Gender and the Garden in Early Modern English Literature

An investigation into early modern gardens, gender and writing, this study considers not only published literary representations of gardens, but also actual garden landscapes and unpublished evidence of everyday gardening practice. Jennifer Munroe here analyzes how writers appropriated the developing gendered tension in gardening that stemmed from a shift from the garden as a means of feeding a family, to the garden as an aesthetic object imbued with status.

Jennifer Munroe is Assistant Professor of English and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA.