Jane Austen's unromantic landscapes

This thesis contends that Jane Austen’s use of the landscape in her six completed novels has, up until now, been under-investigated by critics. Previous scholarship has focused on the idea that Austen does not provide descriptions of places or people, and this has led to an under-valuing of the landscapes that she does provide to her readers. Further, it is easy for a modern reader to misunderstand horticultural fashion and concepts from Austen’s period, and this can lead to misunderstanding of the settings of the novels. Careful analysis of these landscapes, and the characters that interact with them, offers support for the view that the novels are not simply stories of courtships, or marriage plots. The relationships described in these works, with few exceptions, do not conform to modern ideals of what constitutes love or romance.