ABSTRACT
A landscape in literature is a view, not only of countryside, but of the moral and social attitudes of writer and reader. In the nineteenth century the upheavals in the intellectual background revealed themselves in attitudes to nature, and in the way nature was portrayed. Jane Austen is a transitional writer. Living an uneventful life in a narrow provincial society, she may seem an unlikely choice as a landscape writer. Jane Austen rejected the excesses of the 'picturesque', but this does not mean that she admired landscape as untouched nature. Pride and Prejudice concerns the misunderstandings and final reconciliation between the vivacious Elizabeth Bennet and reserved, socially poised Fitzwilliam Darcy. The eighteenth-century view of landscape was concerned with the ideal, the generalized, and the timeless. The variety of Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting, a particular image of the countryside emerges. It is of a still moment, usually in summer or autumn, heavy with sensations.
