ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on key questions such as the relationship between gender and nature, and the construction of gender identities in landscape representation. It focuses on the rural landscape and environment and on the rather broad and complex topic of nature. The chapter examines the gendered nature of responses to the rural environment and shows how such responses are critical to the everyday experiences of the countryside in all sorts of important ways. The relationship between landscape and gender, it is argued, influences our working lives, our recreation, our use of space and our consumption practices. The chapter develops the idea of male control over nature in examining the relationship between masculinity and the rural environment. It shows how the views of the rural landscape and of who or what is appropriate within that landscape stem from, in a very fundamental way, the association between gender and nature.
