‘Moving gently through her thoughts, as one might explore a new garden’ (McEwan 150): The Gardens of Atonement

• Main Author: Cécile Beaufils
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2018-12-01
• Series: Études Britanniques Contemporaines
• Subjects: McEwan (Ian); Atonement; nature; pastoral; English garden; gardening
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/5419

The pastoral aspect of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement has been underlined on multiple occasions, as well as its role in Joe Wright’s adaptation. Beyond the observation of a cultural topos, the presence of nature in the novel and its adaptation warrants a closer study, as it is used as a heuristic tool in Briony’s writing project. The emergence of this motif as a frequent backdrop to the plot and as a key element to the characters’ motivations can be construed as a clue as to how to connect the discovery process of the novel’s core and an intricate aesthetic construction rooted in the empiricist tradition, which is gradually challenged. We thus propose to focus this paper on the image of the garden in the novel and its adaptation: as an empiricist device, an ode to a specific visual aesthetics, and a strong claim to connecting nature and writing. Such a model is progressively questioned as the novel unfolds, and new aesthetic models of nature are proposed—in such a context, the place of nature will be examined both as background and as a plot-building device.