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Persuasions #2, 1980                                                                                                                                            Page 19

 

HEDGEROWS IN MANSFIELD PARK

by Mary Millard

Jane Austen, Letter 76 [to Cassandra] p. 298, Chapman.

I am glad to find your enquiries have ended so well. If you could discover whether Northamptonshire is a country of Hedgerows I should be glad again.

Mansfield Park, p. 208. Fanny is sitting in Mrs. Grant’s shrubbery with Mary Crawford:

“‘Every time I come into this shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago, there was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field …’”

Thus, contrary to Chapman (in his note on Letter 76) and many later critics, Jane Austen did use a hedgerow in MP.