'Wilderness' was a term used by landscape developers to describe a wooded area, often set between the formal area around the house and the pastures beyond the ha-ha. At Sotherton, it is described as "a planted wood of about two acres ... was darkness and shade, and natural beauty, compared with the bowling-green and the terrace." The alternative meaning of wilderness as a wild inhospitable place would have been known to Austen's readers from the Biblical account of the testing of the Israelites through the wilderness. John chapter 3 links this story ("as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness ...") with redemption through Jesus.