Ideology of the Picturesque

In The Historical Austen, William Galperin notes that Austen understood that certain kinds of realistic art or aesthetics could naturalize and "realize" what is really only an ideological construct. And he notes the somewhat surprising political ramifications of such aesthetic theories. He points to the theory of the picturesque, which Austen satirizes in a number of works (Northanger Abbey, for instance):

The picturesque "was an aesthetic where the 'natural' was restricted to a number of representational possibilities, none of which was comprehensive or faithful necessarily to what was 'out there.' To theorists of the picturesque . . . it was fine, indeed imperative, to conceive the natural as rough, ungoverned, and variegated so long as the scene was not also ugly or dull or fraught with any untoward surprises. In addition the particular animus of picturesque theory to the landscape improvements of such English 'gardeners' as Lancelot 'Capability' Brown and Humphrey Repton (a rebate that figures prominently in Mansfield Park) was unabashedly ideological in equating a certain kind of landscape gardening - one that was especially self-conscious in exposing the imprint of the human upon nature - with the leveling initiatives in France and at home. In a remarkable reconfiguration of political affiliations and identities, proponents of the picturesque were disposed to league wealthy individuals, who frequently initiated such improvements, with the 'revolutionary' masses in an effort to reclaim a middle (and higher moral) ground for the social order, at once conservative and middle class, in whose interests they were writing."

Galperin cites Ann Bermingham, who in her Landscape and Ideology suggests that while picturesque theory appealed to the wealthy classes of landowners, "at a deeper level the picturesque endorsed the results of agricultural industrialization" that was undermining the "paternalistic, quasi-feudal system of reciprocal rights and duties" that the picturesque, because of its "emphasis on age" was also promoting.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, August 10, 2007 at 05:08 PM

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