Sexualised landscapes and gentry masculinity in Victorian scenery: An ecostylistic examination of a pornographic novel from the magazine The Pearl

Abstract This article is an ecostylistic examination of Sub-Umbra, one of the six serialised novels in the Victorian pornographic magazine The Pearl (1879–1881). It explores the stylistic strategies utilised to depict landscapes and masculinity – stylistic choices at word- and phrase-level, collocation and compounding, semantic crescendo, humour and point of view – applying an ecostylistic approach. The investigation reveals that the unfolding of the licentious narrative develops from the description of the setting, more precisely the landscape and natural scenery, as feminised and sexualised (Kolodny. 1975. The lay of the land: Metaphor as experience and history in American life and letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). It also demonstrates that the sociological model of gentry masculinity (Connell. 2005. Masculinities. Oxford: Blackwell), characterised by landownership and domination of the physical environment, is the most appropriate to define the main character and narrator interacting with the gendered countryside setting.