Shrubbery! Il giardino inglese attraverso gli occhi di Jane Austen

Le opere di Jane Austen racchiudono interessanti particolari riguardo la vita della media e alta società vissuta nelle campagne inglesi tra il Settecento e l’Ottocento. Jane Austen’s novels contain interesting information about the English middle-class and upper-middle-class society between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Austen only writes about what she knows, condescending to imagination but never to invention. She is a keen observer of the world around her, of a culture drawing on both the traditions of the aristocracy and the vogue of the picturesque. In doing so, she provides a compelling point of view on pre-industrial daily life, focusing on the perception of living spaces such as the English garden and its evolution. It is not merely a question of taste, or of choosing between the formal and the informal. While her heroines make mistakes, meditate, change their mind, fall in love and, most importantly, grow up in their daily search for identity – either in the refreshing wilderness or in a sunny shrubbery – the landscape and gardens undergo significant changes. Such transformations appear to hold a mirror up to the society in which the author lived.