To subtly press her point, Austen has set the scene in the wilderness where their serpentine walk provides echoes of Spencer's, "The Faerie Queene," and the "sepentining" pathways of the Wandering Wood. Spencer's "Redcrosse Knight" (the novice knight who symbolises both England and Christian faith) is lost within the dangerous and confusing Wandering Wood. The knight nearly abandons Una, his true love, for Duessa, the seductive witch. So too, Edmund (the would-be Church of England minister) is lost within the moral maze of Sotherton's wilderness.