ABSTRACT
Oppositions, such as outsider/insider, male/female, and culture/nature, play an important role in looking at landscape, both the real physical location and the artistic landscape. I do not regard these pairs as necessarily essentialist (in that there is no place in between) or even as hierarchical (although generally in patriarchal western society, “culture” and “male” have been considered superior terms). I regard these oppositions as the ends of continuums along which authors may decide to place their characters, even move characters, or show characters choosing several options during the course of the narrative. Even the exact physical location may be framed, as with a Claude glass, or the artistic landscape may be reinvented in any number of ways, according to the authors’ desires. To remain an “outsider,” a person views landscape in the culturally prescribed way. I use these oppositions, even though sometimes a character, especially a woman, may feel both within the landscape and yet outside it, a confusing place to be for certain, but nonetheless one suggesting a number of options for her. In other words, she might move along the continuum more freely than if she were confined to either end. This movement along the continuum, remaining on the margin or trying to occupy two places at once, involves the kind of mediation Raymond Williams describes as “a positive process in social reality” (98-99). As we study views of self, linked with views of the world, in this chapter, we will use a combination of Appleton’s prospect/refuge theory and Cosgrove’s ideas about landscape and social formation.
