The three gardens

Roland Barthes’ description of the three gardens that we read in class illustrates how important the gardens were in Barthes’ past. Barthes describes the gardens as the “tripartition of social desire,” suggesting that each garden symbolizes a plane of existence. The “worldly” garden is the first garden that Barthes describes, “You crossed the first garden to reach the house; this was the “worldly” garden, down which, taking tiny steps, pausing often, you accompanied the ladies of Bayonne to the gate itself.” The second garden described is the contrast of the first. The second garden represents the domestic aspect of life. Barthes’ description of canvas chairs and mosquito netting paints the second garden as a comfortable place as opposed to the “worldly” garden, which seems like a place that a person would enjoy walking through but never be at rest in. The third garden is a representation of the wild and unknown. “The third garden… was undefined, sometimes fallow, sometimes planted with vegetables that needed no tending; you didn’t go there much, and only down the center path.” Barthes’ account of the third garden gives the impression that it was a place to be feared as opposed to the other gardens.
In the final paragraph of Barthes’ account of the three gardens he states “It is anything but surprising that I turn from this Bayonnaise garden to the fictive, utopian spaces of Jules Verne and Fourier.” Barthes is saying that because these three gardens were so perfect in their representations of the worldly, the domestic, and the wild that science fiction stories were his only escape into something new and unknown.