Jane Austen on Nature

Jane Austen’s heroines respond to the power of the natural world, seeking comfort in nature’s calm or referencing trees and “verdure”—meaning fresh greenness and fertility—in relation to their awakening self-knowledge and, in most, their sexuality.
This book focuses on interactions between Austen’s heroines and uncontrollable forces of nature. Gender and nature are interwoven; some upper-class, usually male characters exploit nature as they exploit women. In the fragment Sanditon, Austen satirizes resort developers who commodify both nature and women. This work demonstrates how Austen transformed the Regency novel through pastoral language and structures, illuminating themes of greed, the inequality of institutions and cultural norms, and the emotional development of young women in the early nineteenth century.

Mary Jane Curry has been speaking and writing to general readers as well as scholars about nature and pastoral elements in Austen’s fiction for thirty years. Most of her articles appear in Persuasions: The Journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). She leads occasional discussions for JASNA-North Carolina and founded JASNA Alabama. A retired associate professor (Ph.D. English), she lives in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.

Mary Jane Curry
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 192
Bibliographic Info: 11 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2025
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9624-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5432-4
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments vi

Abbreviations and Page Numbers viii

Preface 1

Introduction: A Natural Sequence to a Childhood in Nature 5

One. Definitions: Austen’s Transformed Pastoral, the Literary Language of Nature 13

Two. Sense and Sensibility: “Constant and painful exertion” 29

Three. Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth Bennet’s Pastoral World 46

Four. Mansfield Park: “To look on verdure” 63

Five. Emma: “Exquisite” Nature and Intellectual Isolation 84

Six. Persuasion: From Isolation to New Pastoral Community 103

Seven. Northanger Abbey: “The pleasure of walking and breathing fresh air” 124

Eight. “Catharine,” “Evelyn,” and Sanditon: Burlesque to Satiric ­Genre-Bending 138

Conclusion 153

Chapter Notes 155

Bibliography 171

Index 181