“[F]earful Hard Work”: the possibilities and pitfalls of a Victorian eco-georgic
As a form of literature that engages with the lived realities of farming life, the Georgic offers an insight into the close working relationship that is possible between humans and nature, a relationship that may in turn be described as ecological in its concern with adaptation and sustainability. T...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Alcalá (UAH) |
| Repositorio: | e_Buah Biblioteca Digital Universidad de Alcalá |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ebuah.uah.es:10017/49936 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10017/49936 https://dx.doi.org/10.37536/ecozona.2021.12.2.4208 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Hardy Jefferies Crackanthorpe High farming Sustainable Agricultura eficiente Sostenible Literatura Medio ambiente Literature Environmental science |
| Sumario: | As a form of literature that engages with the lived realities of farming life, the Georgic offers an insight into the close working relationship that is possible between humans and nature, a relationship that may in turn be described as ecological in its concern with adaptation and sustainability. This essay focuses on three examples of a Victorian Georgic literature that highlight both the possibilities and pitfalls of making this association: Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” (1891), which illustrates life at Talbothays Dairy, and later, on a marginal sheep/corn farm on the uplands at Flintcomb-Ash; Richard Jefferies’s “Amaryllis at the Fair” (1887), which depicts a struggling Wiltshire smallholding; and Hubert Crackanthorpe’s short story, “Anthony Garstin’s Courtship” (1896), which focuses on Garstin’s life in a hill farming community. All three narratives were set during a period when innovations in “high farming” effected a shift away from self sufficient and potentially sustainable forms of farming to a modern, mechanized, and systematically exploitative approach to the land; the forms of farming these texts describe are, by contrast, survivals of an earlier period. As these narratives illustrate, more traditional alternatives to high farming nevertheless involved back-breaking and often poorly paid work. Moreover, and while these farms were passed over in the move to high farming, they were still exposed to the vagaries of a now globalised market, and the periodic depressions that were a result: whatever ecological balance these alternative forms of farming embodied, it was threatened by these socio-economic pressures. Nevertheless, these narratives offer an insight into what an eco-Georgic might mean, as a form of writing properly attentive to the challenges of reconciling human and nonhuman needs, and accommodating both within a global, capitalist framework. These works are, furthermore, alert to the difficulty of how best to (re)present those challenges; each marks a shift away from conventional realism and towards new literary modes better able to confront the idealising, pastoral expectations of an urban readership. As such, these works emerge as prototypical forms of a modern, self-reflexive form of (eco-)Georgic mindful of the practical difficulties of sustainable living, and flexible enough to find innovative ways of representing them. |
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