Throughout Mansfield Park, Jane Austen describes characters' relationships to a person, place, or situation as their "prospect." Often the word is used to refer to one's outlook for the future, but it is also used to define one character's relationship to another, and one's physical field of vision.
In designing their country houses and the surrounding landscape, aristocrats kept in mind their "prospect" of the local gentry and all others, whether county residents or guests and visitors to the area. "The first requisite of a seat was therefore an imposing external appearance. ...The house was consequently placed in a prominent position upon a hill. This not only offered a 'prospect' for those inside looking out, but also offered an imposing appearance for those outside looking in" (Stone and Stone 300).
An example of this positioning can be seen if one looks back at Burden's Landing from the road.
This view was painted by Turner among many, and was once called "the finest view in England" (Green 2). It is certainly the most artificial. Acres of forest were cleared to provide the meadow leading to the hill and house. The pond was dug and its island man-made. The island's trees are carefully positioned to portray order: notice their symmetrical placement between the bridge and the house. Weeping willows to the right of the house "bow" toward to the Landing. Any traveler might pass this road. The Burdens hope none will be looking to the left -- they might miss the family's cosmetic power.
"To the sublime in building, greatness of dimension seems requisite" (Burke 76). Edmund Burke wrote this in 1759, long after the Landing was built. But Vanbrugh, designing and building the landing 50 years earlier, certainly seemed to be striving for a similar effect. He intended to intimidate the beholder rather than give rise to delight (Beard 38). The Landing's massive facade and magnificent state rooms might frighten and inspire awe and respect, but rarely will one call this home quaint.
Here is another example of a carefully engineered prospect:
If one can forget how ridiculous a replica of Rome's Pantheon sitting idly next to a lake in England seems, this scene appears quite pleasant. Uvedale Price, who wrote on aesthetic theory late in the 18th century, might call it "picturesque": "I am therefore persuaded, that the two opposite qualities of roughness and of sudden variation, join to that of irregularity, are the most efficient causes of the picturesque" (Ashfield and de Bolla 272). There is a great variety of trees in this scene, flowering bushes of vibrant colors are interspersed, and all this is offset by the presence of the lake and the Pantheon replica. And of course, all this combines to delight the observer unaware of the 'prospect's' conscious manipulation.
Burke writes of the rotunda as a perfect example of the sublime in buildings, and Price, who believes uniformity is the cause of the sublime would probably agree (Burke 75; Ashfield and de Bolla 273). In this scene, however, the building is the cause of much irregularity (a rotunda placed in the woods next to a man-made lake framed by manicured trees is irregular, right). The Pantheon replica contributes to the picturesque quality of this prospect, and to its impressive quality for visitors and observers.
To see another example of a Uvedale Price-ian picturesque prospect, visit The Watergarden.
--Jack Burden II
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