T.C.

ERC YES ÜN VERS TES

SOSYAL B L MLER ENST TÜSÜ
NG L Z D L VE EDEB YATI ANAB L M DALI
NG L Z D L VE EDEB YATI B L M DALI

MARGARET ATWOOD’UN THE HANDMAID’S TALE

(DAMIZLIK KIZIN ÖYKÜSÜ) VE STARHAWK’IN THE FIFTH
SACRED THING (BE NC KUTSAL EY) S ML ESERLER NE
EKOFEM N ST B R YAKLA IM

Hazırlayan
Ne e ENEL

Danı man
Yrd. Doç. Dr. . Banu AKÇE ME

Yüksek Lisans Tezi

Haziran 2015
KAYSER
 2

T.C.
ERC YES ÜN VERS TES
SOSYAL B L MLER ENST TÜSÜ
NG L Z D L VE EDEB YATI ANAB L M DALI
NG L Z D L VE EDEB YATI B L M DALI

MARGARET ATWOOD’UN THE HANDMAID’S TALE

(DAMIZLIK KIZIN ÖYKÜSÜ) VE STARHAWK’IN THE FIFTH
SACRED THING (BE NC KUTSAL EY) S ML ESERLER NE
EKOFEM N ST B R YAKLA IM

Hazırlayan
Ne e ENEL

Danı man
Yrd. Doç. Dr. . Banu AKÇE ME

Yüksek Lisans Tezi

Haziran 2015
KAYSER
 3

ERC YES UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

AN ECOFEMINIST READING ON MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE

HANDMAID’S TALE AND STARHAWK’S THE FIFTH SACRED
THING
(Master’s Thesis)

by
Ne e ENEL

Supervisor
Yrd. Doç. Dr. fakat Banu AKÇE ME

June 2015
KAYSER
 i

B L MSEL ET E UYGUNLUK

Bu çalı madaki tüm bilgilerin, akademik ve etik kurallara uygun bir ekilde elde
edildi ini beyan ederim. Aynı zamanda bu kural ve davranı ların gerekti i gibi, bu
çalı manın özünde olmayan tüm materyal ve sonuçları tam olarak aktardı ımı ve
referans gösterdi imi bildiririm.

Ne e ENEL
 ii

YÖNERGEYE UYGUNLUK SAYFASI

“Margaret Atwood’un The Handmaid’s Tale (Damızlık Kızın Öyküsü) ve Starhawk’ın

The Fifth Sacred Thing (Be inci Kutsal ey) simli Eserlerine Ekofeminist bir
Yakla ım” adlı Yüksek Lisans tezi, Erciyes Üniversitesi Lisansüstü Tez Önerisi ve
Tez Yazma Yönergesi’ne Uygun olarak hazırlanmı tır.

Tezi Hazırlayan Danı man

Ne e ENEL Yrd. Doç. Dr. . Banu AKÇE ME

ngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı ABD Ba kanı

Doç. Dr. Melih Karakuzu
 iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest gratitude and sincere thanks to my advisor, Assist.
Prof. Dr. Banu Akçe me for her endless patience, permanent support, genuine
kindness and valuable criticism that guided me not only at the every stage of this
thesis but also in my hardest times. Throughout the process of writing this thesis and
my education, she has been the source of inspiration and the unit of support for my
academic life. Without her continuous assistance and constructive supervision, I would
never have started and finished this thesis. It is sure that one cannot wish for a more
helpful advisor.

I also would like to express my sincere gratitude to each of my valuable jury members,
Prof. Dr. Behzad Ghaderi Sohi, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cristina Mirela Nicolaescu and
Assist. Prof. Dr. Mansoor Abbasi for their detailed comments and insightful
suggestions. Especially, I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Behzad Ghaderi Sohi for sharing his
invaluable intellectual knowledge and experiences with me throughout my MA study.
I would also like to thank the academic staff of the Department of English Language
and Literature at Erciyes University for their support and contribution to my academic
studies. In addition, I owe special thanks and gratitude to my colleague, Dr. Hülya
Taflı Düzgün, whose friendly support and academic advice, kept me motivated and
positive all the times.

Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to TÜB TAK (The Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey) for the financial support they provided
during my MA education and also for their contribution to the academic and scientific
development of Turkey through funding and supporting young researchers for further
scientific research.

I am yet indebted to my parents and my whole family, who have always been
supportive of me throughout my all my ups and downs with the love, patience and
faith they have shown from the initial to the final stage of this thesis. Without them
this thesis would not have been possible. Finally, I would like to dedicate this thesis to
my dear niece, Bu lem Naz, who has recently come into the world.
 v

MARGARET ATWOOD’UN THE HANDMAID’S TALE (DAMIZLIK KIZIN

ÖYKÜSÜ) VE STARHAWK’IN THE FIFTH SACRED THING (BE NC
KUTSAL EY) S ML ESERLER NE ECOFEM N ST B R YAKLA IM
Ne e ENEL
Erciyes Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü
ngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Anabilim Dalı
Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Haziran 2015
Danı man: Yrd. Doç. Dr. . Banu AKÇE ME
ÖZET
Bu tez, Margaret Atwood’un The Handmaid’s Tale (Damızlık Kızın Öyküsü) adlı eseri
ile Starhawk’ın The Fifth Sacred Thing (Be inci Kutsal ey) isimli eserini, özellikle
her iki gelecek-dünyasında resmedilen kadın ve do a arasındaki ba lantıları
inceleyerek, ekofeminist bir bakı açısıyla ele almaktadır. Esasen, ekofeminizm
kadının ezilmesi ve do anın baskı altında tutulmasının erkek-egemen bir zihniyet
tarafından uygulandı ını ve kadın ile do a sömürgesinin birbiriyle ba lantılı konular
oldu unu ileri süren ekoloji merkezli radikal bir edebiyat kuramı, politik bir hareket ve
ekoele tirinin alt dalıdır. Bu nedenle, bu radikal ekolojik ele tiri birbiriyle ilintili
baskıların incelemesini gerektirir. Ekofeminizme göre ataerkil dü ünce yapısı,
insan/do a, erkek/kadın, do a/kültür gibi ikincil yapılardan beslenen otoriter güç
yapılarını kullanarak gücünü ve kontrolünü devam ettirir. Bu sebeple, ekofeministler
var olan bütün yapıla mı düalizmleri yıkmaya çalı arak, bütün cinsiyetler için e itlik
ve özgürlü ün hüküm sürdü ü ekoloji bilincine sahip toplumların propagandasını
yaparlar. Bu çalı ma, Margaret Atwood’un The Handmaid’s Tale adlı eseri ile
Starhawk’ın The Fifth Sacred Thing adlı eserinde geçerli olan belirli ekofeminist
temaları ele alır. Söz konusu eserler cinsiyet, do a, kadınlık, erkeklik, cinsellik, din ve
bilim arasındaki ba lantıların izini sürerler. Atwood’un distopyası modern erke in
do aya ve kadına kar ı baskıcı tavrından kaynaklanan yanlı tutumunun yansıtıldı ı
felaketli bir sosyal düzeni sunarken, öte yandan Starhawk’ın ekotopyası (ekolojik
ütopya) insan ve insan olmayan bütün türlerin ve cinsiyetlerin e itlik, barı ve uyum
içerisinde ya adı ı bir ütopyayı önerir. Dolayısıyla, her iki roman da kadın ve do a
konularına dikkat çekerek, e er toplum kadına ve do aya kar ı olan ataerkil,
hiyerar ik ve en önemlisi erkek-merkeziyetçi tutumunu de i tirmezse, ekolojik kriz ve
cinsiyet ayrımı sonsuza kadar devam edecektir diyerek ekofeminist bir mesaj verirler.
Anahtar Kelimeler: ekoele tiri, ekofeminizm, kadın, do a, ekoloji, cinsiyet.
 vi

AN ECOFEMINIST READING ON MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE

HANDMAID’S TALE AND STARHAWK’S THE FIFTH SACRED THING
Ne e ENEL
Erciyes University, Institute of Social Sciences
The Department of English language and Literature
M.A. Thesis, June 2015
Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. . Banu AKÇE ME
ABSTRACT

This thesis analyzes Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Starhawk’s The
Fifth Sacred Thing from ecofeminist viewpoints by specifically examining the
interconnections between women and nature in both future-societies. Essentially,
ecofeminism is a radical literary theory and a political movement based on ecology
and a sub-branch of ecocriticism, which proclaims that the subjugation of the females
and the exploitation of nature are all interrelated stratums conducted by a prevailing
masculine mindset; thus, this radical ecological criticism necessitates the analyses of
these interconnected oppressions. According to the ecofeminist understanding, the
patriarchy exerts and maintains its power and domination by making use of
authoritative power structures that are based on dualisms like human/nature,
men/women, nature/culture. Thus, ecofeminists attempt to destroy all the established
dualities and they disseminate ecologically informed societies where equality and
liberation are maintained for all genders. This study explores the specific ecofeminist
themes prevalent within Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Starhawk’s
The Fifth Sacred Thing. These novels trace the connections between gender, nature,
femininity, masculinity, sexuality, religion and science. While the dystopic fiction of
Atwood offers a catastrophic social order that reflects the fallacy of the modern man
regarding his oppressive attitude towards nature and women, Starhawk’s ecotopia, on
the other hand, proposes an ecotopia where all species, genders, the human and non-
human communities live in equality, peace and harmony. Both fictions, thus, focus on
the issues of women and nature and signal an ecofeminist message by reflecting that if
the society does not change its patriarchal, hierarchal and mostly androcentric
approach towards women and nature, the environmental crisis and gender-based
discrimination will be sustained forever.
Key Words: ecocriticism, ecofeminism, women, nature, ecology, gender.
 vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

AN ECOFEMINIST READING ON MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE

HANDMAID’S TALE AND STARHAWK’S THE FIFTH SACRED THING
B L MSEL ET E UYGUNLUK................................................................................i

YÖNERGEYE UYGUNLUK SAYFASI ....................................................................ii

ONAY .......................................................................................................................iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................iv

ÖZET .........................................................................................................................v

ABSTRACT ..............................................................................................................vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS..........................................................................................vii

INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................1

CHAPTER 1: CRITICAL THEORIES OF ECOCRITICISM AND ECOFEMINISM.6

1.1 Ecocriticism ..........................................................................................................6

1.2. Ecofeminism ......................................................................................................40

1.3. Central Concepts in Ecofeminism......................................................................61

1.3.1. Nature and Women..........................................................................................62

1.3.2 Religion ...........................................................................................................70

1.3.3. Science............................................................................................................79

CHAPTER 2: ECOFEMINIST ANALYSES OF MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE

HANDMAID’S TALE ................................................................................................84

2.1. Gender Roles .....................................................................................................87

2.2. Women and Nature ............................................................................................99

CHAPTER 3: ECOFEMINIST ANALYSES OF STARHAWK’S THE FIFTH
SACRED THING .................................................................................................... 114

3.1. Gender Roles ................................................................................................... 119

3.2. Women and Nature .......................................................................................... 134

CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 154

 viii

BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................... 162

ÖZ GEÇM ........................................................................................................... 174

CURRICULUM VITAE ......................................................................................... 175

 1

INTRODUCTION

This study aims to closely study the feminist fictions of a dystopia, Margaret
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), and a utopia, Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred
Thing (1993). Questioning the masculine attitude towards nature and women, the
study especially attempts to find out how the interaction between these two identities
is represented and why such a depiction of the interaction is significant. To this end,
belonging to the feminist writings of the postmodern age, the dystopic and the utopic
novels will be analysed to reveal the patriarchal approach to the subservient identities
of women and nature. This thesis sets out with the purpose to explore the interaction
between women and nature against men and culture, by manifesting that while the
hierarchal patriarchal power structures make use of religious belief systems, scientific
and technological practises to dominate the two subservient identities, women and
nature assemble to attain liberation from the male-domination by making use of non-
material spirituality and emotions. To achieve this aim, within the framework of
ecofeminist and environmental ethics, an ecofeminist analysis is applied to the
feminist utopia dominated by an eco-conscious regime of matriarchy and the dystopia
dominated by a totalitarian regime of patriarchy. Thus, this study mainly focuses on
the attitude of men towards both women and nature while it searches for the relation
between women and nature.

These two novels are selected to be studied since written in the same period of the late
20th century when both environmental and feminist movements hit the peak, both
novels reveal close ecological and feminist tendencies and concerns of their time.
These fictions depict contrasting utopic and dystopic societies with different
approaches towards nature and women and therefore, they make an ecofeminist
reading possible.
 2

This study mainly concerns nature and women, the identities that are historically cast
to be subservient under the patriarchal domination. Especially, thanks to the awareness
and concerns about environmental issues of the late 20th century, the history and a
possible future of the world has started to be interpreted ecologically. The recent
environmental degradation, ecological crisis, the extinction of animals and the gradual
deterioration of the earth make people question the human intervention to the non-
human world. With the impacts of developing mechanization, industrialisation,
scientific revolution and colonization starting in the 17th century, the West has majorly
contributed to the ecological crisis today, which makes them fear from a future
ecological catastrophe. In the late 20th century, when the environment has much
degraded and the concerns about the well-being of the non-human world intensified,
the ecological movement was on the rise just like the feminist movement that has
started with the first wave feminism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and hit the
peak with the second wave feminism of 1960s. Therein, the critics have signalled that
it is the same male-dominated understanding that oppressed and exploited women and
nature, which gave rise to the studies of ecofeminism. Thus, in this study in order to be
able to make an ecofeminist reading we should first refer to an ecocritical approach
since ecofeminism is essentially a sub-branch of ecocriticism.

As an interdisciplinary literary criticism, ecocriticism questions and analyses the texts

in the sense of ecological themes by considering the relation between man and
environment; culture and nature. The ecocritical studies are interested in the relation
men established with nature since the early times. Nature, which has had several
positive and negative connotations throughout the history, has been exploited for
centuries especially since the Scientific Revolution when the attitude of men towards
nature has totally shifted. With the promises of progress and discourses of culture, the
exploitation and domination of nature by the humankind is further legitimized. Making
use of the Christian Bible which posits nature as a servant for the man and the
discourse of the Scientific Revolution, which views nature as a non-living object, and
the capitalist system, which furthers the exploitation of the natural resources,
humankind has denied the interconnections with and dependency on nature and has
been dominating it. The perception of anthropocentrism and placing human beings at
the center of the universe have paved way for Cartesian dualism that set people,
 3

culture, civilization and progress against nature, the uncivilized, and the primitive. The
dualistic perception much authorized the exploitation and oppression of nature.

Such an anthropocentric mind-set has resulted in great environmental degradation for

over several centuries. Nevertheless, the rising environmental concerns and
movements starting after the 1970s help people to question the environmental
degradation and future ecological disasters. The same environmental concern has also
been expressed within the literary and academic world, which evenly resulted in the
establishment of ecocriticism. Ecocritics mainly study, analyse and question the
relation between the humankind and the non-human world within the texts ranging
from the canonical works and nature writings. To this end, in this study, basing on the
representations of nature in both novels and the relations both men and women
develop with nature, a basic nature-concerned ecocritical reading will be rendered.

As a sub-branch of ecocriticism, ecofeminism is an interdisciplinary literary criticism

that bridges the gap between ecological criticism and feminism. Also referred as
ecological feminism, ecofeminism brings together environmental and feminist
movements and associates the exploitation and subjugation of women with the
exploitation and oppression of nature by stressing that both unjust repressions are
carried out by a patriarchal culture based on subjugation, power and control.
Ecofeminism challenges the mechanistic view of patriarchy, which perceives nature as
the inanimate object and women as the inferior identity, and thus, manipulates and
exploits both. As members of this radical ecological movement, most ecofeminists call
people for action in order to develop a loving and caring relationship with nature.
Rejecting the anthropocentric insight that there are hierarchal superiorities of human
beings over nature, ecofeminists maintain that both human and non-human worlds are
interdependent; each life is unique and deserves respect regardless of its relation to the
humankind. Ecofeminism maintains that men disregard and oppress women and nature
since it is the same masculine insight that describes women’s and nature’s value in
relation to themselves. In contrast to this androcentric patriarchal attitude, ecofeminists
tend to develop close attachment to the non-human world and value it for its intrinsic
significance rather than its use for the humankind. Thus, ecofeminism, rises against all
kinds of dominations operated by the male-dominated mind-set including the
 4

oppression of the other genders, species, races, colors, classes, nationalities etc. Yet, as
the most dominant version of oppression is applied against nature and women,
ecofeminists mainly focus on the both.

The ecofeminist theory gains momentum especially in the 1990s with the contribution
of the sociology and philosophy oriented ecofeminists; yet, the environmental
movements of the 1970s underlie the base of ecofeminism. Thanks to the ecology-
conscious feminist writers who have adopted an ecofeminist theory, a new body of
literature that reflects the concerns regarding women and ecology has appeared. The
novels of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred
Thing are two important examples for this rising nature-and-women-oriented
literature.

Just like the way Western patriarchal power structures devalue nature and label it as
the other to the humankind, the same masculine attitude perceives women as
subservient and inferior identities who exist to serve men. The oppressive and dualistic
masculine understanding is implemented both on the perception of women and nature
in the point of binary oppositions and dualities. While the feminine side includes
women, nature, spirituality, the material and the particular, the masculine side contains
men, culture, the nonmaterial and the abstract. Through this dualistic polarization, “the
destruction of the environment and the oppression of women are easy to do because
nature and women have been objectified as others”, as McAndrew asserts. (1996, p.
369).

Similar to the grand discipline of feminism, which harbours many varying feminisms
inside, the general ecofeminist theory also contains several ecofeminisms, each of
which holds different insights regarding the relation between women and nature and
ecology. While some ecofeminists assert that liberation for both women and nature is
possible only when they merge and assemble together against any patriarchal threat,
some other ecofeminists support the idea of partnership, claiming that the only
liberation is through changing the hierarchal and structured masculine mind-set that
tends to oppress women and nature so that the equality for all the humankind, the
members of the non-human world and for all the genders can be sustained on earth.
 5

Both The Handmaid’s Tale and The Fifth Sacred Thing reveal some of these varying
ecofeminist tendencies within the contexts of a feminist dystopia and utopia.

This graduate thesis consists of three main chapters. Chapter I constitutes the
theoretical discussions of both ecocriticism and ecofeminism. This chapter firstly
provides the theoretical framework of ecocriticism, which includes the theories and
approaches about environmental problems, the relationship between men and nature
through specific references to some significant ecocritics. In this chapter, the
discussion of the environmental ethics also provides the philosophical background of
ecocritical theory. This chapter also offers the historical development of ecofeminism
and it traces the theoretical framework of ecofeminism while it discusses the
ecofeminist theories and approaches about the masculine attitude towards women and
nature, and the relation between the two suppressed identities with references to
leading ecofeminists like Ynestra King, Val Plumwood and Karen Warren. The
ecofeminist ethics provide the philosophical background for ecofeminism. The chapter
also contains a survey of the major ecofeminist concepts, including nature, women,
religion and science because all these ecofeminist concepts play significant roles in
both fictions’ construction of the ecofeminist utopia and dystopia. Chapter II is
concerned about the ecofeminist analysis of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
while Chapter III presents the ecofeminist reading of Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred
Thing. The chapters about ecofeminist examination of the novels are organized in
thematic titles in order to trace thematic ecofeminist influences such as the
construction of gender roles and how this construction shapes the representations of
the relationship between women and nature within the fictions. Each analytic chapter
first delivers a brief introduction to the author and the novel in question. Finally, this
study ends with a conclusion in which general comments on the result of ecofeminist
analyses by comparing and contrasting the positions of women and nature in The
Handmaid’s Tale and The Fifth Sacred Thing. The analyses show that both Atwood
and Starhawk write their ecofeminist utopia and dystopia with a women-and-nature-
centered consciousness to show the reader the fallacy of their time, resulting from the
prevailing patriarchal insight and thus, raise the ecological and female-oriented
awareness.
 6

CHAPTER 1

CRITICAL THEORIES OF ECOCRITICISM AND ECOFEMINISM

1.1 Ecocriticism

Eco- is derived from the Greek word oikos and ciritic from kritis and in conjunctional
usage, these words would literally mean “house judge” (Howarth, 1996, p. 69). In the
wording of Howarth, “a long-winded gloss on ecocritic might run as follows: a person
who judges the merits and faults of writings that depict the effects of culture upon
nature, with a view toward celebrating nature, berating its despoilers, and reversing
their harm through political action” (p. 69). So, within the lexical and literal practice
of the term, oikos is analogous to nature, a place called as “our widest home” and the
kritos is the agent who “wants the house kept in good order, no boots or dishes strewn
about to ruin the original décor” (p. 69). According to Howarth, the term ecocriticism
implies more ecological literacy1, proclaiming that his definition of ecocriticism
necessitates a more ecological knowledge. In his definition, he not only focuses on the
relation between nature and culture but he also assigns the critic with such grand tasks
as judging the works from an environmentally conscious perspective, celebrating
nature, rebuking the despoilers of ecology, and using political action to invert their
detriments.

Apart from defining it as the ‘green awareness in literature’, Cheryll Glotfelty in her
Ecocriticism Reader compilation, which is referred as one of the leading pillars of
ecocritical theory, basically defines ecocriticism as “the study of the relationship
between literature and the physical environment” and she also refers to it as “green

1
Ecological Literacy, or more commonly eco-literacy is a term coined in 1990s to integrate education
with the welfare of Earth and all related ecosystems. It is the knowledge and understanding of the
independent natural and human systems, which also includes the consideration of the results of human
actions and interactions within the context of nature (Orr, 2005, p. ix)
 7

awareness” (1996, p. xvii). Garrard extends Glotfelty’s definition of ecocriticism and

defines it as “the study of the relationship of the human and the non-human throughout
human cultural history and entailing critical analysis of the term ‘human’ itself” (2004,
p. 4).

Through her definition of ecocriticism, Glotfelty draws examples from other literary
theories and she asserts that just like the way feminist literary criticism focuses on the
basis of literature and language by a gender-conscious perspective, and just like the
way Marxist literary criticism analyzes the works of literature with a critical awareness
on various types of production and economic class divisions, ecocriticism applies “an
earth-centered approach to literary studies” (1996, p. xvii). Similarly, Garrard defines
ecocriticism as “an avowedly political mode of analysis”, which bonds its cultural
investigation openly to ‘green’ moral and political agenda” and therefore, ecocriticism
is attentively related to environmentally-conscious improvements in philosophy and
political theory (2004, p. 3).

Although early postmodern literary studies have changed according to the demands
and problems of the modern-day society, there was “the absence of any sign of an
environmental perspective in contemporary literary studies” (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xv).
Just like the way the social and political problems of race, gender and class
distinctions bothered the society of the late twentieth century, the same problems
accordingly circulated in the literary studies to raise awareness within academics.
Consequently, these social problems respectively gained their critical discourse.
During the course of last thirty years, the society and particularly the profession of
academics have confronted three crises: “civil rights, women’s liberation and
environmental degradation” (Love, 1996, p. 226). These problems were all within the
attention of social concern to be discussed as critical world issues. However, while
postmodern age has been marked as the era of global environmental crisis and many
other ecological problems that have been the concern of the newspaper headlines,
these issues were not circulated in the literary grounds (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xvi).
“While related humanities disciplines like history, philosophy, law, sociology, and
religion have been ‘greening’ since the 1970s, literary studies have apparently
remained untinted by environmental concerns” (1996, p. xvi).
 8

All the same, although there was not a collective step taken together as the school of
green literary studies, since the seventies individual literary and scholarly steps have
been taken for the sake of ecologically oriented criticism and theory. Yet, these
individuals did not prefer to or did not have the chance to be organized as an
identifiable literary group. Therefore, “each critic was inventing an environmental
approach to literature in isolation” in the metaphorical language of Glotfelty, “Each
was a single voice howling in the wilderness” (1996, p. xvii). Finally, the collaborative
scholarly action started to be taken in the mid-eighties, when environmental studies as
a separate field was planted and in the following decade it became a systematic critical
academic field in literature (p. xvii). The nineties was the decade for ecocriticism to
gradually start to shine when nature writing or environmental literature was the focus
of several literary conferences. It was also in the nineties that such grand scholarly
steps for ecocriticism were taken when Association for the Study of Literature and
Environment (ASLE) and a new journal titled as ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in
Literature and Environment were also founded in order “to promote the exchange of
ideas and information pertaining to literature that considers the relationship between
human beings and the natural world” and “to encourage new nature writing traditional
and innovative scholarly approaches to environmental literature, and interdisciplinary
environmental research” (p. xviii). Ecological Literary study or in other words,
ecocriticism, the origin of which predates to more than twenty years back, ultimately
emerged as an identifiable critical school only in 1993, with the contribution of pre-
mentioned academic efforts.

Though how the term ‘ecocriticism’ was coined is not known exactly, there are several
possible attempts in-dispute to explain the appearance of the name of this literary
study. As Glotfelty puts it forward, Joseph W. Meeker, introduces the term ‘literary
ecology’, referring “the study of biological themes and relationships which appear in
literary works” (Glotfelty, 1996, p. XIX). As a broad definition of ecology and the
mission of ecologists Meeker asserts:
Ecology is to a large extent the study of plant and animal succession.
Ecologists seek to understand the processes through which interactions
among species over long periods of time produce the various biological
communities and environments found in the natural world. (1996, p. 160)
 9

Following the definition of Meeker, William Rueckert’s essay “Literature and

Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism” written in 1978, seems to be the first study
in which the term ecocriticism was coined. (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xix). Rueckert’s use of
the term ‘ecocriticism’ simply refers to “the application of ecology and ecological
concepts to the study of literature”, which is basically related to the science of ecology
(p. xix). Therefore, his application of the term ‘ecocriticism’ stands limited and
insufficient when it is compared to Glotfelty’s broad definition of ecocriticism that
embraces “all possible relations between literature and physical world” (1996, p. xx).
In addition to the Rueckert’s popular wording of ‘ecocriticism’, there are other
possible terms in use to refer to the green branch of literary study such as ‘ecopoetics’,
‘environmental literary criticism’ and ‘green cultural studies’ (p. xx).

The preference of the critics in their adoption of ecocriticism as a title for this eco-
theory has several practical reasons. Primarily, it is short and convenient as a title. In
addition, these critics preferred the ‘eco-’ instead of ‘enviro-’ because they believed
that the latter would simply mean the science of ecology, which is only a branch of
ecocriticism that includes all the “studies on the relationship between things, in this
case, between human culture and the physical world” (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xx). From
the perception of Glotfelty, the critics had another reason in their name preference.
According to her, the connotations of these two terms differ from each other. While
“enviro- is anthropocentric and dualistic, implying that we humans are at the center,
surrounded by everything that is not us, the environment”, eco- “implies
interdependent communities, integrated systems and strong connections among
constituent parts” (p. xx). Consequently, due to the practical application of the term
and the connotational preferences, the term ‘ecocriticism’ has become the name of an
environmentally-conscious, green criticism and theory, which is widely celebrated and
acknowledged today.

From a nature-centered perspective, ecocritics and theorists are concerned with several
nature-related questions. These questions are asked with an earth-centered
consciousness to determine the direct or indirect relationship between the literary text
 10

in question and the physical environment outside. Within the wording of Glotfelty
these ecocritical questions are mainly as follows:
How is nature represented in this sonnet? What role does the physical
setting play in the plot of this novel? Are the values expressed in this play
consistent with ecological wisdom? How do our metaphors of the land
influence the way we treat it? How can we characterize nature writing as a
genre? In addition to race, class and gender, should place become a new
critical category? Do men write about nature differently from women do? In
what ways has literacy itself affected humankind’s relationship of the
natural world? How has the concept of wilderness changed over time? In
what ways and to what effect it the environmental crisis seeping into
contemporary literature and popular culture? What view of nature informs
U.S. Government reports, corporate advertising, and televised nature
documentaries and to what rhetorical effect? What bearing might the
science of ecology have on literary studies? How is science itself open to
literary analysis? What cross-fertilization is possible between literary
studies and environmental discourse in related disciplines such as history,
philosophy, psychology, art history, and ethics? (1996, p. xix)

The questions that Glotfelty raises direct a wide-ranging scope of ecocriticism, which
would not stir up any problems because “suggestive and open is exactly what
ecocriticism ought to be” (1996, p. xxii). Just like her, Richard Kerridge, in his
Writing the Environment (1988), defines ecocriticism as an extensive and vast literary
theory:
The ecocritic wants to track environmental ideas and representations
wherever they appear, to see more clearly a debate which seems to be taking
place, often part-concealed, in a great many cultural spaces. Most of all,
ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence
and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis. (Kerridge, 1998, p. 5)

The scope of ecological criticism is vast and the very core principle of all
environmental criticism is that human culture is inevitably connected to physical
world. This connection would be direct or indirect; however, the human cultural
product, literature, is truly affected by earth, or more specifically, by nature.
Ecocriticism mainly deals with the interconnections between nature and culture,
especially what Glotfelty calls “the cultural artefacts of language and literature” (1996,
p. xix). For her, “as a critical stance it (ecocriticism) has a foot in literature and the
other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human and the
nonhuman” (p. xix). Consequently, ecocriticism is defined as a critical theory that
concentrates on the interconnections between the human and non-human agents such
 11

as culture and nature and inescapably as literature and physical environment outside.
Within this theoretical endeavour, all the ecocritics universally share the ecology’s
basic maxim that “We are not free to violate the laws of nature” (Rueckert, 1996, p.
113).
The interconnections between nature and culture, ecology and literature are crucial for
ecocriticism. The ethologist Joseph W. Meeker also questions the role of literature in
its contribution to the studies on nature and the relation between literature and its
impact on human behaviour and natural environment. In his ground-breaking work
The Comedy of Survival (1972), which is regarded as the first book in which a genuine
reading of literature from an ecological and eco-centric perspective is conducted,
Meeker regards literary production as a crucial quality of the human beings. For him,
literature is equal to flight in birds or radar in bats. By this insight, he challenges the
essential notions forced upon us:
Human beings are the earth’s only literary creatures… If the creation of
literature is an important characteristic of the human species, it should be
examined carefully and honestly to discover its influence upon human
behaviour and the natural environment – to determine what role, if any, it
plays in the welfare and survival of mankind and what insight it offers into
human relationships with other species and with the world around us. Is it
an activity which adopts us better to the world or one which estranges us
from it? From the unforgiving perspective of evolution and natural
selection, does literature contribute more to our survival than it does to our
extinction? (p. 3-4)

Although other literary theories assess the relationship between literature and the
world, which is generally an equivalent to the social sphere, ecocriticism goes beyond
this limited usage of the word and takes it further to be an equivalent for an entire
ecosphere (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xix). In addition, taking the Barry Commoner’s first law
of ecology that “Everything is connected to everything else”, literature, rather than
aesthetically being away from the material world, “plays a part in an immensely
complex global system, in which energy, matter and ideas interact” (p. xix). To point
out the recent scientific concern regarding the interconnections between human and
nonhuman world McDowell notes as follows:
One of the major shifts in our scientific worldview in the twentieth century
has been to recognize the importance of systems and relationships in the
phenomenal world. We've begun to recognize that an entity is largely
created and undergoes change by its interaction with other entities; nothing
has an unchangeable essence that it can maintain in isolation, and no one
 12

can change in isolation merely through the effort of a transcendental ego.

(1996, p. 371)

Interconnectedness, interdependence and the holistic aspect that form the primary
principles of ecology suggest that the biosphere or ecosphere is “the home that life has
built for itself on the planet’s outer surface” (Rueckert, 1996, p. 112). Additionally, it
is in this exact ecosphere where a mutual interdependence of a single type of life
builds upon another, “there is a mutual interconnected development of all the earth’s
life systems” (112). It is an accurate premise of the most critics that, as a replacement
of Cartesian dualism2, the last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of
holism3. White, in this sense of interconnectedness, portrays a pessimistic picture of
the current ecologic situation stating that “quite unintentionally, changes in human
ways often affect nonhuman nature” in such a vital time when “the problem of
ecologic backlash is mounting feverishly” (1996, p. 4). Not only do changes in human
or non-human world interconnectedly influence each other but the definitions of ‘self’
are also uttered through interconnectedness, as Bakhtin and Darwin shares the view
that “every creature defines itself and in a real sense becomes a ‘self’ mentally,
spiritually, and physically by its interaction with other beings and things” (McDowell,
1996, p. 375)
Accordingly, ecocriticism does not simply look for an outer interaction between
literature and the world, but the theory itself expands both of the usages further and
examines the inescapable relationship between the vast concept of ecosphere and
literature, which is an interactive member of this huge entity. Also, the problem of
environment, in other words, the ecological crisis is not on the national scale, but on a
huge global, planetary scale. According to Arthur Boughey, “There is no population,
community, or ecosystem left on earth completely independent of the effects of human
cultural behaviour. Now [this human] influence has begun to spread beyond the globe
to the rest of our planetary system and even to the universe itself." (Boughey, 1975, p.
3)
The need to have an environmentally-conscious perspective has risen not only in
literature but also in most branches of the humanities because people all together, have
already reached and exceeded the environmental limits offered to them by nature. To

2
the philosophy of Descartes regarding the dualism of mind and body
3
the theory, which points out “the parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection such that they can
not exist independently of the whole” (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/holism).
 13

Glotfelty, “the most ecocritical work shares a common motivation: the troubling
awareness that we have reached the age of environmental limits, a time when the
consequences of human actions are damaging the planet’s basic life support systems”
(1996, p. xx). Carolyn Merchant marks the 1970s as the decade when the death of
nature was metaphorically at its heights because the wellbeing of an entire planet was
already threatened (1990, p. xv). She observes the environmental exploitation and its
impact on the spiritual Earth, Gaia:
Ozone depletion, carbon dioxide buildup, chloroflurocarbon emissions, and
acid rain upset the respiration and the clog the pores and the lungs of the
ancient Earth Mother, rechristened “Gaia”, by atmospheric chemist James
Lovelock. Toxic wastes, pesticides, herbicides, seep into ground water,
marshes, bays, and oceans, polluting Gaia’s circulatory system. Tropical
rains forests and northern old-growth forests disappear at alarming rates as
lumberers shear Gaia of her tresses. Entire species of plants and animals
become extinct each day. (1990, p. xv)

At such an edge of a time when the newspaper headings are surrounded by such crisis
as “oil spills, lead and asbestos poisoning, toxic waste contamination, extinction of
species at an unprecedented rate, battles over public and land use, protests over
nuclear waste dumps, a growing hole in ozone layer, predictions of global warming,
acid rain, loss of topsoil, destruction of tropical rain forest”, what people are supposed
to do is nothing more than making a preference on either changing their manners
towards nature or accepting the catastrophic fate, which is the result of their destroying
and exterminating actions towards environment (Glotfelty, 1996, p. XVI). For Lord
Ashby, environmental degradation is more than crisis because “a crisis is a situation
that will pass; it can be resolved by temporary hardships, temporary adjustment,
technological and political expedients. What we are experiencing is not a crisis; it is a
climacteric” (qtd. in Love, 1996, p. 227). Therefore, Merchant insists that there needs
to be an urgent partnership between human beings and earth in order to overcome this
environmental crisis (1990, p. xv).

The point of ecological crisis that the mankind has reached is due to the current system
of production, which is destructive and disparaging (Rueckert, 1996, p. 115). All the
same, the present ecological problems and crisis signal that it should be started
somewhere since things regarding the environmental crisis have been delayed for too
long (115). Rueckert asserts that living in a world where actual power is political,
 14

economic, and technological and most importantly scientific, using the power of the
word may seem to be highly challenging yet highly crucial to get over the detriments
of the climacteric (p. 115):
The present course of human civilization is suicidal. In our unwitting
march toward ecological suicide we have run out of options. Human
beings have broken out of the circle of life, driven not by biological need,
but by social organization which they have devised to conquer nature.
(Rueckert, 1996, p. 116)

In order to contribute to the environmental restoration and to be part of the solution

rather than the ‘climacteric’ itself, environmentally conscious scholars and critics have
chosen to constitute awareness on environmental problems that have long been
ignored. These ecocritics recognize the fact that environmental crisis is the result of
human actions and therefore, it is inevitably “a by-product of culture”, and of course
also of literature (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xxi). Similarly, William Howarth, in his
pioneering essay, “Some Principles of Ecocriticism”, portrays a general picture of the
related case and assigns a vital task to ecocritics:
Ecocriticism observes in nature and culture the ubiquity of signs, indicators
of value that shape form and meaning. Ecology leads us to recognize that
life speaks, communing through encoded streams of information that have
direction and purpose, if we learn to translate the messages with fidelity”
(Howarth, 1996, p. 77)

Accordingly, Donald Worster reflects that in order to translate the ecological message
reliably, the main mission of the scholars and critics of several social sciences shall be
discovering the methods to add environmental dimensions to their own disciplines.
Therefore, he calls all the scholars to the action to create awareness about these
problems regarding environment:
We are facing a global crisis today, not because of how ecosystems function
but rather because of how our ethical systems function. Getting through the
crisis requires understanding our impact on nature as precisely as possible,
but even more, it requires understanding those ethical systems and using
that understanding to reform them. Historians, along with literary scholars,
anthropologists and philosophers cannot do the reforming, of course, but
they can help with the understanding. (1993, p. 27)

As an answer to the call of Worster to raise an awareness on environmental issues,

scholars of such several academic social sciences and humanities as history,
anthropology, psychology, philosophy, theology and inevitably literature have been
raising several environmental issues in order to add a new green consciousness to their
 15

academic fields. It is due to the fact that environmental crises require both cultural and
scientific approaches because environmental problems are the products of “the
interaction between ecological knowledge and its cultural inflection” (Garrard, 2004,
p. 14). This call by Worster necessitates interdisciplinary scholarship that “draws on
literary and cultural theory, philosophy, sociology, psychology and environmental
history as well as ecology” (p. 14). Within this regard, literary scholars have been
adding several environmental dimensions in literary disciplines to draw attention on
environmental degradation and problems of their world:
Literary scholars specialize in questions of value, meaning, tradition, point
of view, and language, and it is in these areas that they are making a
substantial contribution to environmental thinking. Believing that the
environmental crisis has been exacerbated by our fragmented,
compartmentalized, and overly specialized way of knowing the world,
humanities scholars are increasingly making an effort to educate themselves
in the sciences and to adopt interdisciplinary approaches. (Glotfelty, 1996,
p. xxii)

The scholars from several humanities have been profoundly tracing the interaction
between nature with the special intentions of adding an environmental dimension to
their disciplines in order to deal with environmental crisis and problems of the world.
To focus on the responsibility of individuals about the ecology, Ian McHarg declares
“Each individual has a responsibility for the entire biosphere and is required to engage
in creative and cooperative activities” (1992, p. 7). Although ecocriticism cannot solve
much of the scientific debates on ecological problems, via accomplishing their
responsibilities for ecology, individuals can rather help ecocriticism to “define,
explore and even resolve ecological problems” in a broader sense (Garrard, 2004, p.
6).
There surely is a problem today regarding the environmental crisis and also in finding
the methods of keeping the humankind away from destroying the natural world and
inescapably from devastating the human world. According to Rueckert, the setback is
“what ecologists like to call the self-destructive or suicidal motive that is inherent in
our prevailing and paradoxical attitude toward nature” (1996, p. 107). The problem
regarding theory and practice of ecocriticism is how to reconcile these two separate
entities of the human and the natural, in other words, how to make ecosphere and
‘egosphere’ harmonize, collaborate and prosper together. The mission of an ecocritic
 16

should be developing ecological visions that could be translated into “social, economic
political and individual programs of action” (p. 107).

Ecocriticism is believed to be distinctive among other recent literary and cultural

theories due to its close connection with the science of ecology (Garrard, 2004, p. 5).
Howarth, for example, constructs a basic theory of ecocriticism when he establishes “a
set of informed, responsible principles derived from ecology, ethics, language and
criticism” because he believes that these four respective scholarly fields provide
recipes of theory and method that investigate ecological literature (1996, p. 71).
Ecocriticism is a literary theory that feeds much more on ecological studies so
Howarth explores the ecocritical discourse from the deeper levels of the science of
ecology, which “describes the relations between nature and culture” (1996, p. 71).
According to him, within the fundamental theoretical background of ecocriticism,
there mainly underlies these four particular disciplines of firstly and most importantly
ecology; ethics which “offers ways to mediate historic social conflicts”, language; the
theory of which “examines how words represent human and nonhuman life”, and
criticism; which “judges the quality and integrity of works and promotes their
dissemination” (p. 71). Although their perspectives regarding humanities differ, it is
sure that these disciplines share something in common: ‘nature’ and each of the
individual discipline emphasises the associations of nature and literature as unstable
and ever-changing, moving shapes (71).

In a world of interconnections, association and interaction among ecology, language,

ethics, criticism is inevitable, among which the significance of literature in the
protection of the green world has often been mentioned. Francis Ponge accurately
proclaims that the absolute function of poetry in the end is to “nourish the spirit of
man” by providing him “the cosmos to suckle” since “we have only to lower our
standard of dominating nature and to raise our standard of participating in it in order to
make the reconciliation take place” (1995, p. 14). Additionally, in his famous essay
“Literature and Ecology” in attempt to make a connection between literature and
ecology, William Rueckert dwells on Commoner’s first Law of Ecology that
“Everything is connected to everything else” (1996, p. xix). He essentially pronounces
a poem as a stored energy and asserts that the act of reading is theoretically an act of
 17

energy transfer and that critics and scholars act as mediators between literature and the
biosphere, freeing the energy and knowledge kept in poetry to be led through society
and to be translated into social action (1996, p. 108-110). To this end, he suggests that
the human being is to make tremendous connections between “literature and the sun,
between teaching literature and the health of the biosphere” (p. 109). In order to move
toward “a generative poetics by connecting poetry to ecology” Rueckert also implies
treating literature within the context of an environmental vision (p. 114).

Furthermore, within their ecocritical approach, all thedisciplines of history,

anthropology, psychology, philosophy, theology, literature, ecology, theory of
language and criticism share the common environmental knowledge in “considering
nature not just as the stage upon which the human story is acted out, but as an actor in
the drama” (Glotfelty, 1996, p. XXI). They rise against the position of man as a
fictional character who oppresses the natural, nonhuman world, “leaving it voiceless
and subjectless” (Manes, 1996, p. 26). As we maintain our biological survival under
deep environmental threats, we, as the actual criminal of the green crises, go on with
the honoured ritual of humanism to “love ourselves best of all” (Ehrenfeld, 1978, p.
238-39), “to celebrate the self-aggrandizing ego and to place self-interest above public
interest, even, irrationally enough, in matters of common survival” (Love, 1996, p.
226). As maintained by Meeker, humankind has been acting the role of pioneer
species, bestowing themselves to survival via the “destruction of all competitors and
achieving effective dominance over other forms of life” (1996, p. 162). Thereafter,
nature becomes silenced in today’s culture as its position as a valuable speaking
subject is reduced to a status of eternally silenced and muted symbolic presence by the
prevailing anthropocentric human perspective (Manes, 1996, p. 15-17).

The great historical and anthropocentric lie that man is at the center of universe has
long lost its essentiality. Now, the human being is just a citizen of a universe where he
is to live together with the non-human world peacefully and congruously. The vital
task of sustaining the tranquil relation between men and nature is granted majorly to
the green-minded critic. Although the man assumes that s/he is at the center of the
universe where all the nonhuman world is blessed for his or service, it seems to be an
immensely mistaken perception for many critics including Campbell, who argues that
 18

“human beings are no longer the center of value or meaning” (Campbell, 1996, p.
133). She objects to the anthropocentric notion that identifies the human being as the
focus of intelligence, spirit and the core value and she thinks that this historical
anthropocentric notion is recently vanishing (p. 133). The hypothesis verifies itself
through Tobias’s assertion that “From the biosphere’s perspective, the whole point of
Homo sapiens is their armpits, aswarm with 24.1 billion bacteria” (1984, p. vii) and
also through Leopold’s famous premise that “we are plain members and citizens of the
land-community not the rulers of the earth” (qtd. in Campbell, 1996, p. 133). In this
regard, Howarth, via his definition of ecocriticism, takes this accurate statement one
step further and he explains the grand task of ecocritics as sustaining “their role as
kritos while assessing the literary oikos before them” without silencing the potential
other but revoicing it (1996, p. 71). However, the ecocritic as a kritos has a challange
in handling “the ways in which ‘nature’ is always culturally constructed” and at the
same time “that nature really exists both as the object and, albeit distantly, as the
origin of our discourse” (Garrard, 2004, p. 9).

From an ecocritical perspective culture should not be perceived to be floating

above nature yet they both ought to be viewed as parts of an inseparable whole
inevitably affecting each other. Campbell advocates that such dualities as “nature
and culture, madness and reason, fact and fiction, human and animal, self and
other, scientific and unscientific, civilized and primitive, even male and female,
good and evil” are artificial and unfair and therefore they need to be reconstructed
by those promising ecocritics (1996, p. 128). The dualities of Us-Them, Culture-
Nature would only make ecocriticism a disputable critical theory:
If its political agenda insists on an Us-Them dichotomy, the ecocriticism
cannot be self-scrutinizing, only adversarial. Since ecology studies the
relations between species and habitats, ecocriticism must see its complicity
in what it attacks. All writers and their critics are stuck with language and
although we cast nature and culture as opposites, in fact they constantly
mingle, like water and soil in a flowing stream. (Howarth, 1996, p. 69)

As proposed by Love, what is momentous to human life should be redefined from now
on since the human morality has already extended into the nonhuman world. This
human morality is truly constructed by an anthropocentric insight that identifies
human beings as such special creatures; that the earth exists as a servant only to serve
 19

to their comfort and disposal. However, just at this exact point, we need a nature-
oriented literature as a corrective:
While critical interpretation, taken as a whole, tends to regard ego-
consciousness as the supreme evidence of literary and critical achievement,
it is eco-consciousness which is a particular contribution of most regional
literature, of nature-writing, and of many other ignored forms and works,
passed over because they do not seem to respond to anthropocentric – let
alone modernist and postmodernist – assumptions and methodologies.
(1996, p. 230)

The anthropocentric mentality that perceives the society as a complex entity while
regarding nature as a simple being is one of the greatest mistaken conceptualizations
(Love, 1996, p. 230). It is this perception that results in the understanding that “nature
is dull and uninteresting while society is sophisticated and interesting” (p. 230). This
anthropocentric thinking that nature is simple and culture to analyse is a complex
entity and the dichotomies of us-them, nature-culture, eco-consciousness - ego-
consciousness have led nature-writing to be ignored for several decades (p. 230). For
Love, nature discloses adaptive strategies which are much complex than the human
mind and it is among the greatest obstacles of literature as a human creation to
examine this infinite complexity since it is also related to the human lives which it
surrounds (p. 231).

Ecocriticism as a literary theory inevitably bears a staged developmental phase like

other theories. To this end, Glotfelty offers three analogous phases in ecocriticism that
parallels to the model of three developmental stages of feminist criticism, developed
Elaine Showalter. The corresponding three developmental phases of ecocriticism to
those of the feminism would be summarized as, the first stage of ‘images of nature’;
second stage of ‘the nature writing tradition’; and the third stage of ‘theoretical phase’
(1996, p. xxii). Just like the way Showalter designates the first stage of feminism as
“images of women”, Glotfelty suggests the first stage of ecocriticism as “the images of
nature” and she notes that this phase deals with the representations of nature within the
canonical literature. (1996, p. XXII). By studying how nature is represented in
literature, the critical studies contribute to the crucial stage of consciousness raising by
the identification of stereotypes of nature and related entities like “Eden, Arcadia,
virgin land, miasmal swamp, savage wilderness” (p. xxiii). In addition, the very same
consciousness raising process is also realised by detecting the absences when the
 20

question “where is the natural world in this text?” is asked (p. xxiii). All the same, as
Glotfelty makes it clear, nature is not the single focus of the first phase of ecocritical
studies of representations. All the images of “frontier, animals, cities, specific
geographical regions, rivers, mountains, deserts, Indians, Technology, garbage and the
body” are also included in the first developmental stage of ecocriticism (p. xxiii).

To create an ecocritical analogous second phase to that of feminist criticism’s stage of

the women’s literary tradition, Glotfelty proposes a nature writing tradition stage,
where “the hitherto neglected genre of nature writing” is retrieved (1996, p. xxiii). As
a necessity of the second stage, and in order to serve to the crucial function of
consciousness-raising in environment, ecocritics rediscover, reissue and reconsider
nature-oriented literature. Glotfelty believes that as an indispensible element of the
second phase, “nature writing boasts a rich past, a vibrant present, and a promising
future” and to serve to the end of appreciating and endorsing nature writing, ecocritics
make use of a varying kind of prevailing critical theories, including “psychoanalytic,
new critical, feminist, Bakhtinian, deconstructive” theories and criticisms (p. xxiii). To
further explain the genre of nature writing Thomas Lyon approaches this nature
oriented literature with quasi-taxonomic terms and he concludes proposing three main
divisions within nature writing; “natural history information, personal responses to
nature and philosophical interpretation of nature” (1996, p. 276).Consequently, the
importance of environmentally conscious literary works, which have an utmost crucial
place in creating ecological understanding, cannot be disregarded when the increasing
number of nature writing within the anthologies is observed (p. xxiii). As part of the
second stage of ecocritical development, the mainstream genres are also examined to
identify writers and the works, which highlight ecological awareness (p. xxiii).
Promoting an ecological vision is the core mission of an ecocritical attempt because as
McHarg puts it forward “where there is no ecological vision, the people will perish”
(qtd. in Rueckert, 1996, p. 114).

Within the context of nature writing, in 1950s and 60s a new awareness emerged
which acknowledges the fundamental potential of female contribution to the
understanding of environment (Norwood, 1996, s. 323). However, for Norwood, it
was only the part of the continuing tradition of women’s natural history literature yet
 21

the contribution of female authors in creating the awareness on female nature writings
was immense. In this regard, each of the female authors who wrote during the time
with a green-oriented mind helped develop the understanding in the preservation of the
natural environment and they played a central role as the heroines of nature (p.323):
Survival in a hostile natural environment is an ego-gratifying
achievement and feeds the achievement-oriented male psyche, enabling
men to return to civilization and improve their culture. Men’s
ambivalence to the destruction of nature stems from this sense of the
potential loss of a useful setting for a specific, and important, cultural
drama. (Norwood, 1996, p. 323-24)

Within the context of Western society, the male-dominated perspective ambivalently

regarded nature as a place to define their virility, to reflect their aggressive,
adventure-seeking and violent impulses. Therefore, nature was/has been regarded as a
must to satisfy men’s concern regarding culture/civilization so that they can feed their
egos and virilities. This ecological fantasy of men has been maintained in the
twentieth century, through the means of “conservationists, preservationists and
ecologists” in the 1960s and 70s under such headings as ‘new environmentalism’
(Norwood 1996: 324). It was through such headings that the conservation of nature or
wilderness was rationalized by the need for an untamed environment, where men
could continue their role as pioneers and develop their status as self-sufficient and
strengthen their role as civilized man (Norwood, 1996, p. 324).

The third stage of ecocriticism is the theoretical phase that makes use of a wide range
of theories to raise crucial questions on “the symbolic construction of species” within
the literary contexts (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xxiv). Similarly, in analysing the works of
literature, ecocritics raise questions of utmost crucial importance regarding the
representational structure of species through several theories: “How has literary
discourse defined the human?” (p. xxiv). Such a question is important to identify and
examine the dualisms deeply woven into the Western thought because they “separate
meaning from matter, sever mind from body, divide men from women and wrench
humanity from nature” (p. xxiv).

As revealed in the theoretical phase, dualism is an important concept not only for
ecocriticism but also for other relevant green theoretical discourses. Ecofeminism, for
example, examines the interaction between subjugation of women and dominance of
 22

nature. Ecological poetics, as another theoretical project, bases its main claims from
the science of ecology with its notion of ecosystem and its stress on the
“interconnections and energy flow” to show through what ways poetry functions
within the society (p. xxiv). As another theoretical discourse, deep ecology, which is
the use of philosophy for ecocritical objectives, criticizes anthropocentric attitudes,
which are so deeply woven in the society and literature. It points out that human
beings, as the victims and ultimate reasons of environmental degradation, must break
away with their “preoccupation with mediating between only human issues” and
instead place themselves within the nature not as a dual opponent of the green but as a
natural and inescapable part of it (Love, 1996, p. 227).

In addition to Glotfelty’s three developmental stages of ecocriticism, in his essay

entitled as “Bakhtinian Road to Ecological Insight”, Michael J. McDowell brings a
Bakhtinian approach to ecocriticism as he analyses the system and relationships by
hard sciences and he finalizes his work with the assertion of a practical ecocriticism,
enhancing a fourth developmental stage. McDowell’s fourth stage of ecocriticism
includes “the practical application of theoretical ecological concepts to specific literary
works, which in comparison to the earlier stages remains a wide open terrain with few
clearly marked paths” (1996, p. 383). The fourth stage is heavily influenced by
McDowell’s readings on Bakhtin, and would be called as Bakhtinian practical
ecocriticism.

Ecocriticism is a critical theory that focuses on the interconnections between human

and non-human agents such as culture and nature, and thereafter between literature as
the product of culture and physical environment as a component of overall nature. As
the theory mainly focuses on the interrelatedness, ecocritics elaborate on several
critical concepts that play significant role in the interconnections between human and
non-human world. The essential notions are mainly studied and examined by many
ecocritics due to their vital function in the construction of not only eco-theory but also
many other ecology-based theories and movements such as environmentalism, deep
ecology, ecofeminism, social ecology, eco-Marxism and Heideggerian eco-
philosophy. The predominant concepts studied and analysed within the context of
ecocriticism include a wide range of critical ecological notions, including pollution,
 23

pastoral, wilderness, apocalypse, dwelling, animals, the earth, science and technology,
religion, popular culture, media and etc. However, within this study the ecocritical
concepts; dwelling, pastoral, wilderness, animals and pollution will be examined
briefly because each of these concepts has a significance and relevance within the
ecocritical exploration of the Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and
Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing.

As an important ecocritical concept, the narratives of dwelling investigate the prospect

of dwelling on the earth within regard to duty and responsibility. Therefore dwelling,
which is literally defined as “a building or place of shelter to live in, abode; home”
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dwelling), implies the “long-term imbrication
of men in a landscape of memory, ancestry and death, or ritual, life and work”
(Garrard, 2004, p. 108). Within the same token, dwelling narratives contain georgic
tradition, that is the literature of farming, and primitive models of lodging, which are
assumed by ecocritics as representative of a genuine dwelling on earth (p. 108).

With regard to the historical context of georgic, soil has been viewed as a heritage and
a historical ritual and a way of conversation between nature and culture. As Phillips
suggests, “the soil is also to be read, interpreted, taught, learned from, handed down to
the next generation, and kept from becoming mere dirt” (Phillips, 1996, p. 221).
Farming is also referred as “a controlled process of turning nature into culture and
culture into nature” (p. 221). Modern Georgic tradition is importantly marked by an
American literary figure Wendell Berry, who depicts a landscape which is not a
wilderness but a farmland (Garrard, 2004, p. 113). Berry offers a marriage with the
land, which metaphorically implies diminishing egocentric tendencies and neglecting
the us-them dichotomy and the related dualities, and becoming a part of the ecosphere
and the human community at the same time. It is the most important duty of the
human community to provide the production and maintenance of soil or land. What
Berry proposes as the marriage between men and place is totally manifested when men
accomplish their duties of being part of both biotic and human community altogether:
A human community, too, must collect leaves and stories, and turn them to
account. It must build soil, and build that memory of itself… that will be
its culture. These two kinds of accumulation, of local soil and local
culture, are intimately related. (Berry, 1980, p. 154)
 24

Within the context of ecocritical dwelling, for many critics the definition of self is
inseparable from the definition of the place because both self and place are two entities
that exist together. Place or region has a crucial function in the sense that it is an
important decisive factor to define the human ‘self’ within the environmental context.
As James Maguire contends, "Experimental psychologists . . . tell us that memory
functions best when it has a strong sense of place” and “tastes, ideas, and values are
shaped in every individual, at least to some extent, by the places where he or she lives"
(1988, p. 649-650). Neil Everndern also attempts to acknowledge the inevitable
relation between self and place within ecological terminology. He mainly claims that
our sense of self is revolutionized by the recent discoveries in ecology and cellular
biology, revealing that a notion as ‘self’ is just a myth but a notion as ‘self-in-place’ is
the absolute truth (1996, p. 92-95). Thus, he supports “a genuine intermingling of parts
of the environment” (p. 93). Man and the environment are not two entities separate
from each other; conversely, man is the part of the environment in which s/he lives.
Thus, the relation of self to the environment necessitates “a sense of place, a sense of
knowing the world and being part of a particular place” (p. 101).

The notion of attachment of self to a setting or dwelling has altered however within
the course of the time. There has been a change in the society’s understanding of
nature in an age, marked with postmodernism. Today, nature is replaced by what Dana
Phillips calls as ‘commodified representation’, where the focus is on urban centers,
architecture, visual arts that are the primary signs of urbocentric postmodernism
(Phillips, 1996, p. 207). Ignoring anything natural, what is spectacle even within
nature has become the primary initiative in postmodernism. According to Phillips, in
as such a postmodern world, attained by science and technology, “nature no longer
seems to be necessary” (p. 207). With its focus on the spectacle and commodified
representations, the attitude of postmodernism on landscape is mere spaces, as argued
by Phillips: “Superficially, it has to do with the fact that landscapes are now treated
identically irrespective of place; on the surface, such spaces become indistinguishable
one from another and thus not properly separate spaces at all” (p. 215). In a globalized
postmodern world, the idea of landscape, which was previously the concern of
spirituality and inspiration, has become meaningless and the world of outdoors has
 25

come to mean the twin of the world of indoors (p. 216). Therein, postmodernism did
change not only human relationships but also the human relation to nature (p. 216).

In an atmosphere of commodified representations of environment in the postmodern

world, contemporary authors inescapably have the attitude of portraying the dwelling
or urban life which is highly stereotyped in order to form bonds with the reader.
However, this manner of depiction has been widely criticized by such ecocritics as
McDowell who assert that the type of the urban dwelling that these writers generally
celebrate has the qualities of “a de-privileging of ‘place’, an ignoring of the human
and natural history of a locale which make it distinct, different, and likely to produce a
certain kind of character, a certain kind of plot” (1996, p. 377). This version of a
devaluing of the place is not appropriate because it constructs the notion that “nature is
nothing more than empty space between towns or a spot one visits on vacation"
(Elliott & et al., 1988, p. 774). Analogously, Bakhtin also points it out that nature has
evolved from a “nature conceived as horizon” into “what a man sees” and into an
environment as a kind of “the background, the setting” (qtd. in McDowell, 1996, p.
378). Thereafter, nature has become nothing more than a dead participant as a
backdrop of men’s daily life (p. 379). For Bakhtin, in literature even “human matters
divorced from a nature that remains ‘out there’” (p. 379).

Pastoral is also an important concern for ecocritics to form the compositions of nature
since the Romantic period’s poetic reactions to the Industrial Revolution (Garrard,
2004, p. 33). The notion of pastoral is deeply woven for Western culture and for the
Western perception on landscape. Within the context of Western history, the
understanding of environment, the roots and connotations of pastoral are pretty
complex. Having deep origins in the classical period, “pastoral has shown itself to be
infinitely harmful in its tensions and evasions” (p. 33).

In order to elucidate pastoral tradition and its impact in environmentalism Garrard

dwells on three kinds of pastoral suggested by Gifford. The first kind of pastoral is
classical pastoral, which includes the whole pastoral literature written until the
eighteenth century and as he suggests it was this kind of a deep-rooted pastoral
perception that enabled Europeans and Americans to develop their landscapes
 26

(Garrard, 2004, p. 33). The second kind of pastoral is labelled as Romantic pastoral,
which involves the contrasting of country and city life at a time when “mass
urbanization made these contrasts relevant to many more people than ever before” (p.
33). The third kind of pastoral includes the Marxist critique of Romanticism, which
provides “a useful ground for contrast of this tradition in cultural criticism with
ecocriticism” (p. 33).

Within the context of classical pastoral, Virgil is an important figure as a civilized

poetic artifice since he influenced subsequent forerunners of pastoral poetry and,
relatedly ecocriticism. Along with the poetry or idylls of Virgil (70-19 BC), even
Plato’s Critias reflects environmental problems of their times like deforestation,
erosion, loss of fertility (Garrard, 2004, p. 36). Garrard indicates that the sense of an
ancient pastoral “often suggests that nature responds to human emotions, a poetic
conceit called ‘pathetic fallacy’ because it wrongly locates feeling (pathos) in, say,
mountains or trees” (p. 35). Classical pastoral, in the end, “was disposed, then, to
distort or mystify social and environmental history, whilst at the same time providing a
locus, legitimated by tradition, for the feelings of loss and alienation from nature to be
produced by the Industrial Revolution” (p. 39)

The Romantic pastoral is heavily influenced by Industrial Revolution after the

eighteenth century. The collaboration of Romanticism with the Industrial Revolution
tremendously altered the imagination of the country and the city, wherein a new sense
sympathetic interrelation of the creative human mind and the creative nature were torn
apart (Williams qtd. in Garrard, 2004, s. 39). In the eighteenth century, there was a
gradual and ever-lasting shift in the perception of pastoral:
There had gradually emerged attitude to the natural world which were
essentially incompatible with the direction in which English society was
moving. The growth in towns had led to a new longing for the countryside.
The progress of cultivation had fostered a taste for weed, mountains and
unsubdued nature. The new-found security from wild animals had generated
an increasing concern to protect birds and preserve wild creatures in their
natural state. Economic independence of animal power and urban isolation
from animal farming had nourished emotional attitudes which were hard, if
not possible, to reconcile with the exploitation of animals by which most
people lived. (Thomas, 1984, p. 301)
 27

It is due to the impact of economic rationalization and Industrial Revolution that

classical pastoral was transformed into a standing reserve during the Romantic period
(Garrard, 2004, p. 47). When the pastoral met with rural labour, the non-human world
ceased being “easeful, plentiful, pretty, instructive or enduring” (p. 47). Garrard argues
that when romantic pastoral is to answer environmental problems and it becomes
ecological, it begins to seem “both un-Romantic and post-pastoral”(p. 48).

Within the context of pastoral, there are both contrasts and parallels between
American Pastoral and British pastoral literature. During the romantic period, British
Romanticism had great impact on the perception of pastoral and it influenced not only
the common canon but also early Anglo-American literature; however, for the
American example, pastoral had a more significant place (Garrard, 2004, p. 48). While
for British Romanticism, pastoral relied heavily on William Wordsworth, the
American experience based on Henry Thoreau as the key figure (p. 48). Pastoral has
been a vital concept for the American criticism as its historical experiences with land
varied highly compared to the British (p. 48). In American ecocritical reading of the
literary works, pastoral “continues to supply the underlying narrative structure in
which the protagonist leaves civilization for an encounter with non-human nature, then
returns having experienced epiphany and renewal” (p. 48). Therein, it is obvious that
British Romantics’ much sublime visions of pastoral are sharpened into distinctively
New World obsessions with wilderness as American pastoral literature emphasizes the
idea of work and endeavour, but the former develops an aesthetic link with the land (p.
49).

At the center of the pastoral underlies the notion that nature is “a steady, stable
counterpoint to the disruptive energy and change of human societies” (Garrard, 2004,
p. 56). Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman belief systems desire to have a divinely
designed order of nature and they acquire “proof in the remarkable fitness of the Earth
as a habitat for its species” (p. 56). The Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries confirmed this pastoral notion of nature; however, altered it via a
“new view of Universe as a great mechanism organized by God” (p. 56). The newly
created image of nature as a symphonic and steady machine has also impacted the
science of ecology of the twentieth century, forming the following ecological
 28

movements to such an extent that even scientific ecologists were mistrusting the very
balance of nature (p. 56).

The literature of pastoral, however, is also criticized by ecocritics including Glen

Love, as they believe that pastoral tradition also includes anthropocentric assumptions.
Love argues that nature has adaptive strategies that are highly complicated and the
attempt of literature to analyse and examine this complexity is a challenging task.
However, in accomplishing this difficult task the pastoral tradition cannot also escape
from being an object of anthropocentricism. Therefore, from an ecological viewpoint a
new definition of pastoral is needed because the conventional descriptions of pastoral
distort the true essence of pastoral (Love, 1996, p. 231). Within the context of
conventional definition, the green world becomes a formalized and simplified
utterance of the humanistic vision of the author and the writer (p. 231). In this pastoral
tradition Arcadia has no identity and characteristic of its own. Rather, the pastoral
depicted here is nothing more than “a temporary and ephemeral release from the urban
world, which asserts its mastery by its linguistic creation and manipulation of the
generic form itself, and by its imposition of its own self-centered values upon the
contrastive worlds” (p. 231). Consequently, Love insists on the redefinition of the
pastoral so that a new and more complex perception of nature could emerge. For the
new definition of pastoral, a genuine nature-writer should be the one who despises
science due to its detriments to moral and spiritual values of a modern self, who re-
evaluates the dualistic view of man’s nature, who prefers ego-consciousness over his
ego-consciousness, and a nature-lover who has the consciousness of
interconnectedness between human beings and the non-human world (Love, 1996, p.
232). Hence, the new definition of pastoral is offered to answer the call of nature: “I
am here still, at the bottom of things, warming the roots of life; you cannot starve me
nor tame me nor thwart me; I made the world, I rule it, I am its destiny” (Cather, 1966,
p. 95)

On this point the assertion by Aldo Leopold via his fundamental Land Ethic would be
enlightening for new pastoralism: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the
integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends
otherwise” (1970, p. 262). McDowell proposes the analogous integration with nature,
 29

too. As for him, from the Bakthin’s theory of dialogism, which advocates the
interaction of multiple voices and point of views, “countryside tradition cannot exist
without the city or court as a counterpart” since the attribution of self to an entity
necessitates relatedness to other entities. (McDowell, 1996, p. 375) The integration of
Leopold’s land ethic with the pastoral characteristics would be an appropriate formula
for the new pastoralism for Love. As mankind takes their place in the shared natural
world and acknowledge their obligation to it, a proper future pastoral will be
constructed.

Wilderness is also another ecocritical notion that plays a significant role specifically in
New World literature. The ecocritical term ‘wilderness’ indicates the state of nature to
be uncontaminated by civilization, which is a concept applying mostly to New World
environmentalism (Garrard, 2004, p. 58). Wilderness is perceived as a setting for those
exhausted of the moral and physical pollution of the urban life to refresh themselves
and the construction of the term involves the purpose of protecting certain habitats and
species (p. 58). As a word, wilderness conducts sacred connotations with its “promise
of the renewed, authentic relation of humanity and the earth, a post-Christian
covenant, found in a space of purity, founded in an attitude of reverence and humility”
(p. 58). Throughout history, humankind has perceived wilderness and civilization as
two detached and dualistic entities just like the highly inherent dualism of nature and
culture:
Some of our most amazing creative achievements -say in chemistry and
physics- have been our most destructive. Culture -one of our great
achievements wherever we have gone- has often fed like a great
predator and parasite upon nature and never entered into a reciprocating
energy-transfer, into a recycling relationship with the biosphere. In fact,
one of the most common antinomies in the human mind is between
culture/civilization and nature/wilderness” (Rueckert, 1996, p. 119)

Although on the surface the terms pastoral and wilderness may bear some similarities,
within a deeper focus, it would be revealed that they differ from each other. The
concept of wilderness was unknown before the eighteenth century and the texts of
wilderness that are analysed by ecocritics are mainly non-fiction nature-oriented texts,
generally disregarded by other critics (Garrard, 2004, p. 58). To make a clear
distinction between the scopes of the both ecocritical terms, Garrard asserts:
 30

Wilderness narratives share the motif of escape and return with the typical
pastoral narrative, but the construction of nature they propose and
reinforce is fundamentally different. If pastoral is distinctive Old World
construction of nature, suited to log-settled and domesticated landscapes,
wilderness fits the settler experience in the New Worlds – particularly
United States, Canada, Australia – with their apparently untamed
landscapes and the sharp distinction between forces of culture and nature.
(p. 59)

The ecocritical concept of wilderness plays a significant role specifically in New

World literature. In its basic promise, the New World wilderness “borrows the ancient
rhetoric of retreat and applies it to the endless miles of sublime landscape in America”
(Garrard, 2004, p. 66). Through their theory of wilderness, such influential American
wilderness writers as Henry Thoreau and John Muir have become keen critics of
anthropocentricism. Muir contends that all the living life forms “are all ample proof
that Creation is not prefabricated for human use and comfort, and that every living
thing down to the 'smallest transmicroscopic creature’ has intrinsic value” (p. 68). Like
most deep ecological critics, he thinks that ecological problems arise from a single
moral or spiritual source and the solution lies in acceptance of pantheism4 (p. 68).
However, there are several objections to Muir. In many of Muir’s writings, wilderness
is othered and it is William Cronon who recognizes this otherness as a part of “the
trouble with wilderness” when he asserts that “wilderness quietly expresses and
reproduces the very values its devotees seek to reject” (1996, p. 80). According to
Cronon, people like Muir set up an ideal as: “Wilderness is the natural, unfallen
antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul. It is a place of freedom in
which we can recover our true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our
artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscape of authenticity” (qtd. in Garrard,
2004, p. 68). All the same, this understanding results in deep-rooted perceptions in
people’s attitude towards nature, in proposing “nature is only authentic if we are
entirely absent from it” (p. 68). This ‘purity’ in nature could only be achieved when
the human interruption is totally eliminated. What is presented as an ideal wilderness
area is a description of a place where is no sign of a human and his interruption while
wilderness writings involve “human subject whose most authentic existence is located
precisely there” (p. 71). According to Cronon, this type of a modelling misinterprets

4
Pantheism is a doctrine that identifies God with the universe (Garrard, 2004, p. 68).
 31

the concept of wild and alienates men from finding a resolution between his domestic
area and the wilderness (Cronon, 1996, p. 81).

Following the nineteenth century wilderness writers, the twentieth century is marked
intensively Aldo Leopold for his writings on wilderness (Garrard, 2004, p. 72). He
stands out with his natural history observations and philosophical insights. He argues
for the necessity of a biocentric land ethic, which is as important as other economic,
scientific and many other man-made reasons for the conservation of the wilderness (p.
72). What Leopold would like to assert is a kind of ethical defence of the land, which
is not troubled by human dogmatism: “A land ethic changes the role of the land-
community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-
members, and also respect for the community as such” (Leopold, 1968, p. 204). His
land ethic simply includes the balance between aestheticism and the science as
Leopold argues: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and
the beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (Leopold,
1968, p. 224-225). Within the context of his land ethic, the human being is not morally
considered as an individual organism, rather as a mere citizen of a community, which
is the moral focus his land ethic (Garrard, 2004, p. 72).

Throughout the history, there have been several varying attitudes for the notion and
literature of wilderness. In the postmodern world, however, the sense of wilderness
has also totally shifted and it turned out to be an ‘optical illusion’ due to the
environmental pollution caused by improved industries and uninterested lifestyles of
post-modern societies. Discussing the change in the attitude of men towards nature in
the postmodern era and casting the postmodern sense of a wilderness as an “optical
illusion”, Dana Phillips asserts:
…even this nature which we have ‘preserved’ already has our fingerprints
all over it: it is smudged with our pollutants, just like anywhere and
everywhere else. That wilderness is something of an optical illusion, crucial
as its preservation may be, is an irony those who care for it have already
lived with a long time. (1996, p. 217)

Within the context of America, by the twentieth century the real sense of wilderness
has vanished and turned out to be an illusion that people rely on. The natural resources
have reached its limits and it was now recognized that increase in the human
 32

population could demolish natural resources (Howarth, 1996, p. 76). Inevitably, all
these threats have awoken a new sense of land: the isolated and deserted lands
attracted the protectors of environment, who were after “the tonic of wilderness”, as
named by Thoreau (p. 76). In any of the interactions between the human being and
wilderness, nature has something to teach, as Howarth adroitly contends “In the darker
moments of history, ecology offers culture an ethic for survival: land has a story of its
own that cannot be effaced, but must be read and retold by honest writers” (p. 76).
Thus, in order to save the future wilderness, William Howarth suggests a forthcoming
discipline called as ‘landscape ecology’, which avoids the differences between natural
spaces and disturbed regions; instead, it uses a language to define the land through its
“shape, function and change” (Howarth, 1996, p. 76). He believes that the disturbance
from cultural or natural grounds is inevitable and with the new approach as offered by
him wilderness would escape from being an illusion because for him “landscape is a
continuous history, never quite completed” (p. 76).

Ecocriticism is described as the study of the interaction between the human world,
inclusive of culture and literature, and the nonhuman world and this description also
requires the examination of the relation between human beings and animals. In a world
of interconnections and interrelatedness, animals become a central ecocritical concept.
Bookchin maintains that human beings have a second nature (culture) which “gives
them not only the right but the duty to alter, shape and control first nature (the
nonhuman world)” (qtd. in Manes, 1996, p. 23). However within the scope of this
inevitable interaction and interrelatedness, and within the mission of controlling the
second nature, the human being does not have the right to do anything he wishes with
nature. As also supported by Meeker, “Human behaviour has generally been guided by
presumed metaphysical principles which have neglected to recognize that man is a
species of animal whose welfare depends upon successful integration with the plants,
animals, and land that make up his environment” (1996, p. 163). According to
Rueckert, human laws should also protect nature and “trees (dolphins and whales,
hawks and whooping cranes) should have lawyers to articulate and defend their
rights”, which is an indispensible part of the ecological vision. (1996, p. 108).
 33

The interaction between animals and human beings has been the focus of Humanities
and attitude towards the question of animals is divided between the philosophical
contemplation of animal rights and cultural study of the representations of animals
(Garrard, 2004, p. 136). Exclusively, the question of animal rights is one of the
greatest concerns of numerous disciplines today (Love, 1996, p. 228). Particularly, the
philosophical consideration of animal rights and their existence required some ethical
stance, for which the great contribution is attributed by liberationist figures like Peter
Singer, who takes his basis of argument from the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy
Bentham (1748-1832) (Garrard, 2004, p. 136). They both support the view that
“cruelty to animals was analogous to slavery” and that “the capacity to feel pain, not
the power of reason, entitled a being to moral consideration” (p. 136). Singer labels
this prejudiced attitude as “speciesism” (Singer, 1983, p. 8). Since animals reside on
the other side of the supposedly insuperable line5, they are subjected to subjugation by
the human beings (p. 8). However, Bentham criticizes the strict anthropocentric line,
which excludes all the animals yet includes the entire human world and he claims that
the drawn boundary is arbitrary and irrelevant (p. 8). The utilitarian tradition of ethics
advocates the idea that “actions are not right or wrong in themselves, but only insofar
as they bring happiness or cause pain” (Garrard, 2004, p. 137). The same precept of
equality evokes that everybody is opt to equal moral consideration regardless of their
race, nationality, or species (p. 137) and analogously Singer argues that “If a being
suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into
consideration” (Singer, 1983, p. 9).

When it comes to the animal rights, the Liberationist critical studies stands out;
however, yet they focus much on the representations of the domestic animals
encountered in the daily life. Relatedly, the liberationist critics examine the modern
representations of animals as stereotypes in political contexts and in animal cartoon
strips (Garrard, 2004, p. 141). One case that is mostly criticized is attitude in which
animals are used as “rhetoric of moral and social regulation” (Baker, 1993, p. 89). To
correspond all the animal representations within popular culture, Baker creates a
5
Insuperable line is a concept firstly theorized by Bentham, who is commonly known as one of the
earliest supporters and activists of animal rights and he is widely labeled as "the first patron saint of
animal rights" (Benthall, 2007, p. 1) He mainly contends that the insuperable line between animals and
human beings should be standardized on the ability to suffer, rather than the capacity to reason.
 34

critical term ‘disnification’, asserting “With regard to the animal, the basic procedure
of disnification is to render it stupid by rendering it visual” (Baker, 1993, p. 174).
While anthropomorphic narratives of animals are often criticized to be childish,
disnification on the other hand worsens this situation and renders the image trifling
and useless (Garrard, 2004, p. 141). Within the context of animal representation, the
position of the nonhuman creatures to the human world has always been dependable
and derogatory on several prospects. In language, for example, it is easy to find
several animal similes, which creates a bridge of likeness and difference between
human beings ad animals through the ‘rhetoric of animality’ as Steve Baker coins it
(Garrard, 2004, p. 140). For Willis, for the humankind animals are “both akin to him
and unalterably not-man”, therefore, they have the alternative of being a close
metonymy or a distanced metaphor (Willis, 1974, p. 128).

It is only through the Industrialization that the status of animals has been eradicated;
they have been removed away from the daily life and the meat production process is
hidden away while previously in the pre-modern sensibility it was the peasant who
became fond of his pig and then fed on it pleasantly (Berger, 1980, p. 5). In this way,
only a few animals become present within the gaze of the human beings as pets, as
Disney Land characters, the objects of spectacles, in several books and films on
wildlife, where they have become “the objects of our ever-extending knowledge”
(Berger, 1980, p. 14). Such an anthropocentric attitude, caused animals to become “an
index of our power, and thus an index of what separates us from them” (p. 14).

Due to its reaction against livestock farming and hunting, liberationist cultural studies
roughly cast parallels with ecocriticism (Garrard, 2004, p. 140). While the former
initially focuses on the representations of the domestic animals and derives from the
family/spectacle dichotomy, the latter mainly studies the depictions of wildlife
animals, which arises from the contrast between animal rights and environmental
ethics (p. 140). Liberationist critics characteristically tend to undermine the
distinctions, or drawn lines between humans and animals; however, they are liable to
make a distinction between wild and domestic animals, and focus on the rights and
representations of the latter kind (Garrard, 2004, p. 149). People generally would
prefer to ignore the pain and suffering of wild animals and they feel morally
 35

responsible from the animals that they use in their everyday lives for food,
transportation, entertainment and companionship (p. 149). Ecocritics, on the other
hand, take this distinction between domestic and wild animals into consideration but
they “tend to venerate wild animals while treating cattle, sheep and cats as the
destructive accomplices of human culture” (p. 149).

Although there are such anthropocentric industries and practises that degrade the
status of animals, still there are such promising disciplines as ethology, the study of
the animal behaviour, which could be taken as a proof that animals are becoming
fundamental sources of information about living (Meeker, 1996, p. 164). As the
studies of ethnologists have shown, contrasting to the common ego-conscious insight,
even the simplest kind of animals and creatures have extremely complicated and
sophisticated versions of behaviour. For Meeker, this complexity in animals may
gradually make the humankind leave its ego-centric and anthropocentric attitude
behind, Therefore, he notes, “In the present environmental dilemma, humanity stands
like a pioneer species facing heroically the consequences of its own tragic behaviour,
with a growing need to learn from the more stable comic heroes of nature, the animals.
(1996, s. 164)

Apart from dwelling, pastoral, wilderness, and animals, pollution has also been a
particularly important ecocritical concept to elaborate on since it is ecological
pollution of all sorts that cause the corruption of nature. Nearly all the green-minded
literary texts signal a catastrophic end for nature if humankind does not protect nature
against the detriments of pollution. However, unfortunately, pollution has been a fatal
reality of the modern-day people, as they could not prevent from effluence or take
precautions. Pollution has been widely critiqued by ecocritics, environmentalists and
circulated by literary figures to create awareness against the detriments of pollution of
all kinds.

Until the seventeenth century pollution had been associated with the moral corruption
of a person or an act; notwithstanding, between the seventeenth and nineteenth
centuries the interior and subjective definition of the word gradually evolved into an
exterior and objective denotation, which was mostly environmental (Garrard, 2004, p.
 36

8). The course of lexical alteration is representative in that “it highlights how people
had to learn to hate their detritus, as well as indicating the deep cultural roots of the
fear attaching to such immoral emissions” (p. 8). The first reference to the modern
sense of pollution in the Oxford English Dictionary is by Francis Bacon’s The
Advancement of Learning (1605) and with his quotation that “The Sunne … passeth
through pollutions, and it selfe remaines as pure as before” (p. 8). In her crucial
ecocritical work, The Death of Nature (1980) Carolyn Merchant accuses Bacon of his
establishment of destructive perception towards nature since “the image of an organic
cosmos with a living female earth at its center gave way to a mechanistic world view
in which nature was reconstituted as dead and passive, to be dominated and controlled
by humans” (Merchant, 1990, p. xvi).

Pollution has been generalized and dematerialized within the course of history, which
has had vital impacts on today’s culture, “constituting a ‘world risk society’ of
impalpable, ubiquitous material threats that are often in practice indissociable from
their cultural elaborations” (Garrard, 2004, p. 12). Thereafter, with its varying kind of
representations, pollution has entered into today’s culture in several areas (p. 12).
Buell defines four criteria for this kind of toxic discourse to be perceived as a cultural
genre: “a mythography of Betrayed Edens” based in pastoral; dismayed “totalizing
images of a world without refuge from toxic penetration” to be located generally in
post-war dread of radioactive mist from nuclear weapons; “the threat of hegemonic
oppression” from authoritative companies or governments as contrasted with
endangered communities; and the “gothicization” of pollution characteristic of
environmental expose (qtd. in Garrard, 2004, p. 12).

Being the dwellers of modern-day society that is ruined by environmental crisis, many
critics have raised their concern regarding the ecological problem itself and its leading
man-made motives, inclusive of the case of pollution. Lord Ashby contends that
ecological degradation is more than just a crisis because “a crisis is a situation that
will pass; it can be resolved by temporary hardships, temporary adjustment,
technological and political expedients” (qtd. in Love, 1996, p. 227). What the modern
society is experiencing, for him, is not a crisis but a climacretic, a sublime version of
crisis that cannot be resolved (p. 227). He believes that the rest of the human history is
 37

compelled to suffer from the crisis of population, resource depletion and inevitably
from pollution (p. 227). Similarly, the English historian Arnold Toynbee argues that
the current biosphere is the only inhabitable place and the power is in the hands of the
mankind to “make the biosphere uninhabitable” (Toynbee, 1976, p. 9). It is a power
that could “produce this suicidal result within a foreseeable period of time if the
human population of the globe does not now take prompt vigorous concerted action to
check the pollution and the spoliation that are being inflicted upon the biosphere by
short-sighted human greed” (p. 9). If men do not take the precautions, once inhabitable
biosphere would turn out to be an uninhabitable earth destroyed with what Ashby calls
as a climacretic. Unlike other creatures human beings have managed to foul their nest
in a short time through the sudden population growth, planless urbanism and
geological deposits of sewage and garbage (White, 1996, p. 5). As human beings
could not follow the premise of Leopold in the preservation of “the integrity, stability
and beauty of biotic community” (Leopold , 1970, p. 262), they are now doomed with
ecological over-crisis everywhere.

Furthermore, the environmental climacretic is not national but a global one,

influencing each of the living organisms on earth (Boughey, 1975, p. 3). For Arthur
Boughey, within all the interactions between nature and culture the global problem of
pollution now even exceeds beyond the globe: “There is no population, community, or
ecosystem left on earth completely independent of the effects of human cultural
behaviour. Now [this human] influence has begun to spread beyond the globe to the
rest of our planetary system and even to the universe itself" (p. 3). William Rueckert,
on the other hand, argues that due to the global problem of environmental climacretic
“All the creative processes of the biosphere, including the human ones, may well come
to an end” on the condition that they “find a way to determine the limits of human
destruction and intrusion which the biosphere can tolerate, and learn how to creatively
manage the bio-sphere” (1996, p. 112).

Within the scope of his scholarly attempts and as an answer to the call of Toynbee,
Rueckert searches for the ways to make literature function productively in the
biosphere in order to have “biospheric purgation, redemption from human intrusions,
and health” (Rueckert, 1996, p. 112). All the same, for Love since the call by
 38

Toynbee there has been little for vigorous concerted action on environmental
degradation and effluence because the mankind still considers himself to be “further
along the road to an uninhabitable earth” (1996, p. 225):
The catalogue of the actual and potential horrors is by now familiar to
us all: the threats of nuclear holocaust, or of slower radiation
poisoning, of chemical or germ warfare, the alarming growth of the
world’s population (standing room only in a few centuries at the
present rate of growth), mounting evidence of global warming,
destruction of the planet’s ozone layer, the increasingly harmful
effects of acid rain, overcutting of the world’s last remaining great
forests, the critical loss of topsoil and groundwater, overfishing and
toxic poisoning of the oceans, inundation in our own garbage, an
increasing rate of extinction of planet and animal species. The
doomsday potentialities are so real and so profoundly important that a
ritual chanting of them ought to replace the various nationalistic and
spiritual incantations with which we succor ourselves” But rather than
confronting these ecological issues, we prefer to think of other things.
(s. 226).

Love lucidly criticizes the reckless attitude of people as they ignore the catastrophic
environmental problems they generate. David Ehrenfield calls this unrestrained
attitude as “the avoidance of unpleasant reality” (qtd. in Love, 1996, p. 226). At the
heart of all these dangers to their survival, men continue to live with the basic
humanistic premise to love themselves over everything else, praise their selves and
egos and to put their egocentricity over public concerns, even regarding problems of
public survival (Ehrenfeld, 1978, p. 238-39). The egocentric and anthropocentric
perception of the mankind caused a common social indifference to the matters of
ecology and environment, including the problems of increasing population growth,
resource depletion and finally all kinds of pollution. At this point, Love proposes a
solution that lies in re-examining nature-oriented fiction so that an ecological
awareness on the ‘unpleasant reality’ could be developed.

Thus, in order to provide consciousness on environmental problems such as pollution,

Cynthia Deitering relates how toxic consciousness was raised in 1980s American
fiction. She mainly argues that there has been a tremendous shift in the historical
consciousness, which was an alteration from a culture described by its production to a
post-industrial culture described by its waste (1996, p. 196). During the 1980s there
was an apparent rise in the novelists who were writing about various representations of
 39

pollution to create awareness regarding toxic waste, which offered a vision to “a

culture's shifting relation to nature and to the environment at a time when the
imminence of ecological collapse was, and is, part of the public mind and of individual
imaginations” (p. 196). What Deitering puts as ‘toxic consciousness’ within fiction
implies that the problem of toxic pollution functions in postmodern fiction as a
cultural symbol for a society’s overall doubts about “its collective future and as
expression of an ontological rupture in its perception of the Real” (1996, p. 197). In an
era when the ecosystem has been worn out by industrial and technological waste and
pollution, green-minded literary figures revealed their concerns about the environment
and began to write about a culture defined by its waste. This shift in fiction and
equally in the consciousness of the society revealed another fact:
In a postindustrial economy, which depends upon the expeditious
transformation of goods into waste (thereby enabling the quick purchase of
replacement goods), we have come to see in our garbage parts of
ourselves, of our personal histories. On some level, perhaps, we have
begun to comprehend our seminal role as producers of waste… This new
way of seeing our environment might be considered as a second stage of
what Martin Heidegger discussed in 1953 as the essence of technology
whereby what we call the Real is revealed as what Heidegger called the
"standing reserve" of industrial and consumer resources. Heidegger, in his
essay "The Question Concerning Technology," contended that the Western
cultural perception of nature and material objects was that of "standing
reserve" whereby a tract of land was revealed and represented as a coal
mining district, a mineral deposit; or a river was regarded and represented
as a supplier of water power; or an air- plane standing on the runway was
viewed as a machine poised to insure the possibility of transportation.
(Deitering, 1996, p. 198-199)

Since the 1980s, what was experienced in most of the works of fiction is a
transformation of Heidegger’s core of technology. Through this technology,
what was previously demonstrated as standing reserve of nature and material
objects has now been used up (Deitering, 1996, p. 199). Heidegger contends that
anything that is perceived as standing reserve, no longer stands as an object for
the mankind because it is decreased into the position of an object to be
dominated, exploited and polluted (qtd. in Phillips, 1996, p. 218).
 40

1.2. Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism is a critical theory that bridges the gap between feminism and
ecocriticism. Many scholars and critics define ecofeminism as a radical eco-
philosophy highlighted with feminist perspectives and they commonly categorize it as
a sub-theory of ecocriticism. With its basic function as a bridge, ecofeminism
questions the logic of domination arising from the patriarchal dualisms such as men
and women, nature and culture. Therein, the female-oriented ecophilosophy sees the
subjugation of nature in parallel with the oppression of women and it critiques the
dominating androcentric mentality. Concurrently, ecofeminism also attacks the master
models that identify women with nature due to the mutually shared ‘feminine’
qualities and men with culture because of commonly shared ‘masculine’ assets.

With its simplest definition, ecofeminism is a radical theory which is described as

“ecologically informed feminism” (Hay, 2002, p. 73). Within broader terms,
ecofeminism is defined as a literary theory that identifies androcentric dualism of man
and woman dichotomy as the major source for anti-ecological grounds (Garrard, 2004,
p. 23). Unlike deep ecology that blames the anthropocentric dualism of the culture and
nature dichotomy as the major reason of anti-ecological thoughts, ecofeminism rather
blames the patriarchal dualisms of both culture-nature and man-woman as the major
reason for the oppression of women and nature (p. 23). The latter criticizes the
anthropocentric insight, which raises the status of human beings over nature and
deliberates the superiority of the human beings due to such so-called assets as
rationality and having an immortal soul (p. 23). Therefore, deep ecology blames
anthropocentricism as the main factor responsible for the destruction of nature (Hay,
2002, p. 73). In contrast to deep ecology, ecofeminism critiques the mind-set that
increases the status of men above both women and nature, and therefore, the insight
that confers the superiority of men due to such alleged qualities as biologically
powerful body and bigger brain scope (2002, p. 73). So, for the destruction of nature,
ecofeminism blames not only the prevalent androcentrism but also the structures of
corruption existing within the human society such as gender.
 41

As a critical theory, ecofeminism argues for the recognition that both of the suppressed
entities of women and nature reveal a general logic of domination (Warren, 1994, p.
129). Thus, the ecologically informed feminism critiques rises against the notion
which centers of master models claiming that “'women have been associated with
nature, the material, the emotional, and the particular, while men have been associated
with culture, the nonmaterial, the rational, and the abstract” (Davion, 1994, p. 9).
Consequently, according to ecofeminists these foundations are to suggest a collective
cause for both feminist and ecologist grounds (Hay, 2002, p. 72).

Ecofeminism is appreciated as a recently conceptualized gender-oriented green

movement. It took some time for the individual voices of ecofeminist scholars and
critics to come together under the heading of an all-encompassing ecofeminism.
Although 1987 is generally attributed as the official year for the collective
establishment for the school of ecofeminism, the individual ecofeminist endeavours of
several scholars, critics and authors started almost forty years earlier. The female
responses to nature are brought to the attention recently because culturally woven
stereotypes and physical variations have mostly kept women away from the discovery
of nature (Norwood, 1996, p. 324). With he immense contribution of such devoted
female nature writers as Isabella Bird, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard,
female voices became effective in the 50s and 60s for the conservation of ecology and
protection of nature against environmental degradation by the patriarchal power
structures. The 1970s was a fruitful decade for ecofeminist scholarly initiatives. The
term ‘ecofeminism’ was coined in 1974 and it is supposedly attributed to a French
feminist, Francoise d’Eaubonne (Hay, 2002, p. 74). Rosemary Ruther later elaborated
on the patriarchal dualism as the central ecofeminist concept but she was not able to
thoroughly conceptualize the ecofeminist insight (p. 74). Following her, the influential
ecofeminist Val Plumwood comprehensively established and developed the gender
oriented radical ecophilosophy in the 70s. Apart from scholarly action, ecofeminist
activism could be seen on the streets as women took place in environmental programs
for the protection of Mother Earth, life, food, and water (Mann, 2011, p. 3).

After the ecological insights that developed in the 1970s, feminist scholars, critics and
activists focussed on and explored the relations between oppressions commonly
 42

shared between different genders, races, classes, species, nations and nature.
Feminists like Susan Griffin, Carolyn Merchant and Mary Daly helped develop the
link between the oppression by the patriarchy on the female, and the oppression
practiced by culture on nature (Gaard, 2011, p. 26-28). In the 1980s, the studies were
furthered in order to conceptualize similarities between these two dominations by the
androcentric mentality (p. 28). Within the course of literary theory, ecofeminism as a
separate and collective critical school showed up on the stage for the first time at a
conference held to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the scientist Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) (Merchant, 1990, p. xv). The 1987-dated conference
was organized to call for ‘ecofeminist perspectives’ to make women “lead an
ecological revolution to restore planetary ecology” (p. xv). In the 1990s, however,
most ecofeminist critics objected the previous ecofeminist fundamentals. The
previous ecofeminism of the 70s and the 80s was labelled as radical ecofeminism and
its main insights were objected due to its essentialism by the ecofeminist critics with a
sociological and philosophical insight.

Within the context of the ethical framework, there have been several purely
ecofeminist contributions and discussions for environmental thought, which have
attained place within the theory. Ecofeminist critics focused and elaborated on such
significant issues and questions as politics of women’s bodies, new reproductive
technologies, psycho-social aspects of birth and mothering, peace and disarmament,
population and female infanticide, economic and social conditions of women in
developing countries, workforce by women, nature of Western science and technology
and the religious perception regarding women and nature (Hay, 2002, p. 84).

When the ecofeminist critics deal with the pre-mentioned concepts, just like all
feminisms, they also analytically object to patriarchy and blame the male domination
for all kinds of social, cultural and political injustices exerted on women. Within the
contexts of all feminisms, patriarchy is defined and treated as “a gender privileging
system of power relations that is subtly embedded within dominant social structures, at
all social levels, across almost all cultures, and sustained throughout most of history”
(Hay, 2002, p. 73). By means of its basic discriminatory grounds, the patriarchal
structures deny access to justice for women. Apart from gender, ecofeminism also
 43

emphasizes other dimensions of discrimination within the structures of humanity,

including class, religion and race. Yet, according to ecofeminists, the most persistent
and dominant version of all kinds of discrimination is, however, leadingly gender.
Also, for ecofeminists, the most dominant power unit of exploitation is noted as
patriarchy. Elaborating on this problematic patriarchal paradigm, influential
ecofeminist critic Karen Warren relates:

A patriarchal conceptual framework is one which takes traditionally male-

identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions as the only, or the
standard, or superior ones; it gives higher status or prestige to what has been
traditionally identified as ‘male’ than to what has been traditionally
identified as ‘female’. A patriarchal conceptual framework is characterized
by value-hierarchical thinking (Warren, 1987, p. 6)

The patriarchal conceptual framework is totally dualistic and the pole associated with
masculinity is always perceived to be transcendent, superior and unmatched. The
associated masculine interests have been perceived to be species-defining and
mainstream (Hay, 2002, p. 73). On the other hand, anything inflicted with feminine
has become “marginal and trivial”, becoming a correspondent category of ‘other’ to
masculine pole, which is perceived to be the mainstream. For Hay, dualism is a way of
othering that resulted in the construction of a power system of oppression that
constantly devalued any position and role associated with the feminine pole (p. 73).

The gender-related opposing poles, caused by the patriarchal dualities, correspond to

any opposition that derives basically from the dualism of masculinity and femininity.
The forms of patriarchal dualities recognized within feminist literature include
“mind/body, spirit/corporeality; abstraction/embodiment; sky/earth; competition/co-
operation; asceticism/promiscuity; rationality/intuition; culture/nature” (Plumwood,
1993, p. 43). For Plumwood, dualism is a “logic of hierarchy” where anything
inflicted with the feminine is decreased to the status of “inferior, impoverished or
imperfect human beings, lacking or possessing in a reduced form the characteristics of
courage, control, rationality and freedom which make humans what they are’ (1993,
p. 36). This dualistic system that generates patriarchal power structures is culturally,
politically and socially represented as an inevitable order and a practice of “naturalized
domination” (Ruether, 1975, p. 189).
 44

The coinage of the term ‘ecofeminism’ is thought to belong to a French feminist,

Francoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 and Rosemary Ruther6 later developed ecofeminism
further through elaborating on patriarchal dualism (Hay, 2002, p. 74). However, rather
than the early ecofeminist Ruether, it is the influential ecofeminist Val Plumwood who
is primarily known to comprehensively develop and discuss patriarchal dualisms (p.
74). She is more concerned with “multi-faceted domination/subordination
relationships” which stem from all versions of gender-based opposing poles, that is,
from patriarchally constructed dualisms (p. 74).

Charlene Spretnak sees the solution in the identification of patriarchal dynamics such
as fear and resentment so that the patriarchal power structures could be well
comprehended and altered. For her, “identifying the dynamics - largely fear and
resentment- behind the dominance of male over female is the key to comprehending
every expression of patriarchal culture with its hierarchical, militaristic, mechanistic,
industrial forms” (1988, p. 1). Another influential ecofeminist, Birkeland identifies
other aspects caused by oppressive power such as “sexual identity, the fear of death,
the link between personal worth and power, the repressed need to belong, and other
expressions of personal insecurity” (1993, p. 19). The relations of power and human
relations are within the scope of the political focus of ecofeminism. Therefore,
Birkeland contends that human interactions based on power, people exert “ecocidal”
attitude (p. 19).

An ecofeminist ethic has been a central issue in ecofeminist theories. The ethical
discourse offered by Karen Warren is highly welcome. Rather than the ethics based on
rights, which is highly conventional in the West, Warren contends that interactions and
interconnections are the most fundamental aspects of an ecofeminist thought; and
therefore, she suggests “relational ethics” to be the core principle of ecofeminist
theory (1990, p. 137). The relational ethics require care and affection when treating
with the ‘other’:

6
Rosemary Ruther published her essential work New Woman New Earth (1975), in which she briefly
mentioned about the dualities as patriarchal constructions against the liberation of women and nature
(Hay, 2002, p. 74).
 45

An ecofeminist perspective about women and nature involves this shift in

attitude from ‘arrogant perception’ to ‘loving perception’ of the nonhuman
world... Any environmental movement or ethic based on arrogant
perception builds a moral hierarchy of beings. In contrast, ‘loving
perception’ presupposes and maintains difference -a distinction between
the self and other, between human and at least some nonhumans- in such a
way that perception of the other as other is an expression of love for one
who/which is recognized at the outset as independent, dissimilar, different.
(Warren, 1990, p. 137).

The loving perception towards the other entities other than the personal self and the
relation based on care have also been a crucial ecofeminist point to be circulated via
the critics (Hay, 2002, p. 85). Therefore, this loving insight has become a basis of
ecofeminist ethic of care. Chaia Heller notes that “authentic love is a celebration of the
distinctiveness of the other; knowledge of other people and of nature must be gleaned
from actual labour or ‘caring for’ the beloved. It cannot be ‘acquired’ by meditating in
isolation” (1993, p. 233). As implied by Heller, the ecofeminist ethic of care cannot be
acquired, that is, it cannot be developed and attained by the means of intellectual
conceptualization. Warren, on the same line with Heller, elaborates on the importance
of a loving perception in the relational ethics, maintaining “ecofeminism makes a
central place for values of care, love, friendship, trust, and appropriate reciprocity” and
in such an peaceful atmosphere, “one is doing something in relationship with an
‘other’, an ‘other’ whom one can come to care about and treat respectfully” (1990, p.
137).

For many ecofeminists, an ecofeminist relational ethics also includes a psychological

root. Stressing on the psychological dimension, the critics predominantly drive from
the object-relations theory of feminist psychology (Hay, 2002, p. 86). Hay observes
this psychological feminist position of objects-relations theory as follows:
This position maintains that the liberal view of the ego as radically apart is a
quintessentially male view that stems from the male child’s anger at his first
dismaying realisation that he is different to his mother, a sense of difference
experienced as betrayal, and the source of deep-seated, gender-focused
resentment. The growing male comes to define himself as ‘not female’ and
seeks, in the venting of his anger, to dominate the female - which includes
nature. And, because the undifferentiated, pre-separation reality for boys
was female, it is nature that subsequently becomes the undifferentiated
natural backdrop against which individuals must struggle for identity. (p.
86)
 46

According to the feminist model, after being separated from their mother, boys come
to the striking realization that they are biologically different from the mother,
therefore, they feel betrayed, which causes further rage, resentment and hatred. All
these psychological realizations cause men to have the desire to dominate the female,
and relatedly anything associated with the female self, which also includes nature. The
case of girls and their sense of self are quite different from the experience of boys.
According to Zimmerman, girls sustain their perception of self through a close
identification with their mothers for a longer time than boys and therefore their sense
of identity is “bound up with relationship” (Zimmerman, 1987, p. 31). To him, this
kind of identification brings about a relational understanding of self and accordingly a
relational ethic of care (p. 31). However, the Western culture is established on the
ethics that are constructed on the protection and equality of rights. As Zimmerman
argues, the reason why a man in a male-dominated Western society prefers to have a
‘rights-based ethics’ should be traced back to their psychological desire to build the
barriers around his isolation and separation (p. 32). Jim Cheney also imagines and
portrays a a moral society whose ethics are based on the relations of care:
A gift community in which selves are not atomistic entities protected by
bundles of rights derived from, or tied to, bundles of properties or interests
internal to the individuals. It is a community in which individuals are what
they are in virtue of the trust, love, care, and friendships that bind the
community together, not as an organism but as a community of individuals.
(1987, p. 129)

The basic principles of ecofeminism launch war on the common logic of domination
that stem from androcentric and anthropocentric dualisms and the shared master
models that associate women broadly with nature and men with culture. However,
there is no agreement on the main principles of ecofeminism and theories. Just like the
way there are several feminisms within the general critical theory of feminism, there
are also numerous ecofeminisms within the umbrella theory of ecofeminism. The
ecofeminist group that is mostly objected and critiqued by most ecofeminists is the
circle called as radical ecofeminists.

Radical ecofeminists support the view that just because women are mostly associated
with nature, it is possible to assault on the pre-established hierarchy and therein
reverse the already existing terms. To this end, they tend not only to promote nature
 47

and anything related to natural premises, but they also exalt such qualities associated
with female identity as “irrationality, emotion, and the human or non-human body as
against culture, reason and the mind” (Garrard, 2004, p. 23). The prominent radical
ecofeminist Sharon Doubiago contends that “ecology consciousness is traditional
woman consciousness”, identifying that “women have always thought like mountains,
to allude to Aldo Leopold’s paradigm for ecological thinking” (1989, p. 41-42).
Correspondingly, another radical ecofeminist, Charlene Spretnak, places female
spirituality in the feminine biology and argues for a cultural apprehension that includes
“compromised of the truths of naturalism and the holistic proclivities of women”
(1989, p. 128-129).

Radical ecofeminism has been criticized for its essentialism, irrationalism on

feminism, and reductionism. Liberal feminists mainly oppose and criticize radical
ecofeminism since this group of feminists critique the recognition of any kind of a
feminine essence based on biological sex (Garrard, 2004, p. 24). Instead, liberal
feminism, along with radical and libertarian feminism, aims to manifest how gender is
culturally constructed. Via master-models, nature and all the weak natural agents are
associated with the female while culture and all the related power-centered cultural
images are associated with men. Garrard asserts that such essential associations cause
ecofeminism to contradict with the basic insight of feminism:
…feminists have long argued against the acceptance of some ‘feminine
essence’ grounded in biological sex, showing instead how gender is
culturally constructed. Because this applies regardless of whether the
essence is constructed negatively or positively, radical ecofeminism would
then appear to present us with a mirror image of patriarchal constructions
of femininity that is just as limited and limiting. Even a positive valuation
of femininity as ‘closer to nature’ thanks to female biology or social
experience neglects the reality that all the gender distinctions we know
have been constructed within patriarchal societies. (2004, p. 24)

The very basic assumption of radical ecofeminism is not merely criticized due to its
essentialism and allegedly weak feminism, but it is also critiqued because of its main
understanding of ecology, as put by Garrard “If radical ecofeminism is questionable in
terms of its feminism, it is even more so in terms of ecology” (Garrard, 2004, p. 24).
Kheel and Griffin share the insight that the questionability of the radical
ecofeminism’s perception of ecology stems from its dismantling of androcentric
 48

primacy over emotion, which results in a prominent “anti-scientism” (qtd. in Garrard,

2004, p. 24).

According to most ecofeminist critics, the subjugation of nature and women are not
directly related to the dualities established by the dominant patriarchy, rather the
established power structures separate people and nature as two isolated entities and
alienate them from each other. Deriving from Descartes’ theory, Plumwood labels the
process of alienation as ‘hyper-separation’. She acknowledges that the main reason of
androcentrism and anthropocentrism are not the dualities of men vs. women; humans
vs. nature; or reason vs. emotion. Rather, “the alienated differentiation and denied
dependency” that is caused by the model of mastery and shared by all these kinds of
subjugation, is the main instigator of the inherent androcentric and anthropocentric
insights (Plumwood, 1993a, p. 47).

Plumwood explains that the technique analytically applied in the process of alienation
is to be called as ‘polarisation’ or ‘hyper-separation’. Such a process includes the
disregarding of the real association of the superior subject to the inferior one (1993a,
p. 47-55). Through Descartes’ model of separation, she explains how men, women
and nature are polarised. Descartes hyperseparates mind and body and debars animals
not only from mind and the act of thinking, but also from any feeling and sensation
associated with any mental activity. As a result, he situates animals to a position that is
radically different from and inferior to human beings, that is he ‘hyper-separates’
animals from human beings. Likewise, according to Plumwood’s modelling of hyper-
separation, such factors as the model of mastery and the shared oppression of women
and nature produce the insight of alienated distinction and negated dependency, which
finally paves the way for the legitimization of androcentrism and anthropocentricism.

Most ecofeminists mainly criticize gendering nature and reason. Ecofeminism is an

all-encompassing, broad and connecting theory that embraces and links a series of
dualisms highlighted in the history of mankind. Plumwood propounds for the
appreciation of both differences and similarities in the human-nature bases. It is
possible to escape from any androcentric or anthropocentric attitude by means of
appreciating the differences regarding gender and nature without being inflicted by
 49

any patriarchal insight. Within the similar mind-set, she shows the ways to destabilize
prevalent anthropocentric and androcentric attitudes:
We can continue to distinguish reason and emotion, man and woman,
human and animal, but without the neurotic obsessiveness of the
mainstream philosophical tradition. In doing so, the mastery model that
legitimates anthropo- and androcentrism is undermined. (qtd. in Garrard,
2004, p. 25).
To many ecocritics, eradication or reversing of any anthropocentric mind-set also
requires the rejection of an androcentric idealization of reason. Whenever the faculty
of reason is liberated from its idealisation by humanism and androcentric philosophies,
it can recognize and esteem the ‘earth others’ without any ‘ultra-rationalistic
estrangement’ or ‘animistic acclimatization’ (Plumwood, 1993a, p. 137)

The solution of integration and incorporation as suggested by Plumwood totally

dismisses all versions of patriarchal dualisms, simplistic ecofeminism and deep
ecological insights because both distinct humanly capacities and ecosphere are
considered to be under the risk of subjugation with such an approach. If the integration
between men, women and nature is not provided, it can finally cause the calamitous
condition as espoused by Carolyn Merchant in her masterpiece, The Death of Nature,
in which she criticizes the mechanistic and technological science and instead
recommends a version of science based on the morals of holism and vitalism (Garrard,
2002, p. 26).

It is a common consent that ecofeminism comprises several ecofeminisms within

itself, each of which opposing to another through their variations as there are major
internal contradictions within the theory. For Ariel Salleh this conclusion is inevitable
“because ecofeminist politics grows out of a plurality of social contexts, it will have
many contradictions” (1993, p. 94). The version of internal contradiction within
ecofeminism could be traced most between the ecofeminist group that ascribe
themselves as socialist ecofeminists and radical ecofeminists (Hay, 2002, p. 90). Mary
Mellor, the member of the former group, reflects the difference between both
ecofeminist approaches as follows: “While radical eco-feminist philosophy embraces
intuition, an ethic of caring, and weblike human relationships, socialist eco-feminism
would seek to give both production and reproduction a central place in materialist
analysis” (1992, p. 44). According to the analysis of Hay, the socialist orientation in
 50

ecological thought has been the group that critiques ecofeminism most (2002, p. 90).
All the same, while some ecosocialists do not favour a linkage, some effective
socialist ecofeminists such as Carolyn Merchant insist on a fusion between radical
ecofeminism and socialist ecofeminism, which would enhance ecofeminist theory
further:
Socialist feminism incorporates many of the insights of radical feminism,
but views both nature and human nature as historically and socially
constructed. Human nature is seen as the product of historically changing
interactions between humans and nature, men and women, classes and races.
Any meaningful analysis must be grounded in an understanding of power
not only in the personal but also in the political sphere. (1990, p. 103)

Ecofeminism also contains the criticism of oppression and domination on various

grounds including race, sexual alignment class in addition to species and gender. On
this perspective, diversity becomes a crucial notion to be celebrated within
ecofeminism. Diversity and multiplicity are the basic concepts of ecology, which
studies the interactions of such a wide range of living entities from microscopic
creatures to cosmic biological entities. For King, the ecofeminist claim of diversity is
also derived from the diverse ecology:
A healthy, balanced ecosystem, including human and nonhuman inhabitants,
must maintain diversity. Ecologically, environmental simplification is as
significant a problem as environmental pollution. Biological simplification,
i.e., the wiping out of whole species, corresponds to reducing human
diversity into faceless workers, or to the homogenization of taste and culture
through mass consumer markets. Social life and natural life are literally
simplified to the inorganic for the convenience of market society. Therefore,
we need a decentralized global movement that is founded on common
interests yet celebrates diversity and opposes all forms of domination and
violence. Potentially, ecofeminism is such a movement. (King, 1989, p. 20)

Joni Seager observes that “the ecofeminist umbrella is a big one, and there are many
important shades of difference among people who self-identify as ecofeminists”
(1993, p. 252). Due to its various shades, ecofeminism includes several internal
contradictions among its groups. Therefore, ecofeminism as a radical eco-philosophy
has been the focus of several criticisms not only from feminist or ecologist grounds
but also from several ecofeminisms that it harbours inside.
 51

Ecofeminism was highly critiqued due to several misconceptions and alleged claims
for its being “dualistic, partial, anti-rational and essentialist” (Birkeland, 1993, p. 21).
Birkeland attempts to refute all these four charges directed against ecofeminism,
claiming that these qualities directly belong to patriarchal theories, rather than
ecofeminism (p. 21). Firstly, Birkeland rejects the charge of dualism, marking it as a
fallacy. As highlighted by Hay, dualism is claimed to be inherent within ecofeminism
and it appears to be caused by the attitude that “privileging of a female standpoint
maintains masculine/feminine dualism whilst merely reversing the ascription of
superior value” (2002, p. 87). However, Birkeland marks this charge to be a
misperception because ecofeminism does not privilege any entity such as men, women
and animals; yet it seeks to preserve the integrity and equality of rights of them. Some
people mistakenly think that ecofeminism perceives women as a “homogenous whole”
against men and they consider that ecofeminism does not make any distinction
between people of different color, race, class and nationality (p. 21). However, for
Birkeland, ecofeminists primarily affirm cultural diversity of all kinds because they
take their base from appreciation of the diversity of ecology. Yet, since women of all
classes, nationalities and races are exposed to same patriarchal repression, they have a
similarly shared cultural experience that unites them against patriarchy (p. 21).
Against Birkeland, there are still some other ecofeminist approaches like those of
Cuomo, who maintain “the concept of gender itself helps maintain the dualistic
hierarchy” (1992, p. 361). All the same, considering that ecofeminism is “a gender-
based philosophy”, Hay contends, the charge of dualism also carries out some
accuracy yet it should not be perceived as an object of criticism (Hay, 2002, p. 87).

Secondly, she refutes the charge of incompleteness, asserting that since patriarchy
regards women and tribal cultures as “childlike, or unworthy of the term culture”, they
also show ambivalent responses to their values (p. 22). Thus, patriarchy sometimes
marks ecofeminism as a partial project like “the shadow side of a real theory”, or just
view is as “essentialist” or “reverse sexistis” (p. 22). For Birkeland, such a
misconception as partiality is deeply inherent within the patriarchal perception of
ecofeminism.
 52

Thirdly, Birkeland rejects the charges of essentialism, which is the main criticism
against ecofeminism. The essentialist line of the argument claims that “women possess
an essential nature- a biological connection or a spiritual affinity with nature that men
do not” (1993, p. 22). However, for Birkeland, such a position is in the same direction
with the philosophy of ecofeminism. Ynestra King also asserts “since all life is
interconnected, one group of persons cannot be closer to nature” (p. 22). Thus, rather
than biology, cultural and historical factors especially “historical socialization and
oppression of women” result in the difference among gender-based tendencies towards
nature (p. 22). As she explains, the claim that ecofeminism is essentialist is merely a
patriarchal construct developed in order to legitimize the superiority of men over
women and nature. Joan Griscom also shares the opinion that the accusation of
essentialism against ecofeminism is a “construct of culture” (1981, p. 9). The diverse
tendencies of men and women are historically and culturally shaped; therefore,
Birkeland acknowledges both genders “consciously choose other values and behavior
patterns” (1993, p. 22).

Birkeland also dismisses the fourth claim of anti-rationalism against ecofeminism by

asserting that ecofeminism is not irrational or anti-rational, rather it questions
“irrationality of patriarchy, and the false model of impersonal Man upon which most
mainstream theories and radical critiques are based” (1993, p. 23). This charge is
mostly due to the female “spiritual identification with nature” and marking the need
and tendency for spirituality as irrational would only be a patriarchal fallacy (p. 23).

Another claim regarding ecofeminism is related to the assumption that the theory is
not complete and it is partial (Birkeland, 1993, p. 21). For some critics, for example,
the gender-oriented ecophilosophy would be considered to be incomplete “if it does
not adequately theorise environmental degradation” (Hay, 2002, p. 87). The so-called
reductionist attitude is another charge brought against ecofeminism. Although
ecofeminist critics avoid any reductionist attitude at all grounds, some critics critique
the ecofeminist theory because it relates patriarchy as the most persistent axis of
domination (p. 87). Thus, they criticize its reductionist stance against patriarchy.
Within the context of this critique, charging merely patriarchy for the exploitation of
both women and nature gives rise to the flawed-understanding that domination and
 53

exploitation of nature is specific only to men, not women. This perception sees
patriarchy as the sole nature-degrading unit while manifesting women as the unique
protectors of ecology. Many critics like Robyn Eckersley criticize and reject such a
position:
How, then, do we explain the existence of patriarchy in traditional
societies that have lived in harmony with the natural world? How do we
explain Engels’ vision of ‘scientific socialism’, according to which the
possibility of egalitarian social/sexual relations is premised on the
instrumental manipulation and domination of the nonhuman world?
Clearly, patriarchy and the domination of nonhuman nature can each be
the product of quite different conceptual and historical developments. It
follows that the emancipation of women need not necessarily lead to the
emancipation of the nonhuman world, and vice versa. (1992, p. 68).

The charges of reductionism directed to ecofeminism have not been precisely cleared
up. Likewise, other critical claims of essentialism have not been dispelled thoroughly
(Hay, 2002, p. 88). Many ecofeminists like Salleh are opposed to the claim of
essentialism and they consider it to be an insult (Salleh, 1997, p. xi). Similarly,
Birkeland upholds that there is no place for any kind of essentialism within
ecofeminism because “women possess an essential nature — a biological connection
or a spiritual affinity with nature that men do not ... would be inconsistent with the
logic of ecofeminism” (1993, p. 22). Rejecting any sort of biologic experience and
essentialism, she identifies the position of cultural experience as the main cause for the
oppression of women. The biological difference that is used to justify the supremacy
of men over women is not rooted in biological variations but in historical socialization
(p. 22).

Although biological essentialism7 was popular in early ecofeminist theories before the
1980s, the essentialist position has been strongly criticized and rejected by a

7
Essentialism is “a belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are, and
that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression”. This philosophical insight
adheres that “essence is prior to existence”
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/essentialism).
Biological essentialism categorizes and posits genders in accordance with their genetic, biological and
physiological variations. Within this taxonomy, it directs that men and women are totally different from
ach others because they have distinct genetic and biological qualities, therefore their behaviours must
also differentiate. As an illustration, according to biologic essentialism the physiology and biologic
features of women make them a nurturing, fertile, delicate subject who can breed, give birth and nurture
the children, the qualities of which mostly resembles to nature. However, according to the same insight,
due to their testosterone male subjects considered to have an innate aggressive, strong and ambitious.
 54

mainstream group of ecofeminists with a sociological and philosophical insight. Even,

such feminist figures like Simone de Beauvoir are against the identification of the
females with nature. For Hay, the ecofeminist argument on essentialism seems to be
unsettled within ecofeminism:
The biological essentialism of early ecofeminism has been rejected in
favour of the privileging of a ‘female standpoint’ based upon a shared
history of cultural oppression; this may, itself, merely transfer essentialism
from one ground to another. But the question can be asked: if there is no
historical or cultural basis upon which a special female empathy with the
natural world can be claimed, what is left of ecofeminism? (Hay, 2002, p.
88)
Similarly, the liberal feminist Judy Evans contends that for the liberation of women,
the problematic entity is nature; therefore she discourages people to celebrate what is
natural because “that could entrench more or less every aspect of the female condition
many of us have sought to renounce. Having fought to emerge from ‘nature’, we must
not go back’ (1993, p. 187):
While there are many causes for which women may, and some of us will
think, should work, by only one - a demand for equal treatment - is our
cause as women advanced. And thus it makes sense, I suggest, to speak ...
not of ecofeminists, but of ecologists who are feminists too. It follows ...
that women have no especial, innate tendency towards, or interest in,
ecological concerns; and that while ecology will be one of the causes for
which we may work, if we do so as feminists it must be on a basis of
equality with men, or rather, while striving for that. (Evans, 1993, p. 187)

These reactionary critics maintain that neither for the liberation of nature nor for
environmental crisis, anti-essentialist ecofeminism cannot offer them much (Hay,
2002, p. 89). Therefore, for this group of critics an essentialist revival and attitude
within ecofeminism should be observed (p. 89). Noel Sturgeon argues that there are
“strengths and weaknesses” in the essentialist thought and useful ways of essentialism
and anti-essentialism (1997, p. 7). She maintains that effective essentialism is
necessary for an influential ecofeminist activism due to its strict sense of oppositions
(1997, p. 8). Also, Cuomo insists that strategic essentialism, which was once rejected,
could be the remedy to efficiently activate women within ecofeminist thought (1998,
p. 125).

Apart from reductionism and essentialism, another battle of argument within

ecofeminism has been the notion of ecofeminist primitive spirituality. Such influential
 55

ecofeminist figures as Karen Warren and Carol Adams support the position that
reorienting earth-based spirituality within ecofeminism is central for the theory..
Warren insists on “life affirming” and “personally empowering” earth-based
spirituality within ecofeminism (1993, p. 130). While many ecofeminists argue against
the marginalization of spirituality within ecofeminism, Adams, on the other hand,
believes that spirituality serves ecofeminist purposes and she thinks that the
ecofeminist philosophy based on the celebration of diversity is parallel to the
celebration of earth- spiritualties:
We reject an either-or approach; we do not believe that we must decide
between working to help human beings or working to stop environmental
abuses, between politics and spirituality, between humans and the rest of
nature. We recognize that addressing issues related to the sacred furthers
ecofeminist goals. We do not dematerialize the sacred or de-spiritualize
matter. The idea of diversity amidst relationship does not erase differences
among us; nor does it deny our commonalities. (1993, p. 4)

Rosemary Ruether, who also celebrates earth-based spirituality, draws attention to the
necessity of the presence and place of God within ecofeminism:
God, in ecofeminist spirituality, is the immanent source of life that sustains
the whole planetary community. God is neither male nor anthropomorphic.
God is the font from which the variety of plants and animals well up in each
new generation, the matrix that sustains their life-giving interdependency
with one another. (1993, p. 21)

Another controversial ecofeminist principle is the ethic of care. Cuomo asserts that an
ecofeminist ethic of care is to include the values such as self-sacrifice, which is a value
mostly opposed by feminisms:
Female caring and compassion for oppressors are cornerstones of patriarchal
systems. Women have forgiven oppressors, stayed with abusive husbands
and partners, and sacrificed their own desires because of their great ability
to care for others … the care ethic actually causes moral damage in women
and, therefore, caring is not always a healthy and ethical choice for a moral
agent. (1992, p. 355)

Ecofeminism has also been criticized by some scholars and critics for being
‘apolitical and ahistorical’ (Hay, 2002, p. 91). Actually these charges were directed by
ecofeminists against deep ecology. However, a voice from deep within ecofeminism,
Joni Seager, now reverses the opposition and critiques ecofeminism since he believes
that the feminist ecological thought is not properly concerned with a political sphere:
 56

Despite the many ecofeminists who do not fall into this trap, there is a
strong apolitical, acultural, and ahistorical undercurrent to ecofeminism that
is especially limiting. Environmental destruction takes place in a political
and politicized context. Environmentalism must remain a political
movement. Such a movement, while it should be concerned with the psychic
well-being of its supporters should not exist primarily to minister to their
personal needs. (Seager, 1993, p. 251-52)

Although radical ecofeminism is questionable as to its concerns of ecology, the grand

theory of ecofeminism, on the contrary, is noted to be a discipline that is ‘greener’
than other radical ecophilosophies. As Hay maintains, “a survey of the current state of
green intellectual and activist development can only lead to the conclusion that
ecofeminism is now the predominant position within ecological thought” (Hay, 2002,
p. 72). For many critics, ecofeminism has more ecological insights and assertions on
environmental justice compared to the philosophies of deep ecology (Garrard, 2004, p.
26). Therefore, due to its elaboration on a distinct ecological aspect, ecofeminism
should be considered to be different and distinct from other forms of feminisms and
ecophilosophies (Hay, 2002, p. 73).

Another criticism raised against is that the ecofeminist theory is considered to hold its
feminist discourse above its ecological appeal, because of which ecofeminism fails to
bridge the gap between ecocriticism and feminism (Hay, 2002, p. 92). “Ecological
feminists take the commitments of feminism as far less problematic than the histories
of environmental thought and science created by men even when feminism neglects to
take seriously the interests of human and nonhuman beings” (Cuomo, 1998, p. 53).
Moreover, ecofeminism relies on the notions of feminist sisterhood rather than
environmentalist concept of family (Hay, 2002, p. 92). According to Hay, the evidence
of such ecofeminist leaning would be evidenced through strict ecofeminist opposition
against deep ecology. (p. 92). What’s more, instead of having a deep feministic
philosophy, ecofeminism adopts ‘womanist8’ politics in its agenda. According to
Salleh, “the embodied materialism of ecofeminism is a womanist rather than a
feminist politics. It theorises an intuitive historical choice of re/sisters around the
world to put life before freedom” (1997 p. ix-x)

8
Womanism is an ideological pro-humankind theory that looks for the liberation of women from both
gender and color oppression. Womanism includes feminism as a sub-branch, thus, Alice Walker, who
coined the term, asserts that “womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender" (1996, p. 10)
 57

Many ecofeminists, such as Arial Salleh, are opposed to abstractions,

conceptualizations and philosphication since they prefer action and practice to the
theory. Salleh maintains that the philosphication of ecofeminism should be
discouraged because the obsession with conceptualization directs one to dominance-
centered and masculine mentality (Salleh, 1984, p. 335). Irene Diamond and Lisa
Kuppler contend that “the strength of ecofeminism is in the streets” because it is only
in the streets where “close attention to the practises of ecofeminism recovers what
much academic discourse loses” (Diamond & Kuppler, 1990, p. 160).

Although ecofeminism majorly deals with women-nature subservience, there have also
been some other feminist objections against ecofeminism because of the separation of
nature from women. Even within the lexical constructions, the usage of eco- in front of
the term, feminism, was also questioned and objected by some feminists like Anne
Cameron. Some feminists like her rejected the separation of ecology within the body
of feminism since they believed that the natural and the feminine were so identical that
a separation would only deteriorate the feminist position:
The term ‘ecofeminism’ is an insult to the women who put themselves on
the line, risked public disapproval, risked even violence and jail ...
Feminism has always been actively involved in the peace movement, in the
antinuclear movement, and in the environmental protection movement.
Feminism is what helped teach us all that the link between political and
industrial included the military and was a danger to all life on this planet. To
separate ecology from feminism is to try to separate the heart from the head.
I am not an ecofeminist. I am a feminist. (1989, p. 64)

Objecting Cameron’s notion of equating nature with women, a very crucial feminist of
twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir argues for excluding any ecological aspects
from feminism since she thinks that it is nature-women association that primarily gives
rise to the oppression and subjugation of women. Therefore, in a world of patriarchal
dualisms, all these politically constructed dualities could only be overcome through
getting into the male side, adopting masculine values for the female and softening
them on the behalf of women, rather than through sophisticating and excelling the
female side. Consequently, Beauvoir rejects any nature-women asociation within
feminism:
 58

An enhanced status for traditional feminine values, such as woman and her
rapport with nature, woman and her maternal instinct, woman and her
physical being ... this renewed attempt to pin women down to their
traditional role, together with a small effort to meet some of the demands
made by women - that’s the formula used to try and keep women quiet.
Even women who call themselves feminists don’t always see through it.
Once again, women are being defined in terms of ‘the other’, once again
they are being made into the ‘second sex’ ... Equating ecology with
feminism is something that irritates me. They are not automatically one and
the same thing at all. (Beauvoir qtd. in Schwarzer, 1984, p. 103)

Like many ecofeminists, the influential modern feminist Beauvoir also maintains that
throughout the history women and nature were faced a mutual subordination by the
patriarchy. For, Beauvoir nature is a “vein of gross material in which the soul is
imprisoned” (1982, p. 176); therefore, women should radically be distanced from
nature and freed from the patriarchal captivation. Feminists within the same line with
Beauvoir assert that it is only through a dynamic partaking within the territories of
culture, which has long been made inaccessible to them that women could be
liberated. For this group of feminists, such an effective participation in cultural or
masculine realms necessitates a total and radical rejection of nature, which does not fit
into ecofeminist philosophy at all. As strongly supported by a group of feminists, the
participation of women in male-domains and their estrangement from nature was their
solution to rid women from any patriarchal domination:
With modern technological achievement, women no longer need to be
chained to the tyranny of their bodies. Now they can become as men,
masters and possessors of nature, able to transcend nature’s enslaving chains
through creative immersion within the golden fields of culture. (Hay, 2002,
p. 82)

Moreover, following the footsteps of Beauvoir, there were even such radical feminists
as Shulamith Firestone, who insists that nature was an all-tyrannous entity since
through such a master-modelling and associating women closely with nature, women
would be furthered one step away from liberation from patriarchal suppression
(Firestone, 1970, p. 193). Therefore, Firestone called other feminist activists into
mission in order to get rid of what she coined as biological tyranny since “humanity
can no longer afford to remain in the transitional stage between simple animal
existence and full control of nature” (p. 193). She even emphasizes that in a society
that has been under evolution from a Darwinian terminology, women “are much closer
 59

to a major evolutionary jump, indeed to direction of our own evolution, than we are to
a return to the animal kingdom from which we came” (p. 193).

This line of radical feminist argument against nature as strongly supported by

Cameron Beauvoir and Firestone, is described by the crucial ecofeminist critic
Plumwood as “the first masculinising wave of feminism” (Plumwood, 1993b, p. 19).
Objecting to the exclusion of nature from feminist domains and its being called as
tyrant, Plumwood criticizes the vainly initiative of feminists to adopt and adapt
masculine positions and interests. Therefore, she rises against the inefficient feminist
effort because, in her own words, “in the equal admittance strategy, women enter
science, but science itself and its orientation to the domination of nature remain
unchanged” (p. 19). Plumwood states that “the very idea of a feminine connection
with nature seems to many to be regressive and insulting’, it is this feminist perception
that perceive women to be “passive, reproductive animals” that are “immersed in the
body and in unreflecting experiencing of life” (p. 38).

While ecofeminist theory is criticized for its “unsatisfied feminism” or un equal

treatment of ecology and feminism, such ecofeminist figures like Ynestra King, Val
Plumwood and Karen Warren “distance their ecofeminisms from ‘masculinising’ first
wave feminism” (Hay 2002, p. 92). In providing the equal treatment, Slicer notes
“ecofeminism, we should remember, is a critique not only of androcentric
environmental philosophy but of some feminist theory as well” (Slicer, 1994, p. 35).

For Salleh, in an atmosphere where ecologist patterns are pre-feminist and feminist
models are pre-ecological, “ecofeminism interrogates the very foundations of
mainstream feminism, by pointing to its complicity with the Western androcentric
colonisation of the life world by instrumental reason” (Salleh, 1997, p. 13).
Correspondingly, Val Plumwood maintains that any ecofeminism is to refuse
“approaches to women’s liberation which endorse or fail to challenge the dualistic
definition of women and nature and/or the inferior status of nature” (1993a, p. 39).
However, the rejection for those of feminisms that lack appropriate ecological insight
is not a total refusal, yet a partial one:
 60

Critical ecological feminism would also draw strength and integrate key
insights from other forms of feminism, and hence have a basis for partial
agreement with each. From early and liberal feminism it would take the
original impulse to integrate women fully into human culture (Plumwood,
1993a, p. 39).

Karen Warren, who is one of the fundamental ecofeminist critics, categorizes “four
minimal condition claims of eco-feminism” which prove its distinctiveness (Warren,
1987, p.7). The first ecofeminist condition, as claimed by Warren, is the association
between the domination of the females and nature (p. 7). The second ecofeminist
condition is that these related oppressions are authorized by a “patriarchal conceptual
framework” (p. 7). The third ecofeminist condition is the criticism of the patriarchal
theoretical structures that are also established in ecological philosophies (p. 7). Finally,
the fourth ecofeminist condition adheres that ecological philosophies ought to
“embrace a feminist perspective” (p. 7). According to Warren, out of these minimal
conditions of ecofeminism, the third condition marks ecofeminism to be a distinctive
strand of feminism because it is “the basis for the uniquely eco-feminist position that
an adequate feminist theory and practice embrace an ecological perspective” (p. 7-8).
Karen Warren, on the other hand, manifests that the main strands of feminism could
actually be criticized from an ecofeminist point of view. She rejects a liberal feminist
ecological perspective for “its extreme individualism”:
The extreme individualism of a liberal feminist ecological perspective
conflicts with the ecofeminist emphasis on the independent value of the
integrity, diversity, and stability of ecosystems, and on the ecological
themes of interconnectedness, unity in diversity, and equal value to all parts
of the human-nature system. It also conflicts with ‘ecological ethics’ per se.
Ecological ethics are holistic, not individualistic; they take the value and
well-being of a species, community, or ecosystem, and not merely of
particular individuals, let alone human individuals, as basic. (1987, p. 10)

On the other hand, traditional Marxist feminism proves to be inadequate to effectively

theorize the association between the subjugation of women and the domination of
nature (Warren, 1987, p. 12). For Warren, radical feminism, which defines female
subjects “as beings whose primary functions are either to bear and raise children ... or
to satisfy male sexual desires” is much closer to the main ecofeminist insight due to its
rejection of biological essentialism (1987, p. 17). Finally, from an ecofeminist mind-
set, socialist feminism identifies the interrelations among several forms of oppressions,
yet it cannot appropriately address the subjugation of nature (p. 17).
 61

As none of the main feminisms fully satisfy her four minimal condition claims of
ecofeminism, Warren suggests a new form of feminism to surpass all other feminisms,
including biological essentialism. This new feminist theory is to be called as
transformative feminism, which is based on the main concepts proposed by Warren
and is identified with ecofeminism (1987, p. 18-20). Similarly, Plumwood also
suggests a new green movement within feminism. For her, ecological feminism is “a
third wave or stage of ecofeminism moving beyond the conventional divisions in
feminist theory” (1993a, p. 39). Despite evolving on the theories of ecofeminism,
radical feminism, cultural feminism and socialist feminism, “this critical ecological
feminism conflicts with various other feminisms, by making an account of the
connection to nature central in its understanding of feminism” (p. 39).

1.3. Central Concepts in Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism is a critical theory that focuses on the interconnections between the

oppression of women and the subjugation of nature by the prevalent male-domination.
As the theory mainly focuses on the interrelatedness, ecofeminists elaborate on several
critical concepts that play significant role for this interconnected oppressions of nature
and women. The essential notions are mainly studied and examined by many
ecofeminists due to their vital function in the construction of ecofeminist theory. The
predominant concepts studied and analysed within the context of ecofeminism include
a wide range of critical notions, including the relation of women and nature, science,
technology, economy, religion and etc. Within this study, apart from women and
nature such ecofeminist concepts as science and religion will also be examined
because each of these concepts has a significance and relevance within the ecofeminist
exploration of the Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Starhawk’s The Fifth
Sacred, because as Merchant notes, one must primarily re-visit and re-consider such
fundamental ecofeminist aspects including science and religion so that ecofeminist
concerns would be revealed:
We must re-examine the formulation of a worldview and a science that, by
reconceptualising reality as a machine rather than a living organism,
sanctioned the domination of nature and women. The contributions of such
founding fathers of science as Francis Bacon, William Harvey, Rene
 62

Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and Isaac Newton must be revalued. The fate of
other options, alternative philosophies, and social groups shaped by the
organic worldview and resistant to the growing exploitative mentality needs
reappraisal. (1980, p. xxi)

Within the context of plot, character development and patriarchal societies, both of the
utopic and dystopic feminist communities presented in the novels develop a close and
discrete relation with science, technology and religious establishment as the miserable
female subjects and silenced nature are exposed to the detrimental domination of the
prevailing patriarchy. In this chapter, the primary ecofeminist concepts will be
highlighted and elaborated since they have specific functions in the establishment of
both utopic and dystopic feminist societies.

1.3.1. Nature and Women

Within the contexts of history, culture and language, women and nature have always
had an intimate link that closely related them to one another. Particularly, the
simultaneity of two modern movements of feminism and ecology intensified and
dramatized this cherished link between nature and women. On one hand, female
subjects rise against patriarchy to liberate themselves from any political and cultural
limitation imposed by men; on the other hand, environmentalists develop ecological
ethics and insights regarding the mutual interconnections between human beings and
nature in order to put an end to the environmental exploitation by the anthropocentric
Western society. Merging the purposes of both feminism and ecocriticism,
ecofeminism is critical of “the costs of competition, aggression, and domination
arising from the market economy, modus operandi9 in nature and society” (Merchant,
1980, p. xx):
The female earth was central to the organic cosmology that was
undermined by the Scientific Revolution and the rise of market-oriented
culture in early modern Europe. The ecology movement has reawakened in
the values and concepts associated historically with the modern organic
world. The ecological model and its associated ethics make possible a
fresh and critical interpretation of the rise of modern science in the crucial
period when our cosmos ceased to be viewed as an organism and became
instead a machine. (1980, p. xx)

9
The latin word is literally translated as “the way of operating” and defined as the particular method of
doing something
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/modus-operandi?q=modus+operandi)
 63

Ecology has been a subversive science because it evaluates the results of uncontrolled
growth of capitalism, technology and progress, which were the dominant concepts
since the seventeenth century in the Western culture. The main agenda of the ecologic
movement has been occupied with the restoration of “the balance of nature disrupted
by industrialization and over population” (Merchant, 1980, p. xxi). Strictly opposed to
the exploitation inherent in the project of progress, ecology movement insists on the
peaceful cycles of nature (p. xxi). Likewise, the feminist movement criticizes the
results of the competition in the marketplace, the loss of economic productive roles for
women in the capitalist societies and the insight that women, along with nature, are the
resources for men to exploit and abuse (p. xxi). Common historical backgrounds and
causes of these movements of women and nature signal that both should be liberated
from the anthropomorphic and stereotypic labels that degrade their own status into
commodified objects.

The common fundamental claim of ecofeminist eco-philosophy is that there is a close

relation between the corruption of nature and the corruption of women. Both of these
subjects are opt to face an unfair treatment by the male-domination due to the master-
models and patriarchal dualisms politically constructed within the perceptions of
society as ‘natural order’. According to Salleh, “the basic premise in ecofeminism is
acknowledgement of the parallel in men’s thinking between their ‘right’ to exploit
nature, on the one hand, and the use they make of women, on the other” (Salleh, 1989,
p. 26). Moreover, to the assumption of Janis Birkeland, “In these cultures, women
have historically been seen as closer to the earth or nature” and this inherent
perception of master modelling paved way for “a complex morality based on
dominance and exploitation” (Birkeland, 1993, p. 18-19).

Having been linked to other dualities, the nature-women pole has been perceived to be
connected with “the primitive rather than the civilised, with the realm of necessity
rather than freedom and high-mindedness, with carnality rather than discipline, with
associative, ‘non-rigorous’ thought rather than rationality” (Hay, 2002, p. 75).
Therefore, any concept, interest or value inflicted with nature and women has been
manifested as ‘the other’, the backwards, the outcast, the periphery and the marginal;
 64

however, any concept associated with men and culture is valued as the powerful, the
mainstream, the center, the superior.

The historical association of nature and women can also be revealed within their
etymologies of Western and non-Western cultures. According to the terminological
analysis of Merchant regarding the roots of ‘nature’, nature has traditionally been
noted as feminine since the ancient times (Merchant, 1980, p. xxiii). When the Latin
language and the romance languages of the Medieval and early modern Europe is
analysed, it could be identified that nature was a feminine noun (1980, p. xxiii). The
word ‘nature’ had a feminine connotation in all western languages: in Latin natura, -
ae; German: die Natur, French: la nature; Italian: la natura; Spanish: la natura (p.
xxiii). Even, the Greek word ‘physis’, which could be translated as nature, was
feminine (p. xxiii). Apart from etymology, the close link or association between
women and nature can be observed when the women and men’s sense of responsibility
are examined. As Norwood analyzes the nature-conscious works of four different
nature writers, she comes to the conclusion that there is one outstanding difference
between male and female sense of responsibility to the nature:

Feminine culture characteristically defines nature in a much more

‘immanent’ fashion. Nature is: before culture there was nature, after
culture there will continue to be nature. Their cultural drama is not one of
successful challenge, nature overcome, but of full recognition, nature
comprehended… Their ambivalence to the progress of culture grew out of
fear that development can destroy the opportunity of recognition. … They
(female nature writers) are connected not with action on the environment,
but with understanding how nature (particularly wilderness) acts on them.
(p. 343)

Throughout the history of Western culture, the nature and feminine connection has
been insistently used to legitimise the supremacy and control of patriarchy over nature
and women. The historical circumstances of the seventeenth century and the figures
like Francis Bacon manifest how the intimate link between women and nature is used
to maintain patriarchal power (Hay, 2002, p. 75). By ethically defending the dissecting
table, Bacon insisted that the secrets of nature could be taken from ‘her’ through force
and violence with his use of intense sexual images (Merchant, 1992, p. 46-47).
Carolyn Merchant maintains that it was the discourse of modern science that resulted
in the patriarchal dominion over the ‘female’ nature when Bacon’s scientific
 65

descriptions caused “his transformation of the earth as a nurturing mother and womb
of life into a source of secrets to be extracted for academic advance” (1990, p. 165):
Disorderly, active nature was soon forced to submit to the questions and
experimental techniques of the new science. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a
celebrated ‘father of modern science’, transformed tendencies already extant
in his own society into a total program advocating the control of nature for
human benefit. Melding together a new philosophy based on natural magic
as a technique for manipulating nature, the technologies of mining and
metallurgy, the emerging concept of progress and a patriarchal structure of
family and state, Bacon fashioned a new ethic sanctioning the exploitation
of nature (Merchant, 1990, p. 164)

The treatment of nature by Bacon as a sexual, insensible and inactive body of conquest
corresponds to a period of time when the seventeenth century England was going
through problematic witch trials. According to Carolyn Merchant, the theory of Bacon
and witch trials are more than a coincidence (1990, p. 168). “Much of the imagery”
Merchant maintains “he used in delineating his new scientific objectives and methods
derived from the courtroom, and, because it treats nature as a female to be tortured
through mechanical inventions, strongly suggests the interrogations of the witch trials
and the mechanical devices used to torture witches” (p. 168). Patsy Hallen finds this
historical overlapping highly ironic and she sarcastically raises a question: “Is it an
accident that modern science was born during the ‘burning times’ when eight to eleven
million women were killed on the charges of witchcraft?” (Hallen, 1994, p. 19). Brian
Easlea concludes that there were mainly two factors influencing the witch persecution
terror (Easlea, 1980, p. 7). For him, the first factor was totally economic self-interest.
Women, especially older ones or so-called witches, were obstacles for the newly
emerging and growing industry of professional medicine, doctors and physicians
because they were healing the people with their natural medicinal knowledge.
Secondly and most importantly there were “non-economic factors such as gender
identity and sexual attitudes” that caused men to legitimise their superiority over
women (p. 7).

In time within the Western mind-sets, the nature and the feminine have been
considered to be inferior subjects that serve as raw materials used to satisfy the
physical desires of men (Hay, 2002, p. 76). However, according to main arguments of
ecofeminists such an erroneous perception may be reversed totally.
 66

In order to reverse the mistaken yet deeply woven political perception of Western
society on nature and women, early ecofeminists made use of biological essentialism,
which received a lot of attention in ecofeminist theory. According to this essentialist
position, women are considered to be blessed with an intimate ecological insight and
the liberation for women and nature was thought to be in this unique integration. The
association between nature and women was not considered as degradation, yet as a
special one when women possess a unique environmental vision. Prominent
ecofeminist critics like Ariel Salleh or Susan Griffin of the 1980s advocated this line
of ecofeminist argument of biological essentialism. They mainly argued that the
biological processes of women physiology are privileging characteristics endowed to
women. Nature and women share some biological resemblances, for example, they
both have the potential to give birth to a new life and sustain that life with breeding
and nurturing. Peter Hay well depicts this side of the ecofeminist argument of
biological essentialists:
This biological ‘closeness’ was said to stem from women’s physiology;
from the menstrual cycle, the acts of carrying and giving birth to young
life, and from nurturing and nursing -all processes said to make for a
privileged oneness with Mother Earth and innate attunement to the
rhythms of other natural processes. Close involvement in the planetary
rhythms acts to ward off the hubris to which the masculine gender is
prone, providing constant reminders of mortality and biophysical limits,
necessary correctives from which men are in large part shielded. (2002, p.
76).

For some other ecofeminists like Ynestra King, rather than biological aspects, there
are more important socio-historical dynamics for a privileged empathy between
women and non-natural word. They crucially assert that liberation cannot be possible
by identifying women away from nature or making them closer to the non-human
world compared to the men. Yet, the subjugation of women is mostly due to both
historical and biological factors:
The liberation of women is to be found neither in severing all connections
that root us in nature nor in believing ourselves to be more natural than men.
Both of these positions are unwittingly complicit with nature/culture
dualism. Women’s oppression is neither strictly historical nor strictly
biological. It is both. (1981, p. 14-15)
 67

According to the assertion of King, there is an inevitable association between

historical experiences of female subjects with their privileged emphatic relation to the
non-human world. The perspective of King requires the esteeming of the “critical
otherness”, which is explained by her as the undervalued experience of being a female
(1981, p. 14). For her, the devalued and othered position of women is a critical stance
and this position of being a female should be reversed and celebrated. Likewise,
Griscom also insisted that being closer to nature or culture is a fatal lie, which will not
further the other pole:
I find it difficult to assert that men are ‘further’ from nature because they
neither menstruate nor bear children. They also eat, breathe, excrete, sleep
and die; and all of these, like menstruation, are experiences of bodily limits.
Like any organism, they are involved in constant biological exchange with
their environment and they have built-in biological clocks complete with
cycles. They also play a role in childbearing. In reproduction, men’s genes
are as important as women’s. (Griscom, 1981, p. 8)

Apart from Griscom, Birkeland carries the argument against essentialism further and
he asserts that while patriarchal power structures place women culturally, politically
between nature and men (King, 1981, p. 14), “one group of persons cannot be closer
to nature” (1993, p. 22). Moreover, for Carolyn Merchant the essentialist celebration
of the alleged closeness between women and nature is highly questionable and
contradictory since rather than liberating women and nature, it intensifies and
legitimizes the exiting oppression on both subjects (1990, p. xvi). She insists that
notions of nature and women are historical and social productions and they are always
in evolution; therefore, she rejects any static ‘essential’ features regarding sex, gender
or nature:
Yet these celebrations of the connection between women and nature contain
an inherent contradiction. If women overtly identify with nature and both
are devalued in modern Western Culture, don’t such efforts work against
women’s prospects for their own liberation? Is not the conflation of woman
and nature a form of essentialism? Are not women admitting that by virtue
of their own reproductive biology that are in fact closer to nature than men
and indeed their social role is that of caretaker? Such actions seem to
cement existing forms of oppression against women and nature, rather than
liberating either. (Merchant, 1990, p. xvi)

The gradual scholarly shift on the perception of nature and gender in ecofeminism
took place in the 1980s with the adaptation of the anti-essentialist viewpoint by the
critics thanks to the impact of Griscom and King (Hay, 2002, p. 77). During the early
 68

1980s, Ariel Salleh supported the biological essentialism claiming that “women’s
monthly fertility cycle, the tiring symbiosis of pregnancy, the wrench of childbirth and
the pleasure of suckling an infant, these things already ground women’s consciousness
in the knowledge of being coterminous with nature” (1984, p. 340). However, with the
influence of the ecofeminist stances that question and shake the position of biological
essentialism, which was previously inherent within ecofeminism, Salleh almost totally
alters her essentialist viewpoint. For her, during the early 1990s, ecofeminism turns
out to be a deeply “democratic project” which ‘enlists men to join women in
reaffirming their place as part of nature and in formulating new social institutions in
line with that position” (1993, p. 100). In the 1990s, many other ecofeminist critics
formed the mainstream discussion of this democratic project when they supported an
ecofeminist approach based on culture (p. 78). Val Plumwood was one of the crucial
critics who shaped an ecofeminist argument from cultural point of view via her
philosophical and sociological insight:
To the extent that women’s lives have been lived in ways which are less
directly oppositional to nature than those of men, and have involved
different and less oppositional practices, qualities of care and kinds of
selfhood, an ecological feminist position could and should privilege some
of the experiences and practices of women over those of men as a source
of change without being committed to any form of naturalism. (1993a, p.
34)

The culture-centered philosophy posited by Plumwood has been a dominant position

within ecofeminism (Hay, 2002, p. 78). According to the mainstream ecofeminist
perception, closeness between nature and women was not totally due to the biological
resemblances, interests or beliefs. Rather, the closeness between the women and the
non-human world was due to the historically assigned social roles. Consequently, the
generative role of women was celebrated not necessarily because it included biological
reasons, yet due to the fact that there were the cultural aspects of this distinguished
experience of re-productiveness (p. 78). However, the ecofeminist insight of
Plumwood has also received several criticism, For example, Victoria Davion claimed
that in the modern-day Western society, there are many women who do not feel
themselves attached and connected to nature while there are some group of men who
feel much deeper connection and attachment to the non-human world (1994, p. 25).
Also for Cuomo, moderately through an elevation over the non-human world the
 69

identities of men and women are constructed; therefore, modern women of the
technological societies did also contribute to the subjugation of nature:
Ecofeminists should not romanticize the connections between women and
nature. Many human females have been conceived, and have conceived of
themselves, as dominators within the logic of domination - as above nature,
and/or as above other members of the human species. Women, especially
members of industrial and technological societies, have contributed to the
oppression of the nonhuman world, and must admit to this complicity so
that they can create alternatives. (1992, p. 356).

While the essential perceptions of ecofeminism have shifted within the course of time,
the connotations of the relation between nature and women have also altered. The
concepts of ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘Mother Nature’, for example, have changed in the
course of time (Hay, 2002, p. 78). According to Joni Seager, “the conceptualization of
the earth as a mother has a long and honourable history; Earth as Mother, as a sacred
and honoured female life force, is a powerful icon in non-Christian, non-
EuroAmerican, mostly agricultural cosmography” (1993, p. 219). However, in today’s
Western societies, the Mother Earth/Nature representations have been perceived to be
linguistic constructions of a patriarchal power structure, in which both of the feminine
and natural images are the depictions by a prevailing masculine mentality. In order to
eloborate on the modern sense of the metaphors, Peter Hay notes:
Primal Mother cosmography cannot be imported into western culture while
retaining its original meanings intact. In fact, the Mother Earth/Mother
Nature icons are now seen as components of the linguistic structure of
patriarchal domination. They perpetuate western images of the mother as
eternally generous, unceasingly fecund and bountiful to the point of
inexhaustibility, whilst meriting no economic value. They are complicit,
then, in the women–nature nexus of exploitation. (2002, p. 79).

Through such a politically constructed image of Mother Earth both nature and women
are reduced to an inferior position. The patriarchal power structures of the society
portray Mother Earth to have healing power, immense absorbing capabilities and an
eternal silence. However, some critics like Seager and Merchant criticize the
‘genderization’ or categorization of nature: (Merchant, 1990, p. 2):
The earth is not our mother. There is no warm, nurturing,
anthropomorphized earth that will take care of us if only we treat her nicely.
The complex, emotion-laden, conflict-laden, quasi-sexualized, quasi-
dependent mother relationship … is not an effective metaphor for
environmental action. (Seager, 1993, p. 219)
 70

Moreover, according to Seager the use of such metaphors as Mother Earth is also
detrimental in the sense that they may cause such an anti- environmental
understanding that as people are the children of Mother Nature, they cannot be
rendered responsible for their negative attitudes towards environment (Seager, 1993,
p. 219). Inevitably, such a metaphor would imply an escape from responsibility for
nature. Also, Gaard maintains that anthropomorphizing10 the nature is similarly not
welcomed because “it seeks to understand another not on her or his own terms but as a
projection of ourselves” (Gaard, 1993, p. 305).

1.3.2 Religion

Many critics share the opinion that the ecological crisis and the problems of gender are
fundamentally matters of the belief and value systems established within the fabric of
societies that direct culture, science and technology. “What people do about their
ecology” states the historian Lynn White, “depends on what they think about
themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by
beliefs about our nature and destiny-that is, by religion” (1996, p. 9). In his attempt to
explore the historical roots of modern-day ecological crisis, he comes to the striking
conclusion that “our daily habits of action are dominated by an implicit faith in
perpetual progress which was unknown either to Greco-Roman antiquity or to the
Orient. It is rooted in, and is indefensible apart from, Judeo-Christian theology” (1996,
p. 9). White firstly examines the story about the creation and its implications of men’s
relation to nature and he concludes that Christianity is the most ‘anthropocentric’
religion:
Like Aristotle, the intellectuals of the ancient West denied that the visible
world had had a beginning. Indeed, the idea of a beginning was impossible
in the framework of their cyclical notion of time. In sharp contrast,
Christianity inherited from Judaism not only a concept of time as
nonrepetitive and linear but also a striking story of creation. By gradual
stages a loving and all-powerful God had created light and darkness, the
heavenly bodies, the earth and all its plants, animals, birds, and fishes.

10
Anthropomorphism is described mainly as the usage of characteristics of human beings to
describe or explain animals (Horowitz & Bekoff, 2007, p. 23)
 71

Finally, God had created Adam and, as an afterthought, Eve to keep man
from being lonely. Man named all the animals, thus establishing his
dominance over them. God planned all of this explicitly for man's benefit
and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve
man's purposes. And, although man's body is made of clay, he is not
simply part of nature: he is made in God's image. (1996, p. 9)

Unlike Ancient Paganism and Asian Religions, Christianity inherently launched a

dualism prevailing between man and nature. By developing such a dichotomy between
culture and nature, religion paved the way for the further establishment of patriarchal
dualisms, because “it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends” (White,
1996, p. 10). In antiquity there was pagan animism, which would simply be defined as
the acknowledgment of a guarding spirit for plants, inanimate objects, and natural
phenomena (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/animism). As
Christianity came on the stage, it demolished the faith in pagan animism, leading to a
possible exploitation of nature via an apathetic understanding of natural objects and
their care (White, 1996, p. 10).

In contrast to the Christianity’s perception of nature as a subservient identity at the

service of man, such primitive religions like shamanism kept the integration between
the non-human world and the human beings. In her close inspection on shamanism
Mircea Eliade notes, “All over the world learning the language of animals, especially
of birds, is equivalent to knowing the secrets of nature” (1972, p. 98). Although
acquiring the understanding of birds, integration with animals, learning the secret of
nature are cast as irrational, superstitious activities within the context of most modern-
day belief systems of the West, these celebrations are inevitable perspective of
animism, which is a refined and long-standing phenomenology of nature. Ecocritics
and ecofeminists do all embrace animism. Manes depicts its characteristics as “the
belief (I) that all the phenomenal world is alive in the sense of being inspirited
including humans, cultural artifacts, and natural entities, both biological and ‘inert’
and (II) that not only is the nonhuman world alive, but it is filled with articulate
subjects, able to communicate with humans” (1996, p. 17). Animistic societies, which
view nature as a living world with an immortal soul, are highly sensitive to ecological
degradation:
While modern scholarship tends to focus on "explaining" this kind of
thinking in psychological or sociological terms, my interest lies in the sense
 72

it gives us of what might be called the "animistic subject," a shifting,

autonomous, articulate identity that cuts across the human/nonhuman
distinction. Here, human speech is not understood as some unique faculty,
but as a subset of the speaking of the world. Significantly, animistic
societies have almost without exception avoided the kind of environmental
destruction that makes environmental ethics an explicit social theme with
us. (Manes, 1996, p. 18)

Animistic cultures view the ecology or nature as full of spirit, inclusive of not only
people but also of animals, plants and even stones and rivers (Manes, 1996, p. 15). In
this animistic understanding, apart from human language, “there is also the language
of birds, the wind, earthworms, wolves, and waterfalls-a world of autonomous
speakers whose intents (especially for hunter-gatherer peoples) one ignores at one's
peril” (p. 15). Yet, today’s contemporary society has adopted an ethics that disregards
the animism. What human beings need, according to Manes is a “counterethics” that
will “listen to the nonhuman world”, “reverse the environmentally destructive
practices modern society pursues” and “break the silence of nature” (p. 16). The
popularity of animism was shaken in the medieval times with “the introduction of two
powerful institutional technologies: literacy and Christian exegesis”, resulting in
humans to act as the supreme speaking subjects (18-19):
The animistic view of nature was further eroded by medieval Christianity's
particular mode for interpreting texts, exegesis. Christian theology was
clear, if uneasy, on this point: all things-including classical literature, the
devil, Viking invasions, sex, and nature-existed by virtue of God's
indulgence and for his own, usually inscrutable, purposes. With this point in
mind, exegesis, the branch of religious studies dedicated to interpreting the
Bible, concluded that behind the littera, the literal (often mundane) meaning
of a biblical passage, lay some moralis, a moral truth established by God.
And beyond that lurked some divine purpose, the anagogue, almost
certainly beyond the ken of human intellect, unless divine revelation
obligingly made it evident. (Manes, 1996, s. 19)

Conventionally within Christianity, the dogma of creation had another connotation

regarding the current understanding of environmental crisis that nature, which is the
prodigious creation of God, must also disclose the divine creator (White, 1996, p. 11).
To serve to the end of an improved understanding of God, there appeared the religious
study of nature called as natural theology (p. 11). “In the early Church, and always in
the Greek East, nature was conceived primarily as a symbolic system through which
God speaks to men: the ant is a sermon to sluggards; rising flames are the symbol of
 73

the soul's aspiration” (p. 11). All the same, in the early thirteenth century the theology
of Latin West twisted the pre-mentioned understanding and ceased “the decoding of
the physical symbols of God's communication with man and was becoming the effort
to understand God's mind by discovering how his creation operates” (p. 11). With the
advent of scientific developments in the course of the time, it was in the late
eighteenth century that science became the main source of knowledge to understand
God:
The consistency with which scientists during the long formative centuries of
Western Science said that the task and the reward of the scientist was “to
think God’s thoughts after him” leads one to believe that this was their real
motivation. If so, then modern Western science was cast in a matrix of
Christian Theology. (White, 1996, p. 11)

White adroitly defends that modern technology when combined with science reflects
“the Christian dogma of man's transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature”
(1996, p. 12). Judeo-Christian monotheism has provided modern European civilization
with environmentally destructive positions (Garrard, 2004, p. 108). In Genesis 1:26 it
is quoted that “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, over the
cattle, and over all the earth” (p. 108). According to White, this insertion poses the
biblical permit and justification for any misuse of nature as an ethical commandment
to be applied anywhere (p. 108). Like White, Joseph W. Meeker also points out that
religion, in addition to philosophy, has a considerable amount of share in the ‘pioneer’
men’s subjugation of nature, stating “Religion and philosophy have usually affirmed
the pioneer's faith that only his own kind really counts, and that he has a right -perhaps
even an obligation -to destroy or subjugate whatever seems to obstruct his hopes of
conquest” (1996, p. 163) Therefore, White concludes that despite the scientific
improvements of Copernicus or Darwin, with the influence of the Judeo-Christian
belief systems today man perceived to be superior to nature by exploiting both nature
and ignoring its spirituality:
The whole concept of the sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the
ethos of the West. For nearly 2 millennia Christian missionaries have been
chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume
spirit in nature.” (p. 12)

On the same line with Manes and White, the influential ecofeminist and environmental
historian Carolyn Merchant also blames the traditions of Christianity for turning the
 74

once spiritual and speaking nature into silence. In her influential work, Reinventing
Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture (2003), she analyzes how the Christian
elucidation of Genesis story developed within Western mind-sets and how a single
religious interpretation historically influenced the Western approach to nature. As she
argues, after the Fall from Eden, the Christian discourse has created an immense
attempt within the society to return to Eden (2003, p. 1-6). In time, the spiritual and
religious desire to return to Eden, which was developed by most philosophers of the
Classical and Medieval period, turned into a mechanistic and materialistic wish
through the impact of the rise of science and such Enlightenment thinkers as Bacon
and Descartes (p. 7-8). Thus, the attempt of spiritual return to Eden is transformed into
a physical reinvention of Eden on the earth, which corresponded to Americas. “This is
the new American Eden” Merchant contends, “The Garden of Eden story has shaped
Western culture since earliest times and the American world since the 1600s” (p. 2).
After the Enlightenment, the Western mind envisioned the newly discovered land
could actually function as the Garden of Eden thanks to the male initiative.
Accordingly, she argues, “The reinvention of Eden by a heroic Adam acting to
improve a nature depicted variously as a virgin, fallen, or fruitful Eve” has constructed
“the mainstream story of most European Americans” and thus intensified the
oppression of nature (p. 135).

Likewise, Arthur Walker-Jones believes that nature is further subjugated because such
biblical accounts reveal inherent dualisms. For him, the story of the Garden of Eden
“blurs the boundaries between God and nature, and humanity and nature (2008, p.
263) and such biblical stories cast “the problem for ecological interpretation of the
Bible caused by biblical scholars reading dualisms into the Bible” (p. 274). Like
Merchant, he also observes that the “scientific Eden myth”, which is “promoted by a
multinational corporation” after Enlightenment, is “sexist, racist, colonial, and
anthropocentric” (2008, p. 269). Furthermore, Merchant reveals that the Christian
interpretation of Genesis has furthered the oppression and exploitation of not only
nature, but also women and colored people, the opposing poles to the mainstream
males:
With the taming of wilderness, the removal of “savages” and “wild men,”
and the repression of blacks, the American Eden had become a colonized
Eden. People of privilege were inside the garden, colonized minorities
 75

outside it or on its margins. The control of the wild represented the kind of
state that Western societies could export throughout the world to colonized
“other” lands. (p. 154).

Humanism apart from religion also has a tremendous share in the subjugation of
nature by men. Since one of the tenets of the humanistic tradition believes in the
notion that men are capable of doing anything his mind could imagine, he has several
behavioural options to prefer regarding nature (1996, p. 163). From a wide variety of
conceptual possibilities, he may choose the one, which “may or may not agree with
established natural processes or with human instinctual needs” (p. 163). This very
capacity of making a selection, within the context of humanistic insertion, contains the
probability of choosing the wrong option and many of the ecological crisis that
mankind face today seem to be the result of these mistaken selections (p. 163).

Some critics also critique exegesis since it is argued that it paves the way for further
silencing of the non-human word. Simply put, exegesis is defined as the critical
interpretation of the Holy Scripture, that is Bible,
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/exegesis). It inaugurates “God
as a transcendental subject speaking through natural entities, which like word on a
page, has a symbolic meaning, but no autonomous voice”, wherein exegesis reduces
the status of natural objects into mute; invaluable symbolic structures (Manes, 1996, p.
20). The dominant idea of Middle Ages that nature was just a symbol serving for the
magnificence of God, also roots in the “so-called scala naturae or Great Chain of
Being, a depiction of the world as a vast network of lower and higher forms, from
zoophytes to Godhead, with humankind's place higher than beasts and a little less than
angels, as the Psalm puts it” (p. 20). The representation of natural world in this
hierarchal model is also of crucial importance. The Great Chain of being was “a
theological restraint against abusing the natural world” according to Medieval
Exegesis (p. 20):
The goodness of the species transcends the goodness of the individual, as
form transcends matter; therefore the multiplication of species is a greater
addition to the good of the universe than the multiplication of individuals of
a single species. The perfection of the universe therefore requires not only a
multitude of individuals, but also diverse kinds, and therefore diverse grades
of things. (Thomas Aquinas qtd. in Lovejoy, 2001, p. 77)
 76

However, the pre-mentioned nature-friendly perception of The Great Chain of Being,

changed after the Renaissance when a new movement called as Humanism captured
scale naturae, bringing “human superiority over the natural world” (Manes, 1996, p.
20). With its call in the progress via the belief in reason, progress and humanly
intellect, humanism has constructed a discourse that tremendously impacted men’s
understanding of The Great Chain of Being. Now, above anything else man was at the
center, at the top of the chain as the “rational sovereign of natural order” just like what
Shakespeare utters in Hamlet, he came to be “the beauty of the world, the paragon of
animals" (p. 21). Therein, man has come to gain the power and discourse to be a
speaking subject, silencing and muting nature for his own benefits. For Manes, to
eradicate this discourse produced by religion and scientific theories create counter-
ethics. Accordingly, a new language should be developed by creating “new ways to
talk about human freedom, worth, and purpose without eclipsing, depreciating, and
objectifying the nonhuman world” (1996, p. 24). Animistic traditions would be re-
explored by metaphorically relearning “the language of birds- the passions, pains, and
cryptic intents of the other biological communities that surround us and silently
interpenetrate our existence” and by re-establishing the communication with nature (p.
25):
The discourse of reason, as a guide to social practice, is implicated in this
fiction and, therefore, cannot break the silence of nature. Instead,
environmental ethics must learn a language that leaps away from the motifs
of humanism, perhaps by drawing on the discourse of ontological humility
found in primal cultures, postmodern philosophy, and medieval
contemplative tradition. (p. 25)

While Christianity and the Biblical perceptions of nature are highly criticized by
ecocritics and ecofeminists, critics like Jeanne Kay argue that nature’s role in the Bible
is misread. She argues that “Nature is God’s tool of reward and punishment, and its
beneficence depends on human morality” (Kay, 1998, p. 214). Old Testament reveals
the ecological catastrophe descending on both people and nature. Therein, Kay
suggests that Bible cannot be blamed to be anthropocentric and ecocentric, but could
be labelled as theocentric (p. 219).

As reflected with the insight of primarily White and Manes, it is commonly believed
that “the notion of ecocentricism has proceeded from, and fed back into, related belief
systems derived from Eastern religions, such as Taoism and Buddhism, from
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heterodox figures in Christianity such as St Francis of Assisi (1182–1286) and

Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), and from modern reconstructions of American
Indian, pre-Christian Wiccan, shamanistic and other 'primal' religions” (Garrard, 2004,
p. 22) However, while many of the ecologically minded literary critics blame
Christianity and Western civilization due to its anthropocentric domination over nature
and the othered subservient identities as women, and thereafter find the resolution in
Eastern thought and religions of primitive peoples, some other critics like McDowell,
addresses the question of the reliability of Eastern practices and primitive traditions
(McDowell, 1996, p. 384). For him, while most critics agree on the validity of the
Eastern alternative, there are several primitive Eastern religious practises against
nature. Paradoxically, even in the Christian West, there are still people who live in
harmony and respect with ecology. Therefore, when Christianity’s treatment of nature
is discussed, it should be noted that Western tradition is marked by its own paradoxes
(McDowell, 1996, p. 384). Thus, McDowell proposes the identification of an
“ecocritical path that attempts a radical critique of dominant Western attitudes, but not
a wholesale rejection in favour of a stereotyped and polarized alternative system” (p.
384). Likewise, White maintains that until now, there has been no new set of values to
replace the very fundamental system of Christianity; thus, men “shall continue to have
a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no
reason for existence save to serve man” (p. 14). Therefore, he proposes “more science
and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we
find a new religion, or rethink our old one” (1996, p. 12).

In accordance with the suggestion of White to find a new ecological path and nature-
oriented belief system, rather than patriarchal religions like Christianity, ecofeminists
are mostly interested in the primal and primitive religions. Merchant observes that
feminist scholars’ depiction of ancient earth goddesses revealed an intimate
connection between women and nature:
They revived interests in statues, images, poetry, and rituals surrounding
prehistoric earth goddesses, the Mesopotamian Inanna, the Egyptian Isis, the
Greek goddesses Demeter and Gaia, the Romanian Ceres, and European
paganism, as well as Asian, Latin American and African female symbols
and myths. Concerts, street theater, solstice, and equinoctial rituals, poetry
bookstores and lecture series celebrated human resonance with the earth.
(1990, p. xvi)
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Therefore, earth-centred belief systems of Native Americans, Native Australians and

primal people of pre-Christian Europe and the shamanic religious experiences of these
religious systems have been the focus of ecofeminist interest (1989, p. 174). The
revival of an earth-centered spirituality, which is the foremost strand of primal
religions, is highly celebrated by ecofeminism:
Celebrating the relationship between women and nature through the revival
of ancient rituals centered on goddess worship, the moon, animals and the
female reproductive system. A vision in which nature is held in esteem as
mother and goddess is a source of inspiration and empowerment for many
ecofeminists … Human nature is grounded in human biology. Humans are
biologically sexed and socially gendered ... The perceived connection
between women and biological reproduction turned upside down becomes
the source of women’s empowerment and ecological activism. Women’s
biology and Nature are celebrated as sources of female power. This form of
ecofeminism has largely focused on the sphere of consciousness in relation
to nature - spirituality, goddess worship, witchcraft - and the celebration of
women’s bodies (Merchant, 1992, p. 191-92).

Some ecofeminists as depicted by Merchant celebrate the revival of an earth-based

spirituality and they tend to celebrate female body believing in the notion that it is as
powerful as nature because both have spirituality, mystery and a sacred dimension.
From this perspective, many ecofeminists acknowledge that primal earth ecofeminism
stands on the same line with biological essentialism (Hay, 2002, p. 80). Yet in time,
just like the way biological essentialism lost its popularity within ecofeminist circles,
so did the pre-mentioned Earth-focussed spirituality and it ended up as a marginalized
ecofeminist strand. The goddess-pantheism even became a hot debated ecofeminist
topic, criticized by such critics as Cuomo, Garb, Plumwood and Seager (p. 80). Even,
the influential ecofeminist Janis Birkeland exclusively theorized the rejection of
mystical spiritualties within ecofeminism by developing nine reasons for this rejection
(1993, p. 47-48). Some other ecofeminists like Karen Warren, on the other side,
criticize the way native spiritual practices are culturally appropriated, in other words,
the way they are Europeanised. According to her, the conventional process of
Europeanization regarding primal spiritualties is “an expression of ethical colonialism,
co-opting indigenous cultural practices as part of an otherwise unchanged dominant
Western worldview” (1993, p. 124). All the same, as Carol Adams contends, the idea
of spirituality within modern societies, is again the construction of a masculine mind-
set and therefore it is read and interpreted wrongly:
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What Eurocentric outsiders identify as the ‘spiritual’ dimensions of a culture

may actually be a thoroughly eviscerated spirituality that a dualistic
worldview cannot even perceive. And regrettably, some aspects of Euro-
American ecofeminism have ‘borrowed’ from these cultures those parts that
resonate with a noninstrumental view of human nature and have
depoliticized the context for these views. In many instances cultures that are
struggling for physical survival against genocide are romanticized, their
spirituality misappropriated and misunderstood. (Adams, 1993, p. 3)

Distinguishing between ecofeminism and earth-centered ecofeminism as a strand of it

is essential because the former deals with the spiritual matters through a general
framework; however, the latter goes deeper into the idea of spirituality via a detailed
earth-based critique (Hay, 2002, p. 81). Greta Gaard well depicts the prominent
relation between ecofeminism and its broadly handling of spirituality:
A way of describing a political theory and practice for what we know intu-
itively to be true. Knowledge and awareness of our interconnectedness
provide the impetus for ecofeminist political acts as well as ecofeminist
spirituality ... Ecofeminist spirituality is ecofeminist politics is ecofeminism.
Without stealing pieces from other cultures and other traditions,
ecofeminists can arrive at this answer on their own. (Gaard, 1993 p. 309)

1.3.3. Science

Science and technology have been important concepts not only ecofeminists in their
fight against the patriarchal oppression of women and nature. Ecofeminists see the
advent of Scientific Revolution as responsible for intensifying and legitimizing the
androcentric and anthropocentric power structures to subjugate nature, along with the
female. Moreover, within the framework of patriarchal dualism, science has always
been associated with the masculine pole in the same line with men and culture, and
opposed to women and nature. “Science also remains stubbornly male-dominated”
states Howarth “excluding women from its ‘hard’ disciplines and justifying the
practice with specious logic”, concluding that “these discriminatory conditions offend
humanistic values of distribution and integration, which ecocritics assume in
principle” (Howarth, 1996, p. 79).

Ecofeminism challenges, criticizes and rises against the mechanistic worldview and
ideas proposed by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), René Descartes (1596–1650) and Isaac
Newton (1642–1727), who scientifically conceptualized and spread the perception that
 80

universe is a great machine (Garrard, 2004, p. 61). For Westling, if all Palaeolithic
society respected a productive ‘Magna Meter’ or Great Mother image, these people
would succeed in exploitation of her, which is firstly initiated by the supremacy of
male Judaeo-Christian sky god (Westling, 1996, p. 14). Instead of adopting an image
of Earth as Mother or as a nurturing entity, the philosophers of the Enlightenment
period treated the universe not as an organic cosmos yet as an apparatus that could be
reduced to the position of mechanism that functions in accordance with the rules
directed by men (Garrard, 2004, p. 61). In this understanding, nature is viewed as a
mechanic entity the parts of which are entirely within the control of human beings.

Bacon and Descartes pursue scientific knowledge to establish men as “masters and
possessors of nature” (Descartes, 1986, p. 49). By means of Enlightenment process
and Scientific Revolution, reason was used as a means to achieve superiority and
authority over nature. Yet, ecocritics reject this “fragmented, mechanical worldview
for a holistic, organic one” (Garrard, 2004, p. 61). Plumwood manifests that when
besides God, human reason and mind is viewed to be the mere source of value, then,
nature would have no other meaning and importance other than the one attributed and
signified by reason: “It is no coincidence that this view of nature took hold most
strongly with the rise of capitalism, which needed to turn nature into a market
commodity and resource without significant moral or social constraint on availability”
(Plumwood, 1993a, p. 111)

The criticism of scientific revolution is also related to gender. Carolyn Merchant

observes that it was during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries that the figure
of female Magna Mater, or the goddesses of Great Mother has changed and she was
rationalized by the masculine reason (Merchant, 1990, p. 172). She even suspects that
“the witches” of Europe were her last followers who finally persecuted and brutally
destroyed by the rationality of masculinized reason (p. 172). During the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the perception that the world is an “organic cosmos” and this
“living female earth” is at the center to serve, created a mechanistic world view in
which “nature was reconstructed as dead and passive, to be dominated and controlled
by humans” (Merchant, 1990, p. xvi). Such a perception was also conceptualized and
 81

legitimized especially with the Scientific Revolution, and women and nature were both
constructed to be culturally passive and subordinate (p. xvi).
The integration of science with the technology in the mid-nineteenth century also
deeply worsened the ecological degradation. Lynn White depicts the merging between
science and technology as a marriage, deteriorating the subjugation of nature further:
Science was traditionally aristocratic, speculative, intellectual in intent;
technology was lower-class, empirical, action-oriented. The quite sudden
fusion of these two, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, is surely
related to the slightly prior and contemporary democratic revolutions which,
by reducing social barriers, tended to assert a functional unity of brain and
hand. Our ecologic crisis is the product of an emerging, entirely novel,
democratic culture. The issue is whether a democratized world can survive
its own implications. Presumably we cannot unless we rethink our axioms.
(White, 1996, p. 6)

Western man’s modern-day trouble-free life among the conveniences of technology

led him “to suffer a spiritual death, to feel alienated, empty, without purpose and
direction” (Fromm, 1996, p. 32). In such a comfortable and alienated way of life, the
man lives without being aware of his link to nature, which has been aesthetically
hidden by modern-day technology (p. 33). Within this regard, Fromm concludes that
due to the Industrial Revolution man’s relation to his nature has thoroughly altered,
causing mind-body duality (p. 33). After the tremendous developments in science and
technology, evenly today the man is self-confident of his domination of Nature and is
cut off from any nurturing roots in earth (34). The technology that the human mind has
fashioned makes nature invisible to his eyes:
Meanwhile, his mind produces a technology that enables his body to be as
strong as the gods, rendering the gods superfluous and putting Nature in a
cage. Then it appears that there is no Nature and that man has produced
virtually everything out of his own ingenuity and it can be bought in a
supermarket or a discount store, wrapped in plastic. By now, man is scarcely
aware that he is eating animals and producing wastes or that the animals
come from somewhere and the wastes are headed somewhere. This
"somewhere" turns out to be, practically speaking, a finite world whose
basic components cannot be created or destroyed although (and here is the
shocker) they can be turned into forms that are unusable by man. (Fromm,
1996, p. 35)

Failing to see his roots of being in the earth, the modern man has created his own
mythology, “The Myth of Voluntary Omnipotence” as put by Fromm, in which he
could determine the roots of his existence (Fromm, 1996, p. 35). For Deitering, “man's
 82

Faustian posturing takes place against a background of arrogant, shocking, and

suicidal disregard of his roots in the earth”:
This new way of seeing our environment might be considered as a second
stage of what Martin Heidegger discussed in 1953 as the essence of
technology whereby what we call the Real is revealed as what Heidegger
called the "standing reserve" of industrial and consumer resources.
Heidegger, in his essay "The Question Concerning Technology,"
contended that the Western cultural perception of nature and material
objects was that of "standing reserve" whereby a tract of land was revealed
and represented as a coal mining district, a mineral deposit; or a river was
regarded and represented as a supplier of water power; or an air- plane
standing on the runway was viewed as a machine poised to insure the
possibility of transportation. (Deitering, 1996, p. 198-199)

Perceiving the whole earth as a potential raw material is the core mission of
technology, which prevails its own culture over nature (p. 218). Thus what people call
as Real, which was previously represented as standing reserve has turned out to be
already-used-up (Deitering, 1996, p. 199).

Today, the perception of standing reserve for nature has been intensified and spread
with the developing computerized industries of the century. Within the capitalist
purposes of the competing markets, nature attains its value to the extend that it
prevails its position as a standing reserve to be usurped in exchange of money. It is in
such modern societies that ecological damage is the most severe:
We have an economic style whose dynamism is too great, too fast, too
reckless or the ecological systems that must absorb its impact. It makes no
difference to those systems if the oil spills, the pesticides, the radioactive
wastes, the industrial toxins they must cleanse are socialist or capitalist in
origin; the ecological damage is not mitigated in the least if it is perpetrated
by a good society that shares its wealth fairly and provides the finest welfare
programs for its citizens. The problem the biosphere confronts is the
convergence of all urban-industrial economies as they thicken and coagulate
into a single planet wide system everywhere devoted to maximum
productivity and the unbridled assertion of human dominance (Roszak,
1978, s. 33).

For a peaceful solution both for industrial economies and ecology, Rueckert suggests
the adaptation of a new steady and maintainable state economy with a novel concept
of growth that will also be central to all ecological perception (1996, p. 108). There are
many calls to action ranging from individual actions to be taken to those of a global
scale. However, for White, the basic solution is to put an end to the hazards of an
 83

industrial change or as a better choice, reverting to a romanticized past, none of which

thoroughly cope with the environmental crisis of our postmodern time (White, 1996,
p. 5).

In order to overturn the image of machine which “has dominated Western culture for
the past three hundred years” Merchant asserts that there have developed new radical
ecological paradigms or movements such as deep ecology and gender oriented radical
ecophilosophy (1990, p. xvii). The 1970s and 1980s, therefore, witnessed various
scientific proposals that challenge the main concepts of Scientific Revolution, which
decrease nature into the status of a mechanic being. The common characteristic of
these scientific proposals against the mechanization of Scientific Revolution was that
they were all nature-oriented (p. xvi). Merchant interprets the emergence of such
green-conscious scientific movements as a possibility to have a new worldview that
could guide the citizens of the twenty-first century for an ecologically sustainable way
of life (p. xvii). She believes that the new worldview based on the principles of
vitalism and holism offers the healing power that “Gaia”, that is, the Mother Earth,
needs:
The mechanistic framework that legitimated the industrial revolution with
its side effects of resource depletion and pollution may be losing its efficacy
as a framework. A nonmechanistic science and an ecological ethic,
however, must support a new economic order grounded in the recycling of
renewable resources, the conversation of non-renewable resources, and the
restoration of sustainable ecosystems that fulfil the basic human physical
and spiritual needs. Perhaps Gaia will then be healed. (Merchant, 1990, p.
xvii)
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CHAPTER 2

ECOFEMINIST ANALYSES OF MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE

HANDMAID’S TALE

Margaret Atwood (1939- ) is an influential Canadian literary figure appreciated as a

fiction writer, a poet, a critic and an essayist. Her literary works are composed of a
wide-ranging collection that includes children’s literature, dystopian fiction, science
fiction, fiction and non-fiction. She is mostly known for her writings that bear a
specific purpose of reflecting a particular Canadian identity. However, in addition to
her literary concerns for introducing Canadian nationality, as her effective writings
reflect, she also has tremendous feminist and ecofeminist leaning. Almost all literary
works of Atwood reflect a particular concern for nature and women.

Atwood is a prolific writer celebrated for her contribution to the development of

women’s writing that has “questioned stereotypes of nationality and gender exposing
cultural fictions and artificial limits they impose on our understanding of us and other
human beings” (Howells, 1996, p. 2). Her fiction also reflects the concerns for
environmental crisis and its impact on the male-dominated society. Most of Atwood’s
important fiction, including The Edible Woman (1969), Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle
(1976), Oryx and Crake (2003), The Blind Assassin (2000) and The Handmaid’s Tale
(1985) reflect ecofeminist themes. Moreover, most female characters of Atwood are
usually portrayed as the victimized females, suffering bodies under the oppression of
patriarchy and they seek for freedom, identity and realisation through attachment and
association to nature. The fabulous natural description of the non-human world, the
pollution and exploitation of nature and the subjugation of women by patriarchy are
regular issues that she explores in her works with an ecofeminist insight. In her literary
works, Atwood reflects how nature and women are intimately associated and how both
are suppressed by men. Most of Atwood’s profound ecological fiction points out to “a
 85

demonstrable relationship between the ways in which men treat and destroy women
and the ways in which men treat and destroy nature” (Rueckert, 1996, p. 117).

Margaret Atwood creates a fantasy world and challenges the essentials of realistic
fiction through her particular construction of dystopic and utopic narratives, just like
the other ecofeminist fiction writers such as Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy, Pat
Murphy and Linda Hogan. The narratives of dystopia reflect the collapse of ecology
via the construction of a dystopic regime, religion and technology as it is proposed by
Howarth regarding the genre of science fiction:
Readers of science fiction fantasy recognize how literature raids science
for utopic or dystopic imagery. Science fiction views technology as either
alien or brethren; it blazes trails into the frontier of outer space; it
forecasts ecological collapse. These narratives emulate the theories and
experiments of science yet challenge its inherent faith in progress. Such
an ironic relativistic mode is comic and corrective, providing a rhetorical
proxy for the ethics of ecology. (1996, p. 78)

The same intense ecological insight for the non-human world has always been a
primary concern for the fantastic literature of Atwood. Patrick Murphy maintains that
the utopic fiction of Atwood reveals feminist and ecological textual leanings:
Atwood has come to be known as a writer of fantastic or speculative
rather than realistic prose. And it seems to be the case that the majority
of the most daring ecological and feminist novels have been written in
some other mode than realism, with almost all of the feminist utopians
and dystopian created in the past two decades predicated upon
ecological disaster. (1995, p. 26)

Atwood brings nationalism, liberalism, feminism and environmentalism together

within her fictional discourse. As Fiona Tolan puts, they are “inextricably related, and
the theme of connection is one that characterises her world-view” (2007, p. 7). For
Atwood, the power structures, oppression and the attitude of othering are linked and
similar. Once asked about her insights on feminism and nationality she reports:
I see the two issues as similar. In fact, I see feminism as part of a larger
issue: human dignity. That’s what Canadian nationalism is about, what
feminism is about, and what black power is about. They’re all part of the
same vision (qtd. in Hammond, 2006, p. 102)

Atwood believes in the notion that a true piece of writing is the one that reflects the
society and the modern-day concerns of the people. For her, the fiction is a mirror
double reflecting the society of the time, as she contends, “I live in the society; I also
 86

put the society inside my books so that you get a box within a box effect” (qtd. in
Kaminski, 1990, p. 28). Therefore, the ecofeminist movement and specifically the
question of women and nature that echoed intensely during the literary and critical
discussions of 1970s through 80s found its reflection in most works of Atwood.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) is a feminist dystopia that portrays the late twentieth
century state system of a patriarchal, totalitarian and theocratic regime, the Republic of
Gilead, via the later disclosed tape recordings of a Handmaid, Offred. It is the most
credited feminist dystopian novel of Atwood that also bears immense ecofeminist
themes and concerns. Atwood describes her novel as a dystopia written in the tradition
of such works as A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, and Nineteen Eighty- Four
(Bloom, 2009, p. 1). The dystopic, or the anti-utopic fiction, relates the oral story of
the Handmaid Offred, who is oppressed and restricted by a brutal tyrannical regime.
The oppressive practices of the Republic of Gilead, which is a totalitarian and
theocratic regime of patriarchy, towards its women and nature and also the struggle of
a surpassed Handmaid for liberation reveal ecofeminist concerns deliberately exerted
by Atwood. Having been immensely influenced by the recent natural catastrophes, the
authoritarian Republic of Gilead overthrows the previous government of the northern
United States and establishes a new theocratic and totalitarian regime that outlaws new
gender roles for its citizens and legitimizes the superiority of Gileadian males over the
females. At a barren period when the fertility rates are hugely impacted by the
distortion of the natural cycle, the new tyranny of patriarchy establishes a government
that is based on the mentality of ‘protecting’ those potentially fertile women so that the
Gileadean society could survive to the next generations. In the dystopia, the new
gender roles established by the laws require the subjugation of women by men.
However, throughout the fiction, the oppressed female Gileadeans whose biological
fruitfulness is hugely impacted by the distorted nature develop an intimate and
loving/caring relationship with the non-human world, which is heavily damaged
during the Pre-Gilead period in the late twentieth century. In this chapter, with
references to ecofeminist ethics, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale will be
analysed through an ecofeminist approach in terms of the gender roles, and the
relationship between women and nature, which are both oppressed by the prevailing
patriarchy.
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2.1. Gender Roles

The patriarchal system in the Republic of Gilead controls and organizes the social
roles and duties of its citizens via its power of legislation. This new authoritarian
government bases most of its power discourse on science and religion because the
lower fertility rates caused by the damaged ecological cycle threaten the survival of
the citizens of the previously Northern United States. The new tyrannical regime
outlaws the hierarchal division of its citizens, both male and female, according to their
sexes and social status.

As regulated by the laws of the totalitarian regime, the female Gileadeans are
categorized according to their abilities and rates ‘fertility’ or their social status. At the
top of the hierarchal order of women are the blue Wives of the Commanders. They are
followed by white Daughters of the Commanders, the grey Aunts, the green Marthas,
the all-black Widows, the red Handmaids, the Econowives and the Unwomen. In
addition to the females, the patriarchal system also orders the hierarchal structure
among men, which is set according to their social status. At the peak of the hierarchal
structure of Gileadean males are the Eyes and the Commanders, who are followed by
the Angels, the Guards and the Poorer Men. However, men and women are perceived
as binary opposing poles and the Gileadean males have superiority over the females no
matter which social status they attain. The forms of patriarchal dualities, which are the
main target of ecofeminism, such as “mind/body, spirit/corporeality;
abstraction/embodiment; sky/earth; competition/co-operation; asceticism/promiscuity;
rationality/intuition; culture/nature” echo all throughout the fiction (Plumwood, 1993,
p. 43). The masculine side of these poles are always posited with superiority and
privilege while the feminine side is always devalued and oppressed.

In Gilead, control, oppression, and domination are greatly exerted on the women by
the patriarchy. The tyranny is systematically applied by the means of the established
hierarchal order. The males of the dystopic Gileadean society also have a hierarchal
order like the females, yet their social stratum is quite different and “normal” than
women. The Commanders and the Eyes own the highest status and all the rest of the
men who are disabled, old or too young are endowed to be the Guardians or the poorer
men who have a lower social position. The Guards are commissioned for daily
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policing duty and the Angels function like the soldiers who have a higher hierarchical
position in the oppressive regime. Ironically, though they are named after ‘angels’,
their oppressive power is so huge that the narrator states, “They were objects of fear to
us” (Atwood, 1986, p.4). All in all, the whole males have domination and control over
the women.

The oppressed female beings are thoroughly afraid of the authoritarian power holders
and each of these oppressive agents represents objects of fear and terror for the
Handmaids. Since the men such as the Guards and the poorer men do not have a
powerful stratum in the society like the Commanders, the authority does not issue a
woman for their pleasure, accompaniment and service. In the hierarchal order among
men of Gilead, the Guards constitute the middle class men who are “either stupid, or
older, or disabled or very young, apart from the ones that are Eyes incognito”
(Atwood, 1986, p. 20). The Guardians as a principle are requited from the ‘othered’
group of men and they are not like the mainstream. They are old, disabled or very
young. Therefore, they are not assigned a woman. The narrator thinks that they must
be dreaming of a woman, a Handmaid. They are forbidden to touch the Handmaids
and if they break the rules, the costs are high:
If they think of a kiss, they must then think immediately of the
floodlights going on, the rifle shots. They think instead of doing their
duty and of promotion to the Angels, and of being allowed possibly to
marry, and then, if they are able to gain enough power and live to be old
enough, of being allotted a Handmaid of their own. (Atwood, 1986, p.
22)

This hierarchal order among men is also formed by the patriarchal system and it
causes partial limitation and restriction for men. Thus, Offred empathizes with men
and even pities for the males of Gilead:
It must be hell, to be a man, like that.
It must be just fine.
It must be hell.
It must be very silent. (Atwood, 1986, p. 88)

Specifically, Offred does not despise or hate the Commander or any other male figure
in the dystopic state, yet she does not love them either. She just pities them because
they are also victimized and restricted by the ‘system’. Though the Commander, for
example, is freer and more liberated than the women, still his social position and life
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is restricted and arranged by the regime. At first sight he seems to be free and ‘fine’.
Yet because of his species’ exploitative tendencies towards nature, currently not only
ecologic harmony but also the biology of both men and women is disturbed. Men
suffer from their destructive treatments towards nature in this dystopia. Therefore, as
Offred contends, it must be like hell to be forced and limited to be silent by the
system they themselves devised.

Although men are exposed to partial restriction and slight limitation in Gilead, the
hugest restriction is conducted on women. The punishment practice of the Wall and the
strict control system through the barricade getaways of the city reveal the severe
restriction and limitation implied on citizens, specifically on the women. Thus, in such
a world of horror, “nothing” as a Martha recalls is “safer than dead” (Atwood, 1986, p.
20). Even, the way of taking leave or saying goodbye in the Gilead reveals how women
are limited and constrained. As the Handmaids take their leaves and depart, they bid
goodbye to each other by saying “Under His Eye” (p. 45). The goodbye phrase is
another implication of restriction and tyranny posed on women; they are always
watched, controlled, limited and restrained by His Eye, which is the Eye of tyrannical
regime of patriarchy.

The word sterile is also forbidden in the society of Gilead. “There is so such a thing
as a sterile man anymore, not officially” notes the narrator, maintaining, “There are
only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that is the law” (Atwood,
1986, p. 61). According to the dominating masculine power structures of the dystopia,
men cannot be biologically sterile and infertile, yet the biological deficiency in
fertility could only be ascribed to women. Though the doctors and most of the society
knows that the distorted order of ecology did not only impact women’s feature of
fruitfulness, but also the Gileadean men are also affected by the environmental
degradation, which causes them to lose their potencies for fertility. The authoritarian
patriarchy, however, disregards such a biological reality, and politically legislates that
infertility is a quality only for women and therefore, categorizes women according to
their qualities of being productive. In this order of classification, women are labelled
as female if they have the potency to be fertile and fruitful, yet if the case is vice-
versa they are called as ‘Unwoman’ and sent to the Colonies, which are the infamous
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restricted regions that are “composed of portable populations used mainly as

expendable toxic-cleanup squads through if lucky you could be assigned to less
hazardous tasks, such as cotton picking and fruit harvesting” (Atwood, 1986, p. 308).
That is how the patriarchal law classifies, controls, limits and oppresses women in the
dystopia.

Through legislation and laws, the patriarchal tyranny of the regime also controls and
authorizes the sexual preferences and the process of sexual intercourse between
Handmaids and the Commanders. During the process of ‘copulating’ the Wife is also
supposed to take part because as Offred contends, “This is supposed to signify that
we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the
process and thus of the products” (Atwood, 1986, p. 94). During consummation of the
sex, no one is naked; both women are fully clothed except the Handmaid’s
underdrawer and the Commander also must be wearing his usual uniform. The
women lie on the top of the other, hand in hand, waiting for the Commander.
Throughout the ‘duty’ of having sex, kissing is forbidden so as not to arouse any
emotion. “This is a serious business,” relates Offred, “The commander, too, is doing
his duty” as regulated by the government (p. 95). There must not be any sense of
emotion, love or affection during the sexual intercourse. The whole process, every
single move must be mechanical:
My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the
Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I
do not say making love, because this is not what he’s doing. Copulating
too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one
is involved. Nor does rape cover it; nothing is going on here that I haven’t
signed up for. There wasn’t a lot of choice but there was some, and this is
what I chose... What is going on in this room under Serena Joy’s silvery
canopy is not exciting. It has nothing to do with passion or love or
romance or any of those other notions we used to titillate ourselves with.
It has nothing to do with sexual desire, at least for me, and certainly not
for Serena. Arousal and orgasm are no longer thought necessary; they
would be a symptom of frivolity merely. (p. 94)

The sexual intercourse during the process of ‘copulating’ is all-mechanical,

automated and deadly dull without any emotion. The whole practice of sexual
intercourse turns into a mere act of exerting masculine power on the feminine.
Additionally, the inclusion of two women into the process is also greatly disparaging
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not only for the Handmaids but also for the barren Wives, who are therefore
forbidden to have active sex, yet forced to passively involve in the governmental duty
of sexual intercourse.

Ecofeminism does not only deal with the oppression of women and nature by the
dominating anthropocentric mind-set, but it also elaborates on the suppression of
those ‘others’ of different classes, races, colors and nationalities. Likewise, although
the main focus of The Handmaid’s Tale is on gender and women, which are
considered to be the most exploited groups, the other oppressed ones are also within
the scope of the fiction. The dystopia of Atwood reflects an ecofeminist attitude of
dealing with several kinds of oppression that is established with the same manner of
power structures established by the patriarchy. A similar ecofeminist criticism of
patriarchal regime is disclosed when the patriarchal suppression of poorer people
from lower social status is depicted. In the Republic of Gilead, the society is
separated into several classes according to the parameters of gender, potency for
fertility and the capital. The Econowives and the unqualified poorer men are those
subjects who are oppressed due to their lower social status by the prevailing power
structure of the patriarchy. Within the divided hierarchal social order of Gilead,
women suffer from double subjugation; first from the patriarchy due to their gender,
secondly from those people of upper classes because of their higher social status. The
dystopic class struggle and the hierarchal social order portrayed by Atwood seem to
offer an ecofeminist criticism since patriarchy exerts its domination and power not
only on women and nature, but also on those from the lower socioeconomic classes of
the society. Thereby, the connections and the links between the dominated subjects of
different species, genders and classes are revealed. Also, it is exposed that the same
masculine mentality and insight constructs the similar power structures to dominate
all those suppressed units.

The patriarchy, however, justifies and vindicates its brutal and oppressive manner
towards women during the totalitarian regime in Gilead via its focus on the
‘immoralities’ women committed during the old-sex life. Therefore, the patriarchy
constructed a tyrannical regime and a social order that forced women to “learn in
silence with all subjection” (Atwood, 1986, p. 221). The Nature’s norm as stated by the
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Commander is the masculine notion that all women and nature are subservient entities
created for the service of men. When the Commander secretly takes Offred to
Jezebel’s, the secret club full of women missioned to sexually serve for the
Commanders of higher rank, Offred would like to learn from the Commander why men
prefer a secret club full of prostitutes instead of Handmaids or Wives and she gets an
answer that reveals the masculine mentality for anything feminine:
“Nature demands variety for men. It stands to reason, it’s part of the
procreational strategy. It’s Nature’s plan… Women know that
instinctively. Why did they buy so many clothes in the old days? To trick
the men into thinking they were several different women. A new one each
day”… “So now that we don’t have different clothes” I say, “you merely
have different women” This is irony, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. “It
solves a lot of problems” he says, without a twitch. (p. 237)

A common male insight upholds the anthropocentric insight that men are the blessed
species by God and they are at the center of the universe. Therefore, God endowed
women and nature for their service and they are blessed with ‘variety’ of nature and
women. In contrast to Campbell’s notion that “human beings are no longer the center
of value or meaning” (1996, p. 133), the Commander like other males of Gilead
mistakenly believes that neither nature nor women attain any particular value yet both
are objects and mechanisms created for the requirements of the males.

The most subjugated group of women in the systematized Gileadean society is the
Handmaids. They are both physically, sexually and psychologically abused and
exploited by the men because unlike other female Gileadeans, they attain the potential
feature of fertility, which is a rare occasion in Gilead. The narrator, Offred, is also a
Handmaid who is greatly restricted and oppressed by the patriarchal power holders.
Two centuries later than the Monotheocracy of the Republic of Gilead, the historian
Professor Piexoto delivers a keynote speech at a conference on Gileadean studies, in
which he attempts to clarify the identity of Offred:
It was clear from the internal evidence that she was among the first wave
of women recruited for reproductive purposes and allotted to those who
both required such services and could lay claim to the through their
position in the elite. The regime created an instant pool of such women by
the simple tactic of declaring all second marriages and nonmarital liaisons
adulterous, arresting the female partners, and, on the grounds that they
were morally unfit, confiscating the children they already had, who were
adopted by childless couples of the upper echelons who were eager for
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progeny by any means. (In the middle period, this policy was extended to
cover all marriages not contacted within state church.) Men highly placed
in the regime were thus able to pick and choose among women who had
demonstrated their reproductive fitness by having produced one or more
health children. (Atwood, 1986, p. 304)

The function of the Handmaids and their subjugated social roles are highly
fundamental to unearth the oppressive patriarchal tendencies towards women in the
dystopia. The Handmaids used to be simply “surrogate mothers”, hired for the
purpose of giving birth before the inception of the new regime (Atwood, 1986, p.
305). Declaring itself as a Religious State, the Republic of Gilead legitimizes the
Handmaiding system, which is considered to have Biblical precedents. According to
the system, the women with a leaning for reproduction are firstly educated at the Re-
education Red Centers about the principles of Handmaiding. After their normal
female life, those women with a potency of fertility are taken to the Center to be
educated biologically, religiously and politically as to how to be a believer, a
Handmaid.

As gathered from the personal recordings of Offred, a Handmaid’s way of life is

much like a prisoner’s. The whole daily activities of the Handmaids are always pre-
scheduled, observed and controlled. They are banned to talk to one another, to
exchange their opinions and to interact. Unlike men, the Handmaids are also
prohibited from reading and writing. As regulated by the law, the Handmaids wear
long red dresses from top to toe. “Everything except the wings around my face is
red,” maintains the narrator, describing it as “the color of blood, which defines us”
(Atwood, 1986, p. 8). As she somehow comes across the mirror in the house of the
Commander, Offred sees her reflection all in red:
I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier of glass, like the
eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of
something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak, descending towards a
moment of carelessness that is the same as danger. A sister, dipped in
blood. (p. 9)

She describes her reflection in the mirror as a self without an entity, without a root,
being or soul. She is nothing but a selfless self; all in red and in this redness, there is
nothing inside but a showy figure like a parody of a real entity. Ironically, the
reflection does not constitute a concrete and living self. She is a fairy-tale figure
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without a genuine and authentic identity; yet she is imposed with an identity by the
authority. Only because the Handmaids are perceived as the units of reproduction and
fertility necessary for the continuation of Gilead, they are respected and esteemed by
men.
Having been suffering from immense oppression and authority by the male-
domination, the women of the dystopia are psychologically alienated from their
bodies, their identities and even from their genders. As Offred sees her naked body
before bathing she notes:
My nakedness is strange to me already. My body seems out-dated. Did I
really wear bathing suits at the beach? I did, without though, among men,
without caring that my legs, my arms, my thighs and back were on
display, could be seen. Shameful, immodest. I avoid looking down at my
body, not so much because it’s shameful or immodest but because I don’t
want to see it. I don’t want to look at something that determines me so
completely. (p. 63)

In a dystopia where the biological sex is politically genderized and categorized, she
does not like being a woman. Being a woman simply equals to being a body to be
conquered, an object to be invaded. Moreover, as the Handmaid is aware that it is the
female body she owns which causes her to be subjugated, she does not feel herself
attached to her own body. In a social order where the women are determined,
structured and categorized according to the productive qualities of their bodies, the
narrator is estranged and alienated from her body. Similarly, just like the way the
females are reduced into the status of mere bodies, in the fiction, nature is also
reduced into the status of what Plumwood declares as the contrast of reason. Therein,
in Gilead, like the female self, nature is perceived to attain the values systematically
excluded and devalued by reason including “the body, animality, the primitive or
uncivilised… the matter and physicality” (1993a, p. 19).

The Handmaids are decreased into the status of mere objects or goods of bodies with
digit codes on their ankles. Even the Handmaids do not own any genuine name of their
own, yet the law of the regime constructs their names according to their owners, like a
way an object is named. According to the regulation, the old-sex names of the
Handmaids are to be dismissed and each woman should be named according to the
Commander of the household she is posted to. Therefore, as it is obvious in the fiction
the Handmaids were given such names as “Offred”, “Ofwarren”, and “Ofglen” etc.
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These are patronymic names, composed of the possessive preposition and the first
name of the Commander they serve for. As Offred reveals, the totalitarian tyranny,
governed by the patriarchy decreased the status of women only to the objects or goods
of possession that could be named and labelled by men:
We are for breeding purposes: we aren’t concubines, geisha girls,
courtesans. On the contrary: everything possible has been done to remove
us from that category. There is supposed to be nothing entertaining about
us, no room is to be permitted for the flowering of secret lusts; no special
favors are to be wheedled, by them or us, there are to be no toeholds for
love. We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels. Ambulatory
chalices. (Atwood, 1986, p. 136)

As obviously put forward by Offred, women especially Handmaids in Gilead are

decreased into the position of objects for breeding. They are not objects of love,
entertainment or affection. Simply the females are the bodies made up of “two-legged
wombs”, owned by the males of Gilead. (p. 136). Apart from their biological features
of fertility, multiplying and reproduction, the women are not appreciated by the
patriarchy; therein, the system degrades the females into the status of mechanisms of
reproduction. Within the same oppressive and demeaning manner, The nature is
appreciated by the patriarchy only for its value of reproduction. Apart from its fertility
and products necessary for the survival of men on earth, the non-human world is
damaged and polluted via huge patriarchal industries, which finally impacted the
ecological cycle and the biological harmony of the humankind. For an anthropocentric
mind-set, women and nature are similar subservient objects for the service of men and
they are only appreciated for their wombs, that is, their reproductional value. Losing
her own identity, Offred perceives herself dysfunctional being for the service of men:
“I am a blank, here. Between parenthesis. Between other people” (p. 228).

Although she was a woman who believed in the ideas of female resistance, hope,
freedom and subverting in her old-sex life, Offred is transformed into a subservient
character with the handmaiding experience. For example, after the dramatic suicide
that Ofglen committed in fear of disclosing her membership to the Underground
Network, Offred recounts that it is just now that she feels ‘the true power’ of the
tyrannizing patriarchy and she discloses that she is a woman who has mostly absorbed
and internalized the patriarchal viewpoints:
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Everything they taught at the red Center, everything I’ve resisted, comes
flooding in. I don’t want pain. I don’t want to be a dancer, me feet in the
doll hung up on the Wall. I don’t want to be a wingless angel. I want to
keep on living in any form. I resign my body freely, to the uses of others.
They can do what they like with me. I am object. I feel for the first time,
their true power. (Atwood, 1986, p. 286)

Though Offred was not an active member of the underground network, due to her
awareness of network, she is terrified to be detected and caught by the Eyes. All in all,
the patriarchy through its exertion of power and domination over women and through
its authoritarian power structure leads women to accept their ‘inferiority’ and their
status as mere objects subservient to men. Therefore, as the black van heads to take
Offred she notes, “I’m tired of this melodrama, I’m tired of keeping silent. There’s no
one you can protect, your life has value to no one. I want it finished” (Atwood, 1986, p.
293)

Throughout the dystopia, religion functions as an important means for the patriarchy
to maintain its power structures and have domination over women and nature. Such a
portrayal within the fiction truly echoes Lynn White’s insight that Christianity is the
most ‘anthropocentric’ religion (1996, p. 9). Rather than nature-oriented belief
systems like primitive Eastern religions or ancient paganism, the society of Gilead is
portrayed to be governed by a theocratic state that bases most of its discourse on
‘anthropocentric’ Western Christianity. Thus, the Christian teachings of the Republic
of Gilead strictly disregard “ancient Earth Goddess worship, Eastern religious
traditions and Native American teachings” (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xxii) and they reject
any spirituality that values interconnectedness and equality of all life forms including
gender. Obviously, the distorted Christianity and Bible help the masculine mentality to
exert power over women and nature because it is the religious discourses that put men
at the center of universe and posit women and nature for his service. From this
perspective, in her dystopia Margaret Atwood seems to show the detriments of strict
totalitarian Christian regime on nature and women. Moreover, she mostly echoes
ecocritic Joseph W. Meeker insight that religion has a considerable amount of share in
the ‘pioneer’ men’s subjugation of nature and women. As Meeker asserts, “Religion
and philosophy have usually affirmed the pioneer's faith that only his own kind really
counts, and that he has a right perhaps even an obligation to destroy or subjugate
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whatever seems to obstruct his hopes of conquest” (1996, p. 163). The Handmaid’s
Tale reveals the same anthropocentric mentality of conquest when the patriarchal
regime develops a religious discourse to conquer and subjugate both female body and
nature.
According to the establishments of the religious discourse that the patriarchy develops
in Gilead, the social position planned for her female citizens includes being submissive
and obedient. A real Handmaid is supposed to be a real believer into the FAITH and
being a devoted Handmaid requires being a real believer in religion that commands
women to serve their men and society through their reproductive capabilities. The
patriarchal religion in Gilead perceives them as machines through which the new
generations could be produced.

The life in Gilead is regulated and organized according to the religious customs of the
patriarchal regime. The religion necessitates that each household must organize a
regular Ceremony, where the Commander reads Bible for the Household. As Offred
reveals, the Biblical accounts and stories that the Commander reads for the rest are
always related to fertility and productiveness of the humankind:
It’s the usual stories. God to Adam, God to Noah. Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth. Then comes the moldy old Rachel and
Leah stuff we had drummed into us at the Center. Give me children, or
else, I die. Am I in God’s stead, who bath withheld from thee the fruit of
the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear upon my knees, that I
may also have children by her. And so on and so forth. (p. 88)

The accounts of the Ceremony are usually made up of the repeated Biblical stories
about reproduction, the blessed fertility, having children and multiplying. It is
obvious that the dystopic authoritarian regime imposes such religious accounts in
order to regulate a domestic way of life. From an ecofeminist insight, the masculine
mentality makes use of the anthropocentric Biblical stories about fertility in order to
exert their power over women and nature, which are only perceived as the objects of
survival for reproduction and multiplication. Also, after the regular services of the
Ceremony, the Wife, the Handmaid and the Commander are supposed to engage in
sexual intercourse. The mission of the Ceremony is highly important in the sense that
after reading/listening to the Biblical accounts on fertility and multiplication, the
oppressed subjects are supposed to be provoked via the religious statements and have
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sex. In this way, the authoritarian regime of the patriarchal system in Gilead also
arranges and controls the sexual lives of its citizens by making use of biblical stories
of reproduction. Herein, the masculine insight establishes the power structure that
legitimizes the exploitation, oppression and subjugation of both women and nature.
All in all, it is revealed that the religion the society is forced to believe in is a
distorted and altered Christianity. As Offred realizes, the Biblical dictums and stories
are sometimes made up and manipulated on purpose:
For lunch it was the Beatitudes. Blessed be this, blessed be that. They
played it from a tape, so not even an Aunt would be guilty of the sin of
reading. The voice was a man’s. Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed be the meek.
Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong and
they left things out, too but there was no way of checking. Blessed be
those that mourn, for they shall be comforted. (p. 89)

Offred unfolds that during the Education period at the Center, the Handmaid would
be made to listen to Biblical accounts during the meal times. However, as she
discloses, the words, phrases and the testimonies from Bible are altered and distorted
intentionally by the prevailing patriarchal regime so that the domination and
oppression over women could be provided by making them devoted believers into the
perverted religion. Such an anthropocentric attitude mostly resembles to the
endeavours of Enlightenment thinkers who, according to Merchant, helped to alter the
meaning Genesis story and transformed the spiritual desire to return to Eden into a
mechanistic and materialistic desire of reinventing Eden on earth (2003, p. 7-8). The
fall from Eden, for example, was reflected as the guilt of Eve: “And Adam was not
deceived, but the woman being deceived was in transgression” (Atwood, 1986, p.
221). And the religion dictated that the purification for women could only be
achieved through childbearing: “Notwithstanding, she shall be saved by child bearing,
if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety” (p. 221).

Throughout the fiction Offred questions the religion and the image of God and feels
estranged from the patriarchally imposed religious dictums. Often she says, “God isn’t
the only one who knows” (Atwood, 1986, p. 104). She is basically critique of the
religion that perceives women as ‘standing reserves’ and causes further suppression
and manipulation. Each night at the Red Re-education Center, for example, the
Handmaids are supposed to deliver their silent prayers to the God before going to bed.
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The prayers are supposed to be about forgiveness and the invocations of fertility and
fruitfulness. Notwithstanding, the prayers of Offred are quite subversive since none of
her prayers involve any spirituality. As she does not believe in God or any religion, her
prayers turns out to be nonreligious and soulless. For her, the prayers are the forced
moments of looking into the empty garden’s darkness when she feels quite indifferent
and alone: “I feel very unreal, talking to You like this. I feel as if I’m talking to a wall.
I wish You’d answer. I feel so alone” (p. 195). Understandably, having been the subject
of miseries of physical exploitation and psychological oppression caused by a
patriarchal religion, Offred does not believe in the image of God as imposed by
patriarchy. Thus, at the end of the Ceremony of Bible reading when everyone is to
render a silent prayer, Offred’s prayer is only a Latin phrase, the meaning of which is
unknown to her: “Nolite te basterdes carborundorum”, which actually means “Don't let
the bastards grind you down” (p. 90).

Soul Scrolls is a shop in Gilead, where are printout machines that print prayers about
health, wealth, death, birth and sin. The Wives could order prayers from the Soul
Scrolls, which manifests their “faithfulness to the regime” (Atwood, 1986, p. 167).
During one of their regular visits to the town’s center, having seen the Soul Scrolls on
the corner of the street, Ofglen asks the narrator, “Dou you think God listens?” (p.
168). Offred’s alienation from a patriarchal religion and the image of God is so great
that her reply to Ofglen’s question turns out to be a total rejection: “I could scream. I
could run away. I could turn from her silently, o show her I won’t tolerate this kind of
talk in my presence. Subversion, sedition, blasphemy, heresy, all rolled into me. I steel
myself. “No” I say”. (p. 168). The reply by Offred also reveals her anger and
resentment against the authoritarian religion, which is distorted in order to legitimize
and justify the exploitation of women by men.

2.2. Women and Nature

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale implicitly manifests that a man-made

imbalance in the ecological order of nature causes further subjugation of women. In the
dystopia, the distortion of natural harmony inevitably influences the biological
structure of women and causes them to be infertile. The decline in the birth rates,
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according to the observation of the fictional historian Professor Piexoto, had several
causes. Firstly, the widespread availability of birth control methods and abortion during
the late twentieth century hugely affected the birth rates for the pre-Gileadean period.
Thus, as he proclaims, the infertility to some extent was partially willed (Atwood,
1986, p. 304). All the same, according to the analysis of the professor in 2195, the most
important factor that caused such a catastrophic infertility in Gilead was that nature
was severely polluted and damaged by the androcentric mind-set of the late twentieth
century:
Need I remind you that this was the age of R-strain syphilis and also of
the infamous AIDS epidemic, which, once they spread population at
large, eliminated many young sexually active people from the
reproductive pool? Stillbirths, miscarriages, and genetic deformities were
widespread and on the increase, and this trend has been linked to the
various nuclear-plant accidents, shutdowns, and incidents of sabotage that
characterized the period, as well as to leakages from chemical- and
biological- warfare stockpiles and toxic-waste disposal sites, of which
there were many thousands, both legal and illegal- in some instances these
materials were simply dumped into the sewage system- and to the
uncontrolled use of chemical insecticides, herbicides, and other sprays. (p.
304)

The catastrophic reflection of the environmental degradation of the Pre-Gileadean

period directly echoes the ecological position as espoused by Rachel Carson in her
pioneering ecocritical work Silent Spring, where she reflected that nature is gradually
exploited and silenced with the egocentricity of the humankind. As she reflects, “No
witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world.
The people had done it themselves” (qtd. in Garrard, 2004, p. 2). In the society of
Gilead, all kinds of toxic and environmental pollution hit the peak and destroy the
ecological harmony by silencing it eternally. In the society of Gilead, the
environmental condition is literally a ‘climacteric’, which is, according to Lord Ashby,
a sublime version of eternal crisis caused by pollution, resource depletion and
population (qtd. in Love, 1996, p. 227).

However, in a world where in Barry Commoner’s words “Everything is connected to

everything else” (1996, p. xix), while men metaphorically silenced once-speaking
nature and turned it into an ecological climacteric, ecology, on the other hand, has
taken its revenge from the society by silencing people’s fecundities. However, the
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Giledean males rejected such a degrading biological deficiency and blamed their
women to lack the potency. In the patriarchal Republic of Gilead, women were rated
and valued only for their reproductive capabilities. In a state where women are
categorized according to their rare status of being ‘fruitful or mostly ‘unfruitful’,
Offred explains how her womb is influenced by the damaged natural order as a
handmaid commissioned for reproduction:
I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of
transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will. I
could use it to run, push buttons of one sort or another, make things
happen. There were limits, but my body was nevertheless lithe, single,
solid, one with me. Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud,
congealed around a central object, the shape of pear, which is hard and
more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside
it is a space, huge as the sky at night and darked and curved like that,
though black-red rather than black. Pinpoints of light swell, sparkle, burst
and shrivel within it, countless as starts. Every month there is a moon,
gigantic, round, heavy, an omen. It transits, pauses, continues on and
passes out of sight, and I see despair coming towards me like famine. To
feel that empty, again, again. I listen to my heart, wave upon wave, salty
and red, continuing, on and on, marking time. (p. 73)

The narrator discloses that the “central object, the shape of pear” on which her life
centers on, that is, her womb is not productive any more because of the recent
distortion of ecological cycle by the ego-centric mentality of mankind. After the
ecology was damaged by the irresponsible acts of the male-dominated society of the
past life, so was damaged the flesh of women. Being ruled by calamitous patriarchal
regime, as Offred reveals, the only partial “liberation” from being a Handmaid lies in
having a “fetus” in the womb if it is miraculously possible:
The chances are one in four, we learned at the Center. The air got too full,
once, of chemicals, rays, radiation, the water swarmed with toxic
molecules, all of that takes years to clean up, and meanwhile they creep
into your body, camp out in your fatty cells. Who knows, your very flesh
may be polluted, dirty as an oily beach, sure death to shore birds and
unborn babies. Maybe a vulture would die of eating you. Maybe light up
in the dark, like an old-fashioned watch. Deathwatch. That’s a kind of
beetle, it buries carrion. (p. 112)

The ecological climacteric is also obvious with the Unbabies in the society.
Sometimes the Handmaids luckily get pregnant, yet they fail the trail of labour and
give birth to an Unbaby. The possibilities differ and an Unbaby can be “with a
pinhead or snout like a dog’s, or two babies, or a hole in its heart, or no arms, or
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webbed hands and feet” (Atwood, 1986, p. 112). Simply, the Unbaby is an
unsuccessful birth, by which an unhealthy fetus is born. Offred relates how people of
the past devastated, exploited and polluted nature and, therein, resulted in an
ecological catastrophe where not only nature but also all forms of life
interconnectedly affected:
I can’t think of myself, my body, sometimes without seeing the skeleton:
how I must appear to an electron. A cradle of life, made of bones: and
within, hazards, warped proteins, bad crystals jagged as glass. Women
took medicines, pills, men sprayed trees, cows ate grass, all that souped-
up piss flowed into the rivers. Not to mention the exploding atomic power
plants, along the San Andreas fault, nobody’s fault, during the
earthquakes, and the mutant strain of syphilis no mold could touch. Some
did it themselves, had themselves tied shut with catgut or scarred with
chemicals. (p. 112)

The medications and pills also distorted the natural biological order of women; men
kept on with deforestation, exploiting the green world for his own benefits; the
factories dumped their toxic wastes into the rivers and seas, the man-made atomic
power plants exploded unexpectedly, upsetting natural balance and devastating
ecology. Therefore diseases like syphilis spread out among the Gileadean people. All
these factors impacted the birth-rates to decline “down past zero line of replacement,
and down and down” (Atwood, 1986, p. 113).
Within the society of Gilead, the patriarchy’s manipulative and exploitative manner
towards nature causes not only the destruction of ecological balance and biological
harmony, but it also result in the mass extinction of species. In this sense, the society of
Gilead goes through what is called by Meeker as ‘the fallacy of the pioneering species’.
While this patriarchal society favours social unity in order to maintain its control and
power, the regime still “fear diversity” (1996, p. 164). The fallacy involves the demand
for “one species”, in this case men, “achieve unchallenged dominance where hundreds
of species live in complex equilibrium” (p. 164). Thus, the anthropocentric and
egocentric insight in Gilead causes men to have the fallacy of “pioneering species”,
who “heroically face the consequences of its own tragic behaviour” (p. 164). For
example, as Offred wanders around the town’s stores for shopping, she observes that
the Fish Store is closed again:
Loaves and Fishes is hardly ever open. Why bother opening when there’s
nothing to sell? The sea fisheries were defunct several years ago; the few
fish they have now are from fish farms, and taste muddy. The news says
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the coastal areas are being “rested”. Sole, I remember, and haddock,
swordfish, scallops, tuna; lobsters, stuffed and baked, salmon, pink and
fat, grilled in steaks. Could they all be extinct, like the whales? (p. 164)

The pollution of the sea and oceans with toxic and nuclear waste inevitably influences
the production of fish that people used to eat in Gilead, where eating fish now is a very
rare and luxurious occasion. The coastal areas of the country are protected and it is
forbidden to fish there. Just like the recently extinct whales, the other species of fish
are also under the risk of extermination. It is only too late that the patriarchal insight
attempts to rescue the nature from infertility and destruction, just like the way Giledean
males try to prevent the women from unproductiveness, both of which are the result of
the pioneering species’ un-preserving attitude towards ecology.

Still, although the destruction of the ecological balance was mainly caused by the
exploitative acts of the men before the inception of the Republic of Gilead and the
new government tries to handle its hazards, the totalitarian patriarchal regime still
maintains its exploitative manner towards nature. As the war is being sustained
between the Angels of the Faith and the Baptist guerrillas and the Quakers, the nature
is not preserved even though the Gileadean society suffers highly from the
exploitation and pollution of environment by the previous regime. During the war the
bombs explode in those forest regions, devastating the trees of the non-human world.
The narrator relates a sight of news about the war she watches on TV: “We are shown
helicopters, black ones with silver rings painted on the sides. Below them, clump of
trees explodes (Atwood, 1986, p. 82). Just like the way it represses and exploits the
female self and body, the so called ‘pioneering species’ still carries the irresponsible
and non-preserving insight of exploiting and devastating the natural order of the non-
human world on behalf of his own benefits.

In the dystopic fiction, women and nature are exploited, subjugated and damaged by
the prevalent male-domination. The males of Gilead mainly carry the anthropocentric
insight, as identified by Salleh, that men have “right to exploit nature” while
correspondingly they have “the use they make of women” (1989, p. 26). Accordingly,
in the dystopia, anything associated with nature is portrayed to be linked to the
feminine, that is, women. According to Birkeland’s ecofeminist observation, “women
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have historically been seen closer to the earth or nature” and this perception master
modelling “caused a complex morality based on dominance and exploitation” (1993, p.
18-19). The appalling position put by Birkeland can be observed within the patriarchal
attitude of Gileadean men towards both women and nature. In the fiction, in order to
sustain its power and authority, the masculine mind-set creates a deeply-seated dualism
where the nature-feminine side is associated with “the primitive rather than the
civilised, with the realm of necessity rather than freedom and high-mindedness, with
carnality rather discipline, with associative non-rigorous thought rather than
rationality” (Hay, 2002, p. 75). Accordingly, in The Handmaid’s Tale there is nearly no
natural description of any wilderness or georgic, or pastoral. Just like the way women
are silenced and oppressed, the wild nature is also muted and subjugated. Casting both
‘feminine entities’ as the others and inferior entities, the anthropocentric mentality of
the regime sustains its supremacy and power.

Ironically, the females of the society of Gilead are portrayed to have patriarchally
internalized perceptions regarding nature. Rather than subverting the patriarchal
tyranny over women and nature, they only reflect that they feel partial and limited
freedom when they go through the experience of sunlight or gardens, which are the
ordered products of patriarchal civilization. The females are, thus, depicted to find
partial solace in their oppressed lives through their limited interaction nature.

A radical ecofeminist insight posits that since women and nature are on the same pole
against the opposing pole of men and culture, it is profitable to attack on the pre-
planned hierarchy and reverse the already existing terms. Thus, radical ecofeminists
tend to promote the association between women and nature and also the other feminine
attributes, including “irrationality, emotion, and the human or non-human body as
against culture, reason and the mind” (Garrard, 2004, p. 23). Though criticized to be
essentialist, such a perception of radical ecofeminism is also inherent within The
Handmaid’s Tale when the females of the dystopia are portrayed have limited freedom
through their contact with nature. The narrator, for example, many times utters that she
is alive when she is within nature or anything inflicted with nature. Offred reveals
specific relation with the sunlight, the blessing by the nature. In the prison-like room
she is forced to live, life is dark, gloomy, stagnant and unbearable yet whenever she
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fells the sunlight on her skin through the partially opening window of her room, she
feels refreshed, back to life, alive and breathing and thereafter the prison-like room
becomes a room of privilege. The narrator innately feels herself attached to sunlight, to
fresh air, to flowers of any kind. In other words, she sees herself as a being of nature:
But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I
live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am
is not a prison but a privilege. (Atwood, 1986, p. 8)

The unification of the Offred’s hands with the sunlight is like a moment of relaxation,
aliveness, liberation and peace for her: “Sun comes through the fanlight, falling in
colours across the floor: red and blue and purple. I step into it briefly, stretch out my
hands; they fill with the flowers of light” (Atwood, 1986, p. 49).

Apart from the specific references to the sunlight, in the fiction there are the elaborate
portrayals of the gardens, which are the sole environments where nature limitedly
retrieves in the fiction. However, the portrayal of the gardens cannot directly be
attributed to nature because according to the ecofeminist and ecocritical discourse
gardens are the ordered, rehabilitated and restricted civilizational spheres of the
androcentric and most importantly anthropocentric mentality for their aesthetical value.
For the ecocritic Peter Morris-Keitel, gardens are “the landscapes in which
interventions into the nature and its suppression by humans” are observed; therefore,
these green spaces are opposed to the “multiplicity, simplicity and totality” of nature
and wilderness (2010, p. 210). From such an ecocritical standpoint, gardens cannot be
viewed as pure spaces of nature; rather they are the constructs of civilization and
mankind as enclosed and restricted natural spaces. Moreover, according to Jennifer
Fuller, gardens have historically been viewed as “safe, enclosed, educational space for
women” (2013, p. 155). Also, the ecofeminist critic Vera Norwood refers to the
gardens specifically as “civilized gardens”, claiming “women are thought to be more
comfortable in rural and cultivated nature” (1996, p. 324). As gardens are regarded as
“a woman’s space, a safe boundary between the domestic and the wider world”
(Henson, 2011, p. 7), it could be concluded that the gardens of the Gilead are the
patriarchally ordered and enclosed domestic spaces served to the women where
Handmaids and the Wives can enjoy limited liberation and restricted freedom.
Therefore, just like the way the females of Gilead are oppressed and restricted by the
androcentric mentality of the patriarchal regime, so are the gardens. The patriarchy
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seems to restrict the women’s interaction with the unlimited nature and constrain them
to its enclosed civilized green spaces. An Aunt, for example, states that “Each woman
is a garden that is to be seeded by men”, so that they will produce new flowers, plants,
fruits, seeds and evenly babies (p. 163).
The restricted experience the gardens offer can be observed in one of the depictions of
the interaction between Offred and the garden. She reveals that nature is a more than an
environment to her; it is an object of attachment. As she is banned from having
pleasure or spending time in the garden, she envies the Commander’s wife who could
relax during the gardening by taking care of flowers and trees. Offred’s primary first-
hand description is highly intimate:
I go out by the back door into the garden, which is large and tidy: a lawn
in the middle, a willow, weeping catkins; around the edges, the flower
borders, in which the daffodils are now fading and the tulips are opening
their cups, spilling out color. The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards
the stem, as if they had been cut and are beginning to heal there. (Atwood,
1986, p. 12)

In the tidy and ordered garden where the lawn, the willow, catkins and flower beds are
depicted, the daffodils are observed to fade away, while the tulips are newly opening
their cups and spread their color. It seems that the narrator refers to the social changes
that has been taking place in the Giledean society. The fading away daffodils may
represent the old sex women, who were once the free and liberated women of this land
before the natural cycle of ecology was broken by the patriarchal regime. Just like the
way the fading away daffodils lost their beauty, charm and aliveness, the old-sex
females of the society lost their freedom, appeal and living soul. On the other hand, the
red tulips are purely red, “as if they had been cut and are beginning to heal there” (p.
12). Atwood possibly refers to the current Giledean society through the natural
description. The red tulips may represent a metaphor for the handmaids, who wear red
dresses from top to toe and they have a common pain. Just like the way tulips seem to
have been cut and received damage, the handmaids too have been metaphorically cut,
hurt, that is they were restricted, oppressed and burdened by the authoritarian male-
dominated society. However, Atwood reveals hope in the audience as she portrays the
tulips to be healing, which premises a hope for the wounded and red handmaids of the
society to heal, to getter better and enhance their social position in this dystopia
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through liberation. With her natural description Atwood seems to associate women
and nature.

The wives also get the restricted liberation that comes out of interaction with nature.
Many of the Wives of the Commanders own the ordered and tidy gardens where they
spend time via gardening or resting and the gardens are “something for them to order
and maintain and care for” (Atwood, 1986, p. 12). The narrator reveals that taking care
of the garden and nature is a domestic mission and duty of the women, which is also an
internal responsibility that they feel for the nature. This line of an association by the
narrator does also signal to the radical ecofeminist insight, as shared by Ariel Salleh
and Susan Griffin, that women and nature are closely associated since they have similar
femininities and privileged biological processes like productivity and nurturing (Hay,
2002, p. 76). According to this highly-debated biological essentialist position of radical
ecofeminism, such a gift could be used to reverse existing hierarchal structures of
patriarchy so that both feminine entities could be liberated through their privileged
solidarity (p. 76). Although they are the ideological implications and ordered constructs
of civilization and patriarchy, gardens would represent the neutral zones of peace and
liberation for the all-hierarchal positions of the Gileadean women. Thus, Offred notes:
I once had a garden. I can remember the smell of the turned earth, the
plump shapes of bulbs held in the hands, fullness, the dry rustle of seeds
through the fingers. Time could pass more swiftly that way. Sometimes
the Commander’s Wife has a chair brought out, and just sits in it, in her
garden. From a distance it looks like peace. (Atwood, 1986, p. 12)

Similar to the perspective of an ecofeminist mind-set that views a historical advantage

out of the association between women a nature, within the dystopia, the portrayal of
the red tulips within the garden of the Serena Joy seems to have a specific association
to the condition of the Handmaids. Not only the shapes of the red tulips resemble to
the appearance of the Handmaids, but also the biological developments of both are
similar:
The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening no longer wine
cups but chalices; thrusting themselves up, to what end? They are, after
all, empty. When they are old they turn themselves inside out, then
explode slowly, the petals thrown out like shards. (Atwood, 1986, p. 45)

In the description by the narrator, the tulips are redder than ever and they have
chalices, flower buds that compress and constrain the plant. It would not be farfetched
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to claim that the conditions of mature tulips that are about to give new blossoms
actually represent the Handmaids. All the pain the Handmaids suffer is just for the
end of giving birth to a healthy baby, which is the only purpose of their lives. Apart
from upcoming chalices and babies, the women are empty, blank and nothing. When
the Handmaids get old and lose their potentialities to be reproductive, both tulips and
the Handmaids explode; simply they die. Nothing remains from them and they just
“explode slowly” and disappear (p. 45). On another experience of the Wife, Serena
Joy, in the garden tulips again seem to symbolize Handmaids due to their
reproductive biology. While Joy is gardening and seeping off the seedpods of tulips
so that they would blossom more strongly and fruitfully, Offred carefully watches
her:
That was in May. Spring has now been undergone. The tulips have had
their moment and are done, shedding their petals one by one, like teeth.
One day I came upon Serena Joy, kneeling on a cushion in the garden, her
cane beside her on the grass. She was snipping off the seedpods with a
pair of shears. I watched her sideways as I went past, with my basket of
oranges and lamp chops. She was aiming, positioning the blades of the
shears, then cutting with a convulsive jerk of the hands. Was it the
arthritis, creeping up? Or some blitzkrieg, some kamikaze, committed on
the swelling genitalia of the flowers? The fruiting body. To cut off the
seedpods is supposed to make the bulb store energy. (Atwood, 1986, p.
153)

On a deeper level of reading, Serena Joy’s specific gardening mission has greater
metaphorical revelations. As already mentioned, throughout the fiction the depiction
of the tulips in the garden seems to represent the condition of the Handmaids. Despite
the fact that the fruitful season for the tulip production is over, the Wife still tries to
make tulips productive by cutting down their seedpods, which are the ‘genitalia of
flowers’. The mission she handles metaphorically represents the duty commissioned
by the patriarchal regime as a Wife. At a time when the birth rates have steadily
decreased, she is conditioned to provide the fertility and breeding of the Handmaids
by taking care of them. In this specific narration of gardening, not only nature and
women are revealed to be attached to each other, but also the closeness between
wombs of women and the seedpods of flowers are disclosed.

In addition to the identification with the tulips, there are other instances when the
female Gileadeans are identified with the flowers. For example, according to Offred,
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during the Ceremonies, the act of copulation or fertilization is what a “bee is to a

flower” (Atwood, 1986, p. 161). Simply, the sexual intercourse between the two is
resembled to the natural phenomenon, when male bees fertilize the genitalia of the
flowers in order to make the flowers breed. Moreover, the attraction of the Wife to the
flower patterns on her dress seems deeper revelations for Offred:
She’s one of her best dresses, sky blue with embroidery in white along the
edges of the veil: flowers and fretwork. Even at her age she still feels the
urge to wreathe herself in flowers. No use for you, I think at her, my face
unmoving, you can’t use them anymore, you’re withered. They’re the
genital organs of plants. (p. 80-81)

Since the Wives are less restricted than the other female Gileadeans, they must wear
all blue clothes yet the patterns or embodiment is left to their choice. Serena Joy likes
wearing blue dresses with flower patterns, which is an important signifier that she
seeks a way to connect herself to nature. However, she is a cripple who is also barren
and unable to produce new lives necessary for the society. It seems that as a
compensation for her ‘deficiency’, ironically she prefers wearing patterns of flowers
that are actually the prod “genital organs of plants” where the fertilization takes place.
The flower pattern not only reveals that though they are less restricted, the wives feel
closer to nature, but it also shows that these oppressed female subjects who cannot
actively use their organs of production, feel metaphorically devoted to the flowers
which are the agents of impregnation. The flowers are therefore metaphorically
crucial for the women of the dystopia in the sense they serve as identification units
for the Handmaids with nature and also that they represent a unique ability of
reproduction. The narrator, thus, acknowledges that she decorated the dystopia with
the flowers since they are the blessings of nature for women and without them all the
rest is a patriarchal catastrophe and oppression for the females:
I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it
showed me in a better light, if not happier, then ate least more active, less
hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it has more shape. I wish it were
about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even
about sunsets, birds, rainstorms or snow… I’ve tried to put some of the
good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be
without them? (Atwood, 1986, p. 267)
In addition to the close association between a woman and a plant, the narrator also
identifies herself to animals like pigs, which are penned up and bred to serve for
mankind like handmaids, pigeons, which are caged, and rats, which are wasted for
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scientific experiments. For example, as a Handmaid the narrator identifies herself

with the pigs which were used to get fattened in the pens for their meat production:
I wait, washed, brushed, fed like a prize pig. Sometime in the eighties
they invented pig balls, for pigs who were being fattened in pens. Pig
balls were large coloured balls; the pigs rolled them around with their
snouts. The pig marketers said this improved their muscle tone; the pigs
were curious, they liked to have something to think about…I wish I had a
pig ball. (Atwood, 1986, p. 69-70).

Offred, as a female, seems to have devastated what animal rights activist Bentham
calls as “the insuperable line” (Benthall, 2007, p. 1) between human beings and
animals by identifying her self with an animal. She wishes so deeply that she could
have a pig ball by which she could at least be occupied. Simply put, the Handmaid
equates and relates herself with the creatures of non-human world since both of the
sides have so much commonly shared. They are both captivated, restricted, oppressed
and classified according to their bodily function for production. Pigs are required for
their meat production and women are necessitated for their features of fertility by the
prevailing patriarchy; therefore, both are oppressed by the same oppressive
patriarchal insight. When Offred associates herself with an animal, she likens
Handmaids’ limited daily routine to the rats, stating, “A rat in a maze is free to go
anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze” (Atwood, 1986, p. 165). According to
this association, the Handmaids are like rats in their mazes; both are captivated and
usurped. Additionally, she identifies herself with a dog when she observes that in the
Handmaiding system if a Handmaid dies, a new one will replace; therefore, she notes,
“If your dog dies, buy another” (p.187), The women in Gilead are treated as dogs,
animals without the ability to feel and think. The specific connection between women
and animals, the constituents of the non-human world can be seen in another
observation of Offred:
The three bodies hang there, even with the white sacks over their heads
looking curiously stretched, like chickens strung up by the necks in a
meatshop window; like birds with their wings clipped, like flightless
birds, wrecked angels. (Atwood, 1986, p. 277)

The death bodies of executed women hang on the Wall are associated with dead
chicken on the butcher windows; now they are flightless birds and wrecked animals.
Again the narrator draws an analogy between animals and women. The corpses of the
executed women are likened to the flesh of chickens in the sense that a chicken is a
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subservient mechanism, producing meat and eggs for the survival of men. Similarly,
women are perceived merely as a subservient mechanism for child-production. The
patriarchy in Gilead perceives the feminine and the natural as similar entities to be
dominated or, from a Heideggerian perspective, as the objects “standing reserve” to be
exploited (Deitering, 1996, p. 199).

Additionally, the attachment of the females to nature and the oppressive perception of
the males towards the nonhuman world is reflected when Offred relates the miserable
story of their cat they owned during the past way of life. As the narrator relates the
escape plan during the transition period from the old government to the tyranny, she
reveals how Luke, her husband in the old-sex, killed a cat. After the couple arrange the
house, they realize that they all forget about the cat, their playful pet. Since giving to
someone or leaving the pet outside would be so suspicious to reveal their secret escape,
Luke tells that he “Could take care of it” (p. 192):
I will take care of it Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I
knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought.
You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your
head and then you make it real. So that’s how they do it. I thought. I
seemed never to have known that before. (p. 191-91)

In a Foucauldian sense, the way patriarchy constructs its power structures through its
discourses, and later legitimizes its domination over ‘the othered’ can be seen in Luke’s
act. In this particular example, cats not only reflect nature, yet they also represent the
suppressed females of Gilead. Just like Luke labelled the cat as ‘it’ instead of ‘her’ by
reducing the status of the cat, the totalitarian patriarchal tyranny also degrades the
position of women from human beings into objects and mechanisms of reproduction.
Thus, both Luke and the patriarchy oppress, subjugate and metaphorically ‘kill’ nature
and women by means of the construction of male-dominated discourses according to
authoritative power structure.

The common greeting phrase among Handmaids also seems to be ironically

constructed by Atwood to emphasize the close relation between the female self and
nature due to their reproductive capabilities. “Blessed be the fruit!” is the common
accepted greeting way among the handmaids and the general response to the saluting
is “May the Lord open!”. The productive asset of nature and women is so destroyed
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that the need and desire for fertility reveals itself even within handmaids’ way of
saluting. The greeting phrase refers to the sole aim of being a handmaid, that is, to
being fertile, fruitful and productive in order to give birth to babies. The patriarchal
focus and obsession on fertility is also evident in many self-revelations of Offred:
I walk to the corner and wait. I used to be bad at waiting. They also
serve who only stand and wait, said Aunt Lydia. She made us memorize
it. She also said, Not all of you will make it through. Some of you will
fall on dry ground or thorns. Some of you are shallow-rooted… She
said, Think of yourselves as seeds, and right then her voice was
wheedling, conspiratorial, like the voices of those women who used to
teach ballet classes to children, and who would say, Arms up in the air
now; let’s pretend we’re trees. I stand on the corner, pretending I am a
tree. (Atwood, 1986, p. 18-19).

The quotation by Offred is quite significant to understand the position of women in

the society and their relation to nature. Just like a tree, the handmaids should stand
still and wait for the orders from men. They are disregarded like a tree. Moreover,
both trees and women are reproductive and menstruational; through a natural cycle
they give birth and they breathe life. The Handmaids of the Gileadean society are the
“seeds” as the sources of reproduction and fertility so that new generations could be
produced. However, in this dystopic country, where the natural order is distracted, so
is the biology of the females. Most of the Handmaids fail to function as a seed to
grow into a tree and grow roots down in the earth. The narrator likes the idea of
pretending to be a tree and seeing herself as a seed since that is the only way she
could feel the senses of peace, harmony and freedom.

When the ecofeminists analyze the historical and cultural dualisms inherent within
the Western society, they conclude that the feminine is associated with “nature, the
material, the emotional, and the particular”, while the masculine is linked to “culture,
the nonmaterial, the rational, and the abstract” (Davion, 1994, p. 9). Such a model
further reinforces an essentialist ecofeminist assumption that “women possess an
essential nature- a biological connection or a spiritual affinity with nature that men do
not” (Birkeland, 1993, p. 22). Although it is highly debated and critiqued, such an
essentialist position creates the perception that while women are closer to nature, men
are further from it. Similar to this ecofeminist mind-set that was popular in the 1980s,
the Gileadean males are portrayed to be highly distanced and further from nature. As
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an illustration, while The Wives of the Commanders are kept occupied with knitting
scarves for the Angels, they knit “more elaborate” (Atwood, 1986, p. 13) patterns
such as the images of nature like eagles and trees rather than the pattern of cross-and-
star. However, the men of the society dissociate and distance themselves from the
nature and they do not prefer to have natural figures on their clothing or scarves. They
try to avoid the natural patterns as much as possible because it is perceived as an
insult for the males. Rather, the males are attached to the cars, which are the cultural
signifiers of mind, industry, capital, power and technology, that is, the master models
associated with the masculine side of the dualism:
In the driveway, one of the Guardians assigned to our household is
washing the car…The car is a very expensive one a Whirlwind; better
than the Chariot, much better than the chunky, practical Behemoth. ıt’s
black of course, the color of the prestige or hearse, and long and sleek.
The driver is going over it with a chamois, lovingly. This at least hasn’t
changed, the way men caress good cars. (Atwood, 1986, p. 17)

The architects of the patriarchal Gilead, who reject their attachment to nature but
culture, make use of the sociobiological theory of natural polygamy as a scientific
justification in order to legitimize and justify their practises of domination and
authority. The theory proposes that upon closely examining the natural cycle of
ecology, polygamy is a natural practice that is also inherent in most species of the non-
human world. Therefore, a social adoption of having more than one wife or husband at
the same time would be the natural practice that must be conveniently applied for the
citizens of Gilead. Also, it would be a remedy for the society suffering tremendously
from infertility. The sociobiological theory is closely associated with Darwinism,
which was also used by the nineteenth and twentieth century ideologies as the scientific
justification for their practices of exploiting nature and depleting the natural resources,
and oppressing the people of other genders, colors and nationalities.
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CHAPTER 3

ECOFEMINIST ANALYSES OF STARHAWK’S

THE FIFTH SACRED THING

Starhawk (1951- ) is an American author and activist who fights for worldwide justice
and peace by participating in “the anti-nuclear, environmental and feminist
movements” (Mirriam-Goldberg, 2002, p. 11). Described as a “Pagan, Witch,
feminist, anarchist” (p. 11), she is mostly celebrated in the academics for her
“influential voice in the revival of earth-based spirituality and Goddess religion” by
developing genuine methods of spirituality and magic in her political agenda
(Starhawk, 2002, p. 277). Having written twelve books of fiction and theory, which
are mainly concerned with movements like neo-paganism, earth spirituality,
ecocriticism and feminism, Starhawk has been able to inspire profound action. In her
books she mainly attempts to construct “the connections among spirituality, sexuality
and political action” (Mirriam-Goldberg, 2002, p. 11). She is often referred as a
“psychologist and political witch” because of the books she has written about
witchcraft feminism (Foltz, 2000, p. 410) like The Spiral Dance (1979) and Dreaming
the Dark (1982).

The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993), Starhawk’s first novel, is majorly interpreted as an
`ecotopia' (Haran, 2003, p. 18), where life is built on the ecofeminist ethic that “love
and reverence” are central for all forms of life (Starhawk, 1990, p. 14-18). Blending
the environmentalist and feminist movements of the 80s and early 90s, The Fifth
Sacred Thing reflects the true ecofeminist indulgences when the war between the two
totally polarized societies of patriarchy and matriarchy is portrayed. The process of a
fictional war between the nature-friendly San Francisco and patriarchal Los Angels is
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narrated via the adventures and journeys of the three eco-conscious protagonists; the
ninety-nine year-old grandmother Maya, the healer Madrone and the grandson Bird.
During the process of the war, the adventures of these three nature-conscious
characters in the lands of both dystopia and utopia reveal the intimate link between
women and nature in order to liberate from the patriarchy’s oppressive tendencies.

In the fictional 2025 a great hunger breaks out due to the destroyed natural order in the
US. After the government collapses in 2028, the patriarchal Millennialists and their
ally Stewards suspend the elections and declare the martial law of their totalitarian
regime. In San Francisco, however, a rebellion, The Uprising, is started against the
Stewards with the initiation of women who protest against the patriarchal regime by
planting seeds into the big holes on the main street of the town. Other women also join
the four old women in their resistance. The seeds that are planted turn out to be “the
seeds of freedom” for the nature-oriented people in the North (p. 18). Unable to
suppress the resistance, the army leaves back to the South taking with them any food
stock available in the city and they leave the folk in starvation, handling the droughts.
However, as Maya narrates, the years with starvation and droughts teach women the
blessings of sharing, preserving and saving food and its sanctity:
We were hungry, so very hungry, for a long time while we waited for the
seeds to grow, and prayed for rain, and danced for rain. ıt was a long dry
season. But we had pledged to feed one another’s children first, with what
food we had, and to share what we had. And so the food we shared
became sacred to us, and the water and the air and the earth became
sacred. (p.18)

As the Stewards leave the City, where the females outnumber, the newly established
society gets through all the epidemic and droughts by their devotion to the protection
and preservation of nature. Soon, the nature-centered governmental system and the
social policy based on equal-share help the ecology-conscious citizens to establish a
society living in peace and solidarity within the soils of a healing nature. Yet, the
threat that the patriarchal Stewards pose does not end with the victory of the Uprising.
During the recession, the Stewards wage biological warfare by engineering viruses
that result in devastating epidemics back in the North. Luckily, thanks to their
developed skills of healing and the natural herbs, the matriarchal society manages to
get over the diseases without losing much of the population. Several years later the
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oppressive tyranny wages a military war against the matriarchal society of the City,
which is in principle unarmed.

The war between the society of San Francisco and the City of Angels is actually a war
between a dystopia, the repressive patriarchal mind-set, and a utopia, an ecology-
conscious female mind-set. Simply put, the war could be referred as a metaphorical
conflict between the endeavours of patriarchy and nature-oriented matriarchy.
According to Starhawk, there are two versions of power, patriarchy and matriarchy,
which are described, respectively as power-over and power-from-within (Starhawk,
1982, p. 20-28). The power-over is attributed to “patriarchal methods of is
domination, hierarchy, coercion” (Eller, 1991, p. 287). The power-over as exerted by
the male-dominated mentality corresponds to the master of models associated with
the masculine values, as put by Starhawk: “Power-over comes from the consciousness
I have termed estrangement: the view of the world as made up of atomized, non-
living parts, mechanically interacting, valued not for what they inherently are but only
in relation to some outside standard” (Starhawk, 1990, p. 9). On the other hand, the
power-from-within is closely associated to “a realm where female things are valued
and where power is exerted in non-possessive, non-controlling, and organic ways that
are harmonious with nature” (Adler, 1979, p. 187).

Correspondingly, the fictional war in The Fifth Sacred Thing, is a battle between the
power-over and the power-from-within. Thus, in addition to the war between the
masculinity and femininity, there is also a battle going on between culture and nature;
the power of machinery and technology against the spirituality and the emotions of
love and care. While the brutal and cruel army of Stewards invades the City with their
giant machine guns and weapons, the female-governed society responds to the attack
with nonviolence, wherein they manifest an ecofeminist desire for reconciliation with
men on the protection of nature and its spirituality.

San Francisco, which is mostly referred as the City, is governed by a female-

dominated council that especially pays regard to the wellbeing of both the non-human
world and the citizens. In this ecological utopia, the society is concerned about
protection of not only nature but also women from any patriarchal exploitation. From
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this point of view, the City could be interpreted as an ecofeminist utopia or feminist
ecotopia, where the basic governmental politics and economy of the City is based on
the notion that Four Sacred Things of air, earth, fire and water are blessed, thus, they
cannot be owned, sold and profited, yet could only be shared.

In the City, where equality is the basic life force, each citizen feels the necessity to
make a contribution to his or her society by working and sharing. The society seems to
render the perfect communist philosophy with its dedication to equal work, equal
profit and equal share. However, since the Marxist approach is thought to be
insufficient in the protection of nature, the ecotopia builds a distinct Marxist
philosophy and brings a natural dimension to it. The nature-conscious society reflects
that the only wealth is the Four Sacred Things that cannot be owned and profited.
Instead of money backed by gold and silver, they make use of credits that are backed
by calories as the basic unit of value. The economy is perceived as an organism, all
parts of which function together. The concepts of sharing, solidarity and cooperation
are core notions upon which the utopic society was established. Each citizen of the
city helps one another regardless of their gender, race or color, because their basic
initiative is the protection of nature.
In the City, the basic constituent for the well-established governmental structure is the
establishment of family since an understanding of extended family provides the senses
of solidarity and belongingness. Bird notes to Littlejohn, “When I say my family, I
mean all my lovers and all their lovers and kids and ex-lovers and everyone- and half
of the them are faggots, at least half the time. We consider it a word to be proud of”
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 87). The concept of a nuclear family is not common for the
nature-oriented people of the City. They perceive the whole community, including the
relatives, lovers and the others, as their family since they believe that in order to
establish natural harmony the social harmony must also be founded.

The City’s principles of peace, equality and social harmony are never destroyed even
when the army of the Stewards invades the eco-friendly city. Having been highly
influenced by the prophet Elijah’s advice, the council of the City decides to act in
non-violence and non-cooperation by suggesting the enemy “There is a place set for
you at our table if you will choose to join us” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 234). Furthermore,
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the decision for nonviolence is also taken with the influence of Che Guevara’s
famous saying that “True revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love” (p.
237). The nature-oriented people of the city finally resolve that rather than being a
case of killing and dying, wars are actually struggles of different opposing poles. In
this fictional war between the feminine consciousness and the masculine perception,
the female-dominated North is of the opinion that by offering hospitality the
tyrannical insight of the Stewards could be turned into a loving and caring vision.
Thus, instead of the use of weapons that would reverse the recently established
ecological balance, the council decides on passive non-violent resistance and non-
cooperation. While the patriarchal government in the City of the Angels prefers
having totalitarian armies, arms and devastating machinery to exert and sustain power
and domination over the society, the female-dominated government favours to be
unarmed with the guns. However, the matriarchal society gets metaphorically armed
with flowers, trees and the spirituality of nature. Regarding her own society, Maya
notes, “We chose food over weapons, and so here we sit, lovely but as unarmed as the
Venus de Milo” (p. 3).

According to the Northerners, patriarchal power structure is like a virus of an

epidemic that spreads easily to oppress, subjugate and exploit both women and nature
through its masculine means of weapons and violence. Having the notion that “any
revolution that starts murdering its opposition becomes just as bad as the thing it
fights against” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 296), the Council rejects violent and bloody
battles, yet it prefers a battle of the consciousness against the virus of patriarchy.
Thus, the female-dominated society of the ecotopia decides to develop “immunity to
that virus” (p. 238) and they reject partaking in the patriarchal patterns that perpetuate
violence. The immunity is achieved by means of hospitality and generosity that the
non-human world unquestionably offers to the humankind. Finally, the obsession of
the male-dominated society of the Stewards with arms, and the intimate connection of
the female-dominated community of the City with spiritual nature possibly reveal the
binary oppositions of dualities and the patriarchal conceptual frameworks as
discussed by most ecofeminists such as Warren (1987, p. 6), Ruether (1975, p. 189)
and Plumwood (1993a, p. 47-55). From an ecofeminist point of view, the non-violent
and non-cooperative response of the City to the Stewards upcoming attack can be
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interpreted as a female nature-oriented response to oppressive male-domination.

Instead of answering the patriarchal force with masculine means of violence, women
tend to offer men a place in their table they set in nature.

3.1. Gender Roles

In the City because gender is not a paradigm through which people are to be judged
and discriminated, there is no restriction regarding the sexual preferences of people.
While in the City of Angels heterosexuality is encouraged as purity and all the other
sexual preferences are banned and despised, in the City a person is free to have
homosexual or heterosexual relationships, or even both. Even, in the Council there is
an assembly called Fairies, the platform for gays and lesbians. San Francisco is a city
where the only concern is ecological and social harmony. To this end, in the ecotopia
even group sexual intercourses are perceived to be normal activities to satisfy sexual
desires of people. Sex is simply perceived as a usual daily activity and necessity of a
human being in which the spiritual energy is transmitted from one person to another.
Mostly, the sexual process is referred as “natural dance” of energy transfer conducted
among people regardless of their gender and quantity (Starhawk, 1993, p. 146).
Moreover, although many people including Maya, Madrone and Bird have many
lovers, they do not envy each other or proclaim owning anyone after the sexual
intercourse. There surely is a place for love as is visible between Bird and Maya;
however, love for these nature-oriented people is not a pattern to philosophize on.

Apart from nature and women, the ecology-conscious females of the City are also
concerned about the people who are also subjugated and othered by the androcentric
mind-set. The women of the North do not discriminate the people of other genders,
races, classes, colors, nationalities, and religions; instead, they adopt a social structure
based on the principles of equality, liberty and solidarity for all kinds because they
believe that each entity is a blessed component of the sacred nature; thus, each living
creature should be respected. During a Jewish prayer, for example, Aviva honours the
souls of those othered marginal groups like ancient slaves, Blacks, Native Americans,
Jews, and Palestinians etc.:
“I dedicate the first cup of wine to the ancestors,” he said. “I honor the
ancestors who were slaves under the Pharaohs”.
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One by one going around the table, they spoke.

“I honor my ancestors who were stolen from Africa to slave on this
continent.”
“I honor the ancestors on this land, enslaved by the Spanish.”
“I honor my ancestors who dies in the concentration camps of the Nazis.”
“I honor my ancestors who dies in the Palestinian relocation camps.”
“I honor my ancestors who dies at the hands of the Stewards in our
struggle for freedom.”
“I honor those who will die in the struggles to come.” (Starhawk, 1993, p.
214)

Moreover, when ultimately the nature-oriented people of the City through non-violent
resistance defeat the patriarchal army, all the ghosts of the victims murdered by the
oppressive masculine mind-set stand together with the citizens of the City to celebrate
the victory of the female-dominated society and nature over men:
The General’s army was fighting itself… Every battered child, every
bruised slave, every starved peasant, every woman raped and murdered,
every soldier who’d died for somebody else’s ends, legions and legions of
the dead came marching, howling, screaming and whipping cold wind
fingers across the nape of his neck, ruffling his hair so it stood on end.
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 475).

For the ecofeminist movement, which “celebrates diversity and opposes all forms of
domination and violence” (King, 1989, p. 20), such concepts as plurality and
multiplicity become crucial. Apart from gender and women, ecofeminism includes the
criticism of oppression and domination on various grounds including race, sexual
alignment class in addition to species and gender. On this perspective, the notion of
diversity becomes a crucial concept which, for Ynestra King, is driven from “the
diverse ecology” that studies the interactions of such a wide range of living entities
from microscopic creatures to cosmic biological entities. Likewise, in San Francisco,
there are people from different nationalities, languages colors and races. Apart from
English, which is the medium of basic communication, everyone is free to speak his or
her own language. Even in the Council, as Madrone observes, “Although the main
discussion was in English, side conversations went on around the edges of the room in
Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Tagalog. Every neighbourhood in the City
claimed a mother tongue of its own to cultivate” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 47). Taking into
account that even two protagonists of the fiction Bird and Madrone are colored, it
could be deduced that the City is a pure ecofeminist utopic community where no one
is ever discriminated depending on their gender, race or nationality. All the
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patriarchally oppressed groups of the City of Angels are perceived to be totally equal
in the City. Madrone explains that equality in the City takes its ground from the
spiritual equality of the non-human world:
“To us” Madrone said, “everything has a soul. Or a spirit, at least.
Consciousness. Animals, plants. Air and fire and water and earth. Like it
says in the Declaration of the Four Sacred Things, ‘We are part of the
earth life, and so sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any
other”. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 186)

In contrast to the extreme hierarchies based on skin color, gender and race in the
South, back in the North the matriarchal society honours all the diversity regarding
heritage and histories. Madrone, for example, asserts, “Diversity is part of our
strength. It enriches us” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 278). In parallels with the notion that
diversity is a key term for the general cosmos of ecology, for a strong social
establishment in the City, it is also vital. Thus, in the ecotopia, there is no place for
discrimination based on gender, race, nationality, religion or skin color. For
Madrone, up in the North governed mostly by females, “it has nothing to do with
what color you are or what genitals you’re born with” (p. 278). Thus, the depiction of
the ecotopia reveal the moral society created on ecofeminist ethics, as proposed by
Jim Cheney, whose theories are admired by most ecofeminist like Warren:
A gift community in which selves are not atomistic entities protected by
bundles of rights derived from, or tied to, bundles of properties or interests
internal to the individuals. It is a community in which individuals are what
they are in virtue of the trust, love, care, and friendships that bind the
community together, not as an organism but as a community of individuals.
(1987, p. 129)

The City in San Francisco proves to be a pure ecofeminist utopia that reflects nine
basic precepts of ecofeminism put by influential ecofeminist critic, Janis Birkeland.
The first teaching of ecofeminism includes an essential social transformation with “the
promotion of equality, nonviolence, cultural diversity and participatory, non-
competitive and nonhierarchal forms of organization and decision-making” (1993, p.
20). Similarly, the matriarchal society in the North has recently had a radical social
change and with their non-hierarchal social structures they turned into a peaceful
society where are always peace, equality and harmony. Also, in order to fight against
androcentric mentality the nature-oriented people preferred nonviolence. The second
teaching puts that “everything has an intrinsic value” and requires spirituality of nature
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as an important component of the social transformation (p. 20). The utopian society
also proves the second teaching because Earth spirituality is already deeply woven
within the society and is obvious from their religious tendencies, governmental
practices and even festivals. The third principle, which follows as, “Our
anthropocentric viewpoint, instrumentalist values, and mechanistic models should be
rejected for a more biocentric view that can comprehend the interconnectedness of life
processes” (p. 20) is also the basic principle for the formation of the society in the
North. Fed up with the patriarchy’s oppressive and exploitative manner towards
nature, the female-dominated society establishes an eco-centric society that organizes
each governmental principle and social arrangement according to the well being of
nature at in a world of interconnectedness.

The fourth teaching discourages people from controlling the nonhuman world, yet lets
the management of the “remaining natural ecosystems and processes only where
necessary to preserve natural diversity” (Birkeland, 1993, p. 20). This teaching is also
obvious within the dystopic society in the North since the green-conscious society
pays closer attention not to waste or overuse natural resources. Especially when the
decisions they have taken in order to preserve the natural diversity of green islands
from any patriarchal invasion are evaluated, such a principle proves to be true for the
matriarchal society in the North. The fifth rule of Birkeland includes the rejection of
“power-based relationships and hierarchy” and the adaptation of “an ethic based on
mutual care” (p. 20). The sixth rule includes the rejection of patriarchal “dualistic
conceptual framework” that paves way for men to have dominance over nature and
women (p. 20). While the seventh rule insists on that ecofeminism is a process with
many goals, the eighth teaching requires the re-balancing of “the masculine and the
feminine in ourselves and society” (p. 20). Finally the ninth rule requires the
abandonment of “patriarchal games” in order to change the system (p. 20). Likewise,
the utopic female-dominated society in San Francisco also destroys power structures
and moves beyond power, by devastating all the patriarchal dualisms and
categorizations like gender, species, race, color and setting everyone equal and
respectable members of Mother Earth. Thus, the society in the North can truly be
referred as an “ecofeminist utopia” because it fits all the basic precepts of
ecofeminism set by Birkeland.
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While in the North an ecofeminist utopia is depicted, back in the South, there prevails
an ecofeminist dystopia, where the political power of the Stewards comes from the
Millennialists. They are the dominant group in the Southern America, where their
theocratic, oppressive tyrannical regime is based on a patriarchal understanding. They
also rule over the Stewards, who mainly dominate the City of Angels. Via providing
religious dictum and finance, Millennialists direct Stewards as a sub-regime to serve
for their totalitarian power. Down in the Southlands, like the tyranny in Gilead, the
patriarchal tyranny sustains its power and authority over people by developing such
discourses that “Where there is fear, there is power” (p. 28). Therein, the patriarchy
can scare people by using violence and force and subjugate them.

The model of mastery that “women have been associated with nature, the material, the
emotional, and the particular, while men have been associated with culture, the
nonmaterial, the rational, and the abstract” (Davion, 1994, p. 9) also manifests itself
through the societies of the matriarchal City and the patriarchal City of Angels. As
opposed to the natural harmony and ecological balance the females sustain in the City,
the City of Angels is a city of metals, plastics and huge machineries, where there is no
single trace of a living nature. For instance, on his duty in the work levees in the
South, Bird mentions the construction of a huge power plant and a missile:
On a flat shelf of land a hundred feet above the ocean, hordes of men
were swarming around the ruins of giant machinery. A huge crane stood
in the center, a black skeleton against the sky, and at its top, men were
working with laser torches, taking it apart piece by piece. A few hundred
feet away, another group of men were dismantling the one-sleek shell of
what appeared to be a giant missile. The prisoners’ job was to pick up the
pieces of metal scrap dropped from above as the workers cut them loose.
They sorted and loaded them onto the back of a flatbed truck. (Starhawk,
1993, p. 59)

All the same, the masculine technology, electronics, and huge machinery of patriarchy
are evenly defeated by the feminine means of earth spirituality, magic and witching.
While Bird and two of his fellows escape from the work levees, they defeat the
electronic zones and PCD bracelets with Bird’s skill of using chi energy flow, which is
the magic taught to him by his grandmother Maya. Bird is able to deactivate the
electronic zones using the feminine magic that requires the spirits of the Four Sacred
Things of nature. Accordingly, it could be concluded that liberation for those men who
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share the same insight with women on the preservation of nature could only be
achieved when they attach themselves to nature.

According to Bird, the City of Angels is a town “where the color of your skin
determines everything about you: where if you don’t have money, not only don’t you
eat, you don’t drink” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 235). Any language apart from English is
strictly discouraged and banned in the city of Angels. Also the operations of magic,
witching or any kind of ‘feminine’ metaphysical impulse is also forbidden. The belief
in the spirituality of Mother Earth is a crime for which the Stewards could imprison.
Any kind of homosexual relationships are also strictly banned in the City of Angels.

In the dystopia of the City of Angels, the systematic division of people into hierarchal
categories depending on their gender, race and nationality is quite common. However,
the classification is conducted arbitrarily: even in the society there are people labelled
to be black but are all white; or vice versa. The system, open to bribery, could easily
upgrade the social status of its citizens. Though the hierarchal structuring of people is
random, the social categorization of people functions as a means through which the
totalitarian regime could sustain its power and domination.

The depiction of the nature-oriented women in the City as witches, who can use magic
and conduct metaphysical operations, seems to reflect the witch persecutions of the
past. As also pointed out by Starhawk, most feminists and ecofeminists criticize and
condemn the witch trials of seventeenth century which were held to execute and
persecute the magic-inflicted women of the Europe and the States basing on such non-
economic factors as “gender identity and sexual attitudes” (Easlea, 1980, p. 7). For
Starhawk, the persecution against the witches has three related points, "the
expropriation of land and natural resources; the expropriation of knowledge, and the
war against the consciousness of immanence" (Starhawk, 1982, p. 189). Interestingly,
all these processes are attempted to be conducted for the nature-oriented witches of the
City by the prevailing patriarchal Stewards. Starhawk, as a literary figure oriented in
nature and women, also echoes the same ecofeminist insight within The Fifth Sacred
Thing when she depicts the ecology-conscious citizens of the City as a perfect utopic
community that is inflicted with metaphysical operations of healing, magic, which are
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mostly referred in the fiction as ‘witching’. Just like the way witches were executed by
the patriarchal power holders basing on several economic and gender-based reasons in
Europe and the USA, the people or “witches” inflicted with magic are also persecuted
by the Stewards in the City of Angels. In order to make their persecution sound just,
the patriarchal regime makes use of the religion and acknowledges the witches as
distorted demons who deviate people by tempting them to worship Goddesses, which
are referred by the patriarchy as demons. The patriarchal order in the dystopic City of
Angels, regards the spirits of Four Sacred Things as demons that digress people. Thus,
the persecution against the witches of San Francisco seems to be a total allegory
representing the bloody and cruel witch trials of the seventeenth century. Thereafter,
Starhawk adroitly draws upon the ecofeminist critique of witch hauntings in the West:
Maybe this was their modern version of old test for Witches, the one
where they threw you in the water. If you sank and died, you were
innocent. If you floated, you were guilty and they burned you. (Starhawk,
1993, p. 35)

While the females or the ‘witches’ in the North sustain a peaceful life, back in the
feminist dystopia of the City of Angels, established according to the structured Four
Purities, women are the most oppressed group. Backed by the Millennialists, the
Stewards take over the government, and establish a patriarchal regime that forces
each citizen of the City of Angels to sign the Millennialist Creed. The patriarchal
regime forces those citizens who do not give consent to sign the Creed and resist to be
commissioned to go to the pens. The description of the pens reveals the oppressive
patriarchal attitude cast upon the females of the City of Angels. Hijohn relates that
pens are mostly like “whorehouses, where they service the soldiers” or some of them
are like farms “where they breed soldiers and runners and other things” (Starhawk,
1993, p. 223). If a woman violates the Four Purities and loses her own immortal soul
she is sent to the pens as a sex-slave. Women are all theoretically perceived as
“whores” to serve to the soldiers in the pens (p. 267). However, those who are lucky
enough have the chance to get married to their rich ‘customers’ and have a limited yet
higher status in the patriarchal society. There are also blond women called as the
Angels, who are “raised and trained” to be “toys for the rich men” (p. 303). Their
mission is described as “sex and pain” (p. 303).
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The dystopic pens are the restricted places where the females are treated as
mechanisms used to satisfy sexual desires of men, or where women are used as
objects necessary for breeding just like the Handmaids in Gilead, to produce male
soldiers or female runners. Even the patriarchal Moral Purity laws that are supposed
to protect women, furthers the subjugation by the male tyranny since the laws provide
legitimization for men to rape a woman, to have a wife or the choice of any mistress
they want from the catalogues.

Under the patriarchal totalitarian tyranny of the Stewards, some women are especially
bred and trained to be runners in the pens. One of them, a pirate in the hills among
Monsters is Isis who reveals to Madrone: “Those of us who are bred for runners,
we’re raised on certain hormones and steroids. That’s how we develop strength and
speed” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 185). The authoritarian regime of the androcentric mind-
set inevitably oppresses and dominates women by categorizing and positing several
roles for the women. Moreover, the women racings are highly institutionalized by the
patriarchy. Each stewardship owns a racing team, a training farm and breeding
contracts. According to the racing system, women are specifically engineered to be
the best runners via various nutrients developed for them. Apart from aiding the
institutionalizing of the racing system, the only mission of men is to watch, gamble
on and take pleasure out of the racings of the females. The racings of women are quite
similar to the present-day horseracings, wherein the status of both women and horses
are descended into the objects for entertainment and fun. A previous racer even
remarks, “We’re not exactly people to them” (p. 185). According to the system, after
a female racer gets older and loses her strength to compete, she is taken to another
system designed to satisfy the sexual desires of men, which for Isis cannot even be
defined as ‘fornication’ or copulation. She acknowledges that women do not own any
human identity in a society where the androcentric mentality rules over:
Fornication is what you do with another person. We’re not people. Our
mamas did something to lose their immortal souls, like getting raped,
maybe, or selling their bodies to put dome food on the table. And our holy
sacred genes have been tempered with. That makes us a sort of higher
animal. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 186)

The males, on the other hand, in the ecotopia of San Francisco are the masculine
figures deliberately created by Starhawk to reflect the ideal male characters as
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espoused by most ecofeminists. The males develop a loving and caring relationship
with nature, in which they find ease and peace. Moreover, the males of the City never
oppress or dominate any female figure. The specific ecofeminist perception of an
ideal man is manifested via the males of the City. In a city where there is no social
stratum based on gender and all sexes are equal, there is no single gender
discrimination. Males of the City are not further from nature but they are as closer to
it as women. The males’ devotion and attachment to nature is mostly represented via
Bird, who risks his own life to save his female-dominated community and Four
Sacred Things of nature from the brutal invasion of the totalitarian army of Stewards.
Also Rio and Sam are other male nature-conscious characters that find ease and
solace only through their devotion to nature, wherein they are liberated from the
detrimental patriarchal insights.

The portrayal of the only male protagonist, Bird, seems to be a highly cynical in order
to manifest that ecofeminism does not designate any superiority for women over men;
instead, both are equal regarding their cause for protecting the nature they are attached
to. Being a beloved grandson of Maya, Bird is raised by her as a person who loves,
cares and preserves his environment. The attachment and affection Bird manifests
towards nature throughout the fiction reveals that he is devoted to the non-human
world as much as Maya or Madrone. Even, his final heroic attempt and stoicism to
save his people and his land from the brutal invasion and oppression of patriarchal
Stewards army shows he is intimately devoted to nature and to the female-ruled
community. Starhawk’s portrayal of such male characters, leadingly like Bird, who are
closely linked to the nature seems to be a deliberate attempt by which she negates an
ecofeminist insight that ‘men are further from nature’ and shows in a utopia, the vice
versa could be possible.

Interestingly, the nature-oriented males of the City are portrayed as characters that do
not own a total masculine strength, yet they are reflected mostly as delicate and
vulnerable figures equal to the females. Bird, for example, upon returning from the
City of Angels is depicted as an incapable suffering character who has warn out of the
brutal tortures of the Stewards, which finally causes him to lose some of his bodily
functions. He is depicted as a male figure that lacks masculine strength, which stops
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him from joining Madrone on her mission to go to the hills as a healer. Additionally,
Sam, another male figure, who is depicted as the lover of Maya is a doctor, yet his old
age also causes him to fail in manly power. There is no other major male character in
the city that owns the manly strength like the males of the Stewards. In contrast to the
men of the North; however, the San Franciscan women are depicted to be more
powerful and more capable. Therein, Starhawk seems to signal that strength or power
is not based on gender or sex; nevertheless, women are stronger and more powerful
when they are unified and have solidarity with nature, which seems to be the final
ecofeminist message of the fiction.

Accordingly, the ecology-oriented men of the North, lacking a dominant masculine

side are also depicted to be different from the mainstream males of the City of
Angels. While the men in the South are bred to be cruel soldiers to oppress and
dominate nature, women and men of social status, the others in the North are people
who have a loving and caring relationship with nature and women. However, apart
from their devotion to the protection of nature, the distinctive feature that also
differentiates the males of the City from the males of the City of Angels is that every
single man in the North develops a hobby in the fine arts. Bird, for example, is a
distinguished musician, though due to brutal imprisonment operations in the South,
he loses his capability to play any instrument via his wounded hand. The lover of
Maya, Sam, on the other hand, is a talented painter who enjoys portraying aesthetical
details of nature. It would be inferred from the comparison of both men of different
cities that unlike the males of the City of Angels, the men in the City develop an
authentic identity of their own.

While the men in City attain and develop a genuine personality, the men in the City
of Angels are imposed identities by the system. The tyrannical order of patriarchy
disregards the identities of its subservient subjects and assigns them new identities by
imposing on them new names. Just like the way in the dystopic Republic of Gilead,
the Handmaids are given new names according to the households they are recruited to
and for each posting to a new household their names also alter according to the name
of the new house. Therein, their genuine names and their identities are both
disregarded and ignored by the male-dominated mentality. Similarly, according to the
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social conventions of the dystopic society of the Stewards, each man in the city is
named after John the Conqueror: “When you go to the hills, you leave your name
behind. You become anonymous: John Doe. And it’s to do honor to John the
Conqueror, the spirit who came over from Africa with the slaves, who brings hope to
the hopeless” (p. 73). The Stewards honor and follow the steps of a man who has
already brought bloody and cruel slavery to the lands of America; therefore, people
are named after him such as Hijohn, Littlejohn etc. Hereby, the oppressive patriarchy
rejects the authentic identities of people by imposing names and new personalities to
them.

Religion is also an important subject to enlighten how the structured gender roles
function both in the feminist ecotopia of San Francisco and the ecofeminist dystopia of
Los Angels. Simply put, while the nature-oriented North does not stick to any
particular religion or God and instead ascribes people to have the freedom of choosing
their own belief system, in the totalitarian tyranny of the South, the religion, which is
signalled as a fundamentalist and extreme version of Puritanism, is used a means
through which patriarchy exerts and maintains its power and domination over the
society. In the fiction, the female spirituality based on nature helps women of the City
develop a new and genuine identity of their own. As suggested by Diesel, “the
womanspirit/women's spirituality movement offers an alternative spirituality that can
bring a new sense of identity and strength to women. This movement includes a range
of alternatives, such as goddess spirituality, feminist witchcraft (wicca), neo-
paganism, and ecofeminism” (1993, p. 71). Thus, instead of a patriarchal Christianity,
ecofeminists tend to re-establish and refresh the spiritual religious conventions like
pagan-animism, which are established before the Christian and patriarchal religions.
That seems to be the reason why the nature-oriented females of the ecofeminist utopia
focus on the spiritual side of the several religions, Gods and Goddesses.

Besides, rejecting the essentialist Mary Daly’s notion that "if God is male, then the
male is God" (1986, p. 19), the ecofeminist society of the city prefers Goddesses to
patriarchal Gods. The main reason for such a preference is that the female divine
figure liberates women from a masculine divine creator’s oppression and domination,
which was already manifested by Starhawk: "For women, the symbol of the Goddess
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is profoundly liberating, restoring a sense of authority and power to the female body
and all the life processes - birth, growth, lovemaking, ageing and death. In Western
culture, the association of women and nature has been used to devalue both."
(Starhawk, 1982, p. 185)

The only common religious attitude is to believe in the spirituality of nature and Four
Sacred Things. The understanding of most ecofeminists regarding religion is also
manifested via the ecofeminist utopian society of San Francisco when the society is
depicted to believe in mostly nature oriented and primitive religions like Orthodox
paganism unlike Western Christianity, which is criticized by ecofeminists for its
patriarchal creeds. Therefore, in this feminist utopia the scopes of religions that people
believe involve such primitive belief systems like paganism, ancient Gods and
Goddesses including those of Greek, Celtic, Roman and Sumerian. Maya states that
the belief system in the City “is an eclectic mixture of traditions” (Starhawk, 1993, p.
11). During the day of the Reaper, for example, people visit several shrines of various
Gods, Goddesses to deliver their offerings and to bless and commemorate the ghosts
of the dead:
A cairn of memorial stones crowned a green mound dedicated to the Earth
Goddess, who could be called Gaia, or Tonantzin, or simply Madre
Tierra, Mother Earth. Kuan Yin had a shrine and so did Kali and Buddha
and many bodhisattvas, along with devis and devas, African orishas and
Celtic Goddesses and Gods. Some formed natural clusters: The Yoruba
Oshun, Love Goddess, Goddess of the River, stood near Aphrodite and
Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte, in front of a small circle cleared ground where, at
the moment, a woman danced barefoot and bare-bellied. (Starhawk, 1993,
p. 11)

In the utopic society of San Francisco, the only salvation seems to believe in the spirits
of Four Sacred Things of nature, primitive religions like Paganism, Judaism, the
mythological ancient Gods and Goddesses of various kinds rather than patriarchally
inflicted Western Christianity. When Starhawk portrays a utopia wherein people
believe in primitive religions, ancient Gods and Goddesses, she seems to be impacted
by the ecofeminist insight that all these belief systems are more ecology-friendly and
feminism oriented.
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Similarly, in the City the image of a just God is also feminine. Thus, the people in the
North would rather believe in a female Goddess, rather than a male God. The
underlying reason of such a preference in the fiction echoes a major ecofeminist
discourse that since the patriarchal established Christian God of the West paves way
for men to oppress and dominate women and nature, in such a feminist utopia, a
female Goddess is preferred as an image that orders justice, harmony, equality peace
and freedom. During a prayer, for example, when Maya renders her wishes not to have
another epidemic in the future she relates: “Goddess, I hope we’re not in for another
epidemic! Please, Mama, you wouldn’t do that to us again? We’re on your team,
remember? We’re the good guys.” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 3). For the matriarchal
community of the feminist utopia, there is no masculine God, but a feminine Goddess
that cares and loves the human kind. The feminine Goddess represents the spirit of
Mother Nature, who is referred as “Mama” or “Holy Mother” (p.3). From an
ecofeminist perspective, it seems that the nature-conscious citizens of the Northlands
do not favour God with masculine qualities, but female loving, caring and nurturing
Goddesses. The women are totally annoyed at any God or prophet, whose dictum was
developed according to patriarchal power structures. Thus, having seen the Jewish
prophet Elijah in her room, Maya spills over all her hatred for him, which seems to
represent the detestation of all the oppressed females against the patriarchal power
structures and belief systems:
What help have you ever been? Did you help priests of Baal that you
slaughtered in Jezebel’s time? Did you help the hundreds of generations
who starved and sweated and suffered and, instead of raising a hand to
better their own lot, waited on you to herald Mesiah? And what about
women? Have you ever raised a finger of your hallowed and prophetic
hand to help a single Jewish woman to escape from an unhappy marriage,
or learn to read the sacred books, or express her own thoughts and have
them heard by the congregation? For hundreds of generations, Jewish
women have invited you each year to eat the sacred foods prepared by
their own hands, the egg and the greens, the salt water of tears and the
sweet charoset, the unleavened matzoh- bread of affliction, we call it- yet
when have you ever lightened so much as a crump of our affliction? And I
will tell you something else, those foods are the real carriers of the
tradition, the sacred mysteries. Not what comes out of your men’s
mouths, the words and the stories and the endless arguments and
explanations, but what we women provide to put into your mouth, the
taste of pain the taste of spring, the taste of hope and new beginnings.
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 217)
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Against the male-dominated establishments that manipulate the Western religions to

sustain their oppression, the nature-enlighted people of the North pay regard to the
primitive gods and goddesses. For instance, whenever a council is to be held there are
some congressional customs to be followed specific to the nature-oriented City.
Firstly the spirits of the Four Sacred Things are invited when the Voices get into deep
trances to relate what fire, water, earth and air are intending. Also, the spirits of the
gods and goddesses of many belief systems are invited, yet these specifically include
Celtic, Pagan and primitive Eastern religions.

No matter what religion is preferred in the City, the people always highlight the
ecological side of the religious systems by performing rituals that are dedicated to
blessing Mother Nature and Four Sacred Things. As a descendent of a Jewish family,
Maya, for example, follows the footsteps of her yet she also adds a sense of ancient
Orthodox Paganism into essence of her way of Judaism. During one of the rituals,
which “had added a bit of Pagan seasoning to its Jewish essence” dedicated to
celebrating the coming of spring, the household gathers and they offer the sacred
foods they prepare for the spirits of nature and ancient Goddesses (Starhawk, 1993, p.
213):
“Here is the egg of life and the green spring,” Aviva said. “The bitter
herbs, that stand for the bitterness of slavery, and the shankbone- in this
case, a roasted chicken neck- to symbolize the burnt offerings brought to
the temple in Jerusalem”
“Perfectly Orthodox,” Maya whispered to her ghosts.
Aviva continues. “And here is the charoset, this mixture of apples and
nuts and wine and spices, which they always told us stood for the mortar
in the bricks the Hebrews laid for their masters. But we know these are
the sacred fruits of the ancient Goddess, apples of life, wine of
intoxication, the tree fruits that honor Asherah, who stood reduced to the
form of a pillar in the Temple of Solomon and who later was expelled
from worship. Yet her memory was never truly erased, and down through
the centuries her gifts have sweetened for us the harshness of life, even as
this food sweetens the bitter herbs we dip into it. Let us taste it tonight as
a token that no true power can ever wholly be lost, and as a promise that,
whatever bitterness lies ahead, we will also find sweetness. (Starhawk,
1993, p. 213)

The regime of Stewards, on the contrary, rejects any system which includes the
spirituality of the earth, the primitive religions and ancient Goddesses and Gods,
which are all in harmony and peace with nature. Rather, the patriarchal power holders
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believe in an authoritative distorted Christianity, which marks the government of the

City of Angels, as a theocratic state of patriarchy. The version of Christianity,
however, does not include any sacred female figure like Virgin Mary, but only God
and Jesus to render salvation. From the perspective of the historian Lynn White, who
thinks that historical roots of ecological crisis lies deeply in Judeo-Christian theology
(1996, p. 9), the patriarchal regime’s strict obedience to Christianity and their
exploitation of nature is not surprising. For White, Christianity is “the most
anthropocentric religion” that creates a dualism between man and nature, which
caused the further establishment of patriarchal dualisms and dualisms (1996, p. 10).
Likewise, the patriarchy in the City makes use of Christianity and even distorts it so as
to use religion as a means to further control and oppress anything behind the
‘insuperable line’, the non-human world and women.

As a post-apocalyptic novel, in The Fifth Sacred Thing, the Stewards mainly rely on
the Millennialist Purities, which is a creed thrown by those extreme fundamentalist
Puritanists who dictate that people are sinful and Jesus Christ has descended into earth
to repudiate the humankind for their immorality. People in the South believe that the
punishment for their sins as disavowed by Jesus Christ is to live in a destroyed, non-
healing ecological order. The theoretical regime of the Stewards claims that the people
that destruction of the nature is not the result of their irresponsive and exploitative
manners towards nature but it is a punishment sent by God for their immoral and
sinful acts on the world. Therefore, the Stewards generate the discourses to save the
morality. Therein, the patriarchal tyranny makes use of a distorted religion in order to
exert and sustain its power over the people. Moreover, as revealed in their creed, the
Millennialists make people consider that all the natural catastrophes cast upon the
world are due to wages of sin and immortality people have committed. Bird mentions
a prayer of a Guardian he witnesses in the prison in the South, which echoes theocratic
Millennialist Creed:
We utterly repudiate the Devil and all his works…In memory of Jesus
Christ, who returned to earth only to repudiate the world for its sins, we
abhor the earth, the Devil’s playground, and the flesh, Satan’s instrument.
We abhor the false prophets and the false gods, those who lie with
promises of salvation and those who tempt us to wallow in the worship of
demons, whether they be called Goddesses, Saints, Lucifer, or the so-
called Virgin Mary. For we know Our Lord never lowered Himself to tale
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on loathly flesh, but was, is, and ever shall be pure spirit. Amen.
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 29)

Describing the spirit of Four Sacred Things, Mother Nature and Goddesses as demons
and false gods, the Millennialist Creed obviously disregards any belief system the
female-dominated society of the City believes in. Instead, in order to exert power and
domination, the Millennialist Creed makes use of a theocretical principle structured as
Four Purities; Moral Purity, Family Purity, Racial Purity and Spiritual Purity. All the
laws of the patriarchal regime are organized according to these four religion-based
authoritarian purities, that pave way for the further discriminations based on class,
gender, race and nationality. By setting a pure and ideal image of man and woman and
by acknowledging the others as impure, the Stewards are able to categorize and
oppress people.

3.2. Women and Nature

The community living in the City represents the ideal ecofeminist society that casts
major ecofeminist insights via its utopic social and natural constructions. In the
ecotopia, gender is not a paradigm according to which people are divided and
discriminated; instead, according to the established rules of the Council, no matter
what gender, nationality, color, race, language and class they have, everyone is equal.
Each citizen lives with a deep faith into the sacred nature. Although women majorly
lead the community, there are a few nature-oriented men to help them in keeping the
wellbeing of nature and the society.

Before the re-organization of the establishment of San Francisco, the global warming,
the depletion of the ozone layer, the drought that strikes the city and the huge
environmental pollution cause the destruction of nature, ecological balance and the
climactic cycles. The drought, the fires of the “drought baked cities, the desertion of
the croplands, the collapse of the earth on its emptied water table” are all caused by
the irresponsive and non-preserving androcentric attitude towards nature (Starhawk,
1993, p. 16). Thus, the harvests, fruits, crops and vegetation turn out to be scarce,
resulting in severe famines all over the city. Inevitably, in the history of the City,
epidemic diseases break out wiping out the majority of the population in San
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Francisco. All the same, having witnessed the detriments of the destructive
androcentric attitude towards nature, the females in San Francisco start the Uprising
against the regime of the Stewards and gradually re-establish a government, whose
main concern is the preservation and protection of the Mother Nature, which will, in
return, bless people with abundance and fertility of vegetation and rainfall. Regarding
the ecological creed of the female-dominated Northlands, Maya gives a speech during
the Ceremony on the Day of the Reaper:
We hope for a harvest, we pray for a rain, but nothing is certain. We say
that the harvest will only be abundant if the crops are shared, that the
rains will not come unless water is conserved and shared and respected.
We believe we can continue to live and thrive only if we care for one
another. This is the age of the Reaper, when we inherit five thousand
years of postponed results, the fruits of our callousness toward the earth
and toward other human beings. But at last, we have come to understand
that we are part of the earth, part of the air, the fire and the water, as we
are part of one another. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 17)

Maya’s declares that human beings are part of the spiritual nature and its vital
constituents of air, earth, water and fire and that they are not superior to it but an
interactive part of nature. The female protagonist’s dictum reflects a genuine
ecological insight as adopted by all ecofeminisms. Accordingly, the citizens of San
Francisco live in harmony and peace with nature, which is perceived to be sacred for
the whole community. Each of these entities of nature is perceived and treated to be
sacred and blessed by the people of the city, especially by the women. Evenly, nature
is treated as a living conscious being, rather than a subservient object for domination.
Thus, the community in San Francisco believes in the earth spirituality. The
declaration of the Four Sacred Things of the matriarchal society of the City reveals
Barry Commoner’s first law of ecology that “Everything is connected to everything
else” since the four sacred entities of nature are interconnected and interrelated units
of nature (1996, p. xix):
Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and the body of the
Mother or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the
interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live
without them. (Starhawk, 1993, p. i)

The society believes that people should reject any ecocidal, egocentric, androcentric
and anthropocentric position; rather, they should have an eco-centric insight and put
nature over human necessity. Nature must rather be celebrated because of its
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sacredness. Therefore, the people of the City set nature as a standard by which human
life is organized and the foremost duty of any single person and council in the City is
to preserve and protect nature and its four sacred constituents.

As clearly stated in the declaration, which reveals the vital insight of the ecofeminist
utopia, whether human or non-human, all the living in the cosmos is sacred since they
are the vital dwellers on the Mother Earth and inevitably connected to it. From this
perspective, the declaration also manifests “the holistic aspect of ecofeminism”
(Birkeland 1993, p. 19) because it focuses on the interconnected and interrelated
position of all cosmic ecology and its members Perceiving each single organism as
sacred, the matriarchal society of San Francisco also believes in the equality of all the
living creatures. There is no place for discrimination based on gender, species, race,
nationality, class or color. Every single living thing is equal and has the same
responsibility to preserve and protect nature. The liberation, the declaration maintains,
can be obtained only through ecological balance for the humankind. It is only in
freedom that a Fifth Sacred Thing, spirit, could flourish with its full variety:
To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment,
sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom and beauty can thrive. To honor
the sacred is to make love possible.
To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences and
our voices. To this we dedicate our lives. (Starhawk, 1993, p. i)

Decisively, the declaration of the utopic nature-oriented society of San Francisco turns
out to be a manifesto of an ideal ecofeminist law. The avowal echoes all the basic
understandings of ecofeminism according to which nature should be the central unit
for the organization of human life; a loving and caring relation with nature should be
sustained to attain freedom for each group (gender, race, class, color etc.) oppressed
by the patriarchy; and primal earth spirituality is vital to maintain the love-care
relationship with the nature. Consequently, the people believe that nature cannot be
owned, bought or sold for in the exchange of anything since nothing sacred can have a
price to decrease its status. As Bird puts, “We believe there are Four Sacred Things
that can’t be owned,” Bird said. “Water is one of them. The others are earth, air and
fire. They can’t be owned because they belong to everybody. Everybody’s life
depends on them” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 72).
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In the City, the devotion to the nature is so intense that for each of these sacred units
the people built shrines where people could offer their blessings to the spirits of water,
air, earth, and fire and those ghosts of their beloved ones. On the Day of the Reaper,
which is the anniversary of the day of the Uprising against the patriarchal tyranny of
the Stewards, Maya also visits the hills where the shrines are situated and she delivers
her offerings for the sacred units:
The shrines to the Four Sacred Things encircled the base of the hill at the
cardinal directions. Maya had made laborious circuit. She left seeds or
rare herbs at the earth shrine, feathers of seabirds and roosters at the air
shrine. At the fire shrine, she gave white sage and black sage and cedar
and at the water shrine, she’d left a jar of rainwater saved from the first
storms of the previous autumn. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 2)

The City with its well-preserved natural order has essentially been re-organized after
the patriarchal Stewards’ exploitative and destructive manner towards nature. The
reorganization is conducted with a female insight of eco-consciousness and people
have developed a loving and caring relationship with nature. Therefore, an ecological
utopia is created where gardens blossom its most colourful flowers and fruits, streams
run along the streets and animals live in peace with the humankind. “The city” is
portrayed as “a place of riotous flowers and clambering vines and trees, whose boughs
were heavy with ripening fruit” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 2). The re-establishment of the
City is based on the perception that nature is a living spirit that should be cared, loved
and protected. Not only protection and preservation, but also disposition is highly vital
to sustain ecological balance and therefore, liberation for the dwellers of the City:
You’d think we had plenty of everything, plenty of land, plenty of water.
Whereas we’ve simply learned how not to waste, how to use and reuse
every drop, how to feed chickens on the weeds and ducks on snails and let
worms eat the garbage. We’ve become such artists of unwaste we can
almost compensate for the damage. Almost. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 3)

Such an intimate association with nature in the ecotopia inevitably reflects itself in
the ways natural harmony is sustained in the City. The gardens, from this perspective,
are ideal places where the devotion of the female-dominated community could be
observed. The garden Bird is taking care of is full of flowerbeds, herbs, fruit trees and
plenty of vegetables. It is narrated that there are also wind generators that help to
generate power and also aquaculture tanks that “warm the greenhouse with the heat
stored in the water” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 127). All the garden depictions show that not
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only the protection of nature and preservation of ecology from the detriments of an
exploitative androcentric manner but also saving the natural energy expenditure is
significant for the ecology-conscious people of the North.

The North is ecologically well-shaped, preserved and cared by the nature-oriented

female-dominated government and society. Rather than as a ‘standing reserve’, nature
is celebrated with its own living cosmic identity, spirituality and consciousness. The
description of the dwelling of the City reveals that any single principle acknowledged
in the Declaration of Four Sacred Things is implemented in the City dwellers:
The city was a mosaic of jewel-like colors set in green, veined by streams
and dotted with gleaming ponds and pools. Seen from above, blocks of
old row houses defined streets that no longer existed. Instead, bicycles
and electric carts and the occasional horse moved through a labyrinth of
narrow walkways that snaked and twined through the green. Above the
rooftops, gondolas like gaily-painted buckets swung from cables,
skimming from hilltop to hilltop, moving between high towers where
windspinners turned. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 1)

In the eco-city, there are no gas-fuelled cars yet a few electric vehicles used for
emergencies. Since the government prefers sparing land for cultivation, parking the
personal automobiles into these lots are discouraged. Instead, people use nature-
friendly bicycles and horses. Also they make use of gondolas over the bay. Simply,
people escape from any medium that could finally distrupt the natural harmony. The
society makes use of the advanced nature-friendly technology based on the movement
of silicon crystals. After the Uprising, every tool in the City is arranged according to
Five Criteria of True Wealth that are based on the principles of usefulness,
sustainability, beauty, healing and nurturing. Thus adopted nature-friendly computers
and Net that function with the crystals and the technologies of solar and wind power
are devised.

Not only in the city planning and daily social life but also for the governmental
operations the protection of nature is the basic principle. Regularly the Council of the
City meets to discuss current problems of the community. Each neighbourhood, work
collective and several councils send their representatives to the official meeting and
everyone is also free to join the Council and have a word for him/herself. Since the
protection of nature is of vital importance in establishing the social life in the City, for
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the governmental regulation the non-human world is also the central paradigm to make
laws. In the council, the spirits of the Four Sacred Things are also present via the
people called as Voices who go into deep trance and speak up on behalf of the air, the
earth, the water and the fire. In order to reflect their attachment to the four blessed
unities of nature, the Voices stand for Deer, Hawk, Coyote and Salmon, whose
judgments and speeches are important for the society. There are also speakers for each
Voice of the Four Sacred Things and in order to show that nature is not genderized, a
female speaker disguises herself as a man or a male speaker disguises as a woman.
During one of the meetings Friend Salmon, the voice representing the water says,
“Human beings must survive to clean up the mess they’ve made” (Starhawk, 1993, p.
50). On another occasion, Friend Deer, the voice representing the earth suggests the
people that they remember their connection to earth since “earth is bigger than any one
of” them (p. 52). While nature is heavily silenced by patriarchal societies, in the
feminist utopia of San Francisco, nature is voiced, valued and protected. Moreover,
not only through Voices but also through several guilds and boards nature is
represented and voiced in the Council. The presence of Water Council, Toxic Council,
Transport Council, Gardeners’ Guild, Carpenters’ Guild, Healers’ Guild, The Fairies
etc. show that the matriarchal council in the City constitutionally protects and
preserves nature. The animals, plants, the waters may not have voice in Council but
every decision made should take them into consideration.

In a society where nature is regarded as the central subject to be cared and loved,
inevitably nature heals from its wounds and blossoms with all its beauty. As Madrone
notes regarding her utopic hometown, the non-human world flourishes as a perfect
ecological cycle thanks to the efforts of preservation of the people:
“We have lots of trees, “ Madrone said. “Trees everywhere and gardens.
Fruit trees and walnut trees and avocados, wherever there’s a sheltered
spot. We grow a lot of our own food, right in the city. And there’s water
everywhere- not that we have a lot of it, but we conserve it carefully, in
cisterns and graywater tanks so we can reuse it, and in the irrigation
channels. Bur as much as possible we let it flow freely, in open streams
that crisscross the pathways, so you can always hear it and smell it and sit
beside it, watching it play with the light. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 206)

Since the environmental well-being of the City is their priority, an Eden-like

ecosystem is established. Bird relates, “Everything’s so beautiful … the streams are
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full of water, and the markets are spilling over with food and flowers and crafts” (p.
211), As Madrone notes:
We don’t just plant a garden, we create an ecosystem that can sustain it
self as much as possible with a minimum of outside energy- including our
own. Everything serves more than one function. For example, we used to
keep a couple of geese, who ate weeds and insects and scared away stray
cats. Their wastes fertilized soil and we ate their eggs and used their
feathers in quilts and jackets. Or take the streams. We brought back the
natural streambeds, brought the water up out of drainage pipes and let it
flow free. Over time, we hope to restore the salmon runs. But the streams
provide habitat with fish and freshwater crawdads, and we divert some of
the water for irrigation. Kids like to play in them and swim in the ponds.
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 296)

In order to sustain the ecological harmony and the health of the ecosystem, people
organize their lives, belief systems and rituals around Nature. Thus, in a region where
water is blessed, people celebrate the rainfall, which is so rare in many parts of the
world. In the fiction after Bird returns to his homeland, it starts raining and people
celebrate the earth’s yearly promise of renewal by thanking Mother Nature via
dancing and singing:
Up and down the pathways, doors were opening and people were running
out to dance deliriously. Children dashed about with bowls and pots to
catch the first rainwater. Next door, Sisters knelt in the mud to give the
prayer of thanks giving. Even Maya danced, skipping, albeit somewhat
stiffly, down the path to join the crowd of people streaming into the park
around the corner. They caught hands and were whirled into the snake
dance, the spiral the long chain turning on itself and winding back out,
like the renewal of generations, Maya always thought, passing face after
face of the neighbours and friends in the mad dance. Fireworks exploded
and rained down in colors that mingled bright fire with the drops. Soon
everyone’s hair and clothes were damp and streaming, but they only
laughed. The rain had come, even a bit earlier this year, and they
welcomed it in the hope that it would return again and again through the
winter, turning the brown hills green, filling the cistern and replenishing
the aquifers, feeding the life in the gardens and fields that fed the people.
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 125)

The ecology-oriented society of the city manifests its gratitude to and solidarity with
nature during the celebrations of the first rains of the year. Having the notion that the
abundance of water is a gift and grace, the people also appreciate the sacredness of
water via a chant of litany:
Rain is our sister, our mother,
Our father, our brother,
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Our sweetest, most missed,

And longed-for lover.
So, if you’ve never loved anyone,
If you’ve ever missed someone
And longed to see that face
And cried for the touch of those hands,
Lift your hands to the rain, now,
Turn your face to the rain, now,
And feel your beloved come,
In rain… (Starhawk, 1993, p. 125-26)

Even when a person dies in the City, in order to bless and hallow the spirit of the
recently dead person, a prayer is delivered for his/her sake. The prayer after the dead
person, which is called as The Last Blessing, reveals how nature and four major
constituents of it are sanctified by the female-dominated society. Moreover, it
manifests that the liberation and salvation for the humankind is only through nature:
May the air carry your spirit gently… May the fire release your soul. May
the water wash you clean of pain and suffering and sorrow. May the earth
receive you. May the wheel turn again and bring you rebirth. (Starhawk,
1993, p. 5)

The period when the vitality of the spiritual Mother Nature is mostly reflected is the
celebration day of the Reaper. At each anniversary of the Uprising, people of the City
celebrate the Time of the Reaper, which is the season of the harvest. The Reaper,
mostly referred as the Crone, is the Goddess of Harvest and fertility. During the time
of the Reaper, the Reaper and the ancient Celtic sun god, Lugh are celebrated and
invoked. Maya describes this blessed season of harvest as the glorious time of the year
“It is a time of sweet corn, ripening tomatoes, the bean drying on the vine. The harvest
begins. We reap what we have sown” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 16).

Having suffered from the disastrous results of patriarchy-invoked epidemics, droughts

of the distorted nature, the government of the City adopts a matriarchal manner and
embraces earth spirituality and primitive belief systems in order to preserve and
protect the whole ecology. Such a deep faith in the earth spirituality is also evident
within the customs of a group of nature-conscious people who live on the hills.
Between the border of the City and the City of Angels, there live a group of the Web
who are called as the Monsters. Since the area where they live is closer to the inactive
power-plant on the contaminated toxic lands of the South, these nature-conscious
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people attempt to heal the earth by organizing rituals at each full moons. The rituals
reveal that these female-dominated group on the hills are totally attached to earth. On
his way back to the City from the South, the Monsters welcome Bird who has a chance
to observe their rituals, which is also very common in the City. During the ritual when
the people become one flesh together with the earth, Bird takes the leading role and
feels the Sprit of the earth:
He walked out to the center and stood by the fire. Taking a deep breath,
he let his own energy extend out to include the whole circle, to link with
their willingness and intention to come together. When he felt the energy
of the circle become one whole, he grounded it, sending it, sending it
down through his own body into the earth, then drawing it back up again.
He looked around. Good. The patterns had changed, as he’d hoped, and
they were all connected to the earth. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 96)

After they feel the spirit of the earth visiting them, the members of the ritual play
drums and sing songs that praise the Mother earth and ask the Goddess for healing
from the disturbed ecological order, blessing and abundance.

Apart from the operations of curing the earth, another spiritual healing method applied
to the sick is conducted via the natural healing methods of alternative medicine rather
than chemical medications. The natural techniques include acupuncture, a variety of
herbs from nature or the healing technique of ch’i. The healing method applied by the
healers is a natural process, called as Ch’i energy transfer, which is a healing
technique that takes its basic principles from Chinese medicine and is mostly referred
as natural energy of the soul, spiritual energy flow within the aura. It is the most
commonly applied healing method in the fiction. Often Madrone, as a healer, cures
people through using their ch’i worlds, that is their metaphysical aura. She gets into
trance and uses the vital energy flow and metaphysically gets into the diseased person
and cures him or her by absorbing the disease. Also, it is perceived to be the vital
constituent of any living creature. Through this cosmic energy, the healer, mostly
female, can heal the sick. Although the people of the City do not perceive it as
supernatural and magical impulse, others refer the healing via ch’i worlds as
‘witching’. Madrone reveals that the technique of healing, the ch’i energy transfer, and
the magic are all natural processes that require females to have an insight into the earth
spirituality:
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There are many ways to be a healer, but this is what we believe about it
and what I was taught when I began. We say that there are Four Sacred
Things, and the fifth is spirit. And when you live in the right relation to
the four, you gain the power to contact the fifth. The four are earth, air,
fire and water. They live in the four directions, north, east, south and
west. No one can own them or put a price on them. To live in right
relation is to preserve them and protect them, never to waste them, always
to share what we have of them and to return all we take from them to the
cycles of regeneration. Together they form the magic circle, which is the
circle of life. And the understanding of that circle is the beginning of all
healing. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 300)

In addition to the healing methods for earth and the people, another social custom that
reflects the devotion of people to the earth spirituality is their rituals of sexual
intercourse. The process of sexual intercourse between the lovers in the City is
performed like a spiritual ritual rather than a concern for love or satisfaction. After a
ritual when Bird and Rita have the Great Rite, that is, the sex, the process resembles to
a part of the ritual dedicated to nature:
Her body against his hands felt like soft loam as she lowered herself onto
him, and he was the sun come down to earth at last. He opened to her
fully and gave himself over to the power she harboured within her, and
she opened to him, revealing pain and beauty that answered his own pain.
She was broken as he was broken, as this land was broken but, thanks to
him and to the others who had suffered and died for it, not destroyed. She
was the bitter brew that nonetheless healed, like one of Sandy’s mixture,
the homeopathic drop of poison that cured, the tainted land that still fed
life. He brought the sun to her, the dying, weakening, abounded sun that
consumes itself as it gives light, as he had brought to the land his won
life-sustaining willingness to give himself away. And so he received back
the bittersweet gift of the land, and rained. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 98)

The description of the sexual intercourse in which the woman is likened to the sun
and man is to the earth shows that the intercourse is practiced as if the process is part
of the natural cycle. More than being an affection of love, the intimation is simply a
transition of vital spiritual energy flow between the couple. Moreover, when
Starhawk the identifies a male character with earth, that is nature, she seems to
reverse the prevalent binary oppositions that associate women with nature against
men and culture.

While an ecological harmony and peace is established and sustained in the

matriarchal City, in the male-dominated South nature is exploited, polluted and
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devastated. After the huge earthquake that destroyed most of the Los Angels,
damaging the waterlines, gas pumps and roads, deteriorating the access to water and
food the ecological order deteriorates with the attacks of the Stewards through bomb
squats and fires. Because of the climate change, the city was already suffering from
environmental degradation, which deepens with the huge quakes. Before
overthrowing the previous government during the time of the droughts, Stewards
establish a Corporation that stock piled grains, seeds and medical supplies to make
profit by selling these goods in the black-market later. After the Stewards manage to
take hold of the regime and establish a totalitarian theocretical tyranny, backed up by
the Millennialists, the uprisings and resistance are stopped by bloodshed and
oppression.

Meanwhile, in order to exert its power and control over people, the Stewards initiate
the market of boosters and antidotes that help people escape from the epidemics and
diseases that are either caused by the ecological degradation or by the viruses
engineered by the patriarchal regime. Moreover, the boosters and antidotes, which
deliberately triggered further addiction, were all vital for the people of the City of
Angels in order to survive on the ecologic dystopia. As the Stewards engineer
epidemics on the City via the deliberately manufactured microbes and viruses, the
military warfare intended by the patriarchy against the matriarchal nature-friendly
society of the North turns out to be a battle of “basic biological survival” (p. 138).
Thus, even after the uprising, the Stewards go on polluting and destroying the natural
harmony prevalent in the North by poisoning the rivers and the sea with the toxic
wastes, and dumping sewage into the ocean, which kills a great number the fish.
Moreover they also spray the forests, destroying the ecological balance. All these
detrimental operations against nature are carried out by a masculine mind-set in the
ecological dystopia, that is, the City of Angels.

As a consequence, the same patriarchal manner keeps on destroying and devastating

the ecological balance not only in the South but also in the North. Although after the
Uprising nature was healed and the ecological balance was preserved in the City,
which had been previously destroyed by the patriarchy, the community has still been
suffering from the toxic stew caused by the South. Though the society of the City has
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left behind the patriarchal attitude towards nature, they are still trapped with the toxic
waste, depletion and finally ecological degradation caused by the patriarchal mind-
set. Thus, Maya refers the City as “a green island in a toxic sea” (Starhawk, 1993, p.
110). Similarly, Madrone reflects the condition of ecology in the seemingly well-
preserved North:
Don’t let the flourishing of the gardens and the clarity of the waters
delude you. There are still chemicals in the Bay we may never be able to
analyse, let alone neutralize. The atmosphere is suffering from an ozone
depletion that won’t begin to reverse itself for at least another twenty to
thirty years- and that depends on what’s happened to the rain forests and
the consumption of fossil fuels on the rest of the planet, which we don’t
even know. There’s low-level radiation left over from the last century,
and who knows what’s being pumped into the atmosphere now? And
there were biological weapons developed years ago, and maybe some of
them have been mutating ever since. Plus some pretty uncontrolled
experiments in genetic engineering. Put that all together, and it’s not
surprising we have recurring epidemics. If anything’s surprising, it’s that
we’re doing as well as we are.” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 51)

In addition to the long-lasting impacts of the androcentric attitude towards ecology,

even the first-hand result of men’s contact with the well-sustained nature of the North
is devastating. Upon their invasion of the City, after the Stewards reject mutual
cooperation with the nature-conscious society, the first thing they do is to damn and
block the stream that flows near the streets. Over the years of drought and restoration
of environment, the women of the City try to heal the wounds scarred by the
patriarchy. Nevertheless, the male-dominated Stewards go on destroying a re-
constructed natural harmony. Each time the people unlock the flow of the stream, the
army builds the damn again to store the water to be owned by the Corporation. The
arrival of the Stewards does also affect the well-protected ecology of the City; now
“gardens are ragged, weeds growing unchecked, flowers and vines withered and dry”
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 421). Besides, the patriarchal army of the Stewards not only
cause natural destruction, but they also damage the women by raping, wounding or
killing them.
The irresponsive and non-preserving attitude of Stewards towards nature mostly
destroy and devastate natural order and ecological cycle in The City of Angels, which
can be described as a city made up of gas, metal, rubber and huge pollution. In the
The Fifth Sacred Thing, it is revealed that the city has a poisonous dry air and all
brown and gray lands filled with motor vehicles and gas powered automobiles. The
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air, loaded with the chemicals released from the cars and factories, burns the noses of
people, making it difficult to breathe. The nature is so disregarded and polluted that
even the tankers ply the oceans with oil. According to the depictions from Madrone
and Bird, in the South the air is all contaminated and dusty; the land is very dry and it
is deprived of any rainfall or any stream water. Therefore, the City of Angels is
depicted as a gloomy region with muds dry pools and stones where it rarely rains.
Except for a few dead tree skeletons, there are nearly no trees. In the City of Angels,
there are some citizens who have never seen any tree in their lives. Natural harmony
and ecological balance in the City of Angels are so much devastated that it rarely
rains in the city, causing the droughts. Therefore, the patriarchal regime of Stewards,
which owns all the farmlands, the seeds and water supplies, establishes Corporation,
which controls the usage and sales of all the water.

In the dystopia, when the irresponsive, non-caring, and non-protective attitudes

towards the non-human world is combined with the huge industries, weaponry and
technology ecological crisis become unavoidable. For Maya, the “greatest waste” of
all is the patriarchal wars of all kinds, which are initiated to gain profits, prestige and
masculine power (Starhawk, 1993, p. 239). Maya, referring to the Cold War, the wars
fought in the Vietnam, Middle East, Latin America, gives an account of how women
and nature are both harmed by such destructive wars:
We waged war on ourselves with nuclear testing, gave our own citizens
cancer and then denied responsibility, poised the sacred lands of the
Indians and turned great rivers into radioactive sewers, and every time
there was a glimpse of peace, we scurried to find a new enemy so we
could continue the mindless wasting. Blowing up our wealth, burning it
off, turning it into poisons and toxins, shooting it in the belly, shipping it
home in body bags, murdering our own children and everybody else’s.
And meanwhile we decayed…Our compassion eroded faster than the
topsoil, and when we began to notice the earth changes, the droughts and
the warming and the die-offs of the animals, the hole in the ozone layer
and the epidemics of strange diseases that showed our own immune
systems faltering, when we still has a chance to save so much and avert
the worst of what followed, we continued to distract ourselves with war.
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 239).

Although nature is not protected and preserved in most regions of the South, in the
private territories controlled by the gangs affiliated with the Web, nature is quite
cared and preserved by the females of the Web, the underground organization against
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the operations of the regime. Madrone, having been able to secretly sneak into the
gang territory in the City of Angels, observes that between the two stucco buildings,
actual green plant grew, “alive and green” with moisture protected with care and
attention (Starhawk, 1993, p. 293). Even the common motto of the Web signals that
they support nature against the detriments of Stewards:
“The earth is our mother
We must take care of it” (p. 25)

Although the Web seems to be highly concerned about nature and the spirituality and
well-being of nature, rather than being a genuinely nature oriented underground
affiliation, the Web is simply an anti-establishment of a squad operating against the
rules of the authoritarian regime of the Millennialists and Stewards. The members of
the Web have totally different visions regarding nature compared to the citizens in the
City because the squad can easily kill people, devastate natural harmony of any region
by bombs for the sake of creating unease against the Stewards’ army.

In the novel, the unique attachment of women to nature is most obvious within the
ninety-nine year-old protagonist Maya’s dedication to the non-human world and the
ecosystem. She simply perceives the dwelling as a conscious being and often repeats
her commitment to the green city stating, “You have been my constant love”
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 2). As a respected author, Maya enjoys and takes delight in those
moments she spends at the shrines of the Four Sacred Things. According to her, these
are the intimate moments when she comes closer with the spirits of four sacred unities
of nature and also the moments when she finds her own true identity via meditating in
nature; therefore, she notes: “An Orthodox Pagan, I like these rituals done right: a
leisurely visit to each shrine, a walk up the processional way, time to mediate,
contemplate and trance out a bit” (p. 2). The females of the City, like Maya, feel
refreshed, peaceful and energetic and they enjoy those moments at the shrines
dedicated to the spirits of nature. In one of the instances, Maya is depicted as blissful
and alive when she is in the hands of Mother Nature during the springtime:
It had been too long since Maya had walked out in the City. The hills
were still green from the winter rains, the trees growing bushy with the
new leaves of spring. The slanting rays of the late-afternoon sun lit leaves
and flowers with an inner glow. Rose moon, she liked to call it, when
everything was budding, burgeoning, bursting forth with color and scent
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and the promise of fruit. She felt giddy, attractive- not young, exactly
merely immortal. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 208)

Consequently, in accordance with the Declaration of the Four Sacred Things, it is only
through such devotion and dedication to nature that ecological balance and liberation
for the women could be achieved and therein, the Fifth Sacred Thing, that is, the spirit
could retrieve.

Throughout the utopic fiction it is mostly women who miraculously heal the wounded
nature and the sick. Moreover, the females have ability to heal both the land and their
people, which also reveals another ecofeminist notion that women and nature are
closely and intimately associated in healing each other. The portrayal of the nature-
oriented women as engaged in magic and witchcraft seems to be an allegory for the
modern witchcraft in feminism that requires “the centrality of goddess imagery for the
divine” and “pre-patriarchal roots” (Diesel, 1993, p. 72). As already mentioned,
feminist witchcraft is a feminist tendency that emerges in the US and Britain after the
1970s, for which Starhawk is also proclaimed to be an initiator, who thinks that
witchcraft is the spiritual dimension of feminism:
The Goddess has at last stirred from sleep, and women are reawakening
to our ancient power. The feminist movement, which began as a
political, economic and social struggle, is opening to a spiritual
dimension. In the process, many women are discovering the old religion,
reclaiming the word 'witch' and with it, some of our lost culture.
(Starhawk, 1979, p. 262)

Through witchcraft, women restore the ancient pre-Christian religions in order to

empower modern women (Starhawk, 1979, p. 260-65). Moreover, according to Diesel,
the authors who support the feminist witchcraft “attempt to control or eliminate
women who live outside the patriarchal family, and so threaten to subvert the values of
a male-dominated social order” (p. 73). Thus, the main purpose of the recent feminist
witchcraft is to empower women by transforming both the individual female life and
the community and “this is what 'magic' (shape-shifting) is about” (p. 73). Even the
final ecofeminist triumph of the matriarchal City shows the female power-from-within
and the power of, what Starhawk terms, ‘magicopolitical action’ (Spirituality, 1988, p.
11). Accordingly, in order to empower women’s position in the fiction, Starhawk
highlights witchcraft feminism and she depicts the women in the City as witches who
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make use of magic to heal people. In the ecotopia, out of necessity, Madrone is sent as
a healer to the hills where these people live so that she can cure their illnesses through
her healing operations of acupuncture, herbs and magic of the ch’i worlds. Being
named after a tree, Madrone describes her task as a healer: “I deliver babies, and teach
women how to stay healthy and eat right when they’re pregnant. I treat diseases,
wither with medicines, if we have them, or with herbs, or with ch’i, with energy”
(Starhawk, 1993, p.184). Her task is described as “to bring healing to the sick, to
bring water to the dry lands” (p. 171). It is vital to posit that rather than men, women
generally take the grand mission of healing the dry and warren lands, curing the sick;
moreover, despite the presence of ecology-conscious men, it is again women who
initiate the Uprising and clear their City from any oppressive patriarchal touch.

Not only the healing power of women, but also the curing miracle of a well-preserved
and protected nature is often emphasized. When Madrone visits a hill camp of the
Web, she notices the bees of a hive are curing a sick man: “It was a human figure,
entirely covered with swarming bees. They were crawling and moving over every
inch of the body’s surface, setting up a loud and angry hum, forming in a small cloud
of arrivals and departures” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 202). The campers of the Web on the
hills see the bees as their “little sisters” that have become the aura and vitality of the
sick man (p. 202). It is thanks to the bees and Melissas, the bee women who direct the
bees via their spirituality, that people are cured from their diseases. As one of the
Melissas notes, they have learned the healing power of the bees by becoming part of
the bees and nature; therein, they have constituted their way of magic:
The sisters work with us to heal wounds… over the years we have been
able to teach them to work with us on injuries, as long as they don’t get
infected. It was difficult to train them. We have had to enter into the hive
mind and become part of it. But it also has become part of us. (Starhawk,
1993, p. 204)

The Melissa is a position attained by the women on the hills who adopt a bee-self,
surrounded by hundreds of bees all the time, communicating with them, sensing and
behaving like a bee. When the Web decides that Madrone should also attain a bee-
self, one of the Melissas tends to educate her as to how to adopt a bee-self. From an
ecofeminist point of view, the intimate link between women and the non-human
world is once more revealed when the position of the bee-self is only posited for
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women, even rather than nature-conscious men. Moreover, when women become a
Melissa by acquiring a bee-self, they enjoy their ‘sweet’ identities most. Madrone
often notes that the moments she spends as a bee-self are the times she feels peaceful
and liberated. To tend Madrone as a bee, she is covered with honey from top to toe
and bee liquid is pored into her throat; thereafter all the bees around swarm Madrone
as if she were a hive. Evenly, “a sweet fire inside her, and outside, the buzzing,
fragrant air” surrounds Madrone, which is narrated in the fiction as a process when
Madrone actually assumes her own identity (Starhawk, 1993, p. 225):
Sweetness. She was immersed in sweetness. Her sense of smell was
augmented. The scent of wild lilacs on the air now became the overriding
quality of the universe. Each breath filled her with the promise of food
and love and abundant life. Sweetness carried her, launched her on wings.
She was suspended in the scented air, following her nose to bury herself
deep in the hearth of blossoms. Her body felt the magnetic pull of the
North Pole just as it felt the pull of the gravity. Petals brushed her with
their moist velvet touch, and she plunged into their depths, filling her
nostrils with scent until her whole body quivered. Extending her tongue to
sip delicate nectar so that she was all sweetness, inside and out. (p 225)

The process of becoming a genuine part of nature with the help of the bees is
described as a practice of attaining an identity for women since they feel liberated and
freed from the patriarchal oppression when they construct intimate bonds with the
nature. As a bee-self, the Melissa Madrone feels herself as if she is a real component
of the non-human world. With thousands of bee-energies and their buzzing wings
around, it is depicted that transcending beyond the material world via the bee wings,
Madrone is liberated from the tyranny and oppression cast by the Stewards:
Yes, and why not? Why not fly, when it was so easy, and her wings were
pulling her into the air, pulling her apart the more she tried to hold on. But
she just let go they would lift her. She could let them lift her way from all
the horrors locked in her own human memory, and dissolve, transform,
take wing. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 226)

As a bee, Madrone notes that she feels warm and safe “like a womb, like a chalice”
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 226). Having learned how to transform herself from the bee-self
to the female-self, she states that switching back to the female identity is “primitive
and inadequate compared to the delicate subtleties of taste and smell” (p. 227)
because according to Madrone the sweet hive condition is “peace and soft bodies
endlessly brushing touching and pleasuring another” (p. 228). In time, Madrone
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learns how to call bees for help and protection; moreover, just like a true Melissa, she
learns how to heal the sick via the help the little sisters. The bee experience Madrone
has thanks to the females of the Web on the hills correctly reflects the ecofeminist
notion that women and the non-human world are attentively committed and linked to
one another. In the fiction, for the females it is only through such a devotion and
attachment to the nature that women could be liberated from the patriarchal
oppression since, as put forward by Madrone, metaphorically the association with
‘the sisters’ provides protection and healing from the wounds male-dominated society
has left.

The females of the City feel honoured to have a feminine essence as nurturing,
productive, and fertile as nature. After a birth delivery operated by Madrone, she
sings a Spanish song, which is translated as, “Feel your power, the power of the
woman. The first mother is mother earth” (Starhawk, 1993, p. 407). The song refers
to the power of both women and nature, which are immense, unstoppable and
liberated when integrated together:
Be free, be strong, be yourself, be lucky, be proud to be a woman, be
loved and loving; live among flowers, surrounded by free flowing waters;
live in the sun’s warmth, breathing clear air, nourished by moonlight and
starlight; know that you are welcome, that you are a precious gift to us; be
blessed. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 409)

In an ecotopia where women and nature are intimately integrated and linked, it is not
surprising that women governmentally protect the wellbeing of the citizens and the
non-human world. Having expelled men and white people from the vital
governmental positions, now in the Defense Council, now nine, old and colored
women “listen and dream” against any possible attacks from the patriarchal South
(Starhawk, 1993, p. 148). After the brutal attitudes of patriarchal Stewards’ army
against nature and women, the utopic society of the City prefers disarmament and
posits nine old women to protect the land via using their metaphysical abilities to
listen to and dream any possible attacks and use their magic to shield the city. For
Maya, rather than the destructive masculine weapons, the matriarchal society in the
City prefers a feminine, nature-centered magic for survival, which is the operation of
changing of consciousness:
We didn’t have to waste our energies stockpiling weapons or drilling
troops; we could jump right to the heart of the matter, which was magic…
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That magic is the art of changing consciousness at will? You can look at a
war as a massing of arms and material and troops, but you can also see it
as something else- as a delicate web of interwoven choices made by
human beings, made out of a certain consciousness. The decision to order
an attack, the choice to obey or disobey an order, to fire or not to fire a
weapon. Armies and, indeed, any culture that supports them must
convince the people that all the decisions are made already and they have
no choice. But that is never true. So, mad as it may seem, this is the
terrain upon which we base our defense of this city- the landscape of
consciousness. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 152)

Through the character Maya, Starhawk seems also to signal that there is hope for the
liberation of women and nature from the male-domination if only these two cooperate
together for protection. Upon learning the South is preparing for a war against the
North, Maya reveals her hopeful wishes for the freedom of both subservient
identities:
We have shown in this city- in this watershed- that even on this ruined
and ravaged and poisoned earth, people can live well together, can care
for one another, can heal and build in harmony with what is around us.
We have demonstrated hope. Now it is up to us to sustain that hope, not to
abandon it to the despair of violence. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 238)

The assumption of some ecofeminists that liberation for both nature and women from
the oppression of patriarchy lies in their solidarity and unification echoes within the
portrayal of the utopic society of the City. Women, fed up with the patriarchal
subjugation of the females and their exploitation of nature, rebel against the Stewards,
wherein they establish a new mostly matriarchal governmental system whose main
agenda is to preserve and protect the spiritual and sacred nature by developing a loving
and caring relationship:
Remember this story, remember that one act can change the world. When
you turn the moist earth over, and return your wastes to the cycles of
decay, and place the seed in the furrow, remember that you are planting
your freedom with your own hands. May you never hunger…. May you
never thirst. (Starhawk, 1993, p. 18)

According to most sociology and philosophy oriented ecofeminists, the liberation for
women and nature could only be achieved when women, men and nature are all
integrated together against the oppression of male-domination. Such a mainstream
ecofeminist notion is promoted throughout The Fifth Sacred Thing whenever the
female-dominated society in the North associates with nature in order to protect and
 153

preserve the non-human world against the totalitarian despotic tyranny of Stewards.
As Birkeland states, “the price of patriarchy is eternal vigilance; ecofeminism is its
own reward” (1993, p. 13). Accordingly, the final triumph of the City against the
Stewards’ army manifests a genuine ecofeminist notion that posits the freedom for the
oppressed women and nature in their assembling against the exploitative and
repressive masculine insight. At the end of the fiction, the people of the city, who
believe in the notion that regardless of their gender, class, race and religion, all the
people are equal and nature, with all its four blessed components, is sacred, finally
triumph over the brutal domination of the Stewards. With their intimate attachment to
the spiritual nature, the ecology-conscious women conclusively convince men to
come to terms with nature and leave the oppressive masculine insight behind. The
novel concludes with a hopeful ecofeminist promising of Maya that “until west
became east, until sunset became sunrise, until time swallowed its own tail and the
day that was ending became a day that was just beginning to dawn” world will be a
place where everybody lives equally and peacefully with the contaminated notion that
nature is a sacred being that must be protected and preserved (Starhawk, 1993, p. 484)
 154

CONCLUSION

In this thesis, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Starhawk’s The Fifth
Sacred Thing have been closely analysed. Both of these postmodern fictions have
offered ecofeminist insights. Both Margaret Atwood and Starhawk looked for the
ways that would help increase ecology and female-oriented consciousness and
awareness in the reader regarding the interrelated environmental and gender-based
problems mainly caused by patriarchy. Thus, both novelists have manifested two
possible future alternatives of today’s world order; one is a dystopia where both nature
and women are highly dominated and exploited; the other is a utopia where the natural
harmony and ecological balance is sustained by a female-dominated society. While
Atwood imagined the end of a dystopic world of oppressed women and nature as a
result of the ecological fallacy of the modern men, Starhawk reflected the designation
of an ecotopia where not only women and nature but also ecology-conscious men
sustain a life based on the principles of peace, equality, love and reverence. Having
Glotfelty’s core question in mind “How can we solve environmental problems unless
we start thinking about them?”, both novelists have demonstrated their intimate
concerns for the contemporary environmental crisis and gender discriminations of
their time and they have taken the initiative to eco-friendly solutions (Glotfelty, 1996,
p. XXIV). Thus, concerned with women and nature, these two women have closely
dealt with ecofeminist and environmental ethics by stressing that the destruction of
ecological harmony is implemented by the authoritarian patriarchal power structures
that similarly destroy and oppress the genuine identities of women.

Each writer in this thesis provides detailed descriptions of the close attachment and
integration between women and nature that are assembled and unified against the
domineering masculine power. While the novels are closely analysed from an
ecofeminist perspective, the established gender roles of women and men are identified,
 155

the masculine and feminine attitudes towards nature are separately examined and the
representations of women, nature and their relation are closely investigated. While
Atwood focuses on the subjugated and suppressed position of women and nature in a
dystopic patriarchal society, Starhawk rather concentrates on the peaceful and
liberated status of women and nature in a matriarchal utopia.

Through examining the interaction between nature, women, men, religion and science,
this study has mostly concentrated on the representations of women and nature and the
masculine attitude towards both entities, as well as the ecological constructions of the
two different utopic and dystopic societies. The ecofeminist analyses of the fictions
have disclosed that in the dystopic atmosphere, patriarchy oppresses and exploits both
women and nature and these ‘othered’ identities find limited ease and restricted solace
within their partial solidarity. On the other hand, in the utopic society, where the
females subvert the patriarchal power structures and masculine consciousness in order
to preserve and protect ecological harmony, both women and nature maintain a
liberated life in peace, harmony and equality with men.

This study has aimed to highlight and raise the awareness that nature and women are
conscious, autonomous and vital beings rather than what Heidegger calls as “standing
reserves”, that is, the inferior and subservient objects of exploitation for the mankind
(qtd. in Phillips, 1996, p. 218). The ecocritic Love maintains, “the most important
function of literature today is to redirect human consciousness to full consideration of
its place in threatened natural world” (Love, 1996, p. 237). Accordingly, just like the
mentality adopted by Starhawk and Atwood, this study attempts to redirect the
masculine consciousness to acknowledge its role in environmental degradation and
gender discrimination. The basic ecocritical principle adheres the interconnectedness
between nature and the humankind, and the major ecofeminist theories develop this
principle and proclaim that there is a close link between patriarchal societies and the
environmental crisis. Throughout their fiction, both Atwood and Starhawk reveal this
basic ecofeminist insight and reflect the ill-functioning systems of the patriarchal West
when they portray the problematic relations between men and the feminine nature in
their utopias or dystopias.
 156

The ecofeminist analyses have been offered in two separate chapters. Through the
first-hand experiences of the Handmaid Offred, it is revealed that in the catastrophic
establishment of the dystopic society of Gilead, which is governed by a patriarchal
totalitarian and theocratic regime, both women and nature are severely exploited and
silenced by the prevailing androcentric mind-set. In an interconnected and interrelated
ecological order where the exploitative and irresponsive attitude of the pre-Gilead
society towards nature hugely destroys natural harmony and ecological balance, the
androcentric insight causes further environmental pollution and ecological climacteric,
which inevitably impacts the biological fertilities of its citizens. In order to save the
society from infertility, the newly established totalitarian regime, however, develops a
strict handmaiding system based on Cartesian dualisms in which both the feminine and
the natural self are highly restricted and oppressed. Thus, it is identified that
patriarchal power structures make use of religious belief systems, as well as science
and technology in order to legitimize their exertion of power and control over the
Handmaids, who are perceived only as the units of reproduction by men. Moreover, it
is ironically observed that while the patriarchal regime is described to be limiting,
restricting and oppressing its female citizens for their reproductional value, in the
fiction the nature is also silenced and restricted because there is almost no given
description of independent nature, wilderness or pastoral. It is observed that the only
restricted interaction between women and nature limitedly occurs in the gardens,
which are the patriarchally constructed and ordered green enclosed spaces of
domesticity. Just like the way patriarchy controls and dominates Gileadean women by
categorizing and structuring them with the duty of being a Handmaid, Wife or an
Aunt, the same male-dominated insight oppresses and subjugates nature by turning it
into ordered, enclosed and reclaimed gardens of the civilization. Therefore, the
females of the society cannot independently experience the utmost liberation within
the unlimited wilderness, yet they experience the feeling of an incomplete and partial
freedom and solace when they have the interaction with the ordered gardens, the only
green spaces of Gilead. However, though limitedly, even the partial interaction
between Handmaids and the gardens reflects the ecofeminist interpretation of the
Gileadean society because the female experience in the gardens is reflected as an
incomplete association and integration with nature against men, who are further from
nature. Moreover, according to the ecofeminist analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale, the
 157

novel highlights not only the patriarchal oppression of women and nature but it also
emphasizes the patriarchal suppression based on race, color, class and nationality as
revealed with the oppressed lives of the people of different social classes including
Econowives and the Poorer men.

While The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates the hazards of the oppressive male-
dominated thought through the dystopic power structures of patriarchy, Starhawk’s
The Fifth Sacred Thing also reveals the detriments of the same ill-functioning
patriarchal mentality on women and nature through the portrayal of a war between an
ecofeminist dystopia, The South, and an ecofeminist utopia, The North. Like
Atwood’s feminist dystopia, Starhawk portrays a dystopic city where men oppress,
subjugate and exploit women and nature. However, in contrast to the dystopic city, a
feminist ecotopia, or ecofeminist utopia, is depicted where women and nature sustain a
spiritual and liberated life in peace and harmony thanks to the mostly matriarchal
social structures. Moreover, it is identified that the Northern society echoes the
fundamental ecofeminist precepts because based on the only governmental rule as
adopted by the North, earth, fire, air and water are depicted to be the Four Sacred
Things that should be valued and protected and any life form, whether human or non-
human, is accordingly described to be sacred and blessed. Moreover, the ecofeminist
salvation as adopted by most ecofeminists like Plumwood and Warren is reflected
when not only the women but men, like Bird and Sam, are also described to maintain a
liberated life avoided from the oppressive male-domination only when they adopt a
nature-friendly way of life. By devising a war between two totally opposing societies
that belong to contrasting dualisms of men and women; nature and culture, Starhawk
initiates to reflect that the masculine power structures oppress and subjugate women
and nature by using the means of religious discourses, scientific theories and the
technological machinery while women and nature sustain an integrated, peaceful and
spiritual life via their loving and caring attachment to the primitive religions and earth
spirituality. It is identified that the eco-friendly society of Maya, Madrone and Bird is
an ecological heaven where the ecofeminist notions of multiplicity, diversity and
equality are all celebrated and people of all races, colors and religions never face
discrimination or social harassment. From an ecofeminist reading of both societies, it
is revealed that the preservation of the ecology relies heavily on the destruction of
 158

patriarchal hierarchies, which necessitates the ultimate destruction of masculine

consciousness. To this end, both novels reveal the ecofeminist notion of partnership
and collaboration between women and men in order to save nature from man-made
destruction.

It is also observed that the dystopic Gileadean society in The Handmaid’s Tale cast
parallels with the dystopic City of Angels in The Fifth Sacred Thing in the sense that
for both societies the male-domination over nature and women is exerted basing on the
same hierarchal power structures of the patriarchy. Moreover, the social establishment
of both dystopic societies also reflects strict contrasts with the ecotopia of San
Francisco. For example, in the prisons of the City of Angels, the prisoners are
randomly divided into several groups according to their nationalities and colors such
as the groups of Blacks, Latinos, Asians etc. In order to sustain its oppressive power
structures, the Stewards’ army categorizes people into random groups regardless of
examining the genuine identity of the prisoners. To sustain power and control over
people, the patriarchal power structures usually establish ‘false’ hierarchal orders and
classifications; thereafter, they diminish any possibilities of collaborated protests of
the subservient identities. Likewise, the very same patriarchal attitude is also evident
in Gilead when the females are also categorized according to a hierarchal order and set
against each other so that the patriarchal authoritarian tyranny could exert and
maintain its power.

Moreover, the work levees in the The Fifth Sacred Thing are quite similar to the
horrible Colonies in The Handmaid’s Tale. In the Gileadean society, the subjugated
women who are labelled to be barren or those females who repugnate to the
established rules of the patriarchy are sent to the Colonies where women are left to die
in toxic clean ups or they are forced to work in the cotton fields. Likewise, in the work
levees the workers are starved to death, exposed to toxic clean-ups and drugged.
Obviously, it is the same oppressive male-dominated mind-set that establishes and
controls the work levees of the dystopia in the City of Angels and the colonies in the
dystopia of Gilead. Furthermore, like the underground Network, which threatens the
power and control of the patriarchal power holders in the City of Angels, there is the
underground circle called as Web. It is an armed underground guerrilla formed by a
 159

group of people who want to overthrow the totalitarian regime of the patriarchal
Stewards and Millennialists. The anti-establishment group, like the Network, secretly
conducts every possible operation to distract the order sustained by the prevailing
Stewards.
It is disclosed that in contrast to the social harmony and ease in the ecotopia of the
City, similar to the patriarchal tyranny of the Republic of Gilead, in the ecofeminist
dystopia of the City of Angels, the patriarchal oppressive power structures of the
Stewards deny any human identity of the women and descend them into the objects
for copulation, breeding and entertainment. Just like the way it destroys and
subjugates nature, the male-dominated insight basically oppresses, restricts and
exploits women, who are perceived as the ‘standing reserves’ of the society. In the
dystopic atmospheres of the City of Angels and the Republic of Gilead, both women
and nature are depicted to be severely damaged and destructed by the prevailing
patriarchal power holders.

It is concluded that by portraying women closer to nature and furthering men away
from it both novels reveal the essentialist position of ecofeminism. The Handmaid’s
Tale totally reflects such an essentialist standpoint when the female Gileadeans,
especially the Handmaids, are portrayed to be associated to nature and identified with
natural attributes rather than culture and cultural artefacts. Due to their reproductional
and nurturing qualities of both identities, women and nature are closely associated.
Moreover, the male Giledeans are mostly dismissed from nature and they are reflected
as the masters of culture, civilisation and reason. On the other hand, the close
ecofeminist analyses of The Fifth Sacred Thing show that in the ecotopia the society
manifests that nature can be protected by integrating culture and nature with the
society’s nature-based sense of technology and science. However, the utopic society
also reflects an essentialist position when the females of the City are portrayed to be
closer to and assembled with nature through the description of such specific healing
methods as witching and bee-selves, which are endowed only to the women. Besides,
while there are few nature-oriented men like Bird in the City who help women for the
protection of nature, most males of the fiction are portrayed to be away from it and
they adopt the oppressive patriarchal insight against women. Therefore, both fictions
reflect the biological essentialist line of ecofeminism.
 160

The ecofeminist analyses of the selected novels have revealed the complex relations
between man and culture with women and nature and their various representations and
basic ideologies. The results have indicated the ecofeminist notion that the degradation
of nature and the oppression of women are conducted by the same prevailing
masculine mind-set, which places itself further from nature while women posit
themselves closer and attached to ecology thanks to their environmental ethics of
loving and caring. Upon revealing the ecological tendencies and power structures of a
utopic matriarchal community and two dystopic patriarchal communities, this thesis
has proposed that men jeopardize their own existence as they keep on exploiting
nature as well as dominating women. With its close ecofeminist reading of both
fictions, this study has tried to highlight that the status of masculine insight which has
long been dominating the West has occluded both women and nature and left them, in
Manes’ wording, “voiceless and subjectless” ” (Manes, 1996, p. 26). Furthermore, this
study has endeavoured to support the ecofeminist mind-set that the oppressive male-
domination is not inevitable. By manifesting in both fictions that through changing the
masculine consciousness and destroying patriarchal hierarchies, the mutual
collaboration and partnership based on environmental and ecofeminist ethics can be
reserved for the well-being of ecology and the whole humankind. Only when men
accept their positions within Homo sapiens as “one species among millions of other
beautiful, terrible, fascinating- and signifying-forms” and they accept their status as
“plain members and citizens of the land-community not the rulers of the earth”
(Leopold qtd. in Campbell, 1996, p. 133) could male oppression and exploitation of
the feminine and the natural come to an end, wherein an ecofeminist utopic society, as
espoused by Starhawk, could be created where all of the life forms, species, genders,
colors and classes could sustain peaceful lives based on the principles of love,
reverence, equality and peace.

In rendering the ecofeminist analysis, this graduation project has had several
limitations. The narrow scope and the restriction of the thesis length have been the
primary limitations. Moreover, the necessitated one-point focus was another limitation
because apart from an ecofeminist examination, the societies portrayed in both novels
are quite applicable for further feminist, Marxist and socio-political analysis and
investigations. Nevertheless, though it has had several limitations, this thesis study is
 161

still promising since in the literary studies of ecofeminism, there has not been such a
comprehensive nature and women focussed ecofeminist reading on postmodern utopic
and dystopic fictions. Thus, thinking of Bakhtinian idea that there is no conclusion to
the texts since they are the dialogues that are always open to further interpretations and
comments of others (qtd. in McDowell, 1996, p. 387), this study is to offer an insight
that will enlighten upcoming studies.
 162

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 174

ÖZ GEÇM

K SEL B LG LER
Adı, Soyadı: Ne e ENEL
Uyru u: T.C.
Do um Tarihi ve Yeri: 27 Nisan 1990, Konya
E-mail: nesesenel@gmail.com
Yazı ma Adresi: Erciyes Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi ngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı
Bölümü 38039 Melikgazi/Kayseri
E TM
Derece Kurum Mezuniyet Tarihi
Lisans stanbul Fatih Üniversitesi 2012
Amerikan Kültürü ve Edebiyatı
Lisans (Yandal) stanbul Fatih Üniversitesi 2012
Uluslararası li kiler
Lise Meram Konya Lisesi 2008

DENEY MLER
Yıl Kurum Görev
2013-Halen Erciyes Üniversitesi Ara tırma Görevlisi
2012-2013 Ardahan Üniversitesi Ara tırma Görevlisi

YABANCI D L
ngilizce, Fransızca

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 175

CURRICULUM VITAE

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Name, Surname: Ne e ENEL
Nationality: T.C.
Date and Place of Birth: 27 Nisan1990, Konya
E-mail: nesesenel@gmail.com
Address: Erciyes University, Faculty of Letters Department of English Language and
Literature Kayseri, Turkey 38039
ACADEMIC DEGREES
Degree Institution Graduation Year
BA stanbul Fatih University 2012
American Culture and Literature
BA(Minor) stanbul Fatih University 2012
International Relations
High School Meram Konya Lisesi 2008
ACADEMIC TITLES
Year Institution Title
2013-… Erciyes University Research Assistant
2012-2013 Ardahan University Research Assistant

FOREIGN LANGUAGES
English, French

PUBLICATIONS

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