Beyond the park pale: elite women and the agricultural landscape, 1700-1830

我的图书项目《超越苍白的公园：精英女性和农业景观，1700-1830年》，调查了精英女性在管理大型农业庄园中所扮演的角色，特别关注她们参与庄园管理、围栏、景观和农业改进。正如艾米·埃里克森和其他人最近证明的那样，女性土地所有者以继承人、寡妇的身份控制着大量财产，有时甚至作为妻子。然而，我们几乎不知道他们是如何管理那些位于公园苍白之外的庄园的部分，即位于公园、游乐场、花园和房屋周围的栅栏或银行外的农场、林地、小屋和其他财产。现有的关于精英妇女的文献几乎完全集中在她们在家庭管理、乡村别墅设计和园艺中的作用，而农业改良和圈地的历史在很大程度上忽视了妇女作为土地所有者和改良者的类别。考虑到越来越多的关于贵族、绅士和中产阶级女性参与经济、政治和反奴隶制运动的文献，这一点更加令人惊讶，直到最近，所有这些领域在很大程度上都被视为男性的专属领域。这个项目利用英国各地的档案材料，展示了拥有土地的女性积极参与了一系列相关实践--包括议会围栏、土地合理化、农业试验和重大美化项目--在1700年后的一个半世纪里，这些活动共同重塑了农村景观。因此，例如，阿什比圣莱杰斯(北安普敦郡)的简·阿什利(Jane Ashley)顽强地为必要的《议会法案》游说，并仔细计算了她预计从圈地中获得的利润，而她的邻居威肯的伊丽莎白·普鲁斯(Elizabeth Prowse)则在她最近封闭的庄园里试验新的农业机械和新作物。在AHRC奖学金下对苏格兰、威尔士和爱尔兰进行的进一步研究将调查英格兰以外地区女性的土地所有权和财产管理，提供比较材料，以评估精英女性对整个英国景观的贡献。在揭示这些女性隐藏的历史时，这本书对最近对女性生活和空间的思考提出了细致入微的批评。它认为，在18世纪，精英女性实际上在塑造农业景观方面发挥了关键作用，而不是普遍退休进入家庭生活。同时，它调查了性别角色和身份如何影响拥有土地的妇女可获得的机会。通过这样做，这本书探讨了有关有财产的妇女在格鲁吉亚社会中的角色的重要问题，并有助于更广泛的关于妇女在英国环境、社会和经济史上的地位的文化辩论。在进行新的研究和出版专著的同时，AHRC奖学金将包括一个旨在最大化我的研究的公共价值的影响活动计划。这将包括为各种通讯和杂志撰写短文，并通过专门的项目网站向公众开放获取材料。我还致力于开发与国家信托基金和英国遗产有关的更多知识交流机会，如佳能阿什比(北安普敦郡)和鲁斯特公园(贝德福德郡)，这两个地方以前都是我在该项目中研究过的拥有土地的女性拥有的。

My book project, 'Beyond the Park Pale: elite women and the agricultural landscape, 1700-1830', investigates the role played by elite women in managing large agricultural estates, paying particular attention to their involvement in estate management, enclosure, landscaping and agricultural improvement. As Amy Erickson and others have recently demonstrated, female landowners controlled significant amounts of property as heiresses, widows and even occasionally as wives. Yet we know next to nothing about how they managed those parts of their estates which lay beyond the park pale; that is, the farms, woodlands, cottages and other property which lay outside the fence or bank encircling the park, pleasure grounds, gardens and house. The existing literature on elite women focuses almost exclusively on their role in household management, country house design and gardening, while histories of agricultural improvement and enclosure have largely ignored women as a category of landowners and improvers. This is all the more surprising, given the growing body of literature on aristocratic, gentle and middle class women's participation in the economy, politics and the anti-slavery movement, all arenas until recently seen largely as the preserve of men.Drawing on archival materials from across Britain, this project demonstrates that landowning women were actively involved in a bundle of related practices - including parliamentary enclosure, estate rationalisation, agricultural experimentation and major landscaping projects - which together remade the rural landscape in the century and a half after 1700. Thus, for example, Jane Ashley of Ashby St Ledgers (Northamptonshire) doggedly lobbied for the necessary Parliamentary Act and carefully calculated the profits she expected to make from enclosure, while her near-neighbour Elizabeth Prowse of Wicken experimented with new agricultural machinery and new crops on her recently enclosed estate. Further research on Scotland, Wales and Ireland - conducted under the AHRC fellowship - will investigate women's landownership and estate management outside England, providing comparative material with which to assess elite women's contribution to the making of the British landscape as a whole. In revealing these women's hidden histories, the book offers a carefully nuanced critique of recent thinking on women's lives and spaces. It argues that rather than universally retiring into domesticity in the eighteenth century, elite women actually played a key part in shaping agricultural landscapes. At the same time, it investigates how gender roles and identities nevertheless impacted upon the opportunities available to landowning women. In doing so, the book explores important questions about propertied women's role in Georgian society, as well as contributes to wider cultural debates about women's place in the environmental, social and economic history of Britain.At the same time as conducting the new research and producing the monograph, the AHRC fellowship will include a programme of impact activities designed to maximise the public value of my research. This will include writing short articles for various newsletters and magazines, and making open-access materials available to the general public through the dedicated project website. I am also committed to developing additional knowledge exchange opportunities in relation to National Trust and English Heritage properties like Canons Ashby (Northamptonshire) and Wrest Park (Bedfordshire), both previously owned by landowning women I have researched on the project.