STEPHEN BENDING, Green Retreats: Women, Gardens and Eighteenth-Century Culture.
2015; Oxford University Press; Volume: 62; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/notesj/gju188
ISSN1471-6941
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Literary Studies
ResumoAS physical spaces ruled by gender double-standards, and as imagined places rife with conflicting associations of obedience and transgression, concealment and display, eighteenth-century English gardens prove tangled fields indeed, for the women who frequented them no less than for scholars seeking to bring clarity to this complex subject. Mindful of his share in these hazards, Bending limits his study to landscape gardens commissioned or created by ‘an educated, leisured, wealthy, and relatively tight-knit female elite’ (3), for which the most documentary evidence exists. His disregard for more straitened spaces such as the kitchen or town garden might be mistaken for elitism, but Bending’s study is not without voices from less privileged observers of eighteenth-century gardens, including the servant Mary Masters (1733–55) and the governess Ellen Weeton (1776–1849). Bending elects to focus on elite women gardeners for reasons beyond the practical limits of a single book as well. Against modern historians who follow eighteenth-century commentators in presenting landscape gardens as scenes of both masculine activity (for landscape architects such as Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown) and manly retirement (for landowners such as William Shenstone), Bending argues for the important role of women in the design and building of elite, large-scale gardens. Who were these extraordinary women? Bending scrutinizes four gardeners and gardens in particular: Henrietta Knight (1699–1756) at Barrells; Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800) at Sandleford Priory; Lady Mary Coke (1727–1811) at Notting Hill; and Lady Caroline Holland (1723–74) at Holland Park.
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