Landscape and gender in the novels of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy

Examining representations of physical and metaphorical landscape in Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, Henson explores the way gender attitudes are expressed, both in descriptions of physical and metaphorical landscape and in the idea of nature, through the gendered voices of the narrators. Henson looks at the influence of changing aesthetic theory, arguing that factors such as scientific enquiry and industrialization changed the representation of landscape and of Englishness in these 'realist' novels.