “the congregation of people in close proximity” (41). Based on the fact that two of her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died of consumption soon after leaving the school, it is fair to speculate that Charlotte Brontë, getting used to the harsh climate in Haworth, have learned that liberating oneself from interior spaces is a must to stay healthy. Later in 1831, Brontë enrolled in Roe Head School, where the scenery was quite different from that in Haworth despite the fact that these two places were only “twenty miles apart” and shared a similar climate.. 政治大. Through “three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow windows run from basement to roof”. 立. in the confided school building, she looked down “upon a long green slope of pasture-land,. ‧ 國. 學. ending in the pleasant woods of Kirklees, Sir George Armitage’s park” (Gaskell 62). That was. ‧. where she relished “a robust freedom in the out-of-doors life” and played “merry games” with. sit. y. Nat. her companions (Gaskell 69). Studying in these two boarding schools located in rural areas,. io. personalities and do exercises to stay in good shape.. al. er. Brontë learned that the garden or park is a place where humans can cultivate their. n. iv n C Gardens are also essential to city dwellers. the garden tucking behind h e n gIncBrussels, hi U. Pensionnat Héger was a shelter to those in need. When Charlotte first moved to Brussels with Emily in 1842, she suffered from tremendous pressure because she was supposed to earn her living by teaching English and also fell in love with her teacher Constantin Héger. When she felt overwhelmed, wandering in the garden with Emily helped easing her stress (Fraser 165).3 The plants and layout of the Brussels garden provided her with comfort and solace. Another fun fact regarding the sheltering function of the garden is that, in the Middle Ages, Pensionnat. 3. One of the pupils studying at Pensionnat Héger drew “a vignette of the pair walking quite tirelessly round the garden” (Fraser 165), indicating that Charlotte and Emily’s pastime in Brussels was garden roaming. 3. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(12) Héger used to be a sanctuary receiving the leprous, the “houseless and the poor;” after that, the spot was filled up with “herb-gardens and orchards” (Gaskell 148) because plants can heal humans’ wounds and ease their sufferings. In this vein, this urban garden not only is a spot where people can relieve their pressure from modern industrialized urban life but also serves as a shelter protecting the needy and the outcast from human persecution. Brontë’s interactions with nature and gardens both in her childhood and at school are later reflected in her works. In Jane Eyre, Jane thirsts for associating with the natural world. Therefore, when an opportunity presents itself, she seizes it to survey the view: My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was. 政治大. those I longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed. 立. prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the base of one. ‧ 國. 學. mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I longed to follow it farther. (C.. ‧. Brontë, Jane Eyre 85). sit. y. Nat. The descriptions above are similar to Brontë’s own experience of looking down the landscape. io. er. from the windows of Roe Head School. When Jane is a pupil in the stifling Lowood Institution, Brontë describes “a middle space [was] divided into scores of little beds,” which. al. n. iv n C “were assigned as gardens for the pupils (C. Brontë 48). This reference is htoecultivate” ngchi U. probably inspired by Brontë’s Cowan Bridge experience, where gardening was part of their educational activities. Some parallels between real life and novels can also be observed in. Villette. In that story, Lucy Snowe admits that she “lived far more in the garden than under a roof” because it is in the “grand berceau” that “classes were held, and meals partaken of” (C. Brontë, Villette 128). That resembles Brontë’s experience at Brussels where the garden served as a less restrained space compared to Pensionnat Héger. Although a trim garden was popular in the Victorian era, Brontë preferred gardens that were wilder and more natural. Once in a letter, Brontë dismissed Pride and Prejudice as “a carefully-fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers” (qtd. in 4. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(13) Barker 180). This comment shows both her disdain of tame, over artificial gardens or delicate flowers and her yearning for a less restricted way of life in tune with the natural world. The garden by its nature is a product of human cultivation and design, but it also serves as the middle ground bridging nature and human civilization. The myriad plants and flowers of the gardens offer a taste of nature and much needed release for people from confining interior or relief from persecution. As a liminal space that swings between interior and exterior, private and public, constraints and freedom, as well as nature and artifice, the garden functions perfectly well to develop characters and plots. The significance of the garden can be observed in Charlotte. 政治大. Brontë’s works. I argue that, in Jane Eyre, gardens are not passive backgrounds, but are. 立. material spaces that can both influence and interact with human beings. The gardens teach. ‧ 國. 學. Jane wisdom, develop her character, and at the same time reveal Brontë’s attitude toward. ‧. nature in general and colonization in particular. These two aspects would form the main part. sit. y. Nat. of my investigation, as I seek to explore the roles gardens play in the formation of Jane’s. io. n. al. er. personality and how gardens sustain and construct human activities. Literature Review and Theories. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. Not many critics have discussed the theme of gardens in Brontë’s works. Michael Waters is one of the pioneers. In The Garden in Victorian Literature, Waters notices that, different from the typical Victorian garden associated with domesticity, the Brontë gardens “possess elements of wildness” and are often “surrounded by ‘unspoilt’ natural scenery” (Waters 173). He classifies the Victorian gardens into four categories according to their qualities like picturesqueness, fragrance, the degrees of ancientness and artificiality; most of Brontë’s works fall into the first category, manifesting Brontë’s attempt at living in harmony with nature. As to gardens in Jane Eyre, Waters analyzes the Thornfield garden only. He focuses on how plants and the gravel path influence the relationship between Jane and Rochester, yet the 5. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(14) fact that he overlooks the significance of many European species in the Thornfield garden discourages him from unearthing the colonial message imbedded by Brontë. In addition, Waters is aware that Jane is interested in gardening, yet he leaves the influence of gardening on Jane unexplored. This topic will be further investigated in the third chapter of my thesis. Another critic that explores the gardens in the Brontëan work is Liu Han-ying. While discussing the cabinets of curiosities in Charlotte Brontë’s novels, Liu devotes a chapter to the garden, where “the mechanism of curiosity and display takes place” (Liu 4). She argues that, the wax and wane of the nineteenth-century pleasure garden corresponds to the change of the concept of Eden4, and uses this concept to read Brontë’s four novels analogically. Take Jane. 政治大. Eyre as an example. Liu alludes to biblical stories to analyze Jane’s personal development in. 立. relation to the garden/Eden and contends that Jane’s Fall, which can be achieved by stepping. ‧ 國. 學. out of the domestic gardens, is a necessity for her growth; without it, she cannot meet her. ‧. Adam, Rochester, nor can she find a real paradise at the end of the story. Indeed, Jane’s. sit. y. Nat. journey after leaving Lowood’s enclosed garden does enrich her life and contribute to her. io. er. growth. However, whether the paradise is regained after all is disputable since Liu’s interpretation of the happy ending—comparing Jane and Rochester’s “self-sufficient” married. al. n. iv n C life in Ferndean to perpetual “[plants] in case” (Liu 108)—does not cope with the haeWardian ngchi U. complexity of the Victorian society. Besides, the reception of the nineteenth century pleasure garden investigated in Liu’s text does not bear directly on the garden in Jane Eyre; even the only city garden mentioned in passing by Adèle is “a great green place full of trees” (102) rather than the kind of unattractive and dull pleasure gardens discussed by Liu. In other words, while Liu examines the gardens in Jane Eyre, she does not touch on the significance of nature. 4. As the Victorian Britain industrializes, British women are no longer as innocent as the prelapsarian Eve since the advance of Victorian publishing allows them to access to various kinds of knowledge; some women, like Jane Eyre, are lucky enough to be sent to boarding schools to receive proper training in preparation for making a living of their own out in the real world. 6. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(15) on Jane. I will address this gap by introducing the Romantic gardens in the second chapter and delving into the influence of nature on Jane to see how the natural aspects of the gardens shape her personality. The garden is a material space. Over recent decades, many critics have recognized the importance of material spaces and objects in relation to human activities and behavior. Virginia Woolf believes that “grossly material things” rather than social relations can help women form their subjectivities and give women a place in history (Woolf 2456). Gaston Bachelard explores “the sites of [humans’] intimate lives” (Bachelard 8)5 and argues that, because the houses entwine the past with present, the memories stored in them can be. 政治大. reinvigorated if humans actively interact with the spaces. Tuan Yi-fu pushes Bachelard’s. 立. theory further by defining home as a place and distinguishing it from space. According to him,. ‧ 國. 學. space “assumes a rough coordinate frame centered on the mobile and purposive self”—. ‧. humans’ movements and sensory experience are the foundations to the awareness of space;. y. Nat. place, however, is a “concretion of value” (Tuan 12) from which “the openness, freedom, and. er. io. sit. threat of space” (Tuan 6) can be experienced. It is the three-dimensional objects arranged in space that invoke people’s memories—the home place emphasized by Bachelard is no more. al. n. iv n C than an abstract concept. Notably, Tuan’s between space and place is still based h edifferentiation ngchi U on Bachelard’s discussions of the dialectics of outside and inside whereby the dichotomy stays fixed. Although these critics value material spaces and objects in the formation of. human identities, they define material spaces as merely passive backgrounds where human subjects act out their desires. In other words, they overlook the facts that the layouts, designs, and ornaments of material spaces also have agencies to engage human beings as well as motivate human behavior. 5. This phrase comes from Gaston Bachelard’s concept of “topoanalysis,” which he defines as a “systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives” (Bachelard 8). He claimed such method is better than psychoanalysis in terms of understanding a person since places localize people’s memories. 7. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(16) Gillian Rose is the pioneer in challenging the traditional concepts of humanistic or humancentric geography. She criticizes the notion of “topophilia” for it focuses on a “place” which denotes “thoughtlessly passivity and unthinking immersion in the natural” (Rose 60) and deconstructs the oppositions between inside and outside in Bachelard and Tuan’s assumptions. She attributes these problems of humanistic geography to the existing masculinist society in which patriarchy is “(re) created and contested” everyday (17) and defines women as “complex and diverse social subjects” with agency (45). To diminish “the patriarchal dualism of Man and Woman” (138), Rose proposes the notion of “paradoxical space,” allowing women to occupy both “the center and the margin” as well as “the inside and. 政治大. the outside;” to her, “feminist maps” should be “multiple and intersecting, provisional and. 立. shifting” (155). Such fluid material spaces provide women, socially inferior subjects, with. ‧ 國. 學. wider possibilities in breaking the hierarchical social system and transcending their own class. ‧. and economical limitations.. sit. y. Nat. Mona Domosh and Joni Seager notice that spaces are gendered. They have observed how. io. er. the settings, arrangements and decorations of domesticated spaces in different culture influence men and women’s life and therefore assert that “spatial organization and relations. al. n. iv n C are not simply a backdrop for human dramas” something that shape human life, even h e nbut gchi U. civilization (Domosh and Seager xxi). They investigate “the gendering of space and place, and the role that space and place play in the making of gender” (xxiii). In their studies, physical bodies are the active subjects challenging conventional social norms in gendered spaces and making transformations regarding gender and space possible. Scholars like John Dixon Hunt and Stephanie Ross examine gardens in real life. Hunt, a noted garden theorizer, defines garden art as “the most sophisticated form of landscape architecture” (Hunt, Greater Perfections 10). From the description that “[g]arden enclosure both define their spaces and appeal across boundaries—by way of representation, imitation, and allusion—to a world dispersed elsewhere” (Hunt, Greater Perfections 29), readers can 8. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(17) infer that Hunt regards gardens as cultural signifiers representing the attitudes and dialectics between nature and culture in different ages, regions, and cultures. Reading Victorian gardens in Jane Eyre through cultural materialistic approaches is therefore very helpful. Another important message Hunt provides is that the garden “came (so to speak) ready-made with the implied imprimatur of Eden” (Hunt, “The Garden” 21). Therefore, how gardeners re-create the Paradise actually reflects the imagined paradise in their minds. According to the fact that Brontë describes the Thornfield garden as an “Eden-like” one (248), it is possible that she imbeds her version of Paradise through portraying the garden in the story. As to Stephanie Ross, she purposes that gardens and other landscapes have the capacities to engage people. 政治大. into two ways of explorations: invitation and enclosure. The former has to do with. 立. “imaginative and actual explorations,” while the latter indicates “a basic sensory and. ‧ 國. 學. kinesthetic notion of surroundedness” caused by the walls or plants (Ross 169-70). These two. ‧. complementary garden features can go separate or exist together. In Jane Eyre, Jane tends to. sit. y. Nat. experience the invitation mode when gardens or landscapes trigger her in-depth desire of. io. er. participating in the outside world. If she co-exists with male, authorial figures in the garden, her explorations normally include both modes owing to the complex nature of power. n. al. struggles between them.. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. While Ross studies the trope of the garden, Susan Ford centers on the female gaze. Disappointed with the concept of the male gaze which relegates women to passive roles determined by their bodies and their “to-be-looked-at-ness,” Ford argues that there is “a matriarchal aesthetic,” which does not “tolerate voyeurs,” actively participating in one’s art experiencing process (Ford 152); this female gaze seeks to “reveal aspects of the landscape which other ways of looking have chosen to ignore” (153). To Ford, the domesticated garden of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is a good place for the workings of female gazes because, like a grain of sand in Blake’s poetry, the sound botanic knowledge observable in the gardens represents rational conceptions of the world. Through gardening, female 9. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(18) gardeners’ “rational and emotional dimensions” are stimulated to feel with this “heavily feminized” space (154). Examining interpersonal interactions with a female gaze not only helps women understand the world but also opens up wider possibilities for gender and class equality. Beth Fowkes Tobin and Jill H. Casid are two of the few researchers looking into colonial gardening of the British Empire; both of them recognize the value of slave gardens and therefore provide historical and geographical frameworks in their analysis. According to Tobin, slaves in West Indies have two kinds of gardens: kitchen gardens and provision grounds. The former is no more than “small plots of land . . . in the yards surrounding their. 政治大. houses,” while the much-larger latter is afar from slaves’ dwellings and located “on the. 立. margins of the plantation” (Tobin 59). The provision grounds are so-called slave gardens. In. ‧ 國. 學. most of the cases, flat and arable land tends to be harnessed to serve colonizers’ imperial. ‧. interests; only hilly and mountainous islands, such as Jamaica, have gardens for slaves. The. sit. y. Nat. slave gardens were pragmatic since they were often utilized by slaves to grow foods in order. io. er. to sustain their own health and life: they may otherwise die of malnutrition. While Tobin introduces the slave garden from the point of view of slaves, Casid reveals how the. al. n. iv n C plantocracy, a ruling class made up of planters, it as an imperial strategy. He notices that h e n gused chi U. “provision grounds, or ‘polincks,’ were required by Jamaican law as early as 1678” and contends that such an invention was meant to “root the slave to the place” (Casid 198).. Having nothing but life to lose, slaves feel secured to own their own gardens—although they only have limited right to it—and would like to pass their meager property from one generation to the next. With the working of this mental mechanism, the slave garden becomes a weapon to keep slaves’ work desertion at bay. It not only pleases both slaves and their owners but also facilitates the close interdependence between them. Tobin’s and Casid’s insights into colonial gardens shed light on my understanding of Rochester’s Jamaican life. Ann B. Shteir and Sam George are interested in botany. While analyzing the significance 10. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(19) of botany in each historical period, Shteir found that myth and literature tend to “link flowers and gardens with women and nature” and with “femininity, modesty, and innocence” (Shteir 3). These cultural linkages pave the way for female characters to get into botanical works and invite writers to deem flowers as emblems of women. As to Sam George, she inspects the relation between female education and botany with a special focus on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In a debate about whether female should have knowledge, Rousseau argues that, compared to book-learning, botany is a ﬁt subject for women’s maternal self-improvement because it is domesticated, flower-focused and based on observation of nature. His Letters on the Elements of Botany, however, is criticized by many because Rousseau passively associates women with. 政治大. flowers. From my observation, Brontë also resisted such passive association between women. 立. and nature. Yet, the notion which flowers are emblems of women appeals to me since this. ‧ 國. 學. metaphor may raise deeper layers of meanings regarding women’s situations and status in the. ‧. Brontëan era.. sit. y. Nat. In addition to Shteir and George, Judith W. Page and Elise L. Smith are two other critics. io. er. exploring gardening through the lens of education. They scrutinize garden settings and botanical instructions in children’s books and conclude that gardening and botanizing serve as. al. n. iv n C means of mental and moral cultivation.h Apart from organism, e n g c h i U they also found framing devices interesting. These devices not only help women perceive the natural world from different angles but reconstruct the dynamic between inside and outside. The examination of this rich body of scholarship on women and gardens has shown that. the garden is a complicated space. Rose’s and Domosh and Seager’s researches on gender and geography suggest that the garden space is an outdoor domesticated space less constraining than home place yet requiring active human laborer. Its unique spatial nature has blurred the binary oppositions between inside and outside. In such a fluctuating space, women, though they cannot totally turn away from traditional social structures, enjoy certain kinds of freedom. 11. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(20) Chapter Organization I propose to investigate these concerns and their reflection in Brontë’s Jane Eyre in the following chapters. Chapter two surveys the evolution of the English garden from the Romantic to Victorian periods. Over the centuries, the garden is the result of two main influences: art and nature; gardens from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries are no exceptions. The representations of Romantic nature can basically be divided into two types: the idyllic and tranquil and the wild sublime. Both facets contribute to the formation of landscape gardening prevailing during the Romantic period. The former arouses designers or. 政治大. owners’ desire to imitate nature, while the Gothic style relating to the latter influences the. 立. ways landscape gardens are constructed. Additionally, the concepts of the sublime and the. ‧ 國. 學. picturesque have greatly influenced the way Romantics perceived gardens. They therefore integrated the idea of the picturesque into landscape, which corresponds to their emphasis on. ‧. the sensory experience of human beings. In terms of Victorian gardens, there are two main. y. Nat. io. sit. traditions: the formal Italian garden and the gardenesque garden. The conception of Italian. n. al. er. garden is inspired by the Elizabethan and Jacobean garden, which comes from Italian. Ch. i Un. v. Renaissance and emphasizes the use of terraces, gravel paths, stone balustrades, and garden. engchi. ornaments. As to the gardenesque deriving from the eighteenth century picturesque garden, it stresses the artistic quality. Worried that picturesque planting could be mistaken for natural growth, its pioneer John Claudius Loudon argued that exotic plants must be used in order to make the garden a work of art (Loudon 137). Different from Loudon expecting gardens to be artistic and useful, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Sir Ebenezer Howard longed to live in harmony with more natural gardens. Ledoux accordingly promoted the idea of a city imitating Nature and Howard later advocated the Garden City Movement. This tug-of-war between architectural and horticultural by itself parallels the thematic conflict between restraint and freedom which Jane and Bertha face in their life. 12. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(21) Chapter three is devoted to investigating how the human-garden interactions contribute to Jane’s maturity. In each period of Jane’s development, a garden accompanies her. When being constrained in Gateshead Hall, she escapes mentally from an unpleasant atmosphere by studying “a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub” in a winter afternoon (C. Brontë 8). After arriving at Lowood, she learns to cultivate plants in its wide enclosure garden and a natural playground helps her to ease pressure. In Thornfield, the garden protects her from social constraints so she dares to demand equality from Rochester. After fleeing to Moor House, she becomes a school teacher and lives in a cottage, where she can cultivate a scanty tiny garden as she likes. Compared to her behavior in the confined houses, Jane appears to be. 政治大. more liberated, audacious, content, and at ease when she is in the gardens. This material space. 立. must have innate capacity to educe her good quality, cultivate her nature and console her. ‧ 國. 學. mind.. ‧. Chapter four explores the associations between the garden and colonization. Although. sit. y. Nat. the Jamaican garden is mentioned in passing in the text, it gives away a significant fact:. io. er. Rochester has witnessed the suffering of slaves, which invites readers to unveil the exploitative system behind the British Empire’s prosperity in general and the Mason, the. al. n. iv n C Rochester, and the Eyre’s fortunes in particular. reading Bertha as a symbolic exotic h e n gThrough chi U flower whom Rochester seeks to tame and then smother when that attempt fails, the mindset of slave-holders and the difficulties slaves faced in a colonial system will be unearthed. In most of the cases, slave-holders made decisions according to their profits, whether the slaves could accustom to new environments was not in their consideration. Take Rochester for example. He violently plucks Bertha out of the tropical Jamaica without considering whether her passionate disposition can accustom to the cold and reserved England, and whether she will be regarded as an outcast just because of her different skin color. All he has in mind is getting rid of his dark history and restarting his life. As to Jane, although she has emotional attachment with slaves, she neither is aware that the fortune she inherits is linked to an unjust 13. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(22) slavery system nor recognizes Bertha’s difficult situation. Her unwitting complicity aggravates Bertha’s suffering. Death therefore becomes the only way for Bertha to get out of the vicious exploitative circle.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. 14. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(23) Chapter Two The English Garden from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries. The gardens in Jane Eyre keep harmonious relationships with their surroundings. Starting from Gateshead, its garden is full of shrubberies. Eliza often feeds the poultry and Jane enjoys glancing at a nearby field where sheep sometimes feed on short and blanched grass (C. Brontë, Jane Eyre 38). Having a wide plantation, this garden is where Eliza plants various “flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants” (29); but in Jane’s retrospect, she cannot recall any single flower since she is forbidden from going out-door freely to explore the. 政治大. beauty of nature. Thankfully in Lowood, the wide-enclosure garden is Jane’s playground. She. 立. enjoys gardening and exercising outdoor. Wandering among “snow-drops, crocuses, purple. ‧ 國. 學. auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies” (75) and greenery “elm, ash, and oak” (76) is just. ‧. romantic. In winter, the penetrating wind and melting snow, however, remind her, having. y. Nat. insufficient clothes, of her humble position, and she consequently longs to “go where there [is]. er. io. sit. life and movement” to find hope (89). Thornfield, near Millcote, the large manufacturing town, is such a place. This mansion is owned by Edward Rochester, who has had a Grand. al. iv n C in Continental Europe. Instead ofhtransplanting Renaissance architectural elements to engchi U n. 6. Tour. the garden, Rochester is interested in trees and flowers and plants many European samples there. The natural design of the garden welcomes Jane to soak in the vibe of nature, and she later relies on its guidance to venture into the moor and arrives at Moor House, whose garden is “dark with yew and holly” and surrounded by “the purple moors” (349). Jane’s associations with the gardens are quite romantic in nature. In this chapter, I investigate the development of the English garden from the seventeenth. 6. When Rochester and Jane talk about travel, he reveals his plan to “sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice, and Vienna” (259). This list contains all the vital destinations of the Grand Tour. 15. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(24) to nineteenth centuries. The Grand Tour and the Industrial Revolution will be briefly introduced at first. These two historical backgrounds have influenced English people’s culture and become the fountains of inspirations for many garden designers and city planners. After that, landscape gardens dominating English rural areas during the Romantic period are discussed. Landscape gardeners, William Kent, Capability Brown, Humphry Repton, and their representative works will be enumerated to show the ebb and flow between art and nature in the development of the landscape garden. Following the constructions of these nature-oriented gardens are the trends of the gardenesque and the Italianate prominent for their architectural values. Then the pendulum swung back to nature: the garden city. 政治大. movement and the arts and crafts, two movements call for a return to nature, are examined at. 立. last.. ‧ 國. 學. To begin with, the Grand Tour prevalent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. ‧. introduced the Renaissance legacy to England. At that time, many aristocratic young English. sit. y. Nat. men inspired by the romantic ideal of the sublime and the picturesque went in search of wild. io. er. natural landscapes and medieval ruins while travelling to other European countries. They often visited Italy; its rich classical heritage sparked many creative minds. The nobility. al. n. iv n C therefore reconstituted Italian style gardens going back to England in their own h e after ngchi U. courtyards. For example, John Arundel attempted to “transplant old Greece,” which he learned in his trip to Italy, “into England” for providing a conspectus of history while designing Albury Park standing on the Thames (Peacham xvii). The gardens have become cabinets of curiosities which each landed gentry displayed their affluence and demonstrated their pursuit of knowledge. The artistic legacy and cultural thoughts of the Italian Renaissance enriched the development of the English garden. The industrial revolution is another turning point for the evolution of English gardens. Different from the Grand Tour whose impact was limited to the upper middle class, the industrial revolution has changed English people’s culture. Due to the invention of machines, 16. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(25) English people’s working efficiency increased and their life facilitated. Their desire of pursuing a quality life was sparked, so the new middle class benefiting from the economic growth moved to rural areas for a tranquil and unpolluted life. Tired of the hustle and bustle life, some of them created cottage gardens “in the belief that they were reviving a traditional British way of life, and returning to the simple pleasures of flowers and nature,” while others “proclaim[ed] their status by emulating their aristocratic neighbours” (Ikin 56), which forced aristocratic landowners to resort to ancient garden styles for emphasizing their family lineage with landscape architects’ assistance. Among all contemporary landscape architects, William Kent stood out because he. 政治大. merged the Renaissance traditions with the ingenious English style in his works. Living in. 立. Italy for nearly ten years, Kent’s trainings in history painting and his observations of Italy. ‧ 國. 學. heavily influenced his garden designs. Rousham in Oxfordshire and Stowe in Buckingham are. ‧. two of his representative works. A Jacobean garden owned by the Dormers7, Rousham is a. sit. y. Nat. product of the Grand Tour legacy. Inspired by the ancient classical culture during the trip, in. io. er. the 1730s, the Dormers decided to invite Kent over their mansion to infuse Italian accent into their landscape garden. While redesigning the garden, Kent made some changes to the. al. n. iv n C existing architectural items to “make Palladio Italian gardening speak good English” h e nand gchi U (Hunt, “The Garden” 27). For instance, he remodeled the old central block wings in the. classical-Palladian mode with ogive niches to make them look Tudor-Gothic. He also decorated the linking walls of Rousham House with “crested parapets or castellations” (Hunt, Gardens 13) and intertwined it nicely with the natural landscape. The Italian style Praeneste Terrace was introduced to Rousham as well. Kent surrounded this arcaded terrace near groves, streams, cascades and river with imitations of several classical Italian sculptures to create a. 7. The Dormer is an aristocratic family with a strong English pedigree because one of them “married the aunt of Sir Philip Sidney” and the family “held court appointments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” during the Civil Wars (Hunt, Gardens 11). 17. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(26) mythical serene atmosphere. The sculptures evoked wanderers’ memories about the historical stories behind, so each individual has had their own unique wandering experience in Rousham. As Horace Walpole remarks, the landscape is “as elegant and antique as if the emperor Julian ha[s] selected the most pleasing solitude about Daphne to enjoy a philosophical retirement” (Walpole 29). The classical ideas and Renaissance spirits have enriched the Rousham garden. Compared to Rousham, Stowe is a landscape garden even more deliberately designed. Other than conventional Italian elements like terraces, statues, grottoes, temples and exedras, inscriptions or mottoes engraved on marbles and stones encourage each individual to decipher and discover deeper layers of meanings when visiting the garden. For example, in the Temple. 政治大. of British Worthies, seventeen English or English-related men having huge contribution to. 立. Western civilization are displayed as busts in an exedra with unique mottos inscribed above. ‧ 國. 學. the head of each sculpture. By designing so, Kent provided more historical information for the. ‧. Stowe visitors. In addition to the monument per se, the relative directions of each architectural. sit. y. Nat. and natural element in the garden also affect the ways tourists or critics interpret the messages. io. er. encoded in the group of statues. Take the Temple of British Worthies for example. It is situated around the middle of the Elysian Fields; in front of the Temple is River Styx. Facing. al. n. iv n C the Grotto, the Grenville Column in-between and the River is on the Temple’s h e ntheg Grotto chi U. upper left. Looking front from the Temple of British Worthies, the Temple of Ancient Virtue having full-length statues of Epaminondas, Lycurgus, Socrates, Homer is on its right at a not too far distance. Interestingly, the sculptures of both Captain Thomas Grenville, a member of Lord Cobham who died in a shipwreck when fighting the French, and Epaminondas, a general of ancient Greece, face the great men in British Worthies. Such deliberate designs allow different interpretations. Artists and scholars such as William Gilpin, Joseph Warton, Horace Walpole, and John Dixon Hunt put their heart and soul into analyzing Stowe and have. 18. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(27) articulated their own readings of this garden in their publications.8 Thomas Whately also agrees that Stowe “must be examined, compared, perhaps explained, before the whole design . . . is well understood” (Whately 129). Kent’s utilization of the Italian architectural forms successfully complicated the design of this garden. But Lancelot Brown, his assistant at Stowe, was not satisfied with his methodology. Capability Brown9 accentuated the importance of nature in the development of the eighteenth century landscape garden. Unlike Kent, he “eliminated” the Italian accent and meticulously arranged natural materials like hills, waters, woods and trees to “give Englishness its fullest voice” (Hunt, “The Garden” 27). He described his landscape-designing. 政治大. process: “Here I put a comma, there, when it’s necessary to cut the view, I put a parenthesis;. 立. there I end it with a period and start on another theme” (qtd. in Brandt and Eagleman 107).. ‧ 國. 學. Such monologue discloses that, although Brown recognized the significance of nature to the. ‧. concept of England, when it comes to garden planning, he made changes arbitrarily like a. y. Nat. painter to a painting rather than respecting the nature of the landscapes as what they were. To. er. io. sit. broaden the gardens, he often employed the ha-ha, a sunken fence “which effectively separated the garden from agricultural territory without obstructing the view,” to encompass. al. n. iv n C the parks or even outlying landscape (Hunt, Greater Perfections 20). The utilization of the hen gchi U ha-ha idealizes the view of the landscape gardens.. Among all of the Brownian works, Blenheim Palace is the most well-known where the ha-ha as well as other Brownian characteristics are demonstrated. Built in the early eighteenth 8. Please see William Gilpin’s A Dialogue upon the Gardens of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Cobham at Stow in Buckinghamshire, Horace Walpole’s seminal History of the Modern Taste in Gardening, Joseph Warton’s poem “The Enthusiast: or, the Lover of Nature,” and John Dixon Hunt’s recently-published The Garden at War: Deception, Craft and Reason at Stowe for details. 9 The most-known source of the nickname “Capability” comes from an article published in the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser in 30 July 1774: “from the answer [Lancelot Brown] made to Lord Coventry; when, having been shewn the place to which much had been done before, his Lordship asked him how he liked it? Why, my Lord, the place has its capabilities” (qtd. in Rutherford 5). 19. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(28) century, Blenheim Palace, the only English Palace not in royal hand, is a gift to John Churchill for his victory at the Battle of Blenheim. In 1764, Brown was called in to design its surroundings. Realizing that trees both hid and revealed features, Brown planted thick belts of trees around the boundaries of the landscape garden to create vast woodlands stretching to the horizon on the one hand, then “planted four stands of beech trees on either side of the Grand Bridge” to “hid[e] the points where it sloped into the ground” on the other (“Capability Brown” 3). While widening the view of the garden, he also decorated it by including clumps of acacia, beech, cedar, chestnut, and poplar into the design. In addition to trees, lake and cascades are also striking features of Brownian gardens. Brown joined the Duchess’ lake and. 政治大. Queen Pool by a canal underneath Vanbrugh’s Grand Bridge to make an enlarged lake. He. 立. also “widened, deepened and altered the course” of the river below the Cascades and built the. ‧ 國. 學. Bladon Dam “about a mile downstream” to create another lake and cascade near the Lince. ‧. (“Capability Brown” 2). With the help of two ha-has, the buildings and the column situating. sit. y. Nat. on pastoral lawns compose a picturesque view with the designed natural sceneries.. io. er. Uvedale Price criticized Brown in the course of investigating and explaining the picturesque. In An Essay on the Picturesque, Price compares Brown to a snail and criticizes. al. n. iv n C that, “[f]ormer improvers at least kept near house, but this fellow crawls like a snail all h ethe ngchi U. over the grounds, and leaves his cursed slime behind him wherever he goes” (Price 227). His aversion toward artificiality originates from his definitions of the picturesque. According to him, “intricacy in the disposition” and “variety in the forms” are two characteristics of “picturesque scenery” that sparks human pleasure (Price 70). Objects exhibiting “roughness,” “sudden variation,” and “irregularity” are “the most efficient causes of the picturesque” (Price 82). To him, Brown’s clumps and belts, different from natural groups of trees mixing together, are too smooth to satisfy spectators’ want of variety. Without wild trees, tussocks, bushes, roots, tufts, and moses, the mirror-like reflections cannot provide spectators with variety and intricacy. 20. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(29) Payne Richard Knight, although having a different definition of the picturesque, shared Price’s disdain for the work of Brown. In An Analytic Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, Knight points out that Price’s “great, fundamental error” is “seeking for distinctions in external objects which only exist in the modes and habits of viewing and considering them” (Knight 196-97). He therefore argues that the picturesque exists not in the external world but in each observer’s mind. It is each observer’s mechanism of association in their richly-stored mind, he believes, that constitutes the picturesque. In Knight’s explanation of the mechanism, he gives credit to “those objects in nature,” which is often of mixtures and diversities, in the formation of the picturesque (Knight 152). Knight was of the opinion that, on a physiological. 政治大. level, humans will naturally be attracted to those rough, variable and irregular objects and. 立. scenes. Based on his judgements, one can infer that he too loved rugged scenes and. ‧ 國. 學. unimproved gardens. Knight and Price’s criticism influenced the development of the. ‧. landscape garden.. sit. y. Nat. Humphry Repton, Brown’s successor, upheld the gothic style in the realm of landscape. io. er. and garden design. After Brown’s death, his son appointed Repton to be the successor (Fleming and Core 149). He defended for Brown when Price attacked him in Essay, yet his. al. n. iv n C attitude changed later. While corresponding about the association between landscape and hen gchi U. painting, Repton admitted that his fancy of believing in the affinity between painting and gardening is the source of errors (Repton 57). The reason is hinted at “Sketches and Hint,” in which he asserts that “I do not hesitate to acknowledge, that I once supposed the two arts to be more intimately connected than my practice and experience have since confirmed” (Repton 99). This statement suggests that, to this point of Repton’s life, he came to realize that perfecting landscape in the Brownian style did no justice to the landscape per se since, as Price notes, “the immediate and uninterrupted progress of the descent” is what distinguishing the landscape from other art forms (Price 457). Based on this epiphany, Repton added antique, rustic, and gothic feelings to houses and buildings since the human mind tends to associate 21. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(30) gothic architecture, its ornaments and appendage with antiquity and medieval history. For instance, Repton proposed to reconstruct the original extensive house of Donington Park into a gothic building. He even adjoined a chapel that is gothic both externally and internally to the front of the house to create a little picturesque asymmetry to the original design so that the whole landscape appears more intricate and eye-catching (Repton 212). Later when designing Ashridge, Repton also proposed to erect a gothic “conduit, or holy well” so that such a garden can be more enchanting (qtd. in John Loudon, The Landscape Gardening 529). Adding gothic elements to the works were by all means one of Repton’s attempts to depart from the “picturesque” Brownian influence.. 政治大. Another contribution Repton made to the garden history is introducing the flower beds.. 立. Noticing that Ashridge is surrounded by a “naked and uninteresting” landscape, Repton. ‧ 國. 學. decided to “exclude the landscape altogether, by bringing plantations near the house” to. ‧. improve the garden (qtd. in John Loudon, The Landscape Gardening 528). In this particular. sit. y. Nat. case, he utilized the rosary to embellish the garden. “The magnolia” and “other American. io. er. plants” were also on his list since they can avail human bodies (529). Those flower beds provide human beings with “comfort and occupation” (530). Gardeners need to tame and. al. n. iv n C cultivate the plants often to ensure its beauty, they were soothed at the meanwhile. If h e ningwhich chi U considering the landscape as a whole, flower beds around the house actually “ease the transition from architecture to landscape” (Ikin 56). Its quality of in-betweenness was captured and magnified to please the spectators of the landscape. Its ornamental and educational functions were especially appreciated by the city dwellers of the Industrial Revolution. The trend of the gardenesque prevalent in the early nineteenth century marked the departure from the nature-oriented garden development. In 1832, John Loudon coined a term called gardenesque in reaction to the picturesque. In a review of W. S. Gilpin’s Practical Hints on Landscape Gardening, he writes: 22. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(31) Mere picturesque improvement is not enough in these enlightened times; it is necessary to understand that there is such a character of art as the gardenesque . . . . The very term gardenesque, perhaps, will startle some readers; but we are convinced . . . that it is a term which will soon find a place in the language of rural art. (Loudon, The Gardener’s Magazine 701) The “mere picturesque improvement” refers to the picturesque critics’ debates and practices of how to present the landscape garden as truthfully as possible. Loudon, however, considers those presentations and imitations of wild nature outmoded and instead speaks highly of the role of art in the formation of the garden. He defines the gardenesque as the imitation of. 政治大. nature “subjected to a certain degree of cultivation or improvement, suitable to the wants and. 立. wishes of man” (Loudon, The Suburban Gardener 164). To concretize the supremacy of art. ‧ 國. 學. over nature, Loudon utilizes the exotic plants rather than native species to embellish his. ‧. gardenesque garden. The spawn of the gardenesque principle in the nineteenth century. sit. y. Nat. diminished aristocratic landowners’ desire of presenting the picturesque nature. Their gardens. io. er. accordingly became their cabinets of curiosities, in which they stored exotic botany to demonstrate their wealth and taste.. al. n. iv n C Apart from the gardenesque, the Italianate famous for architectural wealth and h e n gstyle chi U. cultural blending is another popular tradition in the Victorian period. This style extends from domestic architectures. Features of the Italian Renaissance, like terracing, statuary, balustrading, grottoes, urns and fountains, are served to “highlight the grandeur of the building” (Ikin 7). Charles Barry invented this style. Around 1840, he introduced the Renaissance gardens of Italy to England when constructing a series of gardens. The “Anglo-Italian” garden in Trentham was his first experiment. While remodeling the house, Barry “excavated the ground between the house and the lake” into a series of stepped terraces; the upper terrace near the house “was centered on a circular fountain,” and the lower one was “on a pair of rectangular panels, between which passed a broad gravel walk leading” into a 23. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(32) lake with a gondolier in a progression of vases, statues, and the lakeside balustrading (Elliott 75). In addition to those Italian principles, Trentham is also noted for ornamenting with the flamboyance and ostentation of the Victorian bedding. William Andrews Nesfield was said to be Barry’s collaborator; together, they designed elaborately-patterned parterres to embellish the Trentham terraces with bright colors and various plants (Ikin 77). By infusing the indigenous British bedding system to the garden, Barry and Nesfield brought a new layer of meaning to the term “Italianate.” It is more than a re-presentation of the Italian garden in Britain but a newly-emerged style connoting a mix of cultural imagination and historical legacy. In Nesfield’s later designs of parterre, he continued to incorporate elements denoting. 政治大. diverse cultural traditions into the setting of Italianate terracing and balustrading. His. 立. trademark was the French parterre de broderie, an intricate embroidery-like pattern created. ‧ 國. 學. with colored gravels and plantings, which can be observed at both Somerleyton Hall in. ‧. Suffolk and Worsley Hall in Cheshire (Ikin 84-85). When designing the Kensington garden,. sit. y. Nat. he embodied “national motifs of shamrock, thistle, rose and leek” to parterres created “from. io. er. box and colored gravel” for strengthening its English royalty (Ikin 86). Thanks to Barry and Nesfield’s innovation, the Italianate style blending the Italian, French and British traditions. al. n. iv n C was popularized in the Victorian periodhand thus became aUparticularly British-style garden engchi design. While diverse styles of gardens carrying cultural legacies were invented, the pleasure garden emphasizing on the utility was appreciated by city dwellers. During the industrial time, the cities were crowded and unsanitary because job seekers flooded into cities not yet prepared for the influx of population. Pleasure gardens, the place for public relaxation and entertainment, therefore became a symbolic oasis away from the filthy malodorous city. Among all, the Vauxhall Gardens had been the “chief site of Londoners’ al fresco entertainment” (Altick 319) welcoming “all classes, from aristocrats to artisans” (Altick 219). People from all walks of life can enjoy hot-air balloon rides, fireworks displays, and most 24. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(33) importantly, live bands and pioneering theatrical performances with a modest shilling. Even though Vauxhall provided Londoners with readily available pleasure, they could hardly find peace in the garden. The Victorian Londoners’ complex association with those entertaining commercial activities at Vauxhall was displayed in Gavarni in London. On the one hand, Smith admits that his generation “ha[s] all pleasant associations connected with Vauxhall” and he “would not willingly exchange” his own pleasant memories in the garden with those “drearer reminiscences of things far more important in the romance of life;” on the other hand, he criticizes the visual and aural wonders that please him as “hacknied amusements” (Smith 94) which shows his disdain toward the pleasure garden. Another time. 政治大. when describing the shows put on in Vauxhall, he admits that he would rather “give way. 立. sometimes to the power of illusion” and “be deceived” (Smith 95). The young Smith knew the. ‧ 國. 學. real sight may be disappointing. He therefore fed his curiosity with a compensative pretense. ‧. to avoid the feeling of emptiness. Still, Vauxhall was unable to provide city dwellers tired of. y. sit. io. er. society.. Nat. the noise and squalor of London’s streets with solace and comfort in the shifting industrial. In reaction to the industrial revolution, some started to associate the concept of Eden. al. n. iv n C with Wordsworthian nature. In The Counterfeit a book examines the garden ideal in the h e n gIdyll, chi U nineteenth-century fiction, Gail Finney points out that “much of the Romantic poetry is. informed by nostalgia for a paradise lost,” showing English people’s craving for “a natural, ‘unspoiled’ way of life” that were mostly preindustrial (Finney 104). In addition, Max F. Schulz longs for having “a society living harmoniously in an urban environment of natural rightness, with streets harking back to the prototype of leafy lanes between trees, and of buildings whose columns are reminders of the Edenic forest” (Schulz 156). His nostalgic for the Wordsworthian nature and want of constructing it in cities revealed how essential the idyllic nature was. Such awareness gave rise to the nineteenth century town-planning movements. 25. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(34) The need of Wordsworthian nature catalyzed the Garden City Movement. Inspired by Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, Sir Ebenezer Howard states his conception of a modern utopia in his 1898 publication, Tomorrow: A peaceful path to Real Reform.10 In this volume, he proposes to create a cluster of satellite garden cities in reaction to the pollution and population explosion brought forth by the industrial revolution. Moderate-sized towns designed for healthy living and a central city surrounded by a rural belt therefore come into being. Caring about people’s living quality, Howard sets strict regulations for population density. When the growth of towns exceeds the limit, another garden city will be initiated. Whenever “laying out a Garden City,” Howard writes, “the free gifts of Nature—fresh air,. 政治大. sunlight breathing room and playing room—shall be still retained in all needed abundance”. 立. (Garden Cities of To-morrow 113). Such claim reveals that retaining Nature is a prominent. ‧ 國. 學. goal of the Garden City plan.. ‧. Apart from the Garden City Movement, the Arts and Crafts Movement also had impact. sit. y. Nat. on the development of the garden history. Founded in reaction to the relentless progress of. io. er. industrialization, the Arts and Crafts Movement popularized by William Morris advocated a return to the simplicity and unity of rural England. The Red House, Morris’ lodging, best. al. n. iv n C exemplified a harmonious balance between interior and the exterior of the house. Created h e the ngchi U around 1860, Red House in Kent and its garden were designed in response to each other for achieving harmony. To begin with, the well within the courtyard, the main chateau-like building and the fireplace inside the house were all constructed with the same red bricks and tiles. Further, the shape of the trellis attached to climbing plants is similar to that of the chequered mirrors painted with flowers and birds (Ikin 97). The consistency between inside and outside creates a sense of agreeable nostalgia that reminds people of, in Alexander Pope’s term, the amiable simplicity of unadorned Nature. In addition to the similarities of those 10. In 1902, Tomorrow: A peaceful path to Real Reform was republished under the new title Garden Cities of To-morrow. 26. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(35) external appearances, fragrance also helps to harmonize the atmosphere. The climbing plants attached to the Red House was said to “waft their fragrance into the windows of the house” (Ikin 99); such a natural means not only blurs the distinction between interior and exterior but fortifies a sense of unity. The traces of the English garden development can be observed in Jane Eyre. When Jane is a child, she rarely has chances to get into the garden alone, but the window of Gateshead operates as a valve from the restrained interior to the landscape outside. The sight of the garden or even wider landscape therefore becomes Jane’s solace in her miserable childhood. As Jane grows up, she and other girls cultivate the Lowood garden and enjoy the. 政治大. Wordsworthian nature during their break time. It provides fresh air, so after the outbreak of. 立. typhus, girls maintain their health and patients recover there. After leaving Lowood, Jane. ‧ 國. 學. arrives at Thornfield. It is merely a gentleman’s mansion, but its designer applies the ha-ha, a. ‧. sunk fence, to broaden the landscape by diminishing the barrier between the lawn and the. sit. y. Nat. fields (99). The nearby laurels allow characters wander there unseen (248); many exotic trees. io. er. and flowers are planted to demonstrate Rochester’s affluence, taste and colonial links. This richly-designed natural garden provides Jane with a setting to do philosophical thinking and. al. n. iv n C serves as a shelter from the constraints h of Thornfield house. e n g c h i U After being hurt, Jane embarks on. an unknown journey and is attracted by a latticed window crept by “the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant” denoting friendliness (331). Her judgement does not disappoint her for her life is saved by the Rivers and she also experiences the fruits of the garden city movement on her way to Moor House. Her in-depth interactions with each of the gardens will be discussed in the next chapter.. 27. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.

(36) Chapter Three “Here, Jane, is an Arbour”: Gardens and Jane’s Development. My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter. ── Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. 政治大. The liminal nature of the domesticated garden offers women opportunities to transgress. 立. restrictions set by social norms and challenge gender and class hierarchies. Situated between. ‧ 國. 學. the interior and the exterior as well as the private and the public, gardens are spaces of spiritual and emotional comfort, but also of voyeurism and excitement. The plants, including. ‧. shrubberies, trees and flowers, grow in the garden, clean human souls and provide natural. y. Nat. io. sit. shelters; together with material objects like windows, walls, arbours and gravel paths, these. n. al. er. designs in the garden serve as props for the exercise of the ebb and flow of power relations.. Ch. i Un. v. Women have long been neglected in the study of human geography; feminist. engchi. geographers, Gillian Rose, Mona Domosh and Joni Seager, uphold the significance of women to diversify the ways of perceiving power relations associated with spaces. In Feminism and Geography, Gillian Rose criticizes Tuan Yi-fu not only because he regards women as “the exception” but also because he “falsely assume[s] that the experience of men can represent all experiences” (Rose 53). She challenges Tuan’s theory by defining home place as the feminized Other in contrast to the universal objective masculinity. The interaction and correlation of these two forces, Rose believes, constitute a capital society. However, home to women is not a safe haven but a site of “oppression—by the state, by capitalism and by patriarchy” (Rose 56). Accordingly, women can enjoy freedom only when their bodies are no 28. DOI:10.6814/NCCU20200033.