Episode 83: The Thing About the Ha-Ha

There's a bit of a brouhaha brewing over at the Sotherton ha-ha, and we've got front row, garden bench seats. Join us as we walk through the various comings and goings of the world's most awkward group date.

Selected Sources:

• Brodey, Inger Sigrun. “Papas and Ha-Has: Rebellion, Authority, and Landscaping in Mansfield Park.” Persuasions 17 (1995). https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions/no17/brodey/.

• Heydt-Stevenson, Jill. “‘Slipping into the Ha-Ha’: Bawdy Humor and Body Politics in Jane Austen’s Novels.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 55, no. 3 (2000): 309–39. https://doi.org/10.2307/2903126.

• Repton, Humphry. The Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the Late H. Repton, Being His Entire Works on These Subjects, with ... Introduction, ... Analysis, Biographical Notice, Notes and Index by J. C. Loudon, 1840.

• Russell, Tilden A. “On ‘Looking over a Ha-Ha.’” The Musical Quarterly 71, no. 1 (1985): 27–37.

• Taylor, Patrick. “Ha-Ha.” In The Oxford Companion to the Garden. Oxford University Press, 2006. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198662556.001.0001/acref-9780198662556-e-0714.

• Toner, Anne. “Jane Austen, Frances Sheridan, and the Ha-Ha: A New Affiliation for Mansfield Park,” no. 32 (n.d.).

The ha-ha at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire is an excellent example of a gated and breached ha-ha that Maria, Julia, and Crawford would have climbed over.

Illustration from Humphrey Repton's book demonstrating a ha-ha or "sunk fence with posts supporting a chain, separating the pleasure-ground from the park."