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

我的书项目，“超越公园的Pale：精英女性和农业景观，1700-1830”，调查了精英女性在管理大型农业庄园中所扮演的角色，特别关注她们在庄园管理、圈地、景观美化和农业改善方面的参与。正如艾米·埃里克森（Amy Erickson）和其他人最近所证明的那样，女性土地所有者作为继承人、寡妇，甚至偶尔作为妻子，控制着大量财产。然而，对于他们如何管理庄园外的那部分土地，我们却几乎一无所知；也就是说，位于公园、游乐场、花园和房屋周围的围栏或河岸之外的农场、林地、小屋和其他财产。关于精英妇女的现有文献几乎完全集中于她们在家庭管理、乡村住宅设计和园艺方面的作用，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学作品，这就更令人惊讶了，直到最近，这些领域还基本上被认为是男性的领地。该项目利用了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的实践——包括议会圈地、财产合理化、农业实验和主要的景观美化项目——这些活动共同重塑了1700年后一个半世纪的乡村景观。因此，例如，北安普敦郡阿什比圣莱杰斯的简·阿什利顽强地游说议会通过必要的法案，并仔细计算她期望从圈地中获得的利润，而她的邻居威肯的伊丽莎白·普劳斯在她最近圈地的庄园里试验了新的农业机械和新作物。在人权委员会奖学金下对苏格兰、威尔士和爱尔兰进行的进一步研究将调查妇女在英格兰以外的土地所有权和财产管理情况，为评估精英妇女对整个英国景观的贡献提供比较材料。在揭示这些女性隐藏的历史时，这本书对最近关于女性生活和空间的思考进行了细致入微的批判。它认为，在18世纪，精英女性并没有普遍退居家庭生活，而是在塑造农业景观方面发挥了关键作用。同时，它还调查了性别角色和身份如何影响到拥有土地的妇女所能获得的机会。在这样做的过程中，这本书探讨了有关有产妇女在格鲁吉亚社会中的作用的重要问题，并为有关妇女在英国环境、社会和经济历史中的地位的更广泛的文化辩论做出了贡献。在进行新研究和撰写专著的同时，AHRC奖学金将包括一个影响活动计划，旨在最大限度地提高我的研究的公共价值。这将包括为各种通讯和杂志撰写短篇文章，并通过专门的项目网站向公众提供开放获取的材料。我还致力于开发与国家信托和英国遗产相关的额外知识交流机会，如cannon Ashby（北安普顿郡）和wrrest Park（贝德福德郡），这两个地方以前都是由拥有土地的女性所有，我在这个项目中进行了研究。

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.