48 Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840–1920
do so (she confi des to Robert ‘[t]hey will singe their wings, Mr. Maurice. Is it the
lamps fault?’).^33 Vincent, for example, is irresistibly attracted to Cynthia at the
start of the novel, but leaves Tregurda when she spurns his marriage proposal.^34
When Robert fi rst meets the earthly Cynthia that evening he deduces that
‘this was not the high, unattainable moon, fulfi lled of her destiny, cold and
glassy, but the delicate slim crescent, hinting a future, yet hesitating to alight on
the horizon hills, with the pink and gold of sunset about her’.^35 Robert talks to
Cynthia of the moon while both are in full knowledge of the association being
made – ‘here I fi nd she rules’, he admits.^36 Th e gendering of the landscape and of
Cynthia is neatly aligned through the simultaneity of their powerful femininity.
Th is creates a space for Robert to discuss her body (the ‘slim crescent’) and his
and other men’s attraction to her through an albeit thinly veiled disguise, yet
one which is reliant on a shared cultural understanding of the feminization of
landscape and the traditional characteristics of femininity.
Th e way in which the novel connects Cynthia with the moon suggests,
therefore, that the narrative reinscribes rather than challenges common repre-
sentations of gender. However, this position is complicated through Cynthia’s
own understanding of and artistic recreation of nature. Given that the artist
colony has set up temporary home in Tregurda for the purpose of painting it is
perhaps surprising that they are almost exclusively to be found working behind
the closed doors of their studios – a ‘nest of fi sh cellars’ converted for the pur-
pose.^37 Cynthia, however, is ‘not oft en in her studio’ and is rather seen to paint
out-of-doors, capturing what she sees before her.^38 Th e more subversive reading
of relationship to nature is suggested even by her breaking the boundaries of the
studio in order to paint.
Flowers hold particular importance for Cynthia, a characteristic which, at
fi rst, seems to further inscribe her connection to nature though traditional gen-
der codes. While ‘caressing’ a rose in Mrs Wilmington’s garden she tells Robert:
I love fl owers ... they are living creatures with no touch of the animal about them.
Th at makes their charm, I think. Th eir life and beauty bring them within the range of
our sympathy, and they never do anything to distress one.^39Unsurprisingly then, fl owers are the focus of her artistic endeavour. ‘Cynthia
paints fl owers’, Jack informs Robert when he has just arrived in Tregurda, ‘one
isn’t sure that she has a heart – she doesn’t give a glimpse of it. But a soul she has,
and she puts it into her fl owers. Th ey live, sir!’^40
Mrs Wilmington also paints fl owers but these are ‘arranged in a pretty
bouquet in a Japanese vase on a polished table, with a Liberty cretonne for back-
ground’.^41 She likes to be in control of nature, just as she controls the movements
and social interactions of the group, and this is refl ected in the cut and arranged
fl owers she paints and her intensely manicured garden with regimented bor-