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It is thought that there were shifting representations of society in the Victorian gardens, suggesting that they showed constructions of gender, modernity and female authorship.


In her novel The Doctor's Wife, Mary Elizabeth Braddon provides the following description of a Victorian suburban garden: "It might have been pretty once upon a time, when the glass was bright, and the latticed porch sheltered by clustering roses and clematis; but the clematis had withered, and the straggling roses were choked with wild convolvulus tendrils, that wound about the branches like weedy serpents, and stifled buds and blossoms in their weedy embrace" (19). And a few pages later: "It was an old-fashioned garden, and had doubtless once been beautifully kept; for bright garden-flowers grew up amongst the weeds summer after summer, as if neglect or cruel usage could not disroot them from the familiar place they loved. [...] [I]t was a dear old untidy place, where the odour of distant pigsties mingled faintly with the perfume of roses" (23). Inspired by Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Braddon's novel presents shifting notions of the garden in mid-Victorian culture and employs botanical metaphors to reference increasingly ambivalent class and gender boundaries. As the quotations above suggest, Braddon evokes a sense of the garden as a location of history, and as a space of transition; it is a scene where old and new plants entangle themselves in an unruly, hybrid state. Braddon's references to "an old-fashioned garden" with roses and clematis reveal a cultural engagement with flowers as symbols of particular moments in history and convey the constancy and rhythm of botanical life--these garden flowers "grew up amongst weeds summer after summer."
Hope this helps. :o)

2007-01-15 00:00:41 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

Because most of the 19c. was taken up with the Victorian era.

2007-01-14 23:13:59 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

answer: somewhat numerous pagans are attracted to gardening because different pagan religious vacation trips renowned the replace of seasons and the energies of the earth. Gardening helps us connect with that, is larger on your wellbeing and may be relaxing. another pagans have black thumbs and do not difficulty attempting. LOL it is not a call for.

2016-12-02 07:23:37 · answer #3 · answered by ? 4 · 0 0

doo

2007-01-15 01:56:29 · answer #4 · answered by silconbob 3 · 0 0

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