Literature and Ecofeminism

Bringing together ecofeminism and ecological literary criticism (ecocriticism),

this book presents diverse ways of understanding and responding to the tangled
relationships between the personal, social, and environmental dimensions of
human experience and expression.
Literature and Ecofeminism explores the intersections of sexuality, gender,
embodiment, and the natural world articulated in literary works from Shake-
speare through to contemporary literature. Bringing together essays from a
global group of contributors, this volume draws on American literature, as well
as Spanish, South African, Taiwanese, and Indian literature, in order to further
the dialogue between ecofeminism and ecocriticism and demonstrate the ongoing
relevance of ecofeminism for facilitating critical readings of literature. In doing
so, the book opens up multiple directions for ecofeminist ideas and practices, as
well as new possibilities for interpreting literature.
This comprehensive volume will be of great interest to students and scholars
of ecocriticism, ecofeminism, literature, gender studies, and the environmental
humanities.

Douglas A. Vakoch is President of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelli-

gence), a nonprofit dedicated to transmitting intentional signals to nearby stars,
as well as fostering sustainability of human civilization on multigenerational
timescales—a prerequisite for a project that could take centuries or millennia to
succeed.

Sam Mickey is Adjunct Professor, Theology and Religious Studies and Environ-
mental Studies, University of San Francisco, USA.
Routledge Environmental Humanities
Series editors: Iain McCalman and Libby Robin

Editorial Board
Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK
Alison Bashford, University of Cambridge, UK
Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK
Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia
Georgina Endfield, University of Nottingham, UK
Jodi Frawley, University of Sydney, Australia
Andrea Gaynor, University of Western Australia, Australia
Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
Jennifer Newell, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA
Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK
Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, USA
Paul Warde, University of East Anglia, UK
Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia

International Advisory Board

William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK
Sarah Buie, Clark University, USA
Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA
Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of
Edinburgh, UK
Deborah Bird Rose, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Tech­
nology, Stockholm, Sweden
Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich, and Co-­Director, Rachel Carson Centre,
Ludwig-­Maxilimilians-Universität, Germany
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA
Kirsten Wehner, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia

The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture rec-
ognizing that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource
depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, overpopulation, food
insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture.
The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future
environmental challenges has shifted the epicentre of environmental studies away from
an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends on the human-­
focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences.
We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines
for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an inter-
national readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises
scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences and thoughtful readers con-
cerned about the human dimensions of environmental change.
Literature and Ecofeminism
Intersectional and International Voices

Edited by
Douglas A. Vakoch
and Sam Mickey
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam
Mickey; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey to be identified as the
authors of the editorial matter, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
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Typeset in Times New Roman
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Contents

Notes on contributors vii

Foreword xiv
G reta  G aard

Editor’s preface xvii

S am M ickey

Acknowledgments xx

Introduction 1
P atrick D . M urphy

1 “Like a creature native”: Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism 9

L esley K ordecki

2 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility 24

C alley A . H ornbuckle

3 Mary Austin’s proto-­ecofeminist land ethic in The Ford

(1917) and the Owens Valley water controversy 40
E mine G e ç gil

4 T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist 54

E tienne T erblanche

5 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity in Sylvia

Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and Mr. Fortune’s Maggot 68
J ulia T ofant š uk

6 “Taking mighty strides across the world”: positioning Zora

Neale Hurston in the ecofeminist tradition 84
N icole  A nae
vi   Contents
7 Ecofeminist sensibilities and rural land literacies in the
work of contemporary Appalachian novelist Ann Pancake 99
T heresa L . B urriss

8 Essentialist tropes in At Play in the Fields of the Lord 115

K arl Z uelke

9 Cyborg-­goddesses, Linda Hogan’s Indios, and Jade Chen’s

Mazu’s Body-­guards 128
P eter I - ­min  H uang

10 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants: ecofeminist readings

of contemporary Spanish novels 140
C armen F lys J un q uera

11 Ecofeminist moorings in globalized India: literary discourse

and interpretations 158
S wapna  G opinath , S ony  J alarajan  R aj ,
and S oumya  J ose

12 The vocation of healing: the poetry of Malika Ndlovu 169

D eirdre  B yrne

13 Grace Nichols and Jackie Kay’s corporeal Black Venus:

feminist ecocritical realignments 185
I zabel F . O . B rand ã o

Afterword: Ecofeminism through Literary Activism,

Hybridity, Connections, and Caring 197
A nna B edford

Index 209
Contributors

Nicole Anae, Ph.D., graduated from Charles Sturt University with a B.Ed. and
Dip.T. before earning her Ph.D. through the Faculty of English, Journalism
and European Languages at the University of Tasmania, Australia. She is
senior lecturer in literary and cultural studies at Central Queensland Univer-
sity, but has also worked at the University of South Australia (Mawson
Lakes), the University of the South Pacific (Laucala Bay Campus in Suva,
Fiji), Charles Sturt University (Wagga Wagga), and the University of
Southern Queensland (Springfield). Her research interests include colonial
and postcolonial writing, embodiment and performance, and the interplay
between literature, performance, and identity. Her work typically explores
historical and contemporary encounters between literature and culture with a
view to examining literature’s role in shaping cultural literacies and identity.
She has published in Australasian Drama Studies, Australian Humanities
Review, Shakespeare-­Gesellschaft, Transnational Literature, and English
Teaching: Practice and Critique, among other journals and monographs. Her
chapter entitled “Spectacles of Revulsion: The Challenges of ‘Bush Tucker’
as Contemporary Cuisine”—an examination of the contemporary aesthetici-
zation of Australian “bush-­tucker” as pejorative from the perspective of spe-
ciesism—appears in Davis, Pilgrim, and Sinha (eds.) The Ecopolitics of
Consumption: The Food Trade (Lexington 2015).

Anna Bedford, Ph.D., is currently a visiting instructor of women, gender, and

sexuality studies at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She earned her Ph.D. in
comparative literature from the University of Maryland, College Park, in
2014, with a dissertation focusing on ecofeminism in science fiction. Anna
also holds a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies, and a Certificate in
University Teaching and Learning from the University of Maryland, and an
M.A. (honors) from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she did her
undergraduate work in English literature. Anna spent three years working at
the University of Maryland’s Center for Teaching Excellence, and served two
years as president of the Graduate Student Body, as well as senator on the
University Senate. She has also served on numerous state, university, and
local committees related to higher education. In 2013 Anna won the
viii   Contributors
University of Maryland’s Graduate Student Distinguished Service Award.
Anna’s recent research and publications have focused upon science fiction
and ecofeminism. Other research interests include feminist theory, global
studies, narrative theory, and the study of teaching and learning (SoTL). She
has published several articles on ecofeminism and on women’s science
fiction. She is currently co-­editing an anthology of early women science
fiction writers from the pulp and magazine era of the 1920s–1950s.
Izabel F.O. Brandão, Ph.D., is professor of literatures in English, and
contemporary Brazilian women writers, at Federal University of Alagoas,
Brazil. Her publications include A imaginação do feminino segundo D.H.
Lawrence (“The Imagination of the Feminine According to D.H. Lawrence,”
Edufal, 1999), and books on Brazilian women writers and feminist literary
criticism from an interdisciplinary perspective on the body, such as O corpo
em revista (“The Body under Scrutiny,” 2005), Gênero & outros lugares
(“Gender & Other Places,” 2009, in collaboration). She is currently editing
(in collaboration) a feminist anthology in translation (Traduções da cultura:
perspectivas crítcas feministas—1970–2010 [“Translations of Culture: Fem-
inist Perspectives 1970–2010”], forthcoming), and a book provisionally enti-
tled Encontros feministas com D.H. Lawrence (“Feminist Encounters with
D.H. Lawrence,” forthcoming). She is also a poet and has three books pub-
lished: Espiral de fogo (“Fire Spiral,” 1998), Ilha de olhos e espelhos (“Island
of Eyes and Mirrors,” 2003) and As horas da minha alegria (“The Hours of
My Joy,” 2013).
Theresa L. Burriss, Ph.D., has a B.A. from Emory University in Atlanta, an
M.S. from Radford University, and a Ph.D. from the Union Institute and
University in Cincinnati. She serves as the chair of Appalachian Studies and
director of the Appalachian Regional and Rural Studies Center at Radford
University (RU). She teaches undergraduate and graduate multidisciplinary
classes on Appalachia. Theresa has published several pieces of literary criti-
cism on the Affrilachian Writers, including chapters in An American Vein:
Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature (Ohio UP, 2005) and Appalachia
in the Classroom: Teaching the Region (Ohio UP, 2013), for which she
served as co-­editor with Dr. Patricia Gantt. Collaborating with RU Professor
of Dance, Deborah McLaughlin, Theresa was cultural consultant and per-
formance storyteller for three Appalachian-­themed dance/theater pieces, The
Shadow Waltz, Sounds of Stories Dancing, and Eating Appalachia: Selling
Out to the Hungry Ghost. She was awarded an NEH Summer Institute Grant
for the 2015 Transcendentalism and Reform in the Age of Emerson, Thoreau,
and Fuller. She serves as Appalachian cultural competency consultant for the
Community Health Center of the New River Valley, and is a board member
for the nonprofit organizations Appalachian Community Fund, Appalachian
Sustainable Development, and MountainTrotter. She serves as Education
Committee Chair for the Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) and serves
on the ASA steering committee.
 Contributors   ix
Deirdre Byrne, Ph.D., is the head of the Institute for Gender Studies at the
University of South Africa and editor of the academic journal scrutiny2 as
well as a member of the editorial collective of the journal Gender Questions.
She has published research on Ursula K. Le Guin, science fiction, fantasy,
and South African women’s poetry.
Carmen Flys Junquera, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of American Liter-
ature in the Department of Modern Philology and member of the “Instituto
Franklin”, an American Studies research institute, both of the University of
Alcalá (Spain). She has co-edited a number of books devoted to ecocriticism
(Paisajes Culturales: Herencia y Conservación // Cultural Landscapes: Heri­
tage and Conservation, 2010; Ecocríticas. Literatura y Medio Ambiente,
2010), as well as special ecocritical issues of Spanish journals. She served as
the President of EASLCE (European Association for the Study of Literature,
Culture and Environment) for the 2010–2012 term. She founded and coord-
inates the only ecocritical research group in Spain, GIECO (www.gieco.es),
and is the General Editor of the journal Ecozon@. European Journal of Liter­
ature, Culture and Environment (www.ecozona.eu). She also directs an
ecocritical book series, CLYMA, in the Franklin Collection. Most of her pub-
lications deal with contemporary ethnic American literatures and sense of
place, ecocriticism, environmental justice, and ecofeminism. She has been
recently awarded a grant, together with a group of fine arts, to research the
synergies between visual and textual arts, and the development of ecological
consciousness, and how these arts foster attitudes and values that promote the
identification with other beings and the world surrounding us, and thus
encourage reflection on the moral consideration of the non-human world.
Greta Gaard, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of English at the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin. She is critically acclaimed for her contributions to ecofem-
inism and ecocriticism. She is the editor of Ecofeminism: Women, Animals,
Nature (Temple University Press, 1993), co-­editor (with Patrick Murphy) of
Ecofeminist Literary Criticism (University of Illinois Press, 1998), and author
of The Nature of Home: Taking Root in a Place (University of Arizona Press,
2007) and Ecological Politics: Ecofeminists and the Greens (Temple Univer-
sity Press, 1998). Her most recent volume is Critical Ecofeminism (2017).
Emine Geçgil, Ph.D., is an instructor at Bilkent University School of English
Language in Ankara, Turkey, where she teaches English as a foreign lan-
guage. She completed her B.A. and M.A. in English language teaching at
Middle East Technical University and Hacettepe University. In 2015, she
received her Ph.D. in American culture and literature from Hacettepe Univer-
sity. Her dissertation, titled By Women, For Women, About Women: Social
Novels of the Progressive Era, 1900–1920, focuses on a number of forgotten
and neglected women novelists of the Progressive Era, who spearheaded
social reform and used their novels as a means of cultural lobbying. Emine is
also a translator of children’s books. She has translated 30 books from
x   Contributors
English into Turkish. She is an active member of the American Studies
Association of Turkey. Her major interests include American novels, the Pro-
gressive Era, women’s studies, ecocriticism, and literary translation.

Swapna Gopinath, Ph.D., is working as associate professor of English language

and literature at S.N College, Chempazhanthy, Kerala. She has an M.Phil.
and Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Kerala.
Her Ph.D. dissertation is titled Dialectics of Historicity in Modernist Fiction:
A Comparative Study Based on the Select Works of James Joyce, Franz
Kafka, O V Vijayan and M Mukundan. Her areas of research interest are
culture studies, film studies, and gender studies. She has completed a minor
research project with the financial aid from UGC, Government of India. Dr.
Swapna had extensively published in high impact journals and has presented
in many international conferences.

Calley A. Hornbuckle, Ph.D., is an associate professor of English and co-

coordinator of Environmental Studies at Columbia College, S.C. In 2011, she
had the honor of receiving both the Faculty Excellence Award and The Stu-
dents’ Choice Award for Teaching Excellence. She earned her Ph.D. at the
University of South Carolina. Focusing on British women writers and the
environmental tradition, she has presented several papers on ecological intel-
ligence demonstrated in the works of Anna Letitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith,
Mary Robinson, Ann Radcliffe, Dorothy Wordsworth, and others. Her
research focuses on British women writers’ investigations of ethics, ethology,
and aesthetics in light of recent developments in neuroscience and embedded
cognition. She serves as executive editor of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
British literature for The Explicator. She is currently editing Analecta
Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, Volume CXXII,
Posthumanism and Phenomenology: The Focus on the Modern Condition of
Boredom/Solitude/Loneliness/Isolation (Springer 2018, forthcoming), in
which her “‘Strange Kinship’: Romantic-era Women Writers and the Post-
human” article will be published, as well.

Peter I-­min Huang, Ph.D., received his Ph.D. in English and comparative liter-
ature from National Taiwan University. Currently, he is professor in the
English Department, Tamkang University, Taiwan. He is one of the founders
of ASLE-­Taiwan. He served as English Department chair for two terms,
2007–09 and 2009–11, during which time he also was the organizing chair-
person for The Fourth Tamkang International Conference on Ecological Dis­
course (May 23–24, 2008) and The Fifth Tamkang International Conference
on Ecological Discourse (December 17–18, 2010). His areas of teaching and
research include ecofeminism, ecopoetry, postcolonial ecocriticism, women’s
studies, and animal studies. His most recent publications are “Canon Forma-
tion in the Study of the Environment in China and Taiwan” and “Rediscover-
ing Local Environmentalism in Taiwan” published in CLCWeb: Comparative
Literature and Culture (December 2014). Other publications include
 Contributors   xi
“Corporate Globalization and the Resistance to It in Linda Hogan’s People of
the Whale and the poetry of Sheng Wu,” East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical
Reader (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); and “Exploring Non-­Human Ethics in
Linda Hogan’s Power and Timothy Morton’s Ecology without Nature,”
Forum for World Literature Studies (June 2014). He is also author of Linda
Hogan and Contemporary Taiwanese Writers: An Ecocritical Study of Indi­
geneities and Environment (Lexington Books, 2016).
Soumya Jose, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English in VIT University
Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Dr. Jose obtained her Ph.D. in African American theatre
from the Department of English, Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, India.
She earned her M.Phil. from the Department of English, Annamalai Univer-
sity, and her master’s in English from Kannur University, Kerala. She
obtained her B.Ed. from Calicut University, Kerala. Her research interests
include post-­colonial writings, African American literature, and diaspora
studies. She has published more than 30 research articles in various journals
of international repute.
Lesley Kordecki, Ph.D., received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Centre for
Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto and is professor of English
at DePaul University, in Chicago, Illinois. A recipient of DePaul Universi-
ty’s Excellence in Teaching Award, she is a former director of the M.A. in
English at DePaul and served as chair of English at Barat College in Lake
Forest for over 20 years. She worked as dramaturge for the Shakespeare on
the Green productions in Lake Forest, IL, for seven years and co-­authored
with Karla Koskinen Re-­Visioning Lear’s Daughters: Testing Feminist
Criticism and Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) as a result of that col-
laboration. She is the author of Ecofeminist Subjectivities: Chaucer’s
Talking Birds (Palgrave, 2011).
Sam Mickey, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor in the Environmental Studies
program and the Theology and Religious Studies Department at the Univer-
sity of San Francisco. He is the author of Coexistentialism and the Unbear­
able Intimacy of Ecological Emergency (2016), Whole Earth Thinking and
Planetary Coexistence: Ecological Wisdom at the Intersection of Religion,
Ecology, and Philosophy (2015), and On the Verge of a Planetary Civiliza­
tion: A Philosophy of Integral Ecology (2014). With Douglas A. Vakoch he
co-­edited Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and
Environment (2017).
Patrick D. Murphy, Ph.D., earned a B.A. in history from UCLA in 1973, an
M.A. in English from California State University, Northridge, in 1983, and a
Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis, in 1986. Recent
publications include Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis (Lexington
Books, 2015) and “Pessimism, Optimism, Human Inertia and Anthropogenic
Climate Change,” special climate change issue, ISLE: Interdisciplinary
Studies in Literature and Environment (2014).
xii   Contributors
Sony Jalarajan Raj, Ph.D., is assistant professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts and
Communications, MacEwan University, Edmonton, Canada. Dr. Raj is a
professional journalist turned academic who has worked as reporter, special
correspondent, and producer in news media channels such as the BBC,
NDTV, Doordarshan, AIR, and Asianet News. Dr. Raj served as the graduate
coordinator and assistant professor of communication arts at the Institute for
Communication, Entertainment and Media at St. Thomas University, Florida,
USA. He was a full-­time faculty member in journalism, mass communication,
and media studies at Monash University, Australia, Curtin University,
Mahatma Gandhi University and the University of Kerala. Dr. Raj was the
recipient of the Reuters Fellowship and is a Thomson Foundation (UK)
Fellow in Television Studies with the Commonwealth Broadcasting Associ-
ation Scholarship. Dr. Raj has been on the editorial board of five major inter-
national research journals and he edits the Journal of Media Watch.
Etienne Terblanche, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of English at
North-­West University in South Africa. He is the author of T.S. Eliot, Poetry,
and Earth: The Name of the Lotos Rose (2016) and E.E. Cummings: Poetry
and Ecology (2012).

Julia Tofantšuk, Ph.D., is associate professor of British literature at the School

of Humanities of Tallinn University, Estonia. Her Ph.D. dissertation was on
construction of identity in the fiction of contemporary British women writers,
focusing on Eva Figes, Jeanette Winterson, and Meera Syal. She has pub-
lished articles and delivered papers on gender, identity, trauma, Herstory, the
Holocaust, and ecocritical concerns (including Palgrave Macmillan, Peter
Lang WV, VW Trier, Interlitteraria, Ariadne Lõng) in British literature, post-
colonial and migrant British literature, and Estonian and British literature
comparatively. Her recent research and teaching interests include literature by
women, gender studies, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, identity studies, cultural
studies, postcolonial theory, trauma and the Holocaust, art history, woman
and landscape in art, and comparative literature. She has developed and
taught M.A. courses focusing on ecocritical considerations of twentieth-
century literary texts, especially novels by Graham Swift, Anita Desai, and
Monique Roffey, a theoretical Ph.D. course on ecocriticism, place theory, and
ecofeminism, and supervised Ph.D. theses in the field. Julia Tofantšuk is a
member of ASLE, ESSE, MLA, Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, and Esto-
nian Women’s Studies Center.

Douglas A. Vakoch, Ph.D., is president of METI International (http://meti.org),

a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to messaging extra-
terrestrial intelligence (METI) and supporting the sustainability of human
culture on multigenerational timescales, which is essential for long-­term
METI research. Dr. Vakoch’s edited books include Ecofeminism and
Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse (2011),
Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (2012), and
 Contributors   xiii
(with Fernando Castrillón) Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environ­
ment: The Experience of Nature (2014). He serves as general editor of the
Ecocritical Theory and Practice series (https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/
LEX/ETAP), published by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman &
Littlefield.

Karl Zuelke, M.F.A., Ph.D., is director of the Writing Center and the Math and
Science Center at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He also
teaches literature, writing, and environmental studies there. His M.F.A. is
from Indiana University and his doctorate is from the University of
Cincinnati. His doctoral dissertation is an ecocritical exploration of four
genres of nature writing and science writing. He has published ecocritical
articles on Terry Tempest Williams in Exploring the Literary Landscapes of
Terry Tempest Williams and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in Ecocriticism and
Religion (forthcoming), and creative work in a variety of journals including
The Antioch Review, ISLE, and The Journal of Kentucky Studies. Dr. Zuelke
has been a long-­time member of the Association for the Study of Literature
and Environment (ASLE) and the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts
(SLSA) and has presented numerous papers at those conferences and others.
His latest projects include a creative/critical blog, Dreaming, Singing, daily
creative meditations or critical engagements with the 385 poems included in
John Berryman’s The Dream Songs, and he is also at work on a novel about
place, industry, and environmental degradation set in Dayton, Ohio.
Foreword
Greta Gaard

Today’s literary readers will appreciate this volume as a map, a decoder, and celeb-
ration of the many narratives affirming our humanimal, material connections with
place, community, and earthothers. Like a pebble tossed in water, ecofeminism’s
ripples continue to expand, touching wider circles of narrative, culture, and history.
Water has long been a cherished value, an association, an activist issue for ecofem-
inist concern—water scarcity, dams, diversions, pollution, privatization, and provi-
sion. From Mary Austin to Wangari Maathai, Maude Barlow, Arundhati Roy, and
Winona LaDuke, literary and activist women have spoken in defense of water.
Their words and actions provide both a “mirror and a lamp,” as literary critic M.H.
Abrams (1953) once defined literature’s contributions to humanity.
The mirrors in this volume reflect the many texts in literature that articulate the
themes and issues central to ecofeminism. Through British historical texts and
figures such as Shakespeare’s Ophelia, we recognize the cultural identification of
women with water and with flora; the value of ecological and animal intelligence,
or the practice of ecospirituality, are reflected in the writings of Anna Barbauld and
Sylvia Townsend Warner. From the United States, we read how Zora Neale
Hurston’s writing reflects ecofeminist concerns for the intersectionality of identi-
ties in terms of race, class, gender, and nature—issues that appear somewhat differ-
ently in India as class, caste, gender, and nature.
Ecofeminism’s postcolonial perspective—present from the start, strongly
expressed in the anticapitalist critiques voiced by the Women’s Pentagon Action
and advanced in the writings of Val Plumwood, Vandana Shiva, and Maria
Mies—gained clear articulation through Laura Wright’s Wilderness into Civi­
lized Shapes (2010), though Postcolonial Ecocriticism (Huggan and Tiffin 2010)
articulates many of the same analyses, without as much feminist attribution.
Here, ecofeminist anticolonial perspectives are prominent in explorations com-
paring indigenous writers from diverse colonial histories—Linda Hogan in the
United States, Jade Chen in Taiwan, Malika Ndlovu in South Africa. Initially
expressed through European invasions and conquest of land, enslavement of
humans and animals, exploitation of ecologies, and annihilation of culture
through the imposition of religion, language, and lifestyle, the enterprises and
operations of colonialism are perpetuated by today’s multinational corporations
and the economics of industrial capitalism. Through the lens of Appalachian
 Foreword   xv
women writers, we recognize the operations of mountaintop removal and coal
mining as colonial assaults on local poor and working class communities and
ecosystems. No longer operating “far away” and “over there,” colonial corpora-
tions also operate within their own nation-­states, from Appalachia and South
Africa to India and California, as this volume’s literary critiques reveal.
A most prominent gendered aspect of colonialism is rape. Feminist texts doc-
umenting rape as a weapon of warfare—whether perpetrated against nations,
women and children, cultures, race or religion, class or caste, nonhuman animals
and nature—extend from Diana E.H. Russell’s The Politics of Rape (1975) and
Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will (1975) to Andreé Collard and Joyce
Contrucci’s Rape of the Wild (1989), Andrea Smith’s Conquest (2005), and Eve
Ensler’s In The Body of the World (2013). Comparable with metaphors of
“mother nature” and “virgin forests,” rape is a poor metaphor for what it repre-
sents—the lived experiences of individual women, children, genderqueers, and
entire cultures. The shame and self-­loathing, the acute sense of violation that
accompanies rape is experienced by humans, not mountains, much as we know.
Yet “rape” speaks an intuition that all forms of systematic violence are intercon-
nected through the violation of earthothers, that the “logic of domination”
(Warren 1990) has no ecofeminist logic at all, only the “power and promise” of
oppression. How shall we, as earthothers all, resist?
For this resistance, this resilience, is the lamp of ecofeminism. From social
workers to ecocritics, feminists do not use “resilience” as a term that relieves
oppressors of responsibility: we do not speak of “resilience” to praise third world
coastal or island communities who flee rising waters and hurricanes, becoming
climate refugees as a consequence of the continuing industrial corporate coloni-
alism that is global capitalism. Ecofeminists use “resilience” as a word that
means taking survival—and the eco-­ethics and community this survival
requires—into our own hands. Our resilience emerges through life-­sustaining
connections, through reciprocal and nourishing relationships across differences
of species and class, nations and natures. Queer feminist artists Beth Stephens
and Annie Sprinkle envision this resilience in “Goodbye Gauley Mountain”
(2013), an ecodocumentary exposing the colonialism of mountaintop removal
and coal mining in Appalachia, and bringing eco-­queer activists together with
local working class communities to perform polyamorous ecosexual weddings,
renewing people’s commitments to one another and to the flora and fauna of
place. Resilience is the lamp that shines in the ecofeminist poetry of Appala-
chian writer Kathryn Kirkpatrick (2007, 2012), in Linda Hogan’s narratives of
Native American anticolonial activisms, in Jade Chen’s depictions of Taiwanese
women’s community care and persistence, and the recuperative poems that trans-
form the suffering and oppression of Black women—epitomized in the life of
Saartjie Baartman—into a counterdiscourse of survival and, yes, resilience.
Resilience and survival of “all our relations” (LaDuke 1999) requires
our active interventions—in the political arena, in our communities, and in our
cultural ideologies depicting “right relations” among humans, animals, nature.
This ecocritical volume strengthens our resilience.
xvi   Foreword
References
Abrams, M.H. 1953. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradi­
tion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brownmiller, Susan. 1975. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Bal-
lantine Books.
Collard, Andreé, with Joyce Contrucci. 1989. Rape of the Wild: Man’s Violence Against
Animals and the Earth. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Ensler, Eve. 2013. In the Body of the World. New York: Picador.
Huggan, Graham, and Helen Tiffin. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals,
Environment. New York: Routledge.
Kirkpatrick, Kathryn. 2007. Out of the Garden. Bay City, MI: MayApple Press.
Kirkpatrick, Kathryn. 2012. Our Held Animal Breath. Cincinnati, OH: Word Tech Edi-
tions.
LaDuke, Winona. 1999. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Boston,
MA: South End Press.
Russell, Diana E.H. 1975. The Politics of Rape. New York: Stein and Day.
Smith, Andrea. 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Boston,
MA: South End Press.
Stephens, Beth, and Annie Sprinkle. 2013. Goodbye Gauley Mountain. Santa Cruz, CA:
Fecund Arts Productions. Film.
Warren, Karen J. 1990. The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism. Environmental
Ethics, 12, 125–146.
Wright, Laura. 2010. Wilderness into Civilized Shapes: Reading the Postcolonial
Environment. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Editor’s preface
Sam Mickey

Ecofeminism is a diverse movement traversing a variety of fields of scholarly

inquiry and numerous fields of activism, advocacy, and other forms of practical
engagement. The noun “ecofeminism” can be misleading. It might lead one to
think that ecofeminism is a homogeneous movement or a single set of beliefs,
which is surely not the case. The history of ecofeminism is full of finely textured
differences. It has involved the ongoing inclusion of a wide variety of perspec-
tives, welcoming multiple voices from diverse social locations to contribute to a
convergence of ecological and feminist theories, methods, and practices. Fur-
thermore, the term “ecofeminism” can be misleading in another way. To some
ears, the word might sound like it is primarily or exclusively about nature and
women, but that is not the whole story. The convergence of ecology and fem-
inism in ecofeminism definitely involves attention to women and the natural
world, and more than that, ecofeminism is about the convergence of different
perspectives on relationality.
Ecology is the study of relationships between organisms and environmental
conditions, and feminism focuses on redressing the subordination of women in
gendered and sexually differentiated relationships. The combination of ecolo-
gical and feminist perspectives opens up multiple ways of understanding and
responding to the complex dynamics of relationships, discerning the difference
between relations of domination and those of partnership, relations that are
destructive as well as those that are creative, and everything in between. The
point of ecofeminism is thus not to focus on nature and women to the exclusion
of everything else. The point is rather to focus on the interconnections and net-
works of coexistence, which include the entangled categories of race, class, age,
ability, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and many others, along with species,
gender, and sexuality. In other words, the point of ecofeminism is fundamentally
intersectional, attending to the multitudinous ways in which the various aspects
of coexistence interconnect. Not necessarily parallel or symmetrical, intersec-
tions abound, tracing paths from personal to political, self to other, environ-
mental to social, class to race, gender to species.
This anthology came together out of the ongoing effort of the co-­editors to
facilitate the development of multiple ecofeminist perspectives. The aim of this
volume is to draw out the international and intersectional range of voices
xviii   Editor’s preface
engaged with ecofeminism, particularly in ecofeminist engagements with liter-
ature. Rhetorical, poetic, metaphorical dimensions of verbal expression bring
into relief the complex dynamics addressed by ecofeminism. Situated in the
rapidly growing interdisciplinary environmental humanities, this book brings
ecofeminism together with ecologically oriented literary criticism (ecocriticism),
analyzing works ranging historically from Shakespeare through contemporary
literature, and ranging geographically from American literature to international
literature from Spain, South Africa, Taiwan, and India. The diversity in the
scope of the book is reflected in the diverse backgrounds of the contributors,
whose locations span six continents, hailing from ten countries (Australia,
Brazil, Canada, Estonia, India, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, and the
United States).
The voices in this volume demonstrate the relevance of ecofeminism, on one
hand, for facilitating critical interpretations of literature, and on the other hand,
for thinking, feeling, and acting among the intertwined social, existential, and
ecological problems proliferating in our increasingly complex world. There are
many methodological approaches at work throughout the following chapters.
Some approaches are exploratory, listening for new voices in the environmental
humanities, and looking for new connections between ecofeminist and ecocriti-
cal perspectives. Other approaches are more descriptive, analyzing and catego-
rizing literary works in terms of ecofeminism, and mapping out the cultural and
historical contexts in which literary and ecofeminist perspectives operate.
Explanatory approaches are also at work in this anthology, as contributors con-
sider causal factors that enter into the intersecting systems of domination—
sexism (androcentrism), speciesism (anthropocentrism), and colonialism—and
the ecological, feminist, and postcolonial efforts to critique and replace those
systems. The reader will find that descriptive, explanatory, and exploratory per-
spectives intersect in complementary ways throughout this anthology.
The chapters in this book accomplish many things, but of course no book
does everything. This book does not present a history of ecofeminism and the
many academic and activist branches of its development, nor does it present a
synthesis of all contemporary scholarship on ecofeminism. Rather, we present
literary analyses from various perspectives of ecofeminist ecocriticism, aiming
to represent more intersectional and international voices in the environmental
humanities. Furthermore, the contributors to this anthology also aim beyond
scholarly analysis and academic inquiry, attempting to contribute to public dis-
course about contentious topics involving environmental and social issues, such
as sustainability and environmental ethics, patriarchy and gender equality, and
globalization and the legacy of colonialism.
The intended audience of this book is anyone interested in intersections of
literature with ecological and feminist perspectives. It is specifically oriented
toward students and scholars in environmental humanities, gender studies, and
literature, especially courses in ecofeminism and ecocriticism. Although it is
aiming specifically for an academic audience, it is also intended to be generally
accessible. Ecofeminism and ecocriticism are for everyone who wants to
 Editor’s preface   xix
cultivate resistance, resilience, and responsibility in the face of tremendous
adversity. They are for everyone who cares about planetary coexistence. Ulti-
mately, this is a participatory volume, inviting and invoking the participation of
the reader in thinking, feeling, and acting with intersectional and international
voices of literature and ecofeminism.
Acknowledgments

First, as co-­editors of this anthology, we must express thanks to the contrib-

utors, for without their thoughtful writing, this volume would not exist: Greta
Gaard, Patrick Murphy, Lesley Kordecki, Calley A. Hornbuckle, Emine
Geçgil, Etienne Terblanche, Julia Tofantšuk, Nicole Anae, Theresa L. Burriss,
Karl Zuelke, Peter I-­min Huang, Carmen Flys Junquera, Swapna Gopinath,
Sony Jalarajan Raj, Soumya Jose, Deirdre Byrne, Izabel F.O. Brandão, and
Anna Bedford. We are grateful for their perspectives and passions and their
contributions to the ongoing development of environmental humanities,
ecofeminism, and ecocriticism. We would like to thank Charlotte Endersby,
Leila Walker, and everyone else involved with the editorial team at Routledge.
We appreciate their support for this work and their expertise in ushering it into
publication, and we are delighted that this anthology is part of the Environ-
mental Humanities Series.
Doug Vakoch is grateful to the members of METI International’s Board of
Directors for their friendship and creative collaboration. It is rare to find a com-
munity that sees a natural link between sustainability and the search for life in
the universe, as reflected in a strategic plan that affirms the “ways that ecofemi-
nism can provide insights into fostering environmental sustainability on multi-
generational timescales.” Doug especially thanks Harry and Joyce Letaw for
their ongoing intellectual and financial contributions to METI. For creating new
publishing opportunities for scholars working at the interface of literature and
environment, he thanks the members of the Advisory Board of Lexington Books’
Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series. Finally, to his wife Julie Bayless, Doug
is grateful in more ways than he can or will share here.
Sam Mickey would like to extend particular thanks to family, friends, stu-
dents, and colleagues who support this work, including the University of San
Francisco, where Sam teaches in the Theology and Religious Studies Depart-
ment and the Environmental Studies program. The learning community at USF
is welcoming and empowering for teaching, research, and writing committed to
a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world. For inspiring his ongoing love of
poetic and linguistic perspectives, Sam would like to thank his teacher, Haj Ross,
whose infectious love of language knows no bounds. Thanks also go out to
the ecofeminists with whom he has been in conversation personally and
 Acknowledgments   xxi
professionally, with extra special thanks to Kimberly Carfore for being a con-
stant source of ecofeminist and ecocritical support.
Finally, last but definitely not least, profound acknowledgments must also be
given to the air, water, land, and life that have shaped the development of this
book and all of its contributors. It is in solidarity with multifarious nonhumans
that we present this anthology.
Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey
Introduction
Patrick D. Murphy

Ecofeminism developed as a movement led by women and with the participation

of men around the world taking actions to address gender-­based issues and to
conserve and preserve human and nonhuman habitats. These actions exposed the
links between the oppression of women and the exploitation of natural environ-
ments. As the movement developed, feminist philosophers began to articulate
the principles, beliefs, and values of such activism. The term “ecofeminism”
emerged as a concept that encompassed a range of viewpoints, orientations, and
methods—both methods of activism and methods of analysis and critique. From
the beginning various academic and activist factions sought to dismiss or dis-
credit ecofeminism. All varieties of this relatively heterogeneous movement
were lumped together and then excoriated for some characteristic of one
segment, such as the essentialist belief that women are spontaneously closer to
nature or that alternative spirituality is the foundation for practice.
Nevertheless, ecofeminist philosophy prevailed and prospered. Eventually, its
value was recognized by literary critics and theorists, some coming out of fem-
inism initially and others coming out of ecocriticism. Even then, it faced resist-
ance. When doctoral students where I taught in the 1990s chose ecofeminist
theories to guide their research and dissertation projects, one faculty member
labored to dissuade them by claiming that it wasn’t being taught anywhere else.
The students, of course, quickly recognized the bankruptcy of that claim and
continued on their way. Their persistence led to monographs and numerous
articles applying ecofeminism to a broad range of literary works cutting across
historical periods and national literatures.
Since the publication of the first collection of essays devoted to analyzing
literature and the relationship of literature to pedagogy and activism, Ecofeminist
Literary Criticism, which Greta Gaard and I co-­edited in the wake of her pro-
posed special session at the Modern Language Association conference being
rejected, other collections have appeared with varying emphases and different
degrees of rigor. This volume builds on those prior achievements and advances
the field of ecofeminist literary studies both in terms of depth and breadth.
Full-­length ecocritical studies of Shakespeare have appeared in the past few
years, such as the one by Simon Estok, and articles have been appearing for well
over 20 years. The benefits of ecofeminist analysis of his plays, however, still
2   P.D. Murphy
have yet to be fully realized. Lesley Kordecki’s chapter, “ ‘Like a creature
native’: Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism,” demonstrates the value of continuing
to pursue this line of inquiry with a sense of urgency. Taking a traditional motif,
the relationship of women to the imagery of flora and fauna, Kordecki fore-
grounds the significance of Shakespeare’s treatment of Ophelia in Hamlet, par-
ticularly Gertrude’s eulogy. Ophelia functions as a kind of reverse referentiality.
Rather than the nature imagery functioning as a symbol for human attributes and
attitudes, Ophelia’s mistreatment, instead, functions as a symbol of the abuse,
silencing, and destruction of the natural world.
To the degree that this woman is identified with nature in the play, her abuse
unto death represents the mistreatment and denigration of the natural world of
which human beings are a part, not apart. Particularly compelling in this reading
is the attention given to the plants with which Ophelia is associated. Identified as
healing plants, they reinforce Hamlet’s refusal to pursue anything but a plot of
death and destruction. In Kordecki’s concise summary: “Flower and shrub,
traditional sign language for our necessary entanglement with the environment,
intrude on this most personal and metaphysical drama of the patriarchy, demon-
strating the ominous effects of men’s rejecting or even neglecting communion
with women and nature.”
In Chapter 2, “Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility,” Calley Horn-
buckle treats the writings of the eighteenth-­century British critic of the Enlight-
enment, Anna Letitia Barbauld. She defines her as a precursor of ecofeminist
thought, one who anticipates certain themes in ecofeminist philosophy. For
example, in “The Hill of Science,” Barbauld deploys the essay form to critique
philosophical dualism and counter the rhetoric of the sublime prevalent in the
time. Through poetry she redefines the concept of sympathy in a decidedly anti-­
Kantian move. Hornbuckle cogently adumbrates Barbauld’s expansive concept
of subjectivities radically proposing an egalitarianism far beyond the demo-
cratic ideals of male thinkers of her day. Turning a poetic form popular in the
Enlightenment against its male practitioners, Barbauld writes a mock heroic,
“The Mouse’s Petition,” to decry environmental injustice and to emphasize
intersubjectivity against an anthropocentric subjectivity that renders the rest of
sentient life mere object of scrutiny. Hornbuckle then elaborates the implica-
tions of this more holistic sensibility through a contrast with William Words-
worth, arguing that Barbauld presents readers with a more egalitarian
“Romantic ecology.”
Turning attention to a modern author in Chapter 3, Emine Geçgil discusses
the prolific activist-­author Mary Austin, with particular attention to her novel,
The Ford, which is based on actual water rights struggles in the Owens Valley
area of California at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Geçgil explains,
Austin not only addressed this particular environmental conflict but also used the
novel to develop aspects of her “proto-­ecofeminist” values. In particular, she
challenged the idea of private ownership of water, certainly a pertinent issue
today as all over the world corporations seek to privatize access to potable water
and sovereign wealth funds buy out agricultural lands in drought-­ravaged
 Introduction   3
countries for control of the precipitation that falls on them. Austin not only
exposes but also proposes ways of developing balanced relationships.
When Austin was initially rescued from obscurity and neglect by feminist
critics, they tended to focus on representations of her female characters and her
collections of short stories, sketches, and essays. Ecocritics tended to focus on
those same stories with emphasis on the representations of the southwestern
desert landscapes and environmental relationships. The Ford deserves as much if
not greater attention because it includes everything admirable about those shorter
prose works and exceeds them through its more holistic representation afforded
by the novel form. Geçgil’s analysis provides the political, activist, and cultural
contexts of the period in which the Water Wars played out and argues that
Austin demonstrates an early version of écriture féminine.
In a radical rereading of one of the most canonical modernist poems in his
chapter, “T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist,” Etienne Terblanche presents a decidedly
different, more militant T.S. Eliot than the emaciated character the poet himself
promoted publicly. Terblanche argues that “Eliot foreknows by some decades the
major, common ecocritical insight that rape of women and rape of Earth diagnose
the same stunted patriarchal cruelty.” In that way, Terblanche’s rereading of The
Waste Land echoes and complements Kordecki’s rereading of Hamlet. King Tereus
has forfeited his authority because he has denied the ecological recognition of the
necessity of coexistence. In making such a claim, Terblanche’s reading here com-
plements Hornbuckle’s argument regarding Barbauld’s egalitarianism.
An important basis for this reading of The Waste Land is Terblanche’s discus-
sion of a passage in one of Eliot’s 1939 essays. What he suggests is that the
poem implicitly presents an environmental awareness that Eliot makes explicit
in that later prose piece, but also explains Eliot’s association of a heartfelt spirit-
uality with a healthy natural world, which must necessarily include different atti-
tudes toward sexual and personal relationships than the ones depicted in the
poem. And that position, in turn, reflects an aspect of the modernists’ rejection
of the fin de siècle optimism about technological progress, which is viewed as
lifeless mechanism.
Whereas Terblanche focuses on one of the most canonical authors of the first
half of the twentieth century, Julia Tofantšuk treats one who has received far less
respect than she deserves, Sylvia Townsend Warner. The wicked humor of
Warner’s fiction reminds me of the same sharp-­edged wit of Amy Lowell, who
also proposed rather unconventional relationships, but did so in poetry rather
than fiction. Like Lowell, Warner addresses what Tofantšuk notes as “such
important ecofeminist issues as identity construction, possession, exploitation,
violation and care.” Tofantšuk provides readings of two Warner novels, Lolly
Willowes and Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, which she notes “are both written in the
genre of a fantasy novel with a moral edge,” a mode popular in her day. But
Warner does so with a decided twist through her choice of characters—unsuc-
cessful middle-­aged British women and men .
The one novel Tofantšuk reads by means of its critique of hierarchy and the
limitations of the eurocentrism of empire. The other plots a woman’s strategy for
4   P.D. Murphy
getting out from under the thumb of patriarchy. Additionally, Tofantšuk finds
Warner continuously questioning binary oppositions and the inequities of the
dominant/subordinate relationships within them. Warner locates agency in resist-
ance, a decidedly feminist claim that is carried over throughout ecofeminist
analysis.
In Chapter 6, “ ‘Taking mighty strides across the world’: positioning Zora
Neale Hurston in the ecofeminist tradition,” Nicole Anae takes up the work of an
American contemporary of Warner, who has become recognized as a major
figure in the rise of African American literature, often labelled the Harlem Ren-
aissance. Hurston’s letters reveal that she develops interracial perspectives of the
natural environment, and, according to Anae, views the natural world in ways
that contest the American hierarchical racial binary of white/black. In a letter to
the Florida author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings concerning her autobiographical
novel Cross Creek, Hurston expresses identification with Rawlings’ perspective.
Rawlings has become recognized as a major figure in American nature writing
who chose her home state of Florida and her own life as the background and
foreground of her writing. Likewise, Hurston situates her most famous novel,
Their Eyes Were Watching God, in the African American community of Eaton-
ville, Florida, which is now part of the greater metropolitan area of Orlando. In
the writings of both of these women, the natural environment functions more as
fellow characters rather than setting.
Anae argues that Hurston uses the concept of sisterhood, which she espoused
in writing to Rawlings, not only for interracial relationships, but for interspecies
ones as well. Further, this form of identifying develops out of Hurston’s training
in anthropology. In the course of her fieldwork, Hurston noted the way much of
African diaspora folklore reflected and reflected upon the co-­evolution of people
and environments in its various communities in the U.S. and the Caribbean.
According to Theresa Burriss in Chapter 7, the contemporary Appalachian
author Ann Pancake demonstrates in her writing “ecofeminist sensibilities.” She
makes this claim on the basis of Pancake’s attention to the practical knowledge
and spiritual orientation of her characters that demonstrate a deep connection with
their rural surroundings. These characters demonstrate that over generations some
Appalachian families have become inhabitory people, exhibiting the cultural and
economic practices that are associated with indigeneity. Through this type of
representation, Pancake avoids any essentialist representations of women as
inherently closer to nature, showing that reason as well as emotion guide
decision-­making based on generations of cultivated values. Through her analysis
of Pancake’s 2007 novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, Burriss takes
readers into the heart of an ongoing environmental controversy in the middle of
coal country: mountaintop removal. Zeroing in on a single family and the contra-
dictions within it between short-­term economic benefits and long-­term environ-
mental destruction, Pancake shows the damage being done to two interrelated
environments: the natural and the cultural. The strength of Pancake’s novel,
beyond her sophisticated character development, according to Burriss is Pan-
cake’s ability to render a plot that addresses the complexity of human behavior.
 Introduction   5
In her discussion of Pancake and her other two authors under consideration,
perhaps surprising to some readers, Burriss avails herself of postcolonial analysis
to demonstrate how this region of the United States is treated as an internal
colony through the exploitation of resources that primarily benefit other parts of
the country with no regard for the long-­term consequences of extractive industrial
practices. Burriss, for instance, discusses the postcolonial concept of mimicry, an
internalization of the exploiter’s value system that denigrates the local culture,
values, and practices. She also makes use of Huggan and Tiffin’s definition of
ecological imperialism. Finally, Burriss discusses a pertinent ecological concept
certainly unfamiliar to mainstream American culture: solastalgia, which she
defines as “an intense emotional distress caused by environmental change.”
Karl Zuelke turns our attention to another contemporary author, mainly
known for his nonfiction, Peter Matthiessen, but does so through a reading of his
novel, At Play in the Fields of the Lord. He focuses on a text that fits well with
Burriss’s chapter, treating external colonization, but at the same time considering
the ideological effects of internal colonization. He does that through his treat-
ment of a bi-­racial character, whose assimilation leads him to view the fictional
Amazonian tribe of the novel through an essentialist perspective. Matthiessen’s
study of an act of genocide, Zuelke argues, addresses contemporary problems of
hyperrealism and essentialism in the form of an exposé. This focus on the ideo-
logical orientation behind destructive practices forms an important part, accord-
ing to Zuelke, of the ecocritical trajectory, since it addresses the failure of the
main character to reorient his thinking in light of the environmental realities he
witnesses. Matthiessen’s novel emphasizes that without such conceptual reorien-
tation environmental destruction will continue unabated.
Peter I-­min Huang in Chapter 9, “Cyborg-­goddesses, Linda Hogan’s Indios,
and Jade Chen’s Mazu’s Body-­guards” transversally reads Native American and
Taiwan texts through a combinatory theoretical orientation that begins with a
quotation from Donna Haraway. He comparatively analyzes Linda Hogan’s long
narrative poem, Indios, as a rewriting of the western classical Medea story,
which he defines as ecofeminist because it synthesizes the relationship of geno-
cide and ecocide. Jade Chen’s Mazu’s Body-­guards also calls up an ancient
myth, that of the Chinese goddess Mazu, who has become an indigenous spirit
for the Taiwanese. Through this rewriting, Chen, like Hogan, critiques the rela-
tionship of colonialism, neocolonialism, patriarchy, and environmental destruc-
tion. In both myths, women are rendered as demons when they respond to
patriarchal and colonizing abuse.
Both works, the poem and the novel, challenge the official myths of the
dominant, colonizing societies. Huang draws attention to the ostracism of mixed-
­race offspring and the efforts of dominant cultures to invent a story of their own
purity even as their sexual activities result in producing mixed ethnicities. In
contrast, Chen narrates an ancient history of ethnic cross-­fertilization, which
when approached through egalitarian relationships can function as a form of bio-
diversity. Huang notes that in contemporary Taiwan, Mazu worshippers are in
the forefront of environmental activism against further nuclear power plant
6   P.D. Murphy
development. In treating this manifestation of Mazu practice, Huang returns to
Haraway’s concept of the cyborg to argue that the goddess represents a “nature-
culture” entity.
Carmen Flys Junquera, in “Wolves, singing trees, and replicants: ecofeminist
readings of contemporary Spanish novels,” notes that within the upsurge of
writing by women that calls for an ecofeminist reading, numerous works address
issues of environmental justice, critique the logic of domination, and proffer
alternative viable relationships with “earth others.” To make her point, Flys Jun-
quera focuses on three contemporary Spanish women writers, the novelist and
journalist Rosa Montero Gayo; young adult novelist Laura Gallego García; and
biologist and secondary school teacher Concha López Llamas. By selecting these
three writers and their works, Flys Junquera is able to demonstrate the variety of
literary strategies appearing within the past five years that address gendered
environmental concerns. In her novel, López Llamas develops the parallel of the
violent oppression of women, hatred of wolves, and assaults on rural lifestyles.
She does so through alternating chapters, the ones focusing on the abused
Beatriz and the others focusing on the wolf, Oak. Both sets of chapters educate
readers about the respective behaviors of the species emphasized. López Llamas
also notes how the violence against wolves is reproduced in the efforts to extin-
guish rural traditions. The loss of diversity is a necessary component of the drive
to produce a globally homogenous population of conspicuous consumers, a
homogeneity everywhere present in metropolises worldwide and rapidly extend-
ing its blight into the countryside. López Llamas makes her thematic parallelism
explicit in the final chapter, when the two female main characters, one human
one wolf, meet.
As Flys Junquera notes, Gallego García’s young adult fantasy novel, When
the Trees Sing, is set up as a medieval romance. Thus, certain forms of oppres-
sion and violence are treated as givens for the era in which the story takes places.
Nevertheless, through the trials and escape from barbarians of the main charac-
ter, Viana, readers are introduced to an alternative socioeconomic reality as a
wolf-­like character named Lobo teaches her the survival skills of the forest.
From fantasy, Flys Junquera turns to the science fiction of Montero Gayo,
who addresses the issues of hierarchical othering and the oppression of the
different through the treatment of androids in a twenty-second-century future.
Montero Gayo both shows the possibilities for gender equality and poly-
morphous sexuality and the tendency for hierarchical power relationships to
reassert themselves in one direction when outlawed or socially disavowed in
another. Despite their differences, Flys Junquera argues that these novels all
demonstrate successful strategies for endowing “earth others” with respect and
moral considerability, representing others not as alien, and therefore hostile, but
as anothers, distinct and relational.
In Chapter 11, Swapna Gopinath, Sony Jalarajan Raj, and Soumya Jose begin
by taking up an issue addressed by Huang, goddess worship, but do so from the
perspective of the consideration of the other. They also use postcolonial theory
to consider how the ecological orientation of early Hinduism was subverted by
 Introduction   7
British colonization, which replaced a cosmology of dyadic interplay with a
linear one of hierarchy, denigrating both wild nature and women in the process.
They then develop this argument through a reading of several novels by such
authors as Shashi Deshpand, Arundhati Roy, Sara Joseph, and Anita Desai.
Gopinath, Raj, and Jose analyze the representations of the family under the drive
of globalization to become “micro units” for the oppression of women, the
destruction of nature, and the commodification of human relationships.
While many contemporary women’s novels rely on a flight to the metropolis,
diasporic dislocation, and cultural hybridity to achieve self-­realization or a
measure of independence, these critics look at novels in which the women move
in the opposite direction toward reintegration with ancestral environments and
rural community relationships. The association of women’s bodily rhythms with
natural cycles is celebrated, for example, in Gift in Green, while The God of
Small Things depicts the pleasure derived from daily activities. Gopinath, Raj,
and Jose note that while the authors they treat lament environmental destruction
and the destructive forces of globalization, they also depict ecofeminist activities
as a life practice affording a sense of optimism for the future.
Deirdre Byrne in Chapter 12, “The vocation of healing: the poetry of Malika
Ndlovu,” writes about a contemporary South African performance artist whose
work focuses on female empowerment and healing. Byrne argues that in order to
accomplish that task, she often utilizes in her poetry a “strategic essentialism.”
She also invokes mythic themes as part of the process of psychic healing, dem-
onstrating a connection with the authors treated by Huang in his chapter. As a
result of her attention to nature and women’s socialization and oppression, Byrne
views Ndlovu’s work as demonstrating several different strands of ecofeminism.
And only through attention to the connections she draws between the treatment
of material nature, such as in the mining industry, and the treatment of women in
society, both the violence perpetrated against them and their denigration to a
lower status, can her artistry be fully appreciated.
Byrne also makes the point that while she employs a strategic essentialism and
mythic elements, she nevertheless does not treat women in South Africa as a
homogenous entity. Rather, across her work she emphasizes what connects and
unites them in a struggle for emancipation while continuing to address their social
strata differences. Byrne especially encourages attention to her achievement as a
South African woman in a country where there is virtually no significant environ-
mental movement and the rights of women are largely ignored and abused.
In the final chapter, Izabel Brandão provides a comparative analysis of two
very different contemporary poets, Grace Nichols from the Caribbean and the
Scottish poet Jackie Kay. Brandão is interested in how the two poets approach
quite distinctly representations of the body through treatment of Sartjie Baart-
man. Brandão discovers what I would term a relational difference in which the
representations from quite distinct perspectives reveal themselves as com-
plementary and thematically expansive when read together. Nichols presents an
ironically inflected voice of Baartman, which Brandão defines as a counter­
discourse to the colonial oppression and exploitation that this woman personally
8   P.D. Murphy
experienced as microcosm of the othering of colonial peoples. Kay, joining
Nichols, treats the body as “home,” and as such renders it a place for a sub-
jective discourse rather than the objectifying ones that have historically circum-
scribed the concept of this woman labeled the Hottentot Venus.
Brandão argues that these two women poets’ recasting of this woman’s image
is a political action calling for respect and recognition. Given her use of a dia-
logical orientation, it seems only appropriate to think of Nichols’ composition in
terms of a Rabelaisian use of irony. The woman’s body as nature, as a site of
natural activity, and the making of the body that has been viewed as grotesque as
a subject, as a site of attention, defies and challenges patriarchy, particularly
white South African and European, with an ironic double-­voiced counter dis-
course. Brandão’s chapter points back through this volume to complementary
aspects of her analysis of these two poets and their poems with others presented,
such as that of Kordecki’s treatment of the fictional Ophelia, as well as the post-
colonial orientation of Burriss. While Terblanche’s interpretation of Eliot pro-
duces a radical ecofeminist rereading of a canonical work, Brandão’s two poets
provide a radical ecofeminist rewriting of a racist, colonialist example of the
center’s efforts to impose on the rest of the world socially constructed definitions
of what is “normal” or “beautiful,” that is, what is natural.
Ecofeminism in general seeks to promote a fundamentally different world-
view from those dominant globally today. Ecofeminist literary criticism con-
tributes to that project through promoting writings that embody its principles,
criticizing works that reinforce reactionary patriarchy, and exploring insights of
ecofeminist critique of canonical texts. It stands squarely with other forms of
ecocritical analysis in reminding readers that not all references to nature are
symbolic commentaries on human thought and behavior. Rather, they both refer
to the more than human world in which we participate and they make referential
statements about the exterior basis for interior thoughts, feelings, and percep-
tions. Note that I wrote, exterior, not external. It exceeds other forms of ecocriti-
cism in consistently foregrounding the inextricability of gender oppression and
ecocide. All of the chapters that follow unabashedly advance that agenda.

References
Estok, Simon. 2011. Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia. New York:
Palgrave.
Huggan, Graham, and Helen Tiffin. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism. New York:
Routledge.
1 “Like a creature native”
Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism
Lesley Kordecki

There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds

Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down the weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her cloths spread wide,
And mermaid-­like a while they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
(Gertrude on Ophelia’s death,
Hamlet 4.7.170–181)

William Shakespeare’s famous lines about Ophelia’s death, recited by Ger-

trude, the only other woman in the play, have generated many centuries of
critical inquiry, but none seems to answer satisfactorily the plaguing questions
about Ophelia’s role in this most definitive tragedy of Western culture. Harold
Jenkins, editor of the play, tells us that “Shakespeare’s conception of Ophelia
is profounder than that of his critics; and [this speech] … is its supremely
imaginative culmination” (1994, 547). What makes this death announcement
the “culmination” of the great poet’s “imagination”? In her groundbreaking
1985 essay, “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibil-
ities of Feminist Criticism,” Elaine Showalter traces artistic, stage, popular,
and critical interpretations to demonstrate the cultural manipulation of this
legendary character’s appearance in feminist thought. She follows the
“meaning” of Ophelia into the twentieth century, showing how her “eroto-
mania” or sexualized madness helped form the representation of women over
the centuries. Showalter calls Ophelia’s story the “history of her representa-
tion,” linking female insanity with female frailty and sexuality, and then by
the end of the last century, linking her with “protest and rebellion” (1985, 79,
91–92). This argument is well founded, but Ophelia has more to teach us.
10   L. Kordecki
We in the twenty-first century can see how Ophelia’s indelible cultural mark is
delineated in yet another way by her abundant and exquisite association with the
flora and fauna of Shakespeare’s potent language, but now with the political edge
that ecocriticism has taught us, we can revise her problematic function as docile
victim. Gertrude’s account of her death excerpted above challengingly positions
her vital significance. Lovely, ephemeral, fading, here Ophelia becomes the sym-
bolic flowers she poignantly and distractedly distributes to the other characters in
her prior scene. But she is not just flowers; the brook that ultimately envelops her
“mermaid-­like,” or “Like a creature native and endued [i.e., fit]/Unto that element,”
literally absorbs this outcast woman into the natural world. Gertrude’s elegant pas-
toral eulogy on Ophelia’s drowning in essence grafts the dead or dying woman
onto the natural tableau, the fluid water itself, as she becomes its “creature.” These
telling signifiers explain the deceptive power of this seemingly passive woman.
The other chapters in this volume will show how literature, positioned histor-
ically and geographically, is deeply infused with social issues entwining women
and nature in the last few centuries. The international scope of the essays alerts
us to the global repercussions of patriarchal mindsets in other times and in other
cultures. I believe that the sub-­textual resonances of Hamlet explored below will
demonstrate the fully formed ecofeminist ideology in the Early Modern stage of
Western society. My chapter will argue that Ophelia continues to point the way
in the history of feminism, but now emerges as the definition of ecofeminist
influences on our perceptions, and reveals the dire effects of ignoring them.
Ophelia’s natural associations are not really news, and do not help us much
with this overdetermined text unless we study how Hamlet, our beloved prot-
agonist, interacts with her; then the play’s prophetic ecofeminism emerges.
Jeanne Addison Roberts reminds us that

The equation of women and Nature is so ancient and so ubiquitous as hardly

to need documentation. From Aristotle on, philosophers have seen women
as formless matter upon which men must imprint shape, even as Nature was
the raw material from which human Culture was to be constructed.
(Roberts 1991, 25)

Ophelia assumes the role of eschewed nature for Hamlet, which in turn helps us
resolve many of the tragedy’s essential questions.
As symbol, Ophelia is not a static romanticized version of the natural world,
but a persistent reminder of human abuse, censorship, victimization, and even
destruction of nature. Still, she also depicts nature’s healing power. Ecofeminists
have noted the impact and the oppression of the environment on the literary texts
we love. Ophelia is subject to “the instrumental treatment of nature and its exclu-
sion from ethical significance in western (now global) culture,” as Val Plum-
wood would put it (1993, 6), by the men around her. She is manifestly used and
objectified, as I will show. She and the nature she represents are denied or “back-
grounded” to “a dominant, foreground sphere of recognized achievement or
causation. This backgrounding of women and nature” (1993, 21) is accom­plished
almost indiscernibly and automatically by the human males who define
 Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism   11
themselves by exclusion from female and from nature. Both Ophelia and the
natural world can be seen as an “independent centre of resistance and opacity”
(1993, 157), Plumwood’s careful phrase to include the nonhuman with the
female human in our speciesist and masculinist language.
Similarly, Shakespearean critics are studying the effect of the environment on
the plays. In the 1930s, Caroline Spurgeon recorded the proliferation of natural
imagery in Shakespeare and especially in Hamlet (1966, 13, 16, 367–368).
Roberts more recently examines how the gendered “wild” interacts with the male
self. She tells us that “Seen as passive and receptive, women were repeatedly
linked by tradition and specifically by Shakespeare with the earth, the affinity of
wombs and tombs became a cliché.” As such, Ophelia, like other women (Lady
Macbeth, Hero, Hermione, Thaisa) can be seen as the “tamed Wild,” rebelling
through death, even if the death is not actual (Roberts 1991, 25–26). Gertrude’s
womb and Ophelia’s tomb both threaten Hamlet’s and thus the play’s sense of
the world. I will return to how the grave dominates the action below.
The following reading argues how Ophelia represents a more thought-­
provoking notion of nature than hitherto supposed. She incarnates all four of the
elements of fire, air, water, and earth, and she attempts to intercede in the fatal
outcome of the other characters. Deirdre Byrne (in the present collection) tells us
of “elemental energies” still associated with women in contemporary poetry.
Like nature itself in Western culture, however, Ophelia is othered and aban-
doned, the only true innocent in this brilliant study of human struggle. Through
her, nature is aligned with many stereotypes of women, and she ultimately
emerges as visionary and ruthlessly expendable as the narrative moves in its
masculinist directions. Ophelia, so well known for her mad scenes, appears
sparsely in Hamlet’s story, but as a representative of nature, she occupies a
primary place in his ideological battles. She interacts with Hamlet on stage only
in Act 3, and yet her death brings about everyone’s end.
Before Ophelia’s appearance in the play, Hamlet, distraught by his father’s
death, begins to move away from his stable grip on the environment around him
and becomes isolated within his own identity concerns. His first soliloquy com-
pares the world to “an unweeded garden/That grows to seed, things rank and
gross in nature/Possess it merely [completely]” (1.2.135–137), and in a few lines
he is accusing his mother of rushing into “incestuous sheets” (1.2.157). He is
then haunted by the ghost of his father, much like the mad Ophelia is later by her
own father. When he becomes animated by the unnaturalism of the ghost, he
vows to transform himself and embrace his mission of revenge:

Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
…
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain
Unmixed with baser matter.
(1.5. 98–99, 102–104)
12   L. Kordecki
His agitation has been well noted, but it seems that his love for Ophelia and his
foundation in the natural world is relegated to “trivial” and “baser matter,”
especially since his mother’s actions prove to him the corruption of all female
sexuality, as he tells us later.
Ophelia’s first scene, with her brother Laertes and father Polonius, establishes
her as the element of fiery passion for Hamlet. Her part in the drama of unremit-
ting human catastrophe amid metaphysical contemplation begins with this identi-
fication. She is not just Hamlet’s beloved, but is wholly defined by the
destructiveness of sexuality, reduced inexorably to her value as virgin by Laertes’,
Polonius’, and later even Hamlet’s patriarchal eyes. Laertes warns her not to open
her “chaste treasure” to Hamlet’s “unmastered importunity” (1.3.30, 31). Polon-
ius refers to Hamlet’s desire as “blazes” but not true “fire,” and that she must
protect herself from his “unholy suits” (1.3.116, 119, 128). Polonius talks to Clau-
dius and Gertrude of Hamlet’s “hot love” (2.2.132). Ophelia brings out the fire in
Hamlet. She is nature’s dangerous temptations for him, which he seems to
convert later to threatening hatred when he accosts her in Act 3.
After this rather conventional plot line exhorting caution with young love, we
move to Ophelia’s next scene in which she tells her father how Hamlet appears
to her “Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,/And with a look so
piteous in purport/As if he had been loosed out of hell/To speak of horrors”
(2.1.79–81). But what is happening here? A reading of the love between Ophelia
and Hamlet rings untrue if we take a realistic look at their interactions. One
could argue that the intelligent, philosophically self-­deprecating Hamlet would
trust a woman he truly loves more, would not use her to display his “antic dispo-
sition” (1.5.170) in order to achieve his revenge. He expressly tells Horatio and
the guards that no matter “How strange or odd some’er I bear myself ” (1.5.168),
they should not reveal his conversation with the ghost, but does not afford his
beloved the same courtesy. When he first appears to Ophelia offstage, she
describes him in this state, but he is deemed to be in the throes of love-­madness,
a long tradition of love-­longynge from medieval texts wherein the sufferer trans-
forms into a melancholic. This constitutes a valid conjecture on the part of Polo-
nius and even Ophelia herself unless, like the audience, they were privy to
Hamlet’s plan to simulate madness.
Significantly, Ophelia is never part of Hamlet’s contemplations about retributive
action toward Claudius or even any concerns he harbors about remaining in
Elsinore. She is not featured in his decisions or his passions as represented in those
extraordinary soliloquies. His declaration of the depth of this love at the end of the
play comes as a surprise: “I loved Ophelia—forty thousand brothers/Could not
with all their quantity of love/Make up my sum” (5.1.258–260). His love affair
rings hollow if she is the mere mortal we take her to be; instead, the text uses her to
stand for the natural, the part of the world abandoned by the obsessed Hamlet. This
is not to give Hamlet an excuse for his abuse of Ophelia; his ranting is not just a
simple betrayal of young love. It tells us more about his inability to embrace the
virtues of ideologies outside a masculinist, speciesist paradigm. He rejects all that
Ophelia represents while he delays in enacting his vengeance.
 Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism   13
We have no scenes of love between Hamlet and Ophelia to compare with
what happens when they first appear on the stage together. We see that Ophelia,
at first hesitant, is now obedient to her father’s order to have nothing to do with
him: “I would not in plain terms from this time forth/Have you so slander any
moment leisure/As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet” (1.3.131–133).
She returns Hamlet’s letters, which he denies giving to her, and then he turns on
her by asking “Are you honest [chaste]?” and suggests that the power of her
beauty will “transform Honesty from what it is to a bawd” (3.1.102, 111). With
little preface, Ophelia’s sexual honor is being attacked, and Hamlet tells her he
lied when he told her he loved her. His love is mentioned after her chastity has
been examined, again showing that for Hamlet she is or must be the embodiment
of virginity (forestalling sexuality and fertility). Hamlet then utters the famed
angry words “Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”
(3.1.120–121). If these lines are sincere and not contrived to feign madness, he
then reveals his consummate wrath toward her, as well as toward himself. His
misogynistic accost, “You jig and amble and you lisp, you nickname God’s crea-
tures and make your wantonness ignorance” (3.1.143–145), expands his con-
demnation to all women, insulting all as well as the submissive and forgiving
Ophelia, who clearly believes in his madness. All women are hypocrites who
lack genuineness as long as they can entrap men with their sexuality. Hamlet
continues to separate himself from any true natural or feminine contact that can
keep him grounded.
A long critical tradition asserts that Hamlet knows that Polonius has set
Ophelia upon him in this encounter, and therefore Hamlet contemptuously deals
with her betrayal when he tells her to “Go thy ways to a nunnery” (3.1.128–129).
But this does not explain Hamlet’s first appearance to Ophelia offstage. Hamlet’s
treatment of his beloved becomes almost iconic, a rejection that is somehow cos-
mically antithetical to Hamlet’s mission of revenge. She is more than a mortal
lover; she is natural life itself, all its promise and desirable sexuality and fertil-
ity, and he cannot entertain thoughts of such during this time. His attack on
Ophelia seems to merge with his disgust of his mother’s remarriage. All love
toward women and nature becomes subsumed to his duty to avenge his father’s
death. As Harold Jenkins notes, Hamlet “denies his own nature” (1994, 153). He
tries to make himself into the masculinist ideal that could easily kill Claudius.
Ophelia’s lament over Hamlet’s loss of reason illustrates her loving spirit.
When he leaves her devastated with his verbal attack, she exclaims that his
“noble mind is here o’erthrown.” This man whom she characterized as the “rose
of the fair state” (3.1.145) no longer is figured as a blossom. She has lost hope
along with the fire of his love: “O woe is me/T’have seen what I have seen, see
what I see” (3.1.159–160).
The fire of his love takes another turn in Hamlet’s second and last encounter
with Ophelia on stage; Hamlet resorts to a mean-­spirited banter with her in the
“play-­within-the play” scene. Ophelia, attempting to conciliate him, utters a
pathetic “I think nothing, my lord” in response to which Hamlet constructs a
crude pun: “That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs … Nothing”
14   L. Kordecki
(intimating a penis or a vagina) (3.2.110–114). Again, he may be simulating
insanity, but only Horatio is privy to his true self, not the estranged Ophelia. The
scene once again casts Ophelia as the threat of passion, a passion gone awry
now, and blamed for its sway over Hamlet. Soon after, Hamlet will kill her
father, and Ophelia will be abandoned again, first by her brother, with his reduc-
tive advice about her virginity, perhaps to keep her value to the family secure in
that culture, then by her lover, who again exhorts her to suppress her fertility,
seemingly punishing her for Gertrude’s sexuality and remarriage, and finally by
her father, who uses their love for each other to prove the cause of madness for
Polonius’ own opportunistic gain. Alone, Ophelia becomes the repository of all
natural grace for the politically corrupt kingdom and its competing men.
The latter part of Act Four deals with Elsinore without Hamlet, and the most
potent scenes are devoted to the two in which Ophelia, mad, addresses Gertrude
and Claudius, and then later her brother Laertes. This presentation of true insan-
ity, as many have shown, contrasts with Hamlet’s feigned madness, but Ophelia
gives us much more to work with. She distributes both song and flowers and
both carry the meaning of the domain outside Elsinore.
The element of air is inhabited by human speech, and Ophelia’s disordered
lines in her mad scenes complete with stylized song show nature’s interruption
of our complacent confidence in controlling air through language. These scenes,
as others have noted, are especially pointed because Hamlet has simulated the
disruption of natural speech earlier in the play. His antics, a precursor to this
poignant and naturally occurring chaos, make Hamlet’s imitation of it still witty,
but somehow manipulative and empty, even cruel. His beloved will transform
into the true and sad madcap, who will soon become the wise fool who airs her
evocative refrains to those around her.
Before she enters, the Gentleman tells us that she “speaks things in doubt/That
carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,/Yet the unshaped use of it doth move/
The hearers to collection” (4.5.7–9). Her songs and subsequent lecture on the
meaning of flowers bring to light the sins against nature of the characters present.
When Gertrude sees her, she immediately talks of her own guilt, her “sick soul”
and “sin’s true nature” (4.5.17). Gertrude may indeed be the only auditor capable
of absorbing Ophelia’s messages. The first song is addressed to her.
Ophelia’s tunes are noted for their reference to sex, once again highlighting
the conjunction of female sexuality and female insanity, but they are even more
openly about death, and seem to be a fusing of thoughts about both Hamlet and
her dead father. The line “How should I your true love know” (4.5.23) may make
Gertrude’s guilt about her remarriage sting. The next verse employs natural
imagery to look back on Polonius and forward on Ophelia’s own funeral:

He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone.
At his head a grass-­green turf,
At his heels a stone.
(4.5.28–31)
 Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism   15
And later:

White his shroud as the mountain snow –

Larded all with sweet flower
Which bewept to the ground did not go
With true-­love showers.
(4.5.36, 38–40)

With “grass-­green turf,” “mountain snow,” “sweet flower,” and “true-­love

showers” the ditty brings earth and water into the air. Besides the usual linking
of death with sex, we have an oral presentation of the deaths that are to come:
first Ophelia herself, the rejected natural world, and then the rest of the charac-
ters who do not recognize her warnings, her nonviolent strength.
Ophelia then enigmatically chants “They say the owl was a baker’s daughter.
Lord, we know what we are but know not what we may be” (4.5.42–44). Jenkins
traces the folk-­tale of the baker’s daughter who is punished and turned into an
owl for holding back bread for Christ. The owl is known as a “mournful bird”
(like Ophelia), whose cry is a “traditional signal of danger” (1994, 532–533).
The combination of women and birds, think of the “wise” owl, sometimes
involving metamorphosis is an especially noteworthy ecofeminist conjunction
throughout the medieval and early modern eras.
Ophelia’s Valentine song returns to the question of love and this time destruc-
tive sex in which the fire is gone. Jenkins thinks this may be directed toward
Claudius (1994, 534), which would implicate both Gertrude and Claudius in
their unnatural acts: their hasty marriage and Polonius’ rushed funeral. Her songs
are not simply the outward expression of her insanity. They become intertwined
with her identity. Later, we hear that Ophelia sings as she dies, “she chanted
snatches of old tunes,” “pulled” “from her melodious lay” (4.7.175, 180).
First songs and then flowers are metaphorically gifted to her audience, those
on stage and then those in the theatre. The allusive quality of song and flora
haunt this play that concerns the monarchy and the family. With Ophelia the
outside world is brought into the struggle and all of us are invested.
But Ophelia is not quite finished warning the others. In a novel move, Shake-
speare brings her back on the stage in a second mad scene to continue to urge
acknowledgment and repentance, this time with props, the plants, but with
limited success. Once Laertes has arrived, the disturbed woman causes even
more pathos, and this time brought on in the traditional and emblematic form of
flowers. Jenkins believes that the play employs “madness to convey what
rational discourse could not” (1994, 537), and ventures a glossing of each kind
of plant despite the variety of meanings they acquired over the centuries. Ophelia
straightforwardly explicates that rosemary is for “remembrance” and pansies for
“thoughts” and gives them presumably to Laertes, the avenging son, but also, the
soon to be grieving brother, which may be her less vengeful message. Jenkins
speculates that the fennel (dissembling) and columbines (cuckoldry) are directed
toward Gertrude, with the rue (regret and repentance) left for Claudius and even
16   L. Kordecki
for herself “with a difference” (4.5.173–176), presumably because she regrets
different things. The daisy (deception or love) is for Ophelia herself, and the
violets (faithfulness) that have “withered” are connected, as she says, with her
dead father (537–542). Many critics see how ironically these flowers represent
the failings or outright crimes of the characters on stage. In the 1970s, Bridget
Lyons asserts that Ophelia “conveys riddling significance,” and “is most persist-
ently presented in terms of symbolic meanings” (1977, 62, 61). In tracing her
allusions to the two stories of the goddess Flora, Lyons demonstrates the semi-
otically rich and ambiguous language of Ophelia as opposed to Perdita’s straight-
forward flower language in The Winter’s Tale (1977, 63–66).
Still, these abundant natural emblems can be interpreted in quite different
ways. Ecocritic Rebecca Laroche writes of how the plants Ophelia carries in are
recuperative plants to help her with her madness, and should be literally present
(2011, 212). The actor playing Ophelia needs to proffer real flowers to reinforce
the nonhuman landscape forgotten in this intense human tragedy. This stage tra-
dition will help audiences understand the character’s natural authority. Laroche
reminds us that “women practiced medicine widely in the early modern period”
and supplies contemporary texts to substantiate this claim (2011, 215). In a recu-
perative mode, then, rosemary, fennel, columbine, pansies, and rue all have
medicinal attributes. The scent of violets means that “to feel good, to find
comfort, has disappeared.” She takes Ophelia’s plants “literally” and surmises
that “Ophelia belongs to another, perhaps more simple, herb-­filled world, in
which plants can restore one’s stability of mind” (2011, 217, 220). Perhaps the
flowers can be seen as associated with the health of each of the characters, and
Ophelia, nature’s nurse, shows how the world surrounding and embracing our
anthropocentric concerns is of utmost importance.
Shakespeare’s rich imagery can admit many of these glossings of the plants
distributed by a non-­rational character. The flowers bring the outside world into
the stifling monarchal and familial struggles of the court. His pun-­laden language
of the Fools in other plays, notably King Lear and Twelfth Night, alert us to how
he takes the opportunity to strew clues to produce diverse signifieds throughout
his texts. We can see here that Ophelia comes to sing her warning and then to
move from the air of song to the produce of the earth once her role as the fire of
passion is extinguished by all.
Not only Hamlet, earlier in the play, underestimates and denies the place of
nature by resisting Ophelia, but also Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes all neglect
Ophelia’s gifts of the natural world as they, especially Claudius and Laertes, are
engaged and obsessed with human revenge and violence before and after Ophe-
lia’s mad scenes. The “violets” that have “withered all when [her] father died”
(4.5.177) are among other things the poisoning of language by the tragedy, and
the conversion of helpful plants to inert weeds.
Gertrude is not quite the resistant auditor of Ophelia’s plaint as the men
around her. Women of Shakespeare’s time would know the recuperative value of
plants, but as the only other woman in this drama, she is given the expressive
announcement of the death of Ophelia. Gertrude is often seen as a woman too
 Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism   17
far removed from nature—too engrossed in the “civilized” and culturally savvy
world of the court. She seemingly protects herself from a competitive monarchy
by marrying Claudius. Hamlet implies this in his “closet” speech to Gertrude in
Act 3, scene 4, and we do not have indication of Gertrude’s acknowledgment of
her complicity in a corrupt marriage (if not a murder), until the scenes showing
Ophelia’s madness. This heartrending performance of a fellow female’s mental
demise could be her turning point, making her believe Hamlet’s words and see
Claudius as the real problem.
The Quarto 1 version of the play, a less “authoritative text” (Shakespeare,
Thompson edition 2014, 487), contains a scene not found in Quarto 2–4 or Folio
versions of the play. In this scene, directly following Gertrude’s witnessing of
Ophelia’s madness and before she announces her death to Laertes and Claudius,
the queen meets with Horatio and learns of Claudius’ plot to kill her son. She
speaks of her husband’s “treason” and “villanie” and says that she “will soothe
and please him for a time,/For murderous minds are always jealous” (Evans
et al. 1977, 1243 textual notes, scene 4.6). This Gertrude, clearly on Hamlet’s
side after Ophelia’s mad scenes and Horatio’s report of her son (Lesser, 2015,
3–5), presents a changed character by the time she brings the news of Ophelia’s
drowning. The flowers, given to her by the determinedly vague but nurturing
Ophelia, have done their job. However, the men awarded flowers clearly reject
their recuperative strength. Only Gertrude is carrying them to Ophelia’s grave
(“Sweets to the sweet” 5.1.233). Before she leaves the stage, Ophelia returns to
the gift of song, and foretells the rest of the metaphoric thrust of the drama:
“No, no, he is dead,/Go to thy deathbed,/He will never come again”
(4.5.183–185). The lyrics address all key characters, not just Polonius. Death
will now be nature’s legacy.
Ophelia’s death becomes a major transition in the action, and its unique
announcement reveals her continued role in the story. Water of course is the
medium of Ophelia’s demise, the brook pulling her back to itself in “muddy
death.” Gertrude announces her end with distinctive and memorable verbal
figures, as her full speech shows:

There is a willow grows askant the brook

That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.
There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down the weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her cloths spread wide,
And mermaid-­like a while they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
18   L. Kordecki
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
(4.7.164–181)

The willow connotes sadness, according to Jenkins, and the nettle means pain,
poison, or betrayal. The daisies are forsaken love (1994, 544–546). All can be
worked into a traditional reading of Ophelia’s death. More pronounced, however,
is that the insistent personification of the landscape becomes something beyond
a romanticized ecosystem. It emphasizes the transference of attributes and the
amalgam of participants (woman, willow, flowers, and brook). Neither the
woman (nor the willow) is “weeping,” but the brook is, once Ophelia enters it.
The willow has “hoary leaves” reminiscent of the hoary head of Polonius or the
song from her last song: “Flaxen was his poll” (4.5.188). The “long purples” are
“dead men’s fingers” and the boughs have “an envious sliver,” in some way
envious that it is not decorated like the garland, or the natural world becomes
envious of the possession of Ophelia, and seeks to draw her in. The garlands are
now “trophies” of human accomplishment swallowed by the water. Ophelia’s
“cloths” we see “bore her up” and become “garments,” “heavy with their drink.”
Shakespeare’s language has all of nature fuse into the human and Ophelia trans-
form into the landscape as the imagery transposes the human and the nonhuman.
Our societal concerns (suicide or accident?) are rendered unimportant. The
poetry considers that she might be “incapable of her own distress,” but then pro-
vides a more satisfying option. Ophelia is “like a creature native and endued/
Unto that element,” a vastly different aftermath to her life, than the suicide she is
thought to be. Metaphorically, she is one with the landscape, born in (“native”)
and accustomed to (“endued”) the “element” of water.
But water also means tears. Laertes reminds us immediately of this, and how
tears are the province of women in this culture (4.7.187). Consider, moreover,
how liquid poison is the means of deaths of not only Gertrude with the poisoned
cup, but Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet himself. Only Polonius is truly stabbed
to death. Poison, the traditional woman’s weapon, kills all in the last scene, but
no woman’s hand has a part in it.
Hence Ophelia, associated not just with plants, becomes a creature of the
water, born there (“native”) and now dying there, both pastoral and sinister,
buoyant in another element, iconic of human/nonhuman synthesis, if not
healthy symbiosis. Her death is the unification of human and environment, the
incorporation of human into the world itself. The influential oil painting of
John Everett Millais strikes some as an exquisite rendering of drowning, made
pretty by the flowers all around and on Ophelia’s gown, but even this romanti-
cized image of nature has its potency realized with a look at her face a moment
before suffocation. In one sense her death by water, with her incoherent (?)
singing might be joyful, an end to the rejections around her. We remember that
 Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism   19
the old king dies through corrupted plant life when, as his ghost says, he is
struck down “With juice of cursed hebona” in the orchard (1.5.62), the first
unleashing of unnaturalism on Elsinore.
Ophelia survives in verse today, but with a twist. In Suzanne Lummis’ poem,
“How I Didn’t Get Myself to a Nunnery,” the persona’s afterlife begins with the
water: “I like rivers./And I’m all right with flowers. I floated/on a bed of roses—
well, O.K., rue/and columbine. It bore me up not down” (2014, 10–13). She sur-
vives in another life, but her transition is in keeping with joyful natural
synthesis.
In addition, as a creature, a hybrid mermaid, half fish, half woman, Ophelia is
that middle ground that critical animal studies have shown us (see, for example,
Agamben 2004, Fudge 2006, Adams and Donovan 1995, Wolfe 2003). She is, as
Jacques Derrida says, “the animal that therefore I am” (2008), and displays the
deconstruction of essentialist categories of human and animal that this statement
implies. In essays below, both Calley Hornbuckle and Nicole Anae pursue this
evocative link between women and nonhuman animals (Hornbuckle, Anae). As
a living woman, Ophelia is well associated with plant and animal, and in her suf-
fering becomes a repository of male antagonism toward nature, em“bodied” in
the women of the patriarchy. In her death, she transcends culture’s political,
vengeful, and ultimately petty concerns. She is now an icon of the connected
oppression of the female and the environment, not simply the union of women
and madness.
Beyond her association with fire, air, and water, perhaps most striking is
Ophelia’s alliance with earth. As Carol Chillington Rutter argues, Ophelia’s
passing is not the end of her role in the play. In Enter the Body, Rutter takes us
through how the graveyard scene becomes the definitive interpretive forecast of
the devastation at the end (2001, 27–56). The long, strange scene beginning with
the gravediggers and ending with Ophelia’s non-­burial brings about the reso-
lution of Hamlet’s revenge better than any human plotting on the part of Hamlet
or Claudius can. This scene further articulates the union of life and death much
more than the wandering ghost in the beginning. Here the harmless woman
becomes part of the earth, but not until human tampering points up the artificial
manipulation of death, with a vied-­for grave, a piece of land possessed by men.
Ophelia is no longer washed away by the uncontrollable water where she seemed
to belong. The free-­flowing water now gives way to the disputed, invaded, and
penetrated earth of a graveyard, a human invasion quite literally into the natural
landscape.
The scene opens with questioning a corpse’s right to a Christian sacrament:
“Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she wilfully seeks her own salva-
tion?” (5.1.1–2). Thus begins a conversation, witty, parodically legal, between
the Gravedigger and the Second Man. The amusing banter ends with the
Gravedigger saying that those in his profession “build stronger than a mason, a
shipwright or a carpenter” as the Second Man puts it (5.1.46–47), because his
“houses” “lasts till doomsday” (5.1.55). The Gravedigger’s “house” or grave
may last forever, but the occupants will change, making apparent how humans
20   L. Kordecki
believe they own the earth, but even their bodies are simply one in a number
who inhabit the plot. Ophelia is never clearly buried in this scene, but forgotten
at the end with the scuffle between Laertes and Hamlet. This concern about the
religious definition of Ophelia’s passing or the decorum of Polonius’ funeral all
becomes moot in the play’s inquiry of the meaning of natural, not social, perish-
ing, and the incomplete burial reflects this forcefully.
The Gravedigger then sings a short song that, as Jenkins notes, picks up on
“motifs from Ophelia’s songs,” in the previous act (1994, 548). He sings of the
sweetness of young love, and how age “shipped me into the land” of the grave
(5.1.69), again uniting sex and death and reminding the audience of Ophelia’s
warnings. After Hamlet and Horatio discuss the Gravedigger’s callous unearth-
ing of skulls, the Gravedigger finishes his melody with reference to “shrouding
sheet” and “pit of clay” (15.1.89–90).
Hamlet’s musings on the dead tenants of the grave which are now being
usurped for Ophelia makes sense in this long and decisive scene about death. He
turns to the Gravedigger to ask whose grave this is, and the Gravedigger verbally
plays with and bests Hamlet with his drollness. He first replies that the grave is
his, and sings his verse line, “O, a pit of clay for to be made,” which is followed
by Hamlet’s punning on the word “lie,” one of Shakespeare’s favorite meaning-
ful homonyms. The clever repartee is all about who lies in the grave, and it
seems that the Gravedigger is the first possibility, and a dead woman is to be the
next occupant, but the lines apply to us all. Hamlet, ignorant of Ophelia’s death,
philosophically moves on to his brooding contemplation about a body rotting in
the earth. But he and we are thinking about our own deaths, and this scene
achieves great potency with Hamlet’s musing on the skull of Yorick, Ophelia’s
precursor in that bit of earth. Ophelia becomes the new dead jester, for as Rutter
tells us, “the mad virgin and the mad-­cap jester … share a grave” (2001, 40). But
as we see, Ophelia, like Yorick, is not to rest comfortably. In most productions,
Laertes leaps into her grave and embraces her, creating the image of Ophelia not
quite dead, not laid “to rest.”
Before Laertes dramatically attempts to circumvent Ophelia’s death by raising
her up, he protests to the Priest who excuses the aborted ceremony because of
her “doubtful” (possibly suicidal) death (5.1.216). Many have wondered about
this seeming digression from the revenge plot. Perhaps more effective would be
to ask why does a funeral, a cultural enactment of the ultimate natural event,
death, matter so much to Hamlet’s story? Why is there this attention to the nature
(suicide or accident?) of Ophelia’s death? And why does the play obsess about
the maimed rites of funerals, that of both Polonius and then Ophelia?
We begin to see that at her death Ophelia becomes the fauna and flora of the
world in an act that blurs the line between accident and suicide. As nature itself,
Ophelia’s end is neither self-­imposed nor inadvertent. She is simply absorbed
back into the nonhuman. The theological dispute in the graveyard scene, lam-
pooned in the gravediggers’ conversation, and then brought to a head with
Laertes and the Priest demonstrates the significance of the loss of Ophelia to all
the remaining people, people who have rejected or abandoned her in one way or
 Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism   21
another. No rites, maimed or otherwise, impede the finality of death. These
social and religious concerns are useless here, and are offered as yet one more
cultural battle over nothing.
Laertes tells the priest to “Lay her I’th’ earth,/And from her fair and unpol-
luted flesh/May violets spring” (5.1.227–229), as Ophelia becomes part of the
earth and can produce the violets (faithfulness) that she said all “withered” when
her father died in her last scene. She delivered blossoms in the last act and now
is planted herself, the natural end for all. Hamlet objects to Laertes’ grief, and
probably out of his own sense of rue, Ophelia’s body is competed over in death
as it was in life. Most productions have Hamlet and Laertes fight each other in
her grave, over her body, perhaps crushing her bones. They are protesting their
love for, despite their negligence of, her.
Gertrude may indeed be the only one who realizes the essential absence of
Ophelia, vessel of life and fecundity. The queen hints at the possibility of a
future generation in that she returns the flowers given to her by Ophelia in the
last act as Gertrude strews them on the dead woman’s grave. She wanted them
for her “bride-­bed” for her marriage to Hamlet (5.1.234–235). Her floral atten-
tion to Ophelia, like her protective move toward her son when Hamlet lashes
out at Laertes’ grief, shows a more concerned woman than she was before wit-
nessing Ophelia’s madness. She thinks of her son’s danger and exhorts Laertes
“For the love of God, forbear him” (5.1.262). Later, she compares Hamlet in
his madness to the “female dove/When that her golden couplets are disclosed,/
His silence will sit drooping” (5.1.275–277). In other words, when Hamlet’s
“fit” runs out, he will be contemplative like the mother dove after hatching her
young.
And indeed, until the end of the play, Hamlet does quiet down and all
thoughts of madness, simulated or genuine, are discarded. Perhaps not a mother
dove, he still will emerge at the end of the play closer to the “rose of the state”
that Ophelia knew. Recuperative nature guides him after he admits his love for
Ophelia. He leaves the graveyard with his rather mild and enigmatic “The cat
will mew and dog will have his day” (5.1.281), another linking to the nonhuman
world. Shakespeare’s natural imagery again reveals what’s really at stake when
Hamlet tells Horatio that he must proceed on with the sword-­play with Laertes,
after he first apologizes to him. Hamlet, pensive to the extreme, counters Hora-
tio’s caution and says

There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be, ’tis not to come.
If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The
readiness is all.
(5.2.197–200)

This new Hamlet, who anticipates his own fatality in the “fall of a sparrow,” has
rejoined his natural self. He recognizes his mortality in the graveyard and even
in Ophelia’s grave. He feels the camaraderie in a bird’s passing, and is more like
his beloved in his figurative correlation with plant and animal. And yet it is all
22   L. Kordecki
too late, too late for the fallen Ophelia, and even for Hamlet himself. The design
against his life proceeds apace.
It is perhaps fanciful to imagine Ophelia as only natural powers, personifying
the life outside the human sphere for Hamlet. The role of the mortal woman,
however, is so highly “backgrounded” that one seeks to piece together the flow
of the love story action with the cramped corruption of the court and the oppres-
sive claustrophobia of family betrayals. Ophelia floats through the play as icon
as well as victim. She exerts profound psychic poignancy in her mad scenes,
with encoded lessons for all. Her end allegorically represents the death of the
open world that becomes shut out with revenge violence. She becomes the incar-
nation, first of fiery love, then the air’s plaintive song, then watery symbiosis,
and finally the earth itself. Hamlet means many things, but our critical progress
makes us entertain another, quite fertile prospect. Ophelia’s identity is invariably
yoked verbally and pictorially with flora; in her character, the woman matures
into both comforting blossoms and strangling weeds. The composite mermaid,
dressed in flower and shrub, traditional sign language for our necessary entan-
glement with the environment, intrudes on this most personal and metaphysical
drama of the patriarchy, demonstrating the ominous effects when men reject or
even neglect communion with women and nature.

References
Adams, Carol J. and Josephine Donovan, eds. 1995. Animals and Women: Feminist
Theoretical Explorations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The Open: Man and Animal. Translated by Kevin Attell. Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2008. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Edited by Marie-­Louise Mallet.
Translated by David Wills. New York: Fordham University Press.
Evans, G., J.J. Blakemore, M. Tobin, Herschel Baker, Anne Barton, Frank Kermode,
Harry Levin, Hallett Smith, and Marie Edel, eds. 1977. The Riverside Shakespeare.
2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Fudge, Erica. 2006. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early
Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Jenkins, Harold, ed. 1994. Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Routledge.
Laroche, Rebecca. 2011. “Ophelia’s Plants the Death of Violets.” In Ecocritical Shake-
speare, edited by Lynne Bruckner and Dan Brayton, 211–221. Farnham, Surrey:
Ashgate.
Lesser, Zachary. 2015. Hamlet after Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lummis, Suzanne. 2014. “How I Didn’t Get Myself to a Nunnery.” New Yorker, Novem-
ber 3.
Lyons, Bridget Gellert. 1977. “The Iconography of Ophelia.” ELH, 44(1): 60–74.
Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge.
Roberts, Jeanne Addison. 1991. The Shakespearean Wild: Geography, Genus, and
Gender. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Rutter, Carol Chillington. 2001. Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shake-
speare’s Stage. London: Routledge.
 Ophelia’s death and ecofeminism   23
Shakespeare, William. 2014. Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare. Edited by Ann Thompson
and Neil Taylor. London: Bloomsbury.
Showalter, Elaine. 1985. “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibil-
ities of Feminist Criticism.” In Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, edited by
Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman, 77–94. New York: Methuen.
Spurgeon, Carolyn. 1966. Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1930; rpt. 1966.
Wolfe, Cary, ed. 2003. Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minneapolis Press.
2 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s
ecological sensibility
Calley A. Hornbuckle

One of the first Romantic period writers to foster ecological intelligence, Anna
Letitia Barbauld (1743–1825) puts forth a vision of community predicated on
the fellowship of all living things.1 She does so, in part, by advocating a kind of
sensibility that breaks down Enlightenment dualisms which privilege the mind
over the body, reason over feeling, and humans and culture over nature. Bar-
bauld’s writings suggest an ecological sensibility that depicts human selves and
nonhuman selves co-­existing within an interconnected whole, with each having
intrinsic value in its own right. Val Plumwood, along with several other ecofem-
inists, such as Carolyn Merchant and Karen Warren, argues that monological
rationalism and hegemonic dualism operate hand-­in-hand to endorse privileged
groups and subordinate others. Such ways of thinking constitute a “failure to
situate the human in ecologically embodied and socially embedded ways”
(Plumwood 2002, 27). Barbauld anticipates the ecofeminists’ articulation of this
failure in the implicit critiques of Enlightenment reason that run throughout her
prose and poetry. In particular, Barbauld’s allegorical essay “The Hill of
Science” (1773) counters the idea of knowledge predicated on dualism by fea-
turing a dichotomous rationale based on the principle of egalitarianism. Like-
wise, her poems “The Mouse’s Petition” (1773) and “The Caterpillar” (1816)
refine the concept of Enlightenment sympathy by synthesizing rational, emo-
tional, and bodily intelligence in terms of imaginative identification with the
natural world. By exploring human and nonhuman subjectivities, Barbauld por-
trays a community of biospheric equality in which all living organisms are
intrinsically valued. In effect, her vision of an egalitarian community, com-
prising human and natural things, emanates a social awareness embodied by
ethical and ecological engagement. By reorienting Enlightenment hierarchies
and concentrating on the imaginative and feeling powers of individuals,
Barbauld features an ecological sensibility that endorses more holistic, inter-
related, and virtuous modes of existence.

Community of virtue
“The Hill of Science: A Vision” situates Barbauld’s notion of an interconnected
community and encapsulates the philosophical underpinnings of her Romantic
 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility   25
ecology. In this short essay, Barbauld fictionalizes an anti-­social, monological
quest for knowledge that operates at the exclusion of virtue, a virtue that depends
not on reason or truth in the highest sense but on an ecology of community,
culture, and nature. Framing the allegory through a poetic reverie “naturally
inspired” by an autumnal scene whose “fading graces” “open the mind to
benevolence, and dispose it for contemplation,” Barbauld envisions an alternate
landscape in which the apex of sight is the “temple of Truth” located high atop
the mountain of Science (163–164).2 As she contemplates reaching the summit,
she discovers that its ascent, though much desired, is most unpleasant in com-
parison with the open valley before her. To enter the path, one must master
Memory at the “gate of languages” and learn to decipher a multitude of “jarring
voices and dissonant sounds” (164, 165). If one is lucky enough to make it
through the entangled briars and trappings of the thick, erroneous woods, one
might retreat to the inspirational “fields of Fiction” or lose oneself in the
“artificially shaded” “dark wall of Allegory” (166). She notices that Genius
manages to overcome many hurdles, but “his progress was unequal, and inter-
rupted by a thousand caprices” (166). Leaving behind his companions, Genius is
seduced by Pride. As he expends much energy on “eccentric flights,” she sees
that, even though the Muses hold him dear, “Truth often frowned and turned
aside her face” (167). Other climbers succumb to the throng of Passions, Appet-
ites, and Pleasures—“tyrants,” who delight in leading the masses to the “cells of
Ignorance, or the mansions of Misery” (168). Still others are swept into the “gulf
of Oblivion” by Indolence (169). Watching the many failures in this kind of
ascent, Barbauld still envisions the happiness of those who succeed, but as she
does, the goddess of Virtue tempers her ambition:

“Happier,” said she, “are those whom Virtue conducts to the mansions of
Content!” […] “I am found,” said she, “in the vale, and I illuminate the
mountain. I cheer the cottager at his toil, and inspire the sage at his medita-
tion. I mingle in the crowd of cities, and bless the hermit in his cell. I have a
temple in every heart that owns my influence; and to him that wishes for me
I am already present. Science may raise you to eminence, but I alone can
guide you to felicity!”
(169–170)

In Barbauld’s vision, greatness presupposes a happiness that resides in a world

embedded in human and natural cultures. Conversely, it is the valley that enlight-
ens scientific progress, the apex of human ambition.
Barbauld’s critique of the heights of science, philosophy, and rationalism has
inspired many important socio-­political interpretations, but none of these has
addressed the ecological threads inherent in her reorientation of knowledge.
Considering Barbauld’s acute awareness of religious and political estrangement,
as the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and tutor at Warrington Academy,
Daniel E. White (2006, 78) reads “The Hill of Science” as an allegory of dissent,
which is “ideologically nonconformist, middle-­class, and anti-­establishment.”
26   C.A. Hornbuckle
Commenting on her heedfulness of the scientific ambition of Joseph Priestley,
Barbauld’s mentor and friend, Mary Ellen Bellanca (2003, 54) notes how “ ‘Hill
of Science’ reads like a reminder to Priestley of his own assertion that the claims
of ‘benevolence’ and moral virtue supersede the pursuit of power over nature.”3
Similarly, William McCarthy (2008, 401) sees “The Hill of Science” as
“allegoriz[ing] the perils of the intellectual life.” Deirdre Coleman reads this
fable as a counterpart to Barbauld’s later poem “To S. T. Coleridge,” written in
1797, shortly after meeting him. Like Priestley, whom Barbauld admired and
admonished, Coleridge was the new “incarnation of that immensely gifted but
flawed boy ‘Genius’ ” (Coleman, 1996, 157).4 Lisa Vargo (1998, 61) concurs
with Colemen by illustrating how Coleridge’s passion for metaphysical musings
causes him to “lose touch” with his “commitment to egalitarian principles.” By
contrast, Jane Stabler claims that Barbauld may have had poets such as Young
and Collins in mind. Linking “The Hill of Science” with “Against Inconsistency
in our Expectations,”5 Stabler (2001, 200) highlights Barbauld’s concern for the
business of “genius” that views itself as superior to mankind. Each of these read-
ings concentrates on how Barbauld problematizes elitist ambition that stands too
high above the world and consequently neglects the principles on which it
stands. Indeed, Barbauld discloses the foundations upon which hierarchical
power depends: the many cannot make it to “eminence,” and the path leading to
it is narrowly selective; the genius who makes it to the top often succeeds at the
cost of friends or at the expense of truth (170). Moreover, the illumination of
such glory presupposes a community of virtue whose labors further augment
genius’s acclaim. However, Barbauld chooses to remain in the vale where indus-
try, domesticity, and reflection bring about contentment, and here is where she
shows her initiative.
For Barbauld, science and the pursuit of truth were important Enlightenment
categories, but their abstract reasoning and systematic practice tended to invali-
date particulars of the quotidian world. Barbauld prioritizes virtue in the realm
of the common, which values individual interest. Her own interests were deeply
invested in the prospects of equality and sociability for all beings: “instead of
proud summits and abrupt precipices,” for Barbauld, the “gentler undulations of
hill and vale, with eminences of gradual ascent,” founded upon philanthropy,
“work to smooth and soften the too great inequities of life” (2002, 355–56). In
contrast to Wordsworth, who gazes down over the banks of the Wye and hears
the “still, sad music of humanity,” Barbauld turns her gaze to the possibility of a
felicitous, egalitarian landscape infused with the “benign radiance” of virtue
(Wordsworth 1991, line 92; “Hill,” 169). As she retires in “silence and medita-
tion” of this benevolent valley, Barbauld foregrounds an ecological sensibility
that fosters an appreciation for all living things and prioritizes their value within
a social, human, ecological community (170).
“The Hill of Science” is not a “green” piece in the sense that it elicits an
environmental ethics advocating the preservation of the natural world. This kind
of ecological ethics appears more explicitly in “The Mouse’s Petition” and “The
Caterpillar,” as well as several other works, such as Hymns in Prose for Children
 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility   27
(1781), Evenings at Home (1793), and some of her letters. Nonetheless, “The
Hill of Science” epitomizes Barbauld’s vantage point with regard to what
Wordsworth would later identify as the interfusion of human and nonhuman
worlds. Each entity has a natural order and is integrally related in terms of sur-
vival, but immoderate challenging, transgressing, or exploiting of that order dis-
rupts the balance. The autumn scene, in “The Hill of Science,” reflects human
nature. As Barbauld reveals, the quest after truth is natural, but when ambition is
stationed too high or when one loses connection with one’s fellow beings in that
quest, negative consequences prevail. Even Truth looks askance as Genius
forgets his humanity and relishes diverting glories. Inspired by a real natural
setting, Barbauld’s reverie embodies a model for a harmonious, prosperous com-
munity. In her view, the natural world, itself, contains no artificial inequalities.
Humankind imposes artificial hierarchies, whereas nature is egalitarian and oper-
ates on the principle of benevolence, which is spiritually bestowed. And for
Barbauld, the material world is part of an assimilative whole, or God. Body,
mind, nature, and culture are integrally related, with each retaining its individual
integrity within an immanent holism.
In “The Hill of Science,” Barbauld allegorizes the hierarchical problem of
Enlightenment masculine reason and mastery over nature, and, in this manner,
her orientation anticipates contemporary ecofeminist perspectives. Barbauld dis-
tinctly encodes the illumination of Virtue as feminine and the pursuit of Genius
as masculine. The effect goes beyond ordinary gender divides because of the
political ramifications of these associations. The valley, itself, signifies the
masses of individuals. It is the body politic. The valley represents common
nature, whereas the Hill represents that which is beyond both human nature and
the natural world. The Hill’s astonishing pinnacle reaches into the obscurity of
spirit, whose perceived access is through the mind, or Enlightenment reason, not
the “temple in every heart” (170). In Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Plum-
wood (1993, 115) notes that, by disassociating reason and the body, the Carte-
sian revolution stripped nature of its “originative power” and made it “devoid of
teleology.” Citing the Phaedo, Plumwood (ibid., 91) points out how Descartes
drew upon a Platonic tradition that prioritized the mind over the body, in which
the body occupied the lower orders of the soul, the body being instrumental to
corporeal existence but “of no help in the attainment of wisdom.” The “effect”
of the Cartesian project, Plumwood (ibid., 115) writes, was

to enforce a strict and total division not only between mental and bodily
activity, but also between mind and nature and between human and animal.
As mind becomes pure thought—pure res cogitans or thinking substance,
mental, incorporeal, without location, bodiless—body as its dualised other
becomes pure matter, pure res extensa, materiality as lack.

Likewise, the new science of Bacon and other thinkers of the time, as Carolyn
Merchant (1982) has demonstrated, shifted the perception of nature from a living
entity, whose entirety transcended the sum of its parts, to a system of material
28   C.A. Hornbuckle
and efficient causes to be broken down, dissected, known, and mastered to maxi-
mize their utility. For Bacon (1857, 86), nature was “to be commanded and
subdued”; bodies were inert mechanisms. Nature ceased to be an end in itself
and, instead, became an instrument of social progress. But, as Barbauld’s alle-
gory suggests, social progress in the name of reason occurs not only at the sacri-
fice of material nature but at the sacrifice of the body politic, as well.
In Barbauld’s orientation, the hill and the valley are an integrated land-
scape. Genius’s narrow-­sighted ambition, however, like Descartes’ emphasis
on the exclusivity of mental consciousness, rules out the wisdom of the valley
as well as the many supportive guides along the way. Genius divorces himself
from organic holism, a holism, which, in effect, could endorse his very path,
not to mention the triumph he would experience once he has reached the
hilltop of Truth. His capriciousness keeps him from being attentive to keener
insights. Yet Barbauld turns her sights upon the summit back to the vale and
female Virtue, which “illuminate the mountain” (170). For Barbauld, there
cannot be one without the other. When Genius takes into account all of the
common nature(s) that supports him, the vale and the hilltop are mutually illu-
minating, as are Virtue and Truth. However, the hierarchical positioning of
Truth, combined with Genius’s transgressive ambition, constitutes an ideo-
logical dilemma of profound political, theological, and ecological implica-
tions. When reason rules the body with little regard for the welfare and
“felicity” of the body itself, not to mention its essentiality, the effects are
counterproductive, especially when reason devalues the very mechanisms and
structures upon which it depends (170).
By the same token, “The Hill of Science” invokes ecofeminist concerns about
the effects of the Baconian ideological shift that changed the perception of nature
as a nurturing maternal essence to what Vandana Shiva (2002, 17) calls “female
nature,” which became subject to patriarchal control and domination. Shiva
(ibid., 14–15) maintains, “Modern reductionist science, like development, turns
out to be a patriarchal project, which has excluded women as experts, and has
simultaneously excluded ecological and holistic ways of knowing which under-
stand and respect nature’s processes and interconnectedness as science.”
Barbauld’s allegory of knowledge, with its subsequent reorientation of truth in
the hearts of common individuals, contrasts and exposes the limitations of the
new ideology that subjugated nature to systematic dictates of a rationalist enter-
prise, which served the ends of science, commerce, politics, and empire. As
Merchant (1982, 164, 165) observes, industrial science created a “new ethic”
concerning the materiality of nature:

Sensitive to the same social transformations that had already begun to

reduce women to psychic and reproductive resources, Bacon developed the
power of language as a political instrument in reducing female nature to a
resource for economic production. Female imagery became a tool in adapt-
ing scientific knowledge and method to a new form of human power over
nature.
 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility   29
This new method positioned masculine rationalism above all other forms of
reason. And as Shiva’s argument also demonstrates, exploitation of feminized
language and imagery served to empower new scientific thought and
methodology. Baconian science established a gendered hierarchy that ironically
obtains dominance through submission. Bacon decrees (1857, 114):

[I]f a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and domination of the
human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called)
is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other
two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and
sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.

Bacon’s (ibid.) reversal accomplished two ends and created a double standard.
First, he acknowledged nature’s power only to undermine “her”; “her” wildness
had to be tamed. Second, he endorsed ambition as an exclusively masculine
endeavor. By obeying ambition, men can command its dictates. By obeying the
very thing they desire to control, men create the laws of nature as they see them.
The men creating these laws, which were based on the principles and values of
Enlightenment reason, were not all men, but the privileged few, who had the
power and authority to reshape the body politic for what they perceived to be the
greater good. Unfortunately, the politics of the greater good tend to adversely
affect the most impoverished and disenfranchised, especially women, the poor,
and other marginalized populations, including the natural world. Barbauld’s
vale, with its socially embedded apex, forecasts the precipices of Baconian and
Cartesian appropriations.
Nonetheless, despite its critical nature, “The Hill of Science” offers an optim-
istic alternative to monological reason and dualistic rationalism. Barbauld’s
vision ends with the meditation on the beauty of locating truth, virtue, and
felicity in the heart (the body) and in a community of common natures that
values and esteems the pursuits of Genius when wisdom is mutually recipro­
cating. By shifting her gaze from the apex of the mental, rational, and spiritual to
the valley of the material, quotidian, human, and even nonhuman sites, Barbauld
not only exposes Enlightenment dualisms that privilege the mind over the body,
reason over feeling, and humans and culture over nature, but she also counters
the problem of dualistic thinking with a dichotomous rationale based on the prin-
ciple of egalitarianism and the fellowship of sense. This fellowship of sense
extends beyond the realm of the human; Barbauld explores this sensibility even
more vividly in “The Mouse’s Petition” and “The Caterpillar.”

Fellowship of sense
In “The Mouse’s Petition” and “The Caterpillar,” Barbauld problematizes the
Enlightenment human/animal dualism to assert that animals have intrinsic value
and that bodily intelligence, combined with human reason, demonstrates how all
living beings are interconnected by virtue of the ability to feel. In “The Mouse’s
30   C.A. Hornbuckle
Petition,” Barbauld presents the first-­person perspective of a caged mouse, who
pleads for his life by enlisting his captor to identify with the terror of the situ-
ation. In “The Caterpillar,” written shortly after two revolutions and several
wars, Barbauld presents the first-­person perspective of the captor, who comes to
sense the caterpillar’s individuality and, consequently, refrains from killing him.
Both poems position animals in the state of victimhood, a state of being which
may equally apply to nonhuman as well as human subjects, but while “The
Mouse’s Petition” concentrates on the despotism of unethical science and social
injustice, “The Caterpillar” focuses on the senseless killing and sacrifice of
victims of war. With each rendering of the various threads of sympathy at work
in these poems, Barbauld emphasizes the importance of fine feeling in recogniz-
ing another’s integrity and difference. By illustrating the symbiotic relationship
between the mind and the body, Barbauld contemplates how individual emotions
and feelings can evolve into an ecological sensibility, which presupposes a
fellowship of sense among all communities of being.
“The Mouse’s Petition” is an anthropomorphic mock-­heroic about ecological
injustice told by a lone rodent victim, vying for his life on the threshold of
death.6 A subject lined up for scientific experimentation, the mouse pleads his
case in the name of kindred sense. By equating animal and human existence, the
mouse places the feelings of both on common ground. This leveling tactic allows
Barbauld to explore the equal importance of the mind and the body as well as
the human and the natural. Calling upon the emotional core of his captor, the
mouse beseeches: “never let thine heart be shut/Against the wretch’s cries”
(3–4).7 No matter what the offense may be, the mouse implies that one’s suffer-
ing is cause for acknowledgement and pity. This mouse does not relent from his
plea. In fact, through a series of reversals, the mouse admonishes the captor with
impending guilt, while he keenly positions himself as the embodiment of incar-
cerated “liberty,” for it is the sigh of “liberty” that the mouse wishes his captor
to “hear” (2, 1). As he sits alone, “forlorn and sad,” awaiting his “impending
fate,” the mouse reminds his captor that he was once “free-­born” (5, 8, 12). His
confinement is unjust, but rather than demanding his liberty with an authoritarian
voice, the mouse, instead, constructs an argument laced with emotional pathos in
an attempt to regain his freedom:

Oh! do not stain with guiltless blood

Thy hospitable hearth;
Nor triumph that thy wiles betray’d
A prize so little worth.
(13–16)

By appealing to his captor’s need to obey the laws of hospitality, the mouse
builds a case for the irrationality of his imprisonment. In doing so, the mouse not
only underwrites his own innocence, but he also anticipates the culpability of his
captor. These lines forecast a premeditated murder and subsequent violation of
nature. If the captor’s “hearth” were truly “hospitable,” the mouse would not be
 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility   31
in any danger (14). Through modest decree, the mouse calls attention to his
insignificance, and, in so doing, ironically underscores the necessity of his exist-
ence. Though a creature of small measure and of perceived lower “worth” by
most humans, the mouse reminds his captor that he does no more than collect
scraps for his “frugal meals” (18). In fact, the mouse supplies an excellent
service by removing the “scatter’d gleanings of a feast,” thus repaying the host’s
hospitality (17). Furthermore, the mouse attempts to appeal to the common
humanity of his warden by reminding him that they share a divinely bestowed
“chearful light” and “vital air” (21). As in Barbauld’s meditative “An Address to
the Deity” (1773), in which such blessings serve to remind one that all forms of
life are equal in the eyes of a spiritual creator, “The Mouse’s Petition” demon-
strates how natural elements that sustain existence cannot be claimed or pos-
sessed; they belong to all creatures: “Let nature’s commoners enjoy/The
common gifts of heaven” (23–24). Here, Barbauld extends the argument to all
beings partaking in existence. Regardless of humans’ underdeveloped know-
ledge and appreciation for the cognitive capacity of animals, the fact that they
exist—not to mention the many that feel and experience emotion—is enough to
attest to animals’ value and significance in the cosmos.8
“The Mouse’s Petition” underscores ecofeminist critiques that parse the
monological threads of patriarchal systems that exploit both human and non-
human others. Plumwood (1999, 211) notes how the oppression of Western
dualisms is an interwoven web of domination; it naturalizes male/female,
human/nature, mind/body hierarchies, and it supports the “inferiorization of
many other groups of humans seen as more closely identified with nature.” As
Julia Tofantšuk also points out in this volume, marginalized others—women,
indigenous peoples, and I would add animals—“are not recognized as ecolo-
gical agents” having agency in their own right. Warren (2000, 47) has demon-
strated how human and nonhuman subjectivities are inferiorized and
objectified by “the logic of domination,” or “logical structure of argumenta-
tion that ‘justifies’ domination and subordination.” “The Mouse’s Petition”
attempts to call out naturalized subjugation and expose the tyranny of its
rationale. As Kathryn J. Ready (2004) has observed, “The Mouse’s Petition”
elicits a humanitarian cause that censures not only the human/animal hierarchy
but also many other systematized, hegemonic structures involving poverty,
disenfranchisement, property, slavery, and political oppression. Douglas A.
Vakoch (2012, 3) has noted how ecofeminism “articulate[s] liberatory ideals
that can be actualized in the real world.” For Barbauld, “nature’s commoners”
extend to all groups oppressed by unfair, unjust, or inequitable treatment—for
her own time and ours today (23).
Advocating compassion for common humanity and common sense, Barbauld
concentrates on bodily sensation by beginning with pain, one of the most feared
emotions, because it strips away one’s feelings of control. Through her mouse-­
speaker, she reminds his captor that an intelligent, sentient being would think
twice about killing a harmless, innocent creature, and this claim reaches deep
into Enlightenment rationality as well as into speculative philosophy:
32   C.A. Hornbuckle
The well taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.

If mind, as ancient sages taught,

A never dying flame,
Still shifts thro’ matter’s varying forms,
In every form the same,

Beware, lest in the worm you crush

A brother’s soul you find;
And tremble lest thy luckless hand
Dislodge a kindred mind.
(25–36)

These stanzas deepen the implications of an impending, unnecessary, and exploita-

tive death in the name of scientific research, and by extension all forms of abusive
power. The mouse suggests that all matter is part of an interconnected whole;
destruction of such matter is fraternal desecration. Julia Saunders (2002, 513) has
argued that “The Mouse’s Petition” calls upon Priestley’s “scientific fraternity” to
consider the wider ethical ramifications of the speculation that all matter is inter-
related and shared. Drawing upon Pythagoras’s theory of soul transmutation, Leib-
niz’s theory that substance is an embodiment of thought, Newton’s theory of an
invisible ether connecting all things, and Priestley’s theory of unified matter and
spirit, Saunders (ibid.) observes that the “mouse binds scientist and subject into one
shared life based in the material rather than the numinous world.” The mouse’s
solicitation of the philosopher’s democratic, “equal eye” certainly lends itself to a
shared bodily whole, but I would add that the mouse’s rendering of the philo-
sopher, who “feels for all that lives,” also extends beyond materiality to a combina-
tion of emotionality, rationality, and spirituality that involves both the sympathetic
imagination and the prospects of entertaining a human-­nature intersubjectivity,
despite the fact that humans cannot know animal thoughts but can only anthropo-
morphize them (27, 28). Through her mouse-­speaker, Barbauld speculates on the
shifting of matter, or soul, through “varying forms” (31). Yet, in all these different
forms, the essential soul remains “the same” (32). As McCarthy (2008, 78) has also
observed, “The Mouse’s Petition” denies the Baconian sanction that a mouse is an
excusable “sacrifice to ‘man’s’ ambition to command nature”; rather, the mouse is
a “conscious being, a sharer, with Priestley, in nature’s goods.” While Barbauld
makes clear that desecration of life—of any form—may have ramifications beyond
human speculations and understanding, she, nonetheless, advocates the common-
ality of suffering and of intersubjective experience.
Which “ancient sages” Barbauld had in mind when composing “The Mouse’s
Petition” is unclear (29). Nevertheless, Saunders points out that Barbauld seems to
invoke an entire fraternity of philosophical thinking. As Barbauld calls upon the
 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility   33
bodily intelligence and emotional pathos that reflect the softer affections of the cap-
tor’s “heart,” she combines the self-­projective mechanism of sympathy found in
Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and its self-­preservation mech-
anism found in Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the
Sublime and the Beautiful (1756) (line 3). She also adds to their theories of projec-
tion and substitution the notion that sympathy implies more than one individual’s
subjective state. Smith (2000, 3–4) argues that when we see another in pain, we
cannot know what that person is truly feeling; we can only project our own imagin-
ings of what we would feel if we were in the same predicament: “our senses will
never inform us of what he suffers”; rather, “it is by the imagination only that we
can form any conception of what are his sensations.” Sympathy, for Smith (ibid.,
22, 5), is but a momentary shift in perspective that triggers pity or compassion, in
other words, our fine feeling. Similarly, Burke (1909, 40) argues that sympathy
works “as a sort of substitution,” but his claims derive from his analysis of aes-
thetic pain or pleasure. In art, there is no real threat; there is only the representation,
as such. For Burke (ibid., 41), sympathy works in one of two ways: either our pas-
sions register the fear or terror in a situation, and we turn instinctually to self-­
preservation, a manifestation of the sublime; or, we register a melancholic kind of
distress, and we turn to a “species of pleasure” from the artistic representation, a
manifestation of the beautiful. In “The Mouse’s Petition,” Barbauld consistently
elicits humans’ emotional and rational capacities to identify imaginatively with the
mouse’s distress, in other words, to project, in Smith’s (2000, 3) terms, “by con-
ceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.” She also integrates a
Burkean brand of sympathy, first, by maintaining the theme of self-­preservation
throughout each stanza and, then, by turning the tables, in the final stanza, to reveal
the oppressor’s own sense of self, if he were to find himself in a similar circum-
stance. At the same time, Barbauld’s solicitation of “compassion” in the seventh
stanza is an attempt to refine Smith’s conception of sympathy, by drawing aware-
ness out of the self rather than back into the self (26). By invoking the philosophic
“equal eye,” she renders a kind of intersubjectivity that does not simply imagine a
larger self-­awareness; it also “feels for all that lives” (27, 28). In other words, that
intersubjectivity senses the otherness of another, thus shifting the locus of sym-
pathy from within the self to outside of the self.
Barbauld’s mouse-­speaker first appeals to the emotions of his captor as well
as his memory: “If e’er thy breast with freedom glow’d,” the mouse decrees,
“Let not thy strong oppressive force” imprison a “free-­born” mouse and take
away his liberty, not to mention his life (9, 11, 12). By summoning his captor to
recall a time when he may have experienced freedom—emotionally and phys­
ically—the mouse invokes his captor’s bodily knowledge, a knowledge that the
captor may never have rationalized. In Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and
the Feeling Brain, Antonio Damasio differentiates between emotions and feel-
ings. Emotions, he argues, are deeply rooted in the body; they precede feeling
and often manifest through actions without our conscious design or awareness.
Feelings, by contrast, emerge from complex biological, chemical, and physio-
logical interplays and manifest to us as mental content. Put more simply,
34   C.A. Hornbuckle
Damasio (2003, 28) explains, “Emotions play out in the theater of the body.
Feelings play out in the theater of the mind.” Through analogy, the mouse gradu-
ally galvanizes the philosopher’s emotional pathos and brings it into conscious
feeling, a sensibility that relies on mind–body symbiosis. The speaker calls upon
more than the captor’s emotional capacity; he also invokes the captor’s environ-
mental awareness—that another’s subjectivity exists and has equal significance.
Mark Johnson and George Lakoff (2002, 248) point out that “[e]xperience is
always an interactive process, involving neural and physiological constraints
from the organism as well as characteristics affordances from the environment
and other people for creatures with our types of bodies and brains.” In “The
Mouse’s Petition,” Barbauld explores an “interactive” experience similar to what
Johnson and Lakoff elucidate (ibid.). Barbauld looks at that recursive process
within the organism as well as among other organisms.
This process manifests itself through the sympathetic imagination, and in both
“The Mouse’s Petition” and “The Caterpillar,” Barbauld does not simply incorp-
orate mechanisms of sympathy but also analyzes and refines them in order to
render them anew. The mouse-­speaker, valuing “all ” of shared life, calls upon
the “pity” within his captor’s “breast” and the preservation of “[t]hat little all ”
(38, 39, 40). The mouse beckons his captor to place himself in the same situ-
ation, thus invoking the captor’s own instinctual self-­preservation:

So, when destruction lurks unseen,

Which men, like mice, may share,
May some kind angel clear thy path,
And break the hidden snare.
(44–48)

The mouse implores the captor to consider the terror of the immediate threat by
imagining himself in a similar situation. Men, too, are just as susceptible as
animals to unjust persecution. Contrary to Descartes’ claims that reduce animals
to sheer mechanism, Barbauld’s central claim in “The Mouse’s Petition” is that
there is no difference in the capacity to suffer. In this instance, the mouse’s argu-
ment suggests strands of both Burke’s and Smith’s concepts of sympathy, and,
at the same time, Barbauld refines those concepts to bring about an expanded
awareness of self and others. While this expanded awareness of a relational self
is somewhat latent in “The Mouse’s Petition,” it is much more apparent in “The
Caterpillar,” and has major ethical ramifications for understanding Barbauld’s
ecological sensibility.
Like “The Mouse’s Petition,” “The Caterpillar” advocates the dignity of all
living forms, regardless of size or scope, but unlike the mouse-­speaker, who
initiates an intersubjectivity between victim and oppressor to be imagined and
felt, the human speaker in the second poem actually imagines and feels the
other’s individual integrity. In “The Caterpillar,” the captor speaks directly to
the victim, and upon the recognition of the other’s (caterpillar’s) essence, she
refrains from killing him. In this poem, Barbauld unabashedly positions her
 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility   35
speaker as the “sworn” enemy to the insect “race” (14). However, instead of
killing the caterpillar, as she is wont to do, the speaker decides otherwise, once
she has “scanned [his] form with curious eye” and “[f]elt the light pressure of
[his] hairy feet (3, 8). Reflecting upon her past extermination efforts—having
“crushed whole families” underfoot and poured “vials of destruction” to get rid
of these pests, the speaker suddenly finds herself jolted out of her comfort zone
by the presence of a “single wretch”: “—This, I’ve done,/Nor felt the touch of
pity; but when thou,—” (20, 22, 24, 23). As designated by the dashes, which
elicit the speaker’s shifting consciousness, this “single wretch” forces her to
reexamine her intentionality and feel for the creature (24). Conversely, the cater-
pillar gracefully overwhelms the human subject by presenting its “individual
existence” (26). Having only looked upon caterpillars in the abstract, as pests to
be destroyed, the speaker comes to appreciate the lone being, “[a] single sufferer
from the field escaped” (36). Taken out of the “field,” literally from his natural
habitat, but also from the discursive bonds of anthropocentrism, the caterpillar
assumes a subjectivity that now puts him eye to eye with the speaker and elicits
from her an expanded ecological awareness of the “fellowship of sense” among
all living things (36, 27).
As in “The Mouse’s Petition,” Barbauld crafts the speaker’s rhetoric in the
form of direct address; however, whereas the mouse-­speaker primarily concen-
trates on the captor’s sense of self, if similarly oppressed, the speaker in “The
Caterpillar” focuses her attention outside of herself, on the animal subject, and
allows the caterpillar’s beauty to captivate her. Mesmerized by her hostage’s
“silver line[d]” back with “azure” and “orange” dividing his “velvet sides,” the
speaker begins to see the minute, intricate details of the caterpillar’s design (4, 5,
6). Delighting in what Francis Hutcheson (2004, 67) calls the “internal sense,”
or the “passive Power of receiving Ideas of Beauty,” the speaker takes in the
creature’s external beauty. This aesthetic appreciation presupposes, in Hutch-
eson’s (2002, 17) view, a “moral sense” that nourishes a kind of benevolence for
one’s fellow being—a benevolence that is entirely independent of self-­interest
and sympathy that is equally disinterested. For Hutcheson (2004, 149), such
benevolence is universal, a reflection of a divine nature, which “extends to all
Bodys in the Universe.” Sensing more from her encounter than what meets her
eye, the speaker lingers in her aesthetic experience, curiously observing and
feeling the “inquiring” creature “curled” around her “finger,” “with stretched out
neck,” seeming to “ask protection” (12, 9, 10, 13). Without words, the caterpillar
indirectly calls for mercy and wins over the tyrannous hand, simply through his
bodily movement. These sensations, working in conjunction with the receptive,
sensibility of the poetic speaker, translate into a kind of intelligence that tran-
scends the interiority involved in Smith’s ideas about self-­projection. The inter-
action is real. As the caterpillar allows her to feel his “individual existence,” the
speaker empirically experiences the common substance of life, while she intuits
a “fellowship of sense” that extends beyond the actual moment (26, 27). Such
experience takes the speaker out of herself, into an expanded awareness that
makes possible the recognition of the caterpillar’s subjectivity.
36   C.A. Hornbuckle
The speaker’s sympathetic identification also invokes the complexity of fine
feeling, in which impressions received through bodily sense and processed emo-
tionally gradually manifest into rationalized feelings of compassion, apprecia-
tion, and benevolence. As James Engell (1981, 143–144) observes,

sympathy also becomes that special power of the imagination that permits
the self to escape its own confines, to identify with other people, to perceive
things in a new way, and to develop an aesthetic appreciation of the world
that coalesces both the subjective self and the objective other.

Engell’s general assessment of sympathy may be applied to Barbauld’s notions;

however, his claim that sympathy “coalesces” both subject and object does not.
That perspective speaks to a kind of idealization apparent in some Romantic-­era
texts, in which the poetic speakers yearn for a fusion of subject and object, as
seen in Shelley’s “The Skylark” (1820) or Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”
(1819). In “The Caterpillar,” Barbauld’s speaker does not imagine a merging of
her subjectivity and the insect’s; rather, she acknowledges that the caterpillar’s
capacity to feel is distinct and separate from her own. The mutual recognition
involves not coalescence but, rather, an appreciation for the caterpillar’s alterity,
especially one whose will to exist is very real.
Through the “sympathy spontaneous” of the speaker’s fine feeling, Barbauld, in
effect, reconstitutes the caterpillar—who once was perceived as an object of perdi-
tion—into a subject vying for rights and equal footing (41). This endeavor brings
her down to a more just sphere of morality as the caterpillar is brought up to the
sphere of human morality. And, as Josephine Donovan has pointed out, when we
“reconstitute the ‘objects’ of discourse as ‘subjects,’ ” we create a paradigmatic
shift in perspective. Drawing upon Martin Buber’s I-­Thou dialogical theory,
involving an appreciation of the “ ‘the immense otherness of the Other,’ ” Josephine
Donovan (1998, 74, 89) maintains that when we move past the “not I” of a literary
text and “restore the absent referent as a ‘thou,’ ” the text itself serves as “a vehicle
for the revelation of being, not a mechanism for its domination.” Within this dialo-
gism, other beings “have a reality of their own to communicate, which must be
respected and attended to” (ibid., 85). At the end of Barbauld’s meditative lyric, the
speaker reveals, “He is grown human, and capricious Pity,/ Which would not stir
for thousands, melts for one” (39–40). This “single sufferer,” through the sheer
intricacy, delight, and intrigue of his individuality, overpowers his captor and
makes a case for his own significance (36). The caterpillar’s individuality prevails,
and his meaningful existence shines through to make a compelling case for con-
sidering the importance of ecological intelligence and understanding living realities
separate from our own. By particularizing the experience of the caterpillar,
Barbauld shows how reductionist views of animals—or any kind of victim—in the
abstract fail to acknowledge a presence that is concrete and real. And by honing the
fine feeling of both speaker and caterpillar, Barbauld inspires her readers, too, to
feel in their imaginations the “light pressure of [his] hairy feet” and value the cater-
pillar’s intrinsic individuality (8).
 Anna Letitia Barbauld’s ecological sensibility   37
The final lines of the poem give Barbauld’s refinement of sympathy an ecolo-
gical dimension that is less reminiscent of an innate, subconscious form of sym-
pathy, found in Shaftesbury’s account, and more rooted in a rationalized concept
of sympathy, which reflects a great deal about the capacity for dominant subjects
to improve their sensibilities. In the final lines of “The Caterpillar,” the speaker
writes, “With sympathy spontaneous:—’Tis not Virtue,/Yet ’tis the weakness of
virtuous mind” (41–42). Like many of Barbauld’s riddle poems, she adds
another prospect to her speaker’s fine feeling for the caterpillar by suggesting
that this act of sympathy is really an act of weakness rather than an act of
genuine virtue. By problematizing the question of sympathy and one’s innate
feelings for one’s fellow sufferers, Barbauld suggests that the speaker’s act of
freeing the caterpillar is not so innate but, rather, a rationalized feeling response
to the question of another’s suffering. Virtue is learned and cultivated in the
hearts of men and women, whereas “Virtue,” like “Truth” in “The Hill of
Science,” is a Platonic form, an ideal that is unattainable and pursued by only a
qualified elite, who tend to overlook “nature’s commoners,” and the very aware-
ness, as such, may inspire shifts in consciousness (“The Mouse’s Petition,” 23).
The sympathetic identification at work in this scenario includes the idea that
when one is confronted with one’s power, the implications of exploitation
emerge. Justice remains in the hands of one who is in control, but great respons-
ibility comes with that decisive power. Barbauld emphasizes how precarious that
position can be, especially when it comes to a life so seemingly insignificant as a
caterpillar or a mouse. The implications of that line of reasoning also concern
the lives of human beings not having equal statures as persons, as is the case of
prisoners of war, victims of market slavery, objects of domestic abuse, and
species of nonhuman beings. Such ecological sensibility extends to all beings
and the acknowledgement of their alterior existence.
In effect, “The Mouse’s Petition” and “The Caterpillar” illustrate how refined
sympathetic identification serves as the primary faculty through which one recog-
nizes one’s interconnectivity to all life. For Barbauld, this kind of conscious ration-
ale is deeply seated in the emotions, as they are the wellspring of fine feeling, and
the vehicle through which one cultivates a refined sense of spiritual existence.
Attention to the minute details and individual existence of every creature brings one
to a greater sense of community and contentment. Barbauld’s poetic visions con-
sistently invoke the possibility of an alternative, non-­hierarchical ideology as well
as a sense of community embodied by the principles of egalitarianism, moderation,
national fortitude, and social justice. By rooting her ideals in the symbiosis of
dichotomous realities, Barbauld cultivates an ecological sensibility that foregrounds
our conception of Romantic ecology. Her aesthetic awareness of nature intersects
with culture and fosters a sense of environmental belonging. Through the valuation
and refinement of all matter, Barbauld anticipates a more virtuous community, in
which humankind and natural beings coexist, sharing the elements as equally as
they share a capacity for suffering. Such empathetic consciousness is fundamentally
ecological, ecofeminist, and anticipates the aesthetic appreciation as well as politici-
zation of nature in the Romantic-­era writings that follow in Barbauld’s wake.
38   C.A. Hornbuckle
Notes
1 An earlier version of this discussion appears in Hornbuckle (2008).
2 Anna Letitia Barbauld, The Works of Anna Letitia Barbauld With a Memoir By Lucy
Aikin, 2 Vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1825). Quo-
tations from Barbauld’s prose are from this edition, unless noted otherwise.
3 Bellanca is thinking here of Priestley’s History of the Present State of Electricity
(1769).
4 As Coleman notes, much of the allegorized natural imagery that threatens to lead
Genius and others astray in Barbauld’s fable curiously emerges in “Kubla Khan.”
5 First published in 1773, along with “The Hill of Science.”
6 Originally, written for Joseph Priestley, upon Barbauld finding a mouse caged in his
laboratory, this poem successfully freed the mouse but left a wake of public debate
about Priestley’s ethos and Barbauld’s concern for her friend’s reputation. See
McCarthy and Kraft (2002, 244–245), Ready (2004), and Bellanca (2003).
7 William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft, The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1994). All citations of Barbauld’s poetry come from this
edition, unless otherwise noted.
8 See Marc Bekoff (2007), Frans de Waal (2003), and Jaak Panksepp (1998).

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3 Mary Austin’s proto-­ecofeminist
land ethic in The Ford (1917) and the
Owens Valley water controversy
Emine Geçgil

Ecofeminism aims to establish a community ecology that is sustainable for both

human and nonhuman beings, deconstructing the oppressor/oppressed identities
that are prevalent in patriarchal society. Anticipating this proposition of ecofemi-
nism, Mary Austin, a woman who became everything—a nature writer, a play-
wright, a poet, a short-­story writer, a novelist, as well as a social activist—inspired
many other women of her generation as well as those in the contemporary world,
laying the foundations of ecofeminism. She rejected the nineteenth-­century middle-
­class conventions of True Womanhood and embraced the twentieth-­century New
Womanhood, feminism, and environmentalism, serving as a link between the cen-
turies. She embroiled herself in activism for the Owens Valley water during the
California Water Wars (1902–07), a series of controversies between the city of Los
Angeles and the farmers of the valley about the acquisition of water rights of
Owens Valley. With a view to portraying such an eventful chapter in American
history and disseminating her ecofeminist land ethic, Austin wrote her 1917 novel
The Ford, blending her female identity as an activist with her literary talents. As a
proto-­ecofeminist, she depicts in The Ford how land speculation deprives people
of their most essential need, water.1 Suggesting a harmonious relationship between
rivers and their beneficiaries, she questions ownership to the land––as she criticizes
the patriarchal hegemony over women––and proposes to utilize rivers to make a
living, yet being aware of the possibilities and limits of the landscape. All in all,
with The Ford, she hints at what occurs when this fragile understanding is broken,
and how the abuse of the river leads to the destruction of ecological parameters.
Born in 1868 in Carlinville, Illinois, as Mary Hunter, Mary Austin
(1868–1934) graduated from college in 1888. Her mother, a widowed woman,
decided to move her family to the West, where they established a homestead in
the San Joaquin Valley in California. John P. O’Grady (1993, 123–125) views
Mary Austin as a “reluctant pilgrim,” who moved from a Midwestern town to
the Southwest with her mother and brother against her will. The wild western
wilderness, for her, was nothing like the green landscapes of the East, and defi-
nitely contradicted the virtues of the Cult of True Womanhood—piety, purity,
submissiveness, and domesticity. Austin took the opportunity to design her own
fate, which opposed social norms. In 1891, she married Stafford Wallace Austin,
a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and lived in Inyo and
 Mary Austin’s proto-ecofeminist land ethic   41
Independent Counties. She poured her love and care for the land and its people
into The Land of Little Rain (1903), a collection of short essays that discusses
the Mojave Desert and its importance to indigenous peoples. Evoking an earlier
version of ecofeminist spirituality, she gave life to the desert, viewing it as fem-
inine, seductive, and bountiful, while calling for environmental conservation and
the cultural preservation of the Indian tribes—since they cared most for the land.
Austin and her husband, who was a land registrar for the Reclamation Bureau
between 1905 and 1906, struggled for the waters of Owens Valley. During the
battle, private negotiations with the wealthy local landowners and officials repre-
senting the city of Los Angeles resulted in the diversion of the region’s waters to
Los Angeles at the expense of its ecosystem (Gabrielson 2006, 651). Her activism
during this controversy was to comprise the raw material for her 1917 novel The
Ford. Disappointed by the event, she left Owens Valley, divorced her husband,
institutionalized her mentally-­retarded daughter, and moved to Carmel, California,
where she joined a writers’ community that included Jack London, Ambrose
Bierce, and Bret Hart (Goodman and Dawson 2008, 21). She then lived in New
York, representing the West in literary circles. During this period, Austin particip-
ated in the women’s suffrage by writing on social and political issues, including
The Young Woman Citizen (1918) and “Sex Emancipation through War” (1918).
Austin left New York for New Mexico, where she became more involved in activ-
ism for the rights of indigenous peoples as well as environmental issues. Austin
spent her last years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and died in 1934.
In her words, Austin was a “woman alone” (Wynn 1937, 245). She always con-
demned the social hypocrisy which denied her the right to express her intellectual
and artistic talents in her works, especially in A Woman of Genius (1912), her most
outspokenly feminist novel, which is based on her own life experiences. Austin
was regarded as eccentric by her neighbors in Independence because of her outdoor
explorations (Goodman and Dawson 2008, 51) and her only friends were the indi-
genous people in the desert, cowboys, and Basque sheepherders (11). As Heike
Schaefer (2004, 53) conveys, Austin’s mother told her that her fascination with
nature was unfeminine, and that she should adopt a ladylike appreciation of the
environment so that her male companions would continue to admire her. Likewise,
in her 1932 autobiography, Earth Horizon, Austin (2007, 112) remembers her
mother saying that “You must not quote, especially poetry and Thoreau. An occa-
sional reference to Burroughs2 was permissible, but not Thoreau” since knowledge
of the latter was deemed to be too deep, intellectual, and masculine. As Dudley
Wynn (1937, 245) states, Austin was misunderstood by her own family simply
because she wished to be judged by her intrinsic character and “not by what she
could make some man feel.”
Nancy Newhall, a conservationist writer and friend to Austin, called her “a
strange woman, who had the courage to walk alone” (Wilson 1997, 60). She
wanted to be like Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, who walked away, and
wandered west to follow their wild dreams. However, society was not ready to
understand her meanderings, or her attempt to reflect the female experience in
nature. Discouraged by her mother, neglected by her husband, and overwhelmed
42   E. Geçgil
with the responsibility of a mentally handicapped child (O’Grady 1993, 126),
Austin nevertheless managed to realize her literary ambitions. Whether romanti-
cizing the desert as she did in her nonfiction The Land of Little Rain (1903) or
providing realistic depictions of the land and its people in her short story collec-
tion Lost Borders (1909), or her novels The Flock (1906), which was praised by
Theodore Roosevelt as an exposé on the shepherding industry, and The Ford
(1917), Austin, above all, embraced her identity as a regionalist nature writer.
For Austin, nature was home. There was no distinction between nature and
the self; indoors and outdoors; private home and public environment (Green
2001, 145). Within this regard, as a proto-­ecofeminist, she did not “love” nature
because she was a “natural caregiver.” Rather, she “loved” nature because she
felt more independent exploring the outdoors: it gave her the freedom to escape
biologically determined gender roles. She did not even endeavor to balance her
domestic responsibilities and field work, and completely ignored her household
chores. Her neighbors reported that she was so devoted to writing that the dirty
dishes would pile high (Goodman and Dawson 2008, 19). In fact, Austin can be
seen as a counterfigure to progressive conservationist clubwomen who dedicated
themselves to the conservation of the home, motherhood, and nature (Blend
1988, 14). However, it was not because she did not believe in the importance of
grassroots organizations and collective action. Rather, she rejected their domestic
world, seeking refuge in the desert and identifying herself with the land. Austin
challenged the white, hegemonic male view of the land, which assumed that
water resources, as well as forests and minerals, were renewable and could never
be depleted (Rudnick 1987, 12). She articulated that there are limits to all
resources, reminding readers of the climactic features of the Southwest and how
fragile they are. Since there are limits to natural resources, she believed, there
had to be limits to human consumption and greed. Not only did she voice
people’s concerns about the land and the depletion of resources, but by battling
against social restrictions that inhibited women with talent, she also provided
readers with an early example of écriture feminine.
As also conveyed by Karl Zuelke in this volume (p. 115), women and indi-
genous peoples are attributed the same characteristics as nature in certain ways,
which brings essentialist tropes into play. Austin was opposed to such dualistic
thinking, and dedicated her life to the indigenous peoples of the land, and as
Louis Rudnick (1987, 16) suggests, adopted the role of a medicine woman,
hoping to “transform her fellow Anglo-­Americans’ relationship with the land
and its indigenous peoples.” She had a clear mission to fulfill. Although Austin
rejected many aspects of the Progressive Movement—particularly those denying
women the public sphere and imposing the superiority of the white race over
indigenous peoples—her efforts to improve the lives of the underprivileged indi-
genous peoples in California and New Mexico, and her battle against the muni-
cipal authorities that robbed these peoples of their lands and water, make Austin
a progressive social activist.
The western landscape was definitely important in shaping Austin’s philosophy.
As Teresa S. Neal (2006, 96) claims, women writers in the East were more
 Mary Austin’s proto-ecofeminist land ethic   43
accepted by the patriarchy because they reinforced sentimental domesticity and
municipal housekeeping. Moreover, they asserted themselves as New Women later
than western women. In the West, however, women like Austin suffered less from
social conventions than those in the East because the West was not bound by the
same rules and was far more flexible (70). In her writing, Austin rejected the
concept of domesticity that was imposed by patriarchal white Anglo-­Saxon Protes-
tant middle-­class men. She equated the home with nature, working to protect it
from being abused. As Rudnick (1987, 26) conveys, what she rejected was a “sen-
timental domesticity” that “mythologize[d] the entire natural world.” Throughout
her life, she favored the “Folk.” As Wynn (1937, 245) states,

She wanted to belong, to be one of a race, to have a home, to express herself

and be understood. But she was not home in [an] America which emphas-
ized a repressive morality, worshipped bigness, and divorced its living from
its way of getting a living.

Austin found her home outdoors, among indigenous peoples who “were still
immune to the evils of the dominant American culture.” For them, Austin ima-
gined a “pastoral paradise” of small communities which could support them-
selves, and emphasized the significance of native peoples, whom she believed
cared for the land and respected natural resources (Blend 1988, 17). While
reinterpreting the concept of home, she formulated an environmental ethic that
influenced her Owens Valley battle. In today’s contemporary terms, as Rudnick
suggests, she offered a “bioregionalist thinking” (1987, 26). Namely, she found
local solutions to social and economic problems by rejecting federal intervention
schemes.

The Owens Valley water controversy and The Ford

Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson (2008, 50) argue that throughout the history
of the United States, the West was defined in terms of rainfall and the damming
and diversion of rivers because aridity and a lack of water prevented the devel-
opment of the landscape. While conservationist women—affiliates of the
General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC)—were struggling in the East to
acquire clean water for healthy homes and children, Mary Austin in the West
took up water conservation as a cause to protect the small communities that
depended on water for irrigation purposes. In The Land of Little Rain, Austin
(1988, 7) observes the delicate relationship between the geography and the
inhabitants of the valley, and how the plants, wildlife, and people depended on
water. Obviously, the desert is a place where

not the law, but the land sets the limit: … Since this is a hill country one
expects to find springs, but not to depend upon them; for when found they
are often brackish and unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a
thirsty soil.
44   E. Geçgil
She further states that “The desert floras shame us with their cheerful adaptations
to the seasonal limitations … One hopes the land may breed like qualities in her
human offspring, not tritely to ‘try,’ but to do” (8).
Austin dedicated herself to the water issue after her husband, Wallace Stafford
Austin, became a Land Registrar for the US Land Office in Independence. By the
early twentieth century, Los Angeles had become an expanding metropolitan center,
but its thirst for water had long remained an obstacle to its growth into a major city.
Fred Eaton, the former mayor of Los Angeles, and William Mulholland, who
served as the head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, believed in
realizing “Los Angeles’s Manifest Destiny” (Walton 1992, 59). They thought water
could be diverted from the Owens Valley River to Los Angeles through the con-
struction of a gravity-­led aqueduct. On the other hand, the Unites States Bureau of
Reclamation was planning a federal irrigation district to help the farmers of the
Owens Valley by damming the river and allocating the stored water for agriculture
(Cassuto 2001, 32). After all, as Samuel Hays (1999, 5) conveys, the conservation
movement in the West was originally established to encourage the construction of
reservoirs for agriculture, as federal administrators and political leaders were trying
to find solutions to western economic growth and water development, so this project
was well within its agenda. Owens Valley was a perfect fit for federal intervention
because it had an underutilized river and a growing agricultural economy, both of
which, if managed correctly, would add to the expansion of the West.
As conveyed by David Cassuto (2001, 33), a federal project to create a
national reclamation district in the Owens Valley would obviously ruin Eaton’s
and Mulholland’s plans. First, they tried to eliminate the Bureau of Reclamation.
Eaton bribed the Bureau’s survey engineer, Joseph Lippincott, who served as a
double agent to undermine federal plans. He acted as Eaton’s secret consultant,
facilitating the acquisition of the valley’s water rights. Marc Reisner (1993, 78)
in Cadillac Desert states that Eaton even posed as a cattle rancher, wandering
among the people in the Owens Valley, talking them into selling their land. He
was also buying options for the best water rights at a cheap rate in order to sell
them to the city at inflated prices (Cassuto 2001, 33).
In 1905, a farm woman named Lesta V. Parker wrote a letter to President
Roosevelt which summarized what was happening and explained her disappoint-
ment with the events. The letter provides insight into the dramatic effect the Los
Angeles water scheme would create in Owens Valley:

Dear Friend
Look onto your map of California, along the eastern boundary south of
Lake Tahoe and you will find a county named Inyo. Running into this
county from Nevada through a small corner of Mono County you will see
the Carson and Colorado railroad which after it enters Inyo follows along
the Owens River until they both come to Owens Lake, an alkaline body of
water. It is about this river I write to you.
This river after it leaves the narrow mountain canyon runs through a
broad and fertile valley for 100 miles. The first 20 miles of which is all or
 Mary Austin’s proto-ecofeminist land ethic   45
nearly so, in cultivation, further south ranches become more scattered. It has
four prosperous towns.
Indeed the people are very proud of their little valley and what their hard
labor has made it. The towns are all kept up by the surrounding farms.
Alfalfa is the principle crop. The put up to from two to four ton per acre and
it cost from $1.25 to $1.75 to put it up. And sell for $4 to $7 per ton so you
see the county is very prosperous. As there is about 200,000 ton raised in
the valley if not more every year. Cattle raising is great industry.
There never has been any capitalist or rich people come here until lately
and all the farms of the Owens Valley show the hard labor and toil of people
who came here without much more than their clothes. And many had few
of them.
Now my real reason for wiring this is to tell you that some rich men
got the government or “Uncle Sam” to hire a man named J.B. Lippincott
to represent to the people that he was going to put in a large dam in what
is known as Long Valley. But—Lo! and Behold! Imagine the shock the
people felt when they learned when Uncle Sam was paying Mr. Lippin-
cott he was a traitor to the people and was working for a millionaire
company. The real reason for so much work was because a man named
Eaton and a few more equally low, sneaking rich men wanted to get con-
trolling interest of the water by buying out a few or all of those who
owned much water and simply “freeze out” those who hadn’t much and
tell them to “Git.”
Now as the President of the U.S. do you think that is right? And is there
no way by which our dear valley and our homes can be saved? Is there no
way by which 800 or 900 homes can be saved? Is there no way to keep the
capitalist from forcing people to give up their water right and letting the
now beautiful alfalfa fields dry up and return to a barren desert waist?
Is there no way to stop this thievery? As you have proven to be the presi-
dent for the people and not the rich I, an old resident, who was raised here,
appeal to you for help and Advice.
My husband and I within the last year have bought us a home and are
paying for it in hard labor and economy. So I can tell you it will be hard to
have those rich men say “stay there and starve” or “Go.” Where if we keep
the water in the valley it won’t be only 3 years until the place will pay for
itself.
So Help The People of Owens Valley!
I appeal to you in the name of the Flag. The Glorious Stars and Stripes.
Yours Unto Eternity,
Lesta V. Parker.
(Walton 1992, 147)

Other residents of the Owens Valley were also disillusioned when they learned
they had indirectly sold their water rights to officials representing Los Angeles
and not the federal government. Mary Austin, “the valley’s literary light,” in
46   E. Geçgil
Reisner’s words (1993, 78) was also “convinced that the valley had died when it
sold its first water right to Los Angeles.” She was so aware of the entire scheme
that Mulholland reportedly said “that woman is the only one who has brains
enough to see where this is going” (79). Wary of human greed and the abuse of
power, Austin opposed Roosevelt’s justification of urban growth over the preser-
vation of valley farmers (Blend 1988, 18). With her husband, she wrote letters to
President Roosevelt, placing the blame on Eaton and Lippincott, and asking the
federal government to investigate the scheme (Goodman and Dawson 2008, 54).
They also participated in meetings to encourage valley residents to take col-
lective action.
Valley residents were hopeful since they believed that Roosevelt, “the
bugaboo of monopolists,” would “never let the Owens Valley die for the sake of
[wealthy landowners like] Henry Huntington, Harrison Grey Otis and their
cronies in San Fernando Valley syndicate” (Reisner 1993, 78). However, this
was not the case. The closing of the frontier revealed an important shift in policy.
As conveyed by John Walton (1992, 194), while the American frontier benefited
from federal aid to develop the West, the rise of Progressivism gave way to
urbanization, and the federal government shifted its focus to urban development.
As Douglas Brinkley (2009, 444) conveys, “if the western cities didn’t have
water, [Roosevelt] worried, they would perish, and their cities would become
ghost towns.” Roosevelt, “a progressive who believed in serving the largest
number of constituents” (Goodman and Dawson 2008, 54), said “It’s a hundred
or thousand fold more important to state that this water is more valuable to the
people of Los Angeles than to the Owens Valley” (Reisner 1993, 324). Eaton,
Mulholland, and Lippincott lobbied the federal government to pursue the aque-
duct project (Cassuto 2001, 33), and eventually their attempts proved successful.
The federal irrigation project was cancelled and Congress passed the water
diversion project from Owens Valley to Los Angeles. The Los Angeles-­Owens
River aqueduct was completed in 1913 and the valley turned into a desert, losing
its ecologically important meadows and agricultural value.
Greta Gaard and Patrick Murphy define ecofeminism as a

practical movement for social change arising out of the struggles of women
to sustain themselves, their families, and their communities. These struggles
are waged against the “maldevelopment” and environmental degradation
caused by patriarchal societies, multinational corporations, and global
capitalism.
(1998, 2)

Anticipating Gaard and Murphy’s definition of ecofeminism, Austin states in her

essay “The American Form of the Novel,” that the novel, as a form, should be
concerned with human struggle (1996, 84–88). Written in 1917, The Ford
adheres to this model, and is “an avatar of the regional conflict and of the unre-
solved political, philosophical and ethical issues underlying that conflict”
(Cassuto 2001, 32). Specifically, it is a bildungsroman that provides an account
 Mary Austin’s proto-ecofeminist land ethic   47
of the coming of age of the Brent family children, Kenneth and Anne, and their
struggle with a wealthy local businessman, Timothy Rickart. Anne and Kenneth
grow up in Las Palomitas, on their father’s ranch in Tierra Longa, a fictional
town based on Independence and Inyo counties where Austin had lived at the
time of the controversy. The novel starts in Tierra Longa, where the family is
about to lose their farm. After their father Stephen Brent loses Las Palomitas,
they try to survive in the newly-­founded oil town. As the years pass, Anne
becomes a real estate agent and a powerful businesswoman, while her brother
becomes an executive assistant to Timothy Rickart, the wealthy land owner and
the father of his childhood friend Frank, whom Anne desperately loves. When
Kenneth discovers Rickart’s plan to divert the waters of Tierra Longa into San
Francisco in cooperation with city officials, he quits his job, and with Anne’s
support tries to persuade people to take collective action. At the end of the novel,
the water diversion project is cancelled. Half success and half failure, the
struggle gives Kenneth a sense of himself as he finds true love and looks towards
the future in a more optimistic way. From Anne, he learns to care for the land
and its inhabitants and to accept the power of the New Woman. The struggle
equips Anne with the skills to beat Rickart at his own game and gives her more
independence to assert her identity as a New Woman. Obviously, The Ford is
Austin’s provocative attempt to “articulate a viable relationship between the
acute ecological sensitivity of The Land of Little Rain and her equally acute
awareness of the need for nonurban space to be recognized and reimagined as
part of the landscape and capitalist modernity” (Raine 1999, 247), which are
triangulated with the feminist arguments embodied in the text.
As Rudnick (1987, 11) conveys, Austin advocated a non-­exploitative har-
monious relationship with the land. In The Land of Little Rain, for example,
Austin (1987, 90) conveys how water is important to the people of the valley,
especially with respect to agriculture.

It is the proper destiny of every considerable stream in the west to become

an irrigating ditch. It would seem the streams are willing. They go as far as
they can, or dare, toward the tillable lands in their own boulder fenced
gullies—but how much farther in the man-­made waterways. It is difficult to
come into intimate relations with appropriated waters; like very busy people
they have no time to reveal themselves. One needs to have known an irrigat-
ing ditch when it was a brook, and to have lived by it, to mark the morning
and evening tone of its crooning, rising and falling to the excess of snow
water; to have watched far across the valley, south to the Eclipse and north
to the Twisted Dyke, the shining wall of the village water gate; to see still
blue herons stalking the little glinting weirs across the field.

In The Ford, Austin continues to stress the importance of water, suggesting a

harmonious relationship between rivers and their beneficiaries. One can utilize
rivers to make a living, yet one should know all the possibilities and limits of
the landscape. In the novel, readers witness what occurs when this fragile
48   E. Geçgil
understanding is broken, and how the abuse of the river leads to the destruction
of ecological parameters. The river that runs through Tierra Longa is

sift and full, beginning with the best intentions of turning mills or whirring
dynamos, with the happiest possibilities of watering fields and nurturing
orchards, but discouraged at last by the long neglect of man, becoming like
all wasted things, a mere mud and malaria.
(34)

From the very beginning, readers sympathize with the landscape as it succumbs
to human exploitation. Nature has long been sacrificed for utilitarianism, and
Austin’s narrative in The Ford is a reference to the general anthropocentric tend-
ency of conservationists like Gifford Pinchot and Roosevelt, or women conser-
vationist clubwomen, who believed that nature was valuable as long as it
provided resources for the home and family (Alaimo 2000, 67).
During her life, Austin praised the persistence and perseverance of rural
people. Yet, as an activist, she also criticizes their greed in The Ford: valley resi-
dents are delighted by the easy wealth that will come from selling the land and
have no desire to wait for a federal irrigation project (Cassuto 2001, 33). What
Austin condemns is the fact that dreams cannot be realized because of a lack of
vision among ranchers, and because the people of Tierra Longa, like those of
Owens Valley, are unable to unite under a single political cause. They do not
take collective action because as Lem, Kenneth’s friend, says: “There ain’t all of
us in Tierry Longway ever agreed about nothin’ yet” (380). Although Anne
dreams of an agrarian community of solidarity, in reality, the farmers are willing
to abandon their land as soon as a good offer comes from the urban planners
(Henderson 2003, 206). The farmers themselves are not as committed to the land
as outsiders, probably because they know, first hand, its difficulties and the
struggle required to live off it. Thus, urbanization seems unavoidable and is even
embraced by rural people, which Austin found problematic. Although the Owens
Valley controversy resulted in the victory of the state, capitalism, and urbaniza-
tion, The Ford proposes hope. That the water diversion project is cancelled in
the novel instills a sense of optimism—that there is a way out of every
dilemma—even for contemporary environmentalists.

The Ford and Austin’s proto-­ecofeminist ideals

For Austin, nature was a woman. In The Ford, through the eyes of her prot-
agonist, she sees the land as a mistress:

For a man lives with his land as with a mistress, courting her, suiting himself
to her humors, contriving as he can that her moods, her weathers shall drive
for and not against him. And in time, he becomes himself subject to such
shifts and seasons. He cannot handle himself; he is to be handled.
(384)
 Mary Austin’s proto-ecofeminist land ethic   49
Stacy Alaimo (2000, 75) speculates that in seeing nature as a mistress, the proto-­
ecofeminist Austin draws the picture of the New Woman because, in her nar-
rative, the land is not viewed as a mother within the patriarchal structure. Austin
suggests that the wilderness is a feminine force, and that men must learn to
reconcile with her. This reconciliation between man and nature can only be
achieved through compromise between men and women; in other words, through
an egalitarian social order (O’Grady 1993, 138).
In the novel, Austin objects to anthropocentric conventions by creating sexist
male characters. Stephen Brent, Kenneth’s and Anne’s father, for instance, is
willing to exploit the land and subordinate it to human desires. “Wherever the
land flings us a handful of corn we run and scramble for it like beggars in the
street. And she laughs—she laughs. I tell you, Burke, we’ve got to master her—
we’ve got to compel her” (62). Such dualism is apparent in the twentieth-­century
British novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes (1926), which is
analyzed in this volume by Julia Tofantšuk (p. 68). Warner also created sexist
male characters who described the land “with possessive gestures.”
The gendered aspect of oppressive attitude is definitely towards the river in
The Ford, while it may be other nonhuman entities in other contexts. For
instance, Nicole Anae’s “Taking Mighty Strides across the World: Positioning
Zora Neale Hurston in the Ecofeminist Tradition,” which is presented in this
volume, examines the relations between labor, power, and oppression within the
framework of human–animal relations (p. 84).
Rudnick (1987, 11) contends that Austin views the land as “masterless,” and
asserts that the land should resist male domination. She rejects the androcentric
approach, the “Judeo-­Christian imprimatur that man must rule, tame and
reform,” because it corrupts ecological parameters, as seen with the Owens
Valley controversy (Cassuto 2001, 43).
Although initially Kenneth, the son of the Brent Family, seems to be the prot-
agonist of the novel, which narrates his coming-­of-age, Austin deliberately
undermines his position, and instead gives his sister, Anne Brent, more promi-
nence throughout the plotline:

Anne was a business woman. She had the gift of detachment; she could buy
land without wanting to work it; she could buy it with the distinct intention
of unloading it on somebody else who believed himself elected to work it
and was willing to pay handsomely for the privilege.
(178)

Neal (2006, 98) conveys that western women nature writers, like Austin, created
strong-­minded, independent female characters, who were outspoken and career-­
oriented. This analysis is particularly correct for Anne, who becomes a business-
woman and a real estate agent in order to buy back their family farm, Las
Palomitas, from the land baron Timothy Rickart. Anne is so self-­controlled that
she conceals her love for Frank, her childhood friend and Rickart’s son, only to
confess it to him to save her brother from being sued by Rickart. Anne
50   E. Geçgil
consistently exhibits “New Woman” characteristics because as a lady, she per-
forms “unladylike” behavior: she engages in the male business world and una-
bashedly reveals her love for Frank.
Alaimo (2000, 76) warns that the female characters in The Ford should not be
mistaken for “Earth mothers.” Through her female characters, Austin rejects
notions of womanhood that enshrine domesticity. Kenneth’s and Anne’s mother,
Mrs. Brent, wants to escape frontier life; their childhood friend Virginia is a social-
ist and suffragist; and Anne is a “hard-­headed” career woman. As a feminist role
model, Anne shows female readers in particular how to become economically inde-
pendent without depending on men. As Vakoch (2012, 3) contends, the emancip-
atory strategies employed in ecofeminist literary criticism help us see possible
ways of overcoming oppression. From this perspective, it is clearly seen that
Austin portrayed Anne full of reforming zeal and liberatory ideals to overcome
biological determinism. Austin knew that in order to stand on one’s own feet as a
woman in the West, one had to know the rules of the game. As Kenneth notes, she
is “doing without all the things that used to be thought indispensable for a woman,
and making a place for herself that men would envy” (209). While other women
seek refuge in the private sphere through marriage and motherhood, she chooses
independence in the male public sphere. Interestingly, Austin underscores Anne’s
feminist traits through Kenneth’s observations.
Austin believes that the cultural practices of the peoples of the land are
embedded in both the ecological and social environment. As a social and
environmental activist, her work, The Ford, illustrates her attention to the land,
which is both scientific and practical, aesthetic and mystical (Raine 1999, 245).
Like Austin, Anne is an activist in her own right: she invites readers not to be
bound by the social forces surrounding them. Anne advises her brother Kenneth
not to believe that the social and economic forces that govern his life are a part
of the natural order:

It was a mistake, she said, that women had always made, thinking that,
because they enjoyed being ordered about by their husbands and cuddling
their babies, it was their God appointed destiny and they were therefore
excused from any further responsibilities. So that if it was a notion he had of
being a Heaven-­built farmer, he could be one, just Baff and Willard were.
He could homestead a hundred and sixty acres under his own canal and be
happy in it until she or Rickart or somebody of the same stripe came along
and took it away from him.
(430)

Clearly, Austin has a feminist agenda: to encourage women to reject biological

determinism, or what Freud would articulate as “anatomy is destiny.” In other
words, that women, by virtue of their reproductive body parts, are destined only to
be wives and mothers. She calls on women to engage in collective action by chal-
lenging their limited social, cultural, economic, and political roles—to break out of
the private sphere and embrace more visible positions in the public sphere.
 Mary Austin’s proto-ecofeminist land ethic   51
As a New Woman, Anne’s identification with the land is not sentimental but
rather practical. She expresses, “Land doesn’t mean crops to me the way it does to
you and father; it means people, people who want land and are fitted for the land,
and the land wants how it wants them!” (199) She has a “gift of detachment” (178),
which enables her to bring laborers and the land together. Although this might seem
to be an impediment to her identification with the land emotionally, her scientific
knowledge about the properties of the soil helps her match farmers with suitable
farmland, which proves her foresightedness (Stout 1998, 92). In an attempt to
answer the question who “owns” the land, Anne says to her brother,

Look at the land; I’m learning a lot about land, and the first thing to learn is
that you can absolutely find out what land is good for, and in time we’ll find
out that, no matter what you feel about it, it only belongs to the people who
can do those things.
(234)

The novel ultimately suggests that “the ownership of the land cannot be deter-
mined by capital, but affinity” (Alaimo 2000, 77).
In The Ford, Anne is pragmatic and Kenneth is histrionic, suggesting a
gender role reversal which strengthens Austin’s feminist arguments. Anne brings
a feminist sensibility to her profession, in Schaefer’s words (2004, 170), by
balancing “the private and public and the economic, social and environmental
aspects of regional planning.” While her brother feels nostalgia for the past, and
Rickart regards the land as a commodity, Anne plays a crucial, mediating role
between these two extremes. Furthermore, Anne is quite aware of how society
denies educational and professional opportunities to women. For her,

Society is a sort of mirage, a false appearance due to refraction…. I mean

most of the things we do and think important only seem so because of all
sorts of hang-­overs, political, religious, all kinds of ignorances … that’s
because we have Androcentric culture.
(233)

By articulating these notions, Austin increases ecofeminist sensibilities and

invites female readers to reconsider their place in society, specifically by con-
tributing to community development and influencing regional politics.

Conclusion
Austin wrote The Ford almost 12 years after Eaton secured Owens Valley water
through legal land purchases. In a short time, the valley lost its agricultural value,
and as conveyed by Forstenzer (1992), the water taken from the Owens Valley has
had a negative effect on the environment: when the river water was diverted to the
aqueduct, it caused the water level to substantially drop, and by 1924, Owens Lake
had already dried. Goodman and Dawson (2008, 56) note that a lawsuit initiated by
52   E. Geçgil
Inyo County in 1972 took four decades to prove that ecological balance was
corrupted because of the diversion of the Owens Valley water; and finally in
December 2006, Los Angeles flew some of its water to Owens River, and in so
doing, made an invaluable contribution to wetlands and wildlife.
While it is difficult to assess the impact of Mary Austin’s The Ford on environ-
mental activism and politics, as Patrick Murphy (2009, 81) suggests, it is one of the
first attempts to deal with environmental issues. It is a critique of modernity, as it
rejects federal tendencies to urbanize small communities by depriving peoples of
their land and their natural resources. Austin depicts regional development as
dependent on local irrigation projects and asks why rural Americans fail to take
collective action against capitalistic forces. As a proto-­ecofeminist, Austin criti-
cizes androcentric and anthropocentric society at all levels (rural/urban, local/city/
federal). She contends that “love of the land” does not, and should not, reinforce
essentialist ideas about women as the guardians of nature, proposing a more down-­
to-earth, solid female character, Anne Brent, who engages with explicit feminist
discourse. She calls for women of all generations to participate in environmental
politics, and stand on their feet in the face of injustices perpetrated against the land,
nature, natural resources, and the ecosystem.

Notes
1 Because of the anachronistic nature of the term “ecofeminist” in the early twentieth
century, “proto-­ecofeminist” is preferred by the author throughout the text.
2 A naturalist, essayist, and a prominent figure in the Conservation Movement during the
Progressive Era, John Burroughs (1837–1921) was best known for his scientific obser-
vations of nature. Please see A Century of Early Ecocriticism, edited by David Mazel
(Athens: University of Georgia Press), 2001, 33–47.

References
Alaimo, Stacy. 2000. Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Austin, Mary. 1906. The Flock. New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Company.
Austin, Mary. 1909. Lost Borders. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Austin, Mary. 1912. A Woman of Genius. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.
Austin, Mary. 1988. The Land of Little Rain. New York: Penguin Books.
Austin, Mary. 1996. “The American Form of the Novel.” In Beyond Borders: Selected
Essays of Mary Austin, edited by Reuben J. Ellis. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univer-
sity Press, 84–88.
Austin, Mary. 1996. The Ford. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Austin, Mary. 2007. Earth Horizon. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press.
Blend, Benay. 1988. “Mary Austin and the Western Conservation Movement,
1900–1927.” Journal of the Southwest, 30(1): 12–34.
Brinkley, Douglas. 2009. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade
for America. New York: Harper Collins.
Cassuto, David. 2001. Dripping Dry: Literature, Politics, and Water in the Desert South-
west. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
 Mary Austin’s proto-ecofeminist land ethic   53
Forstenzer, Martin. 1992. “Dust to Dust.” Los Angeles Times, April 10. Retrieved May
20, 2014, from http://articles.latimes.com/1992-04-10/news/mn-­179_1_owens-­lake.
Gaard, Greta, and Patrick D. Murphy. 1998. “Introduction.” In Ecofeminist Literary Criti-
cism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, edited by Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy,
1–13. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Gabrielson, Teena. 2006. “Woman-­Thought, Social Capital, and the Generative State.
Mary Austin and the Integrative Civic Ideal in Progressive Thought.” American
Journal of Political Science, 50(3): 650–663.
Goodman, Susan and Carl Dawson. 2008. Mary Austin and the American West. London:
University of California Press.
Green, Amy S. 2001. “Two Woman Naturalists and the Search for Autonomy: Anna
Botsford Comstock and the Producer Ethic; and Gene Stratton-­Porter and the Gospel
of Wealth.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 29(1/2): 145–154.
Hays, Samuel P. 1999. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Con-
servation Movement, 1890–1920. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Henderson, George L. 2003. California and the Fictions of Capital. Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press.
Mazel, David, ed. 2001. A Century of Early Ecocriticism. Athens: University of Georgia
Press.
Murphy, Patrick D. 2009. Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies:
Fences, Boundaries and Fields. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Neal, Teresa S. 2006. Evolution Toward Equality: Equality for Women in the American
West. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse Books.
O’Grady, John P. 1993. Pilgrims to the Wild: Everett Ruess, Henry David Thoreau, John
Muir, Clarence King, Mary Austin. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
Raine, Anne. 1999. “The Man at the Sources: Gender, Capital and the Conservationist
Landscape in Mary Austin’s The Ford.” In Exploring Lost Borders: Critical Essays on
Mary Austin, edited by M. Graulich and E. Klimasmith. Reno, NV: University of
Nevada Press, 243–266.
Reisner, Marc. 1993. Cadillac Desert. New York: Penguin Books.
Rudnick, Louis. 1987. “Re-­naming the Land: Anglo-­Expatriate Women in the South-
west.” In The Desert is No Lady: Southwestern Landscapes in Women’s Writing and
Art, edited by Vera Norwood and Janice Monk. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 17–26.
Schaefer, Heike. 2004. Mary Austin’s Regionalism: Reflections on Gender, Genre and
Geography. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
Stout, Janice. 1998. “Mary Austin’s Feminism: A Reassessment.” Studies in the Novel,
30(1): 77–101.
Vakoch, Douglas A. 2012. “A Different Story.” In Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment,
Women and Literature, edited by Douglas A. Vakoch. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 1–12.
Walton, John. 1992. Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture and Rebellion in
California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Wilson, Malin. 1997 “Walking on the Desert in the Sky: Nancy Newhall’s Words and
Images.” In The Desert is No Lady: Southwestern Landscapes in Women’s Writing and
Art, edited by Vera Norwood and Janice J. Monk. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 47–61.
Wynn, Dudley. 1937. “Mary Austin, Woman Alone.” Virginia Quarterly Review, 13:
243–256.
4 T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist
Etienne Terblanche

Over the past five decades the notion has taken root that T.S. Eliot is sexist.1 This
has spawned the assumption that his poetry must also be sexist. Careful reading of
his poetic oeuvre shows that his minor poem “Hysteria” does seem to suffer from a
misogynist tone. This is an important reason for its minor status. To use one of
Eliot’s familiar terms, the poem is failed by its objective correlative. The narrow
tones reduce its objects, thus spoiling its emotional bearing for the reader.
However, reading any of his major poems allows a different picture to emerge
when it comes to Eliot and sexism. As I will argue in the remainder of this chapter,
in his major poetry, a rubric including The Waste Land, Four Quartets, “The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” “Gerontion,” and “The
Hollow Men,” Eliot surfaces as an early ecofeminist. This could come as a surprise
to some critics. Has it not been established that Eliot is the epitome of the sexist
poet? Does it not speak for itself that this sexist man’s poems oppress women? In
response to these demanding questions, this presentation will retain a certain lit-
erary equanimity for the moment, turning to The Waste Land published in 1922.
The fragmentary configuration of nuggets in this poem offers various images
of waste, including images from working life. One of these depicts a scene from
the closing of the London business day at “the violet hour” (Eliot 2001, 12),
presumably when light fades in its prolonged London manner. Millions return
home after a long day at what was then, in the early twentieth century, the
world’s central marketplace. As we will see, one of these is a typist returning to
her small flat, a scene witnessed by the blind seer-­prophet Tiresias, who turns
out to be intriguingly hermaphrodite in Eliot’s poem. Tiresias shares with other
figures in the poem such as the Sybil of Cumae and Madame Sosostris a double
existence: he-­she-it has the ability to experience the time-­bound world of
everyday life as well as the timeless realm of spiritual perception, the numinous.
These legendary personas therefore occupy that supreme space, also that very
human space, between matter and spirit. They see a more comprehensive
meaning because they see the everyday world from a timeless perspective.
Like the other personas in the poem who experience unity between the two
worlds, though, Tiresias seems to be on the very brink of death: exhausted,
de-­vitalized, participating in what Max Weber called in 1904, in a much-­
discussed phrase, die Entzauberung der Welt, that is, the disappearance of the
 T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist   55
numinous from everyday life (Josipovici 2010, 11). Now that Tiresias is more or
less in place, consider this passage of the poem:

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…
(Eliot 2001, 12)

One marvels at how Eliot turns mundane realities and prosaic utterances into the
poignant music of poetry. One marvels further at how carefully he depicts the
suppression of women in modern time. To begin with, the typist is trapped in a
tiny space within a mechanized city. In his 1939 prose essay titled The Idea of a
Christian Society, Eliot critiques what he terms “the mechanistic life,” a way of
existing that according to the poet denies the integrity of religious perception
56   E. Terblanche
of the concrete unfolding of existence (1980, 290). For him, this daily denial is
the root cause of ecological destruction (290). Of course, fellow poets and philo-
sophers of Eliot’s day were equally troubled by the mechanization of the rela-
tionship between humanity and Earth; the poet’s conscious or unconscious
choice of the typist image is not incidental.
She has been sitting in her office for hours and hours to press the hammers
home. She lights her stove, a warm image that reminds of centuries of humanity
carried by the intimate ritual of mealtime after a long, hard day prior to a long,
unfamiliar night. But she lays out her food in those lonely tins, not least since
mechanization and World War I in particular led to the skyrocketing of demand
for canned food. The ritual has become enclosed in mass metal. More frighten-
ingly, sex, too, has become mechanized, driven by urban ennui. Carefully these
lines suggest the parallel between habitual control of Earth and abuse of female
sexuality.
But now that the clerk has left, how does the typist respond? The passage
movingly depicts her response:

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-­formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
(Eliot 2001, 12)

The mechanical imagery so carefully prepared in the preceding passage finds its
culmination. Starting with the images of an engine, a taxi, a stove, and tins, we
have progressed to an automatic hand. The typist looks in the mirror, she is too
tired to think, her actions are involuntary. The hand that types all day smoothes
hair in a disconnected manner. She has been displaced in her home and her so-­
called lover’s assault is just part of the pervasive modern subjugation of an
authentic inner existence, inner existence that should be reflected in sensuous
outer existence. The progression of mechanical imagery in the poem now goes
further, suggesting that loose sex has become automatic: the little hole in the
record is placed over the stunted little phallus of the gramophone. It turns and
turns but the music probably means as little as the clerk’s approach.
And Tiresias knows that sex has remained the most available form of mys-
tical oneness between opposites in modern time but he witnesses how male dom-
inance lays waste the prospect of that fragile unity. As in the case of all Eliot’s
allusions, these allusions to past texts in The Waste Land carry his prophylactic
awareness of generational corruption to which I will return in this chapter.
The timing of the rhyming in these lines of the words “and” and “hand” is
almost unbearably sensitive and alive. With fragility the “and” wavers, a lyrical
 T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist   57
note, a momentary direct glimpse into the sensitivity that foresuffers the casu-
ally disturbing scene. The word “and” comes at the end of its line, suspending
the line in expectation. And … what? And: she smoothes her hair with auto-
matic hand. In this way the reader’s expectation is also made to end in the
image of repetition, set off against resilient sensitivity. The hypocrite reader is
led to sympathize on a refined level with patriarchy’s disregard for the typist
and the earthly matters of food, sex, home, and so forth. As is usual in Eliot,
the lines get under the reader’s skin, sometimes even before one can explain
the lines.
But is this the only image in the poem that critiques patriarchy, that is, male
dominance that narrows and violates humanity’s experience of Earth and female
energies, thus also narrowing the experience of male energies? Far from it: once
noticed, the poem teems with images of this important critique. Consider, for
instance, the persona of Lil. She is being discussed by anonymous female friends
in a bar, presumably in London again. One of these friends gossips as follows:

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—

I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
(Eliot 2001, 9)

Lil’s friend is apparently quite concerned for her. Now that he has returned from
war, Albert just wants a good time and surely a woman ought to do her best for
any man, especially if the man has been largely absent performing military
duties for his country. After all, he gave her money for new teeth. And Lil’s
friend also feels evident sympathy for poor Albert. Perhaps she has an eye on
Albert, sensing the weakness of her friend Lil, her sudden opponent.
One imagines how the drinks go down in this busy bar late at night in the
aftermath of wartime as Lil’s friend continues to say:

You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.

(And her only thirty-­one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
(Eliot 2001, 10)
58   E. Terblanche
Not only has Albert trapped Lil’s entire existence in his lust but the chemist
could not care less about a dispensable woman’s health. It “would be all right”
but she is losing her teeth and suffering from the consequences of five pregnan-
cies and an abortion. The poem shows how the male dominant act of modern
war leads to hell not only for affluent urban women as found elsewhere in the
poem (9) but especially for millions of poor women sitting in bars across the
cosmopolitan world. With terror the passage shows what it means for a woman
to get trapped in her biology (Brooker 1994, 239), while men cause the entrap-
ment and shrug their shoulders. Though there is too little time here to discuss it
comprehensively, the poem as a whole moreover shows intense awareness of a
modern cultural language trap, that is, the one-­sided condition at the opposite
end of the biology trap, while the poem demonstrates that men are instrumental
to the creation of both of these parallel traps.
The bartender wants to close shop, calling “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS
TIME,” reinforcing the poem’s overall comment on the disenchanted nature of
modern time. Lil’s friend has one or two further observations to make and the
little drama closes as her words melt into the much-­discussed goodnight greeting
of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet—words uttered by Ophelia just before she
commits suicide. Eliot probably cites them in adumbration of Lil’s fate:

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
(Eliot 2001, 10)

And so it is clear that not only men but also women suffer from and participate
in the cruelties resulting from war. I mention this because an intrinsic fiber of the
poem’s greatness is Eliot’s egalitarian handling of the opposite realms of male
and female experience. In a world strangely masterminded by the dry rational-
ism and control that arise when numinous perception of corporeal existence has
lost its vitality in the mind of Europe (or in the mind of early globality, for that
matter), Lil, her friend, the carbuncular clerk, and Albert suffer equally and they
equally inflict suffering.
The victims include not only men and women but also language. In some
respects modern English amounts to the poem’s final irony since it is an exten-
sion of the Vedic, Greek, and Roman civilizations, while the poem painstakingly
relates itself to how these cultures and languages have decayed over time. The
poem’s fragmentary English indeed presents a fractured ontology; its modern
English ironies point to cultural entropy. These daring acts of fragmenting the
artistic medium reflect the risk that this poem and modern art as a whole is
willing to take in the face of experience hollowed out by inauthentic inner
 T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist   59
worlds. These acts indicate the extent of modern art’s artistic and social commit-
ment. In the case of The Waste Land, that commitment is not afraid to tackle the
central matter of skewed relations between men and women. It has not been
mentioned, for instance, that gender is central to a passage in the poem contain-
ing some of the most extreme fragmentation in Eliot’s oeuvre and modernism as
a whole. It occurs at the conclusion of Section III of The Waste Land titled “The
Fire Sermon,” where one finds what could be termed an embodied crumbling:

“On Margate sands.

I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.”
la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning
(Eliot 2001, 15)

Even at this end of linguistic limits, Earth is crucial to the poetic engagement.
(After all, though The Waste Land is abundantly metaphorical, its title does
contain the word “land.”) The passage refers to a place that Eliot knew when he
was suffering from depression: a seaside resort at the Thames estuary in Margate
(North 2001, 15). This sense of place reverberates in the other lines of this
passage. One of the most striking is the allusion to the Philomela legend where
she is raped by King Tereus in Ovid’s eighth-­century cornerstone text of
Western culture titled Metamorphoses: the image reading “The broken finger-
nails of dirty hands” with its emphatic full stop. It beams into the field of signifi-
cance with harrowingly concrete realism. The one-­sidedness of excruciating
emplacement is paralleled by the one-­sidedness of disjunction between spirit and
matter.
I am struck further by the rhyming of “hands” with “sands,” which suggests
Philomela’s terrible ordeal of being powerlessly pinned to the soil. The fragment
viscerally describes the knowledge that the raping of Philomela involves an
alienated physical closeness to and psychological distance from Earth. Humans
cannot be this cruel without dissociating from Earth and who they are, their
nature. From this perspective rape can be defined as the disconnection from
nature that is concomitant with brutal employment of physical domination. It is
little wonder that the next fragment, equally beaming onto the page as if from
60   E. Terblanche
nowhere, “la la,” alludes to the Thames daughters, figures from the pagan past
who used to present complete reciprocity between mytho-­poetic insight and the
flowing river. The fragment pitifully evokes a lost, sacred sense of Earth. Indeed,
elsewhere the poem laments the bottles, sandwich papers, handkerchiefs, card-
board boxes, and cigarette ends that the river bears (Eliot 2001, 11). The frag-
ment “la la” moreover alludes to Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde (North
2001, 14), sustaining the notion that fractious engagement with Earth mirrors the
detriment of severance between male and female worlds.
The little piece from Augustine’s Confessions, “To Carthage then I came,”
centers again on that ultimate earthly and mystical connection, sex—to which
the whole of the solipsistic and much-­discussed character of Eliot’s Prufrock of
course cannot respond. To Carthage Augustine (1907, 31) comes only to enter a
cauldron of unholy loves including all kinds of sexual promiscuities, Manichean
complications of body-­soul divisions, and a soap-­opera-like disillusionment. He
burns with desire that cannot be fulfilled, a theme not unlike themes carried by
the rock songs of our day. Hence the apparently idiotic fragment “Burning
burning burning burning” followed by broken images of the Lord plucking out
the eye of desire so that tranquility could arrive at last. One “final” and wholly
isolated instance of the fragment-­verb “burning” breaks down as the passage and
the section in the poem conclude.
As in the case of the other fragments in the poem, each fragment here is valu-
able since it carries a link with the meaningful past, in this instance the Buddha’s
fire sermon. There the Buddha identifies the flames of desire (in mind, body,
feelings, spirit, and in the eye) as the root cause of human suffering. Extinguish-
ing these desires and the false impressions that bring them about causes what we
term the peace that passeth understanding or, in a frequently used current word,
mindfulness of coexistence.
But what happens to this important recognition if, through interference of an
eye such as Albert’s or that of the carbuncular clerk, desire itself no longer
occurs but only the automations of patriarchal “perception”? Eliot suggests
(1980, 236) that the prospect of calmness, wisdom, and authentic coexistence is
thwarted. Not even that full verbal phrase—“to burn with sexual desire”—rings
completely true in a society where perception has become automatic. The alive
everyday sense of good and evil has dissipated from this kind of perception,
leaving humanity in doldrums between religious dispensations, doldrums that
keep truly human behavior uncannily alive. And language, having lost some of
its vital sexiness because of its dissociation from an enchanted sense of Earth,
can at best reflect the loss in a heap of broken images, including the depiction of
Philomela’s broken fingernails in the unforgiving sand. Little or no reverence for
concrete coexistence on Earth in fact means that matter turns into so much
dormant, mute powder—“stuff ”—which The Waste Land summarizes in a
caveat reading: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” (Eliot 2001, 6).
Paradoxically, Eliot renders these matters in the form of compellingly
embodied poetry that persistently points at the wholeness of being by tracing its
absence. The tensions between his dramatic aesthetic lyricism on the one hand
 T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist   61
and the narrowly alive flickering of authentic experience on the other further-
more make of this poem a haunting work of art. And part of the poem’s relev-
ance to our time is its mind-­boggling adumbrations in 1922 of climate change or
Earth fever, of a somberly solar inner world reflected in the outer world of
increasing desert, the desertification of planet Earth’s living complexity (see also
Harrison 1993, 149). Within The Idea of a Christian Society, Eliot states in so
many words that the modern lack of spiritual harmony with Earth would lead
to “dearth and desert” and the intense suffering of future generations (1980,
290). But it is in the poem that we find the most lurid images of the desertscape
within and without. I cannot do justice to all of these images. Hence I focus on
one example:

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses

If there were water

And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
(Eliot 2001, 6)

By presenting the modern condition of opposites in the form of this immense

chanting that rings from a world of complete aridity, in the form of this searing
desertscape, and in the form of this place of female hands pinned to the powdery
sands of male brutality, Eliot provides a unique prototype of the current ecofemi-
nist insistence (Carr 2011, 9) on the parallels between oppression of women and
mutilation of Earth. King Tereus’ “authority” and Philomela’s rape reflect that
particular modern lack of perceiving Earth and female energies in deep terms.
Where there should be a kind of “threeness” or three-­dimensionality of inner
recognition where grown-­up power meets the sensitivity of feeling and sacred-
ness, there is only the meagre and crippling “twoness” represented by two sets of
one-­sidedness, as mentioned: one a supposedly reasonable, patriarchal language
62   E. Terblanche
trap and the other its parallel, a biology trap of the kind experienced by Lil. At
the heart of this or the lack of the heart of this resides the recognition of patri-
archy, once more: dissociation of male and female energies results in dominance
that emaciates experience, including experience of maleness itself. Dryness
cannot find its opposite of moisture to open renewed tangible spaces that would
be joyous and fertile for growth.
The Waste Land therefore gives us not only a profound and disturbing poetic
description of the ecofeminist problem but also offers a diagnosis and prognosis.
Opposite worlds that have split into parallel but disengaged sets of one-­sidedness
should combine again in that integrity which is of a corporeal, open-­ended,
dynamic, sensitive, and participating transcendence. And this can be achieved
through re-­membering, re-­integrating, the world of numinous awareness and the
world of material being. It is my belief that the poem’s conclusion carefully
arrives at open-­ended integration of this nature, as I argue in a monograph on
Eliot and Earth (Terblanche 2016, 78).
Now, the proto-­ecofeminist picture I sketched here does not show up in the
extant critical response to Eliot. Over the past half century new strands of Eliot
criticism have emerged that mirror the many shifts in emphasis that have charac-
terized the study of literature, though, of course, excellent close reading of his
work and life continued unabatedly. Very broadly speaking, these shifts have
amounted to elision of great primary literary works such as The Waste Land in
the name of a tidal wave of secondariness that wants secondary contexts to
swallow primary texts. Lingering in the moment of the text has not been prac-
ticed in these criticisms. Often this view has portrayed authors with considerable
gifts as little more than ideological puppets. In many cases the focus shifted to
what could be exhumed about authors in a frenzy of personality forensics. In
Eliot’s case, he was more or less found to be a sexist, misogynist, totalitarian,
fascist, anti-­Semitic racist!
The attack has been a little less relentless over the past decade and the jury
seems to be out on whether he really was so sexist and anti-­Semitic in life, after
all, even though these were of course common diseases from which most men in
his days suffered quite unconsciously or “naturally.” Can we expect of our poetic
heroes to have risen in their daily lives above the taken-­for-granted prejudices of
their time? Perhaps my generation lacks self-­irony here. For example, we do not
yet think twice too much about driving our cars and flying in those tiny tubes
that cracker us across the oceans despite the knowledge that we are thus borrow-
ing the atmosphere from our children as though it were a gigantic credit card that
they will have to pay for by struggling to find water, food, or refuge from
oppressive heat and climate migrators. How should they judge the relations
between our texts and our lives?
At the outset of this discussion I mentioned the tendency among critics to
assume that a sexist Eliot must have composed sexist poetry. This brings the
conversation to the important cultural studies work of two superstar feminists,
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. The main culprit, the huge enemy to be
brought down in their famous book titled The War of the Words, indeed happens
 T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist   63
to be Mr. Eliot. In feminist warmongering huge targets count. Their assault
ironically forces Eliot exactly into that terrain that he critiques, namely a binary
logic of bitter enmity between two one-­sided camps, one male and one female,
as has been shown by Jewel Spears Brooker in her 1994 essay on Gilbert, Gubar,
tradition, and female enmity.
They soon find Eliot guilty of such binaries: first the man in terms of his
unpublished poetry (30, 53), then in terms of the fisher king legend and his life
of attending parties and finding a supposed blood brother in D.H. Lawrence
(36–38, 89, 112), then in terms of an unlikely crowd who fear the advances of
female writing (66, 98), then in terms of his grossly misread prose writings (162,
254), and then, with the greatest of apparent ease, his poetry and The Waste Land
in particular.
For instance, in a false comparison with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who on one occa-
sion took his wife Zelda’s words as his own, Gilbert and Gubar find Eliot the
man guilty of stealing from his wife, Vivien (Brooker 1994, 218; Gilbert and
Gubar 1988, 153). But, as Brooker shows, the former was “a theft deeply
resented” while the latter was “a gift joyously bestowed” (218). Brooker con-
tinues that Eliot invited

not only Ezra Pound but his wife to look over his manuscript and make sug-
gestions. In the second section (“A Game of Chess”), Vivien remarked
through various words and lines and suggested alternates, with the note:
“Make any of these alterations—or none if you prefer.” Some of her recom-
mendations are excellent, a fact Eliot easily recognized. He accepted, for
example, her suggestion of “pills” to replace his more general “medicine” in
the line that now reads, “It’s them pills I took, to bring it off.”
(218)

A number of Vivien’s comments are enthusiastically appreciative: “WONDERFUL

… wonderful & wonderful … Yes … Splendid last lines,” she writes in bold pencil
next to lines in the poem’s draft (218). The tone of her marginalia, writes Brooker,
makes it clear that

she was delighted to be taken seriously as a reader-­critic. Driven by their

‘battle of the sexes’ metaphor, however, Gilbert and Gubar missed a point
that Vivien understood very well. Eliot respected her judgement, as he did
that of Ezra Pound.
(218)

Having found Eliot guilty of female oppression and abuse in life, then, Gilbert
and Gubar rush across to the poetry with binaries in hand. “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock” according to them shows that Eliot prefers culture over nature
and therefore maleness over femaleness (Brooker 1994, 225). Rather astonish-
ingly, the opposite is again true: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” sign-
posts that Eliot is sick of culture (225). As for The Waste Land, they
64   E. Terblanche
subsequently simply quote a mistaken James Joyce to clinch their mistaken
finding that the major poem, too, suffers from the one-­sided binaries that they
project onto Eliot (1988, 236).
It is therefore necessary to point out, despite the valuable contributions that
Gilbert and Gubar indeed made to the feminist debate, among other things by
rescuing powerful female writers “from near oblivion” (Brooker 1994, 213), that
their jingoist approach misplaces Eliot’s poetry. Most particularly, it misplaces
the remarkable ecofeminist aspect of the poem.
As a final consideration here, after about 30 years of reading this poet, I
would like to linger for a moment in the recognition that I have come to know
two Eliots. These two Eliots are sometimes related and sometimes foreign to
each other but I know who among them is real, important, and knowable in a
special sense. Let us say that the second Eliot is the persona of the man that we
are able to build up around access to archives. This is a very important Eliot who
is related to the first. But in a deadly sense I do not wish to meet him at my desk
tomorrow morning whereas I almost always look forward to meeting again the
first Eliot, the one I continue to learn to know in his poetic compositions. There
he becomes upon careful reading what George Steiner terms a “real presence”
(1989, 4), that is, when we meet in the poems as worlds he transgresses the
boundaries of his ego and his personal history into my world as I transgress the
boundaries of my ego and personal history into his world, a singular form of
human freedom made possible by the immediacy of art. In this sense I meet in
the poems what we term by way of the shorthand of his surname, “Eliot.”
I am reminded of Jacques Derrida, who cites from Heidegger in his,
Derrida’s, much-­discussed biographical movie where Derrida more or less acts
himself as a famous philosopher of our time, complete with cat and pipe. In the
movie Derrida cites Heidegger, who was asked what we should make of Aristo-
tle’s life: “He was born. He thought. He died,” Heidegger retorted, adding that
“the rest is pure anecdote” (Jeffries 2017). This is relatively true but, with
Derrida, I presume, I would not go as far as to say that Eliot was born, wrote
poetry, and died, and that the rest was pure anecdote. Rather, the analogy that
springs to mind for me when it comes to meeting the poetic Eliot in his poems is
that of listening to music. It is as though I am a man who lives a shallow, poor
life, struggling along. Then in a busy, noisy street this man incidentally passes a
window and hears someone playing music on a piano, notes in sensuous touch
with the tangible silence they create, while the drifting of that music into his
incidental ear shows the man that life enjoys an unfathomable place of resonance
where communication occurs on levels not noticed before. In short, the man
experiences depth. And the event is entirely akin, as if by itself, to meeting a
new person. Perhaps it is for this reason that we refer to Beethoven’s music
simply as “Beethoven” and Eliot’s poetry as “Eliot.” “So, who are you reading
at the moment?” “Well, I’m reading Eliot.” Behind the frailty of this everyday
manner of speaking lies a considerable truth.
To boot, the idea of meeting someone in the poems is not as impressionistic
as it sounds. Brain research is catching up with this recognition. I recommend
 T.S. Eliot, ecofeminist   65
the reading of Iain McGilchrist’s book titled The Master and his Emissary: The
Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World as a whole, even as I neces-
sarily fragment his argument by citing one or two passages from it. McGilchrist
put himself in a position to give a particularly thorough and unique perspective
on brain division and cultural development because he is an Oxford professor of
literature who has qualified himself to practice as a psychiatrist and then, on top
of that, as a specialist in the new science of neuroimaging. But of course the
proof of the pudding lies in the reading, which I cannot recommend highly
enough for those who continue to dare to think about opposite conditions in our
time. These adulations I give despite the knowledge that his treatment of mod-
ernism in art and Eliot’s poetry (394, 396, 422) fails to see how modernism
renders new persons to be met in poetry and new ways of experiencing and art-
istic depth and context.
Despite this criticism (to which I cannot pay the right measure of attention
here), the book makes very important points about meeting others in their art.
First, though, the book meticulously cleans from the table embarrassing popular-
ized ideas about the divided brain. Language does not sit in the left hemisphere,
for example (2012, 1). And the right hemisphere is not picturesque, silent, and
conveniently female (2). Equally painstakingly McGilchrist gets rid of the reduc-
tive thought that everything can be explained by the physical nature of this
imperative organ (4–5). On this basis and much more, and faced with a lack of
exact English words, McGilchrist separates two forms of knowing as found in
the German words kennen and wissen (2012, 96). Kennen is to know someone
intimately and it goes with right brain modes of attention. One does have know-
ledge, wissen, of one’s beloved: his or her height, age, weight, date of birth, and
so on and so forth, but hopefully one does not share a knowing life with him or
her based purely on attention to these relatively anecdotal facts that go with left
brain modes of attention. Conversely and perhaps more importantly for our time
(since we seem to be forgetting it), kennen, knowing in the individual sense, can
be applied to apparently impersonal things such as a piece of music or a poem.
In McGilchrist’s words:

the approach to music is like entering into relation with another living indi-
vidual, and [brain] research suggests that understanding music is perceived
as similar to knowing a person; we freely attribute human qualities to music,
including age, sex, personality characteristics and feelings.
(96)

This is also true, for me, of reading those literary works of art that get to me and
stay with me. In the case here I simply applied my experience of reading The
Waste Land to the important ecofeminist debate of our time, a lens enabling us
to make our past authors present in a special and important moral sense. It is
here that I am baffled by the culture studies ease with which critics will glean
moral victories from what we know about past persons and apply these supposed
facts to the poems as though the poems do not exist as known individuals.
66   E. Terblanche
And the case of Gilbert and Gubar is not unique when it comes to Eliot. As I
have shown in the mentioned monograph on Eliot and Earth, the inimitable
Edward Said for whose writing I have great appreciation alas similarly ignores
the poems to dismiss, in that case, Eliot’s orientalism, again as though the alive
individual sense of meeting the poems in their very who-­ness has somehow
quietly slipped out of the critic’s jargon-­filled office.
As McGilchrist probably knows by having examined many students’ papers,
the work of peers, and so on, it is not easy to put the individual experience of the
poem or the piece of music into words. “The empathic nature” of experiencing
the art work, he continues,

means that it has more in common with encountering a person than a concept
or an idea that could be expressed in words. It is important to recognise that
music does not symbolise emotional meaning, which would require that it be
interpreted; it metaphorises it—“carries it over” direct to our unconscious
minds. Equally it does not symbolise human qualities: it conveys them direct,
so that it acts on us, and we respond to it, as in a human encounter. In other
words, knowing a piece of music, like knowing other works of art, is a matter
of kennenlernen. Coming to us through the right hemisphere, such living cre-
ations are seen as being essentially human in nature.
(96)

In the remarkable kennenlernen of exchanges with the Eliot that I meet in The
Waste Land, an Eliot that I certainly also meet in most of his other poems and an
Eliot shared with his many other readers in ways that are similar and therefore also
different, it has become clear to me that on balance he is an incisive poetic critic of
patriarchy, including his early portrayal of the unbearable parallels between rape
and Earth-­rape, parallels that have developed into a predominant feature of the past
century, our century. This compelling criticism moreover enjoys the visceral nature
of the experience of poetry, a lasting and unsettling impact of dazzling, sensitive,
and terrible beauty. By way of continuing to catch up with this Eliot on the appar-
ently endless journey of our maturation into living with and within the open-­ended
freedom of finding oneself on this Earth, the anachronistic ecofeminism of his
major poetry should be given its historical and contemporary significance.

Note
1 I wish to acknowledge with gratitude that the research on which this chapter is based
was made possible in part through generous financial assistance by the National
Research Foundation in South Africa, though the views expressed here are my own and
not that of the National Research Foundation.

References
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(Norton Critical Edition), edited by Michael North, 58. New York: W.W. Norton.
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Brooker, Jewel Spears. 1994. Mastery and Escape: T.S. Eliot and the Dialectic of
Modernism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Carr, Glynnis. 2011. “Foreword.” In Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Ecocritical Perspectives
on Sex, Technology, and Discourse, edited by Douglas A. Vakoch, ix–xviii. New York:
Berghahn.
Eliot, T.S. 1980. Selected Prose, edited by Frank Kermode. London: Faber & Faber.
Eliot, T.S. 1991. Collected Poems 1909–1962. New York: Harcourt Brace.
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Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. 1988. The War of the Words. Vol. 1 of No Man’s
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5 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of
identity in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s
Lolly Willowes and
Mr. Fortune’s Maggot
Julia Tofantšuk

Opening her argument in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Val Plumwood
(1993, 1) uses a natural metaphor to describe the complex essence of an eco­
feminist investigation: “It is usually at the edges where the great tectonic plates
of theory meet and shift that we find the most dramatic developments and
upheavals.” Likewise, introducing “[t]his hybrid discipline … ecofeminist lit­
erary criticism,” Douglas Vakoch (2012, 2) points to the potential strength of
that “meeting at the edges,” to use Plumwood’s phrase: both feminist criticism
and ecocriticism are open to “multiple, even incompatible perspectives” and,
ultimately, “liberatory alternatives” (ibid., 12). In this vein, a focus on the writ­
ings of a largely underappreciated woman writer, Sylvia Townsend Warner, as
illustrative of the complexities of ecofeminist agendas, appears intriguing,
though indeed “incompatible” at first sight. Born in England in 1893 and making
her literary debut with Lolly Willowes in 1926, three years before Virginia
Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own, Warner is neither a proper feminist nor an eco­
logical writer. However, as my argument will show, it is the ecofeminist per­
spective that has potential for bringing forth Warner’s two early novels (the
aforementioned Lolly Willowes and Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, 1927), hoping to add
to larger discussions on the connections of feminist and ecological literary criti­
cism. As literature of all times is a mighty means of raising questions concerning
topical issues of today, these theoretical intersections can provide insights into
still dominant modes of thinking, such as dualism, hierarchical binaries, and cat­
egorization as forms of oppression. Warner’s views on identity and domination
of women and nature echo those of contemporary theorists, such as Judith
Butler, Stuart Hall, Karen J. Warren, Val Plumwood, and Patrick Murphy.

Dualism, hegemonic centrism, and backgrounding

Present-­day cultural theorists generally challenge Aristotle’s logic of binary
oppositions, which ultimately aims at producing the other in order to justify,
among other things, racial and sexual dominance. Foucault (1984) sees it as a
disciplining practice of producing a “docile body” (1984, 180) to enact the
cultural rituals, which Butler (1990, 173) calls “fabrications,” having “no
ontological status by itself.” It is culture that inscribes the roles that the body
 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity   69
has no choice but to “perform.” Cultural construction has been the focus of
feminist theorists since the beginning of the Second Wave, with de Beauvoir’s
“one is not made, but becomes, a woman.” For Hall (2003), inscribed roles
and constructed identities have political ends: based on binaries and con­
structed through difference, they are convenient to be arranged hierarchically,
in order to control, to dominate. In a world built upon binaries, which Plum­
wood (1993; 2002) calls “dualisms,” something, in Hall’s (2003, 4–5) words,
is always excluded, rendered outside, “abjected,” turned into “a silent and
unspoken other” (ibid.) without which the centralized, powerful self cannot
exist. As Plumwood (2002) stresses, in the system of hegemonic centrism,
which privileges reason and marks the Other as “deviation from the centrality
of the One, as colour is a deviation from the ‘normal’ condition of whiteness”
(104–105), the One is licensed to control and govern the Other, because the
Other represents the opposite to the rational paradigm—irrationality and
“disorderly” space.
Theorizing binaries/dualisms and hegemonic centrism is crucial for feminists
and especially ecofeminists, because it explains the logic of domination of what
is constructed as marginal groups. Thus, Plumwood (1993) shows how in the
reason/nature dualism of traditional western thought, women have been linked
with nature, because emotional, not reasonable (32, 45), and thus rendered infe­
rior. Nature, in turn, because associated with women (irrational, emotional,
passive), has been rendered negative, marginalized, and controllable. The result
is “backgrounding” of both women and nature, by which Plumwood (1993;
2002) means the unjustifiable culturally constructed position of denied import­
ance and agency. Thus, “traditional” women’s tasks of home labor are not recog­
nized as important but rendered as “background” to “real work” and achievement
(Plumwood 2002, 104); indigenous people are not recognized as ecological
agents and their land is taken as “unoccupied” (ibid.) for “real” development and
cultivation; human dependency on nature appears as “a source of anxiety and
threat” (ibid., 108) and is denied unless a disaster occurs—not as “nature’s
voice,” but as a signal to human agency to seek further “rational” technological
solutions to overcome the “threat.”
Analyzing the position of nature and women in patriarchy, Karen J. Warren
(2000) brings forth hierarchical dualisms as Up/Down dialectic and speaks,
among other things, of the linguistic framework that “feminises nature,” viewing
it as “subordinate and inferior,” thus authorizing the domination. Referring to
symbolism deeply embedded in the human unconscious, Warren (2000, 27) reit­
erates that it is “Mother Nature (not Father Nature) [that] is raped, mastered,
controlled, conquered, mined”; “Virgin timber … felled”; “Fertile (not potent)
soil … tilled, and land that lies fallow is barren.” It is remarkable that sexual
imagery is used for both women and land in a discourse in which the “Downs”
(Warren’s term) are subordinated, their needs are not met and one of the
unhealthiest consequences is rape, making the survived women’s life unmanage­
able—in the same way, an ecosystem could be also made unmanageable because
of military environmental damage.
70   J. Tofantšuk
Oppression and backgrounding are exemplified in this volume in the case
study of Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Kordecki (this volume) shows how, by being
aligned with Ophelia and her eponymous madness, nature is simultaneously
“aligned with many stereotypes of women,” though eventually emerging as a
visionary countering the masculinist developments of the narrative. Kordecki
in fact shows how the previously devaluing attitude of backgrounding can be
turned into attributing a positive value to the connection of women and nature.
This is exactly what Plumwood (1993, 19) encourages ecological feminists to
do: counter the nature/culture binary with “anti-­dualist ecological feminisms”
stressing, at the same time (ibid., 40), that the movement should not be toward
a gynocentric model—a “women’s culture grown from women’s essential
nature”—but an integrative project informed with recognition of various liber­
atory processes. She obviously challenges the feminist utopias of the 1960s
Second Wave, the planning of all-­women’s communities and radical, even
violent solutions to lack of power women still experienced. Such radicalism
would mean a simple reversal of the roles, but not erasing the dualist princi­
ple—and would therefore be as unhealthy a practice as patriarchy itself.
Neither is essentialism a solution—if women are nature, to be celebrated for
their own specificity, it will be again the other, non-­interactive, non-­dialogic,
non-­holistic.
Could there be a solution, then?
Warren’s (2000) ecofeminist philosophy is not only a way to problematize
patriarchy as an unjustifiable practice of domination but a way to suggest altern­
ative approaches. One of them is her view of ecosystem as a process that also
includes the human component. In her view, humans are always “selves in rela­
tions” (187), members of ecological communities. This makes her ecofeminist
approach different from Buell’s (2005) mainstream ecocriticism: for Buell, the
concept of bioregion, which can appear similar to that of “ecological com­
munity,” does not include the human. Defining the bioregion as not only a phys­
ical terrain, but a “terrain of consciousness,” Buell (2005, 83) insists on it being
a better alternative to the concept of nation-­state in that it develops the notion of
place—an awareness of locality, with potential for environmental literacy and
sustainability. Yet it seems that Buell’s literate, sustainable human, often urban­
ite preoccupied with reducing his ecological footprint (Buell 2005, 85) is still in
a way above the bioregion, not an organic part of it. He is part of a human/
human or human/nonhuman interaction, aiming at maintaining “a more prudent,
self-­sufficient human quality” (84) rather than merging with the environment as
one organic whole.
Warren (2000), on the other hand, stresses inclusivity, a relational view in
which humans are members of an ecological community, along with its other
members—nature and the nonhumans. That inclusivity, however, does not erase
differences but acknowledges them respectfully, building “selves-­in-relations”
(Warren 2000, 187), or “ecological selves” (ibid., 100). Warren illustrates this
sense of inclusivity emerging as an “ethic of care”—her important ecofeminist
contribution—by a personal account of the experience of swimming with
 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity   71
dolphins. She finds it extraordinary, yet quite natural, that the dolphins chose to
swim with her, to include her and not vice versa, once she abandoned the habit­
ual role of a dominating caretaker. “I had let go of my attempts to control the
outcome. And I knew that the internal changes in me had made it possible for
these intelligent and sensitive creatures to invite me to swim with them” (Warren
2000, 121).
The “ethic of care” can be contrasted to patriarchal attitudes described by
Annette Kolodny (1984) who, exploring the lives of eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century women on the American frontier, points to the difference between male
and female response to encounter with nature, the riches and opportunities of
the new continent. On the basis of diaries and fiction by wives of the first set­
tlers, Kolodny (1984, 4–11) observes that where for men there is an almost
libidinal fantasy, an erotic discovery and possession of the new riches, women
are after a sense of home, a search for harmony with that new environment.
Men’s activities on the frontier are typical male activities elsewhere in the
course of history—at war, during crusades and colonization, intensified by the
new demands of capital-­accumulating economy of the nineteenth century.
These include, as Kolodny (1984, 4) observes, acute “competition—even
between brothers” and, what is worse, “a willingness to violate the very gener­
osity” of that new land, turning nature into “a princess fallen into hands of the
robbers, who cut off her fingers for the sake of the jewels she wears” (ibid., 5).
Thus, the initial “reaping of pleasure” is turned into “violation,” “transforma­
tion of the wilderness into profit”—in Warren’s discourse, “rape.”1 Moreover,
there is a further connection women settlers find between the predicament of
nature and their own: while the men are out into the wild, exploring (with the
named consequences), the women are locked at home, dreaming of a “howling
wilderness” (Kolodny 1984, 11) they feel kinship with. Thus the narratives of
these women are “captivity narratives” (ibid.), extending the metaphor to both
themselves and the land they are now part of. At the same time, this feeling of
kinship prompts a more caring attitude: if men’s ambition is to tame and subdue
the wilderness by turning it into cultured space, women strive to preserve some
of the wilderness’s own character, some “original beauty of the place” (12),
even if in the form of uncut trees for shade, some greenery for garden space,
etc. In other words, the caring attitude, “an ethic of care” theorized at the turn
of the Millennium as an urgent measure for preserving the dramatically endan­
gered environment, was already adopted intuitively by women settlers centuries
earlier. However, as women were not decision-­makers or policy-­settlers (being
constructed, like nature, the irrational, muted “other”), that “care” did not
and could not become a general attitude, with the consequences we are
facing today.
Townsend Warner’s novels can be chronologically placed roughly between
the frontier narratives and experiences, and the theories of “Third Wave”
ecofeminism discussed above. A reading of these novels provides insights into
such important ecofeminist issues as identity construction, possession, exploita­
tion, violation, and care.
72   J. Tofantšuk
Identity and feminism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s novels
Although both novels discussed here are set in the “voguish” 1920s, they reflect
the white middle-­class European mentality of the newly passed Victorian age,
still looming large in the fates of the respective protagonists. The narratives,
however, work at disrupting that mentality, offering a freshness that was
immediately recognized in the author’s own time (Harman 1991, 62–71) with
aspects speaking to the readers of today. Laura “Lolly” Willowes is a 28-year-­
old English spinster from a traditional middle-­class family engaged in the suc­
cessful brewing industry in the countryside. After the death of her beloved
father, who was responsible for her intellectual and aesthetic growth (strong
autobiographical connections with Warner herself ), Laura is left in the care of
her two brothers and their wives. It only appears “natural” that she would move
to London with one of the families, becoming the conveniently available, unpaid,
and indispensable “aunt Lolly”—an identity she would have to inhabit for 20
years. After that comes a moment of awakening: rich flowers from the country­
side and leaves of beech she accidentally purchases fill her with a sudden desire
for a life and personality of her own. She buys a map of the region the plants
come from and, spotting a village called Great Mop, immediately decides to
settle there, buying a house on the income she thinks she has, determined to be
making her own decisions for the rest of her life. Announcing the plan to her
brother, who is currently her “protector,” the necessary “male authority” in the
absence of a husband or father, Laura declares the programmic “Nothing is
impracticable for a single, middle-­aged woman with an income of her own”
(87)—moving rhetorically from a typical Jane Austen figure to an emancipated
1920s type. Unfortunately, only to discover that the “male authority” has not
handled her finances wisely, losing her the resources she had counted on. Never­
theless, Laura departs to Great Mop, causing shock and indignation to all her
relatives save nephew Titus, another country lover in the family, and takes a
room there, leading a carefree, blissfully aimless life exploring the surroundings
and learning local ways. Her complacency is disrupted when “culture” (her
nephew) comes to claim her, turning her back into the domesticated Aunt Lolly,
and the only way to preserve her autonomy is to turn into a witch, thus merging
first with the villagers (also all witches), and then with the environment, called
Satan in the novel (perhaps for the sake of thrill) but really standing for nature
itself as opposed to everything oppressive (LW, 124)2: “Society, the Law, the
Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament … the Bank of England …
and half a dozen other useful props of civilization”—in other words, identity
attributes constructing what she is not, while by embracing Satan/nature Laura is
finally at peace with what she is.
Written a year later and set about the same historic time as Lolly Willowes,
Mr. Fortune’s Maggot (1927) appears totally different in plot and geographic
setting. It recounts the story of Timothy Fortune, a former bank clerk from
London who, having spent ten years on a South Sea mission, settles on a remote
island of Fanua with the ambition to convert its “unconvertible” inhabitants.
 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity   73
After three years there, he has only one convert, a beautiful boy Lueli, who is
fiercely loyal to his pastor. The climax of the novel is Mr. Fortune’s discovery
that his attempts to turn nature into culture have been futile: his loyal convert is
still worshipping his wooden god. The result is what Harman (1991, 71) sees as
the ultimate tragedy of the man, reiterated in Sylvia’s own comments on her
earlier work (ibid., 124): the missionary himself loses his god, and slides into a
bleak realization that we humans cannot “love anything without messing it
about” (MFM, 194).
Despite the seeming plot differences, there is much similarity between the
two novels. First, they are both written in the genre of a fantasy novel with a
moral edge—influence of Wells and Stevenson, as well as the vogue of the day.
But, differently from her male contemporaries, Warner does not explore the
world of pirates or scientists, choosing to work with what Harman (1991, 71)
calls “the most unpromising material”—both Lolly and Timothy are “mute,
middle-­aged English failures” (ibid.). The biographer (ibid.) praises Sylvia’s
skill in opening these characters to the readers’ fantasies, thus achieving an
incredible degree of realism. What is most remarkable about these novels,
however, is the way they explore and subvert the nature-­culture dichotomy,
problematizing it as an unhealthy patriarchal practice and bringing out altern­
atives, such as paganism and witchcraft.

Place, nature, and civilization

Place and nature play an important part in the two novels. In Buell’s (2005,
61–69) terms, one can follow the transformation of localities from “abstract
space,” a point on a map, to a place that is “seen, heard, smelled, imagined,
loved, hated, feared, or revered” (Buell 2005, 63). Sylvia Townsend Warner can
be viewed as a regional writer who, like Laura, was first attached to her father’s
home at Harrow, Middlesex, then residing in London, until she finally found her
own place in Dorset (Thomas Hardy’s country), spending most of her literary
and emotional adult life there with her partner Valentine Ackland.
There is a strong biographical link between her fictional situations and life
experiences. On the basis of an account of her discovery of the Essex marshes,
Harman (1991, 52–53) describes the future writer’s, then 28, decision to stay at
Drinkwaters indefinitely, having “become properly her own person,” one pos­
sessing inner integrity and self-­awareness that was lacking in her former London
self, which she referred to as “the creature of whoever I was with.”3 That dis­
covery of identity evolved, for Sylvia, into “the discovery that it was possible to
write poetry” (ibid., 53). In the same way, Laura comes to be her true self in
what becomes her “place” (in Buell’s terms)—the remote village Great Mop and
the surrounding countryside of Buckinghamshire.
For the preceding 20 years, Laura had to accept the family rhythm of
summers in the country and winters in London from the second week of Septem­
ber, with the arrival of “unhealthy” season of fallen leaves and damp earth. The
imposed dualism of exciting/healthy London vs. dull/unhealthy countryside,
74   J. Tofantšuk
though she personally longed for that damp but alive earth, dead leaves and the
moon calling her “Now! Now!” (66), resulted in the sense of split personality or
false identity she had in that London space: “while her body sat before the first
fires and was cosy with Henry and Caroline, her mind walked by lonely
sea-­bords, in marshes and fens, or came at nightfall to the edge of a wood”
(LW, 67). One may observe ecofeminist connections in Laura’s affinity with the
moon,4 as well as the dichotomy of city/woods as one of culture/nature, whereof
Laura definitely belongs to the latter. Her inner conflict, the uncomfortable situ­
ation of made identity continues until she makes her rebellious decision to go
where she belongs—to her place, which she first knows as a place of imagina­
tion and meaning—as Buell’s ecological place. Having announced her determi­
nation to her disapproving brother, she already feels a new person—of her own,
not somebody else’s, making: “she had come to the edge of the wood, and felt
its cool breath on her face” (LW, 90). Once at Great Mop, she finds it as windy
and rainy as her family foretold, which she finds not scary but exciting, remark­
ing inwardly with a sarcastic satisfaction (Warner’s trademark) that “weather
like this … would never be allowed in London” (LW, 91).
The paradox that weather can be “allowed” is quite explicable in terms of cul­
tural identity based on dualist thought: weather is nature, but in city space nature
is subdued to cultural rules, standards, clichés. Just like Laura was not “allowed”
to feel the way she did, to have a life of her own, freedom to “sit in the doorway
and think” (LW, 194) rather than being “the refuse of [others’] thoughts” (LW,
196), feeding on life’s leftovers if not fitting into the general scheme proper to
her class and gender at the time (married, child-­bearing, city-­dwelling, ball-­
going, fashion-­conscious) so nature, too, would be judged as “too” cold/hot,
un/healthy, un/bearable, moody, rainy—in a word, acceptable or unacceptable.
Thus, both Laura and nature are objects of backgrounding, the Up/Down hier­
archy discussed above.
It is worth remarking that the names of Laura’s family allude to British mon­
archs: James, Henry, Princess Caroline, and their descendent Titus, ironically
linked to Roman history of conquests. Thus the Willowes represent culture
unadulterated by nature, rejecting the countryside they once inhabited, propa­
gating evil and cruelty. They have fused with the mechanistic “waste land” of
the 1920s, in which, in T.S. Eliot’s (Townsend Warner’s contemporary!) vision,
there is no place for real communication and real feeling. As discussed by Ter­
blanche (in the present volume), Eliot’s Waste Land represents a kind of life that
is dangerously removed from a sense of organic unity with nature and, by exten­
sion, members of society (p. 54).
In this context, Laura acts as a counter-­force all along: as a country-­dweller,
she is interested in herbs and their gastronomic as well as medicinal powers,
delighting her father and improving his health; having moved to London, she
continues “destabilizing” the harshly ordered, rational household of Henry and
Caroline by bringing in lilies and chrysanthemums, or carnations that are always
too beautiful, out of season, irrational, impracticable in Caroline’s eyes, in a
word, wrong. This makes Laura akin to Ophelia, compellingly discussed in this
 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity   75
volume (Kordecki) and alluded to earlier in my essay: in Kordecki’s view, by
bringing in flowers, Ophelia brings a more alive natural world into “the stifling
monarchal and familial struggles of the court” (this volume, p. 16), acting as
“nature’s nurse” (ibid.), as each flower is associated with a certain character’s
health and thus a promise of healing. In the same way, Laura with her lilies and
beech leaves brings some life and aesthetic illumination into the rational London
household, which, however, does not want to accept the healing, leaving her no
alternative but to move to the countryside by herself.
It is no wonder that natural imagery is used throughout Lolly Willowes to
describe the protagonist, her situation, self-­perception, transformations, and even
her political views. For example, a sustained metaphor is employed comparing
objectified women to berries and trees:

… all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as
common as blackberries, and as unregarded. Nothing for them except sub­
jection, and plaiting their hair … they think how they were young once, …
like trees in spring. But they are like trees towards the end of the summer,
heavy and dusty, and nobody finds their leaves surprising, or notices them
till they fall off.
(LW, 94)

Here we can see how Warner explores and in fact challenges the standard
women/nature association: on the one hand, there is a “natural link” but, on the
other hand, it is culture that makes it appear “natural.” Laura, realizing that
enforced situation of backgrounding, strives out of it. Making her programmic
speech in defense of witchcraft as the only alternative, she suddenly feels not
like a rooted tree anymore but like a bird, “as though she had been thrown into
the air and had suddenly begun to fly” (194).
Remarkably, there are no women in Mr. Fortune’s Maggot,5 but one can see
ecofeminist issues in the novel, because from an ecofeminist point of view, not
only women, but also other marginal groups, such as people of color, indigenous
people, children, and so on, are subjected to backgrounding. In a series of comic
episodes, the European missionary is trying to “convert” a Polynesian boy not
only to Christianity but also to European ways, forgetting the boy’s own identity
and trying to squeeze him into his own. For instance, he spends the whole day
sewing clothes for Lueli (a strong cultural marker), only to discover that he had
forgotten to allow for the natural curves of the boy’s body, making him feel
tight, uncomfortable and look ridiculous, not to mention the torture of being
measured and made to try on strange-­looking items, while what the boy wants
most at the moment is to bathe in the stream or lie in the shade being comfort­
able in his body in a climate that does not require extra layers physically—so
why should they be forced upon him, culturally. As Fortune makes his next cul­
tural attempt, making the boy learn geometry, even he himself senses the dis­
crepancy and absurdity of his intentions. Lying on his back in order to
demonstrate the logic of measures and heights, he becomes aware not of these
76   J. Tofantšuk
geometrical properties—product of reason—but the natural sensation of “the sun
… delicious and the grass soft” (MFM, 180). In that world of nature, pleasure,
and wooden gods, there is no place for geometry, a hole in the earth is a hole in
the earth and not a geometric point—appointed starting point (170)—and the
ocean is vast and to be bathed in, not measured. Another symbolic episode is
when Mr. Fortune, having discovered that Lueli has not given up his pagan god
for the new Christian one, spends an hour “commanding, reasoning, expostu­
lating, explaining, persuading, threatening” (MFM, 117), the boy sits without
looking or listening. Presently, however, he starts listening hard, to sounds that
do have meaning: the sounds of a beginning earthquake. Timothy’s watch stops,
reminding him that “time is a convention” (MFM, 142). The earthquake, the fire,
the tide, and the ensuing rain are, in contrast, “equally natural, equally account­
able for, equally inevitable” (MFM, 147). Indeed, for Lueli, forces of nature is
the only frame of reference, as is his “natural” spirituality, his wooden gods that
the white missionary attempted to take away. Like in Lolly Willowes, natural
imagery is used as illustrative of human predicaments, complications of identity,
and degrees of freedom. The bird metaphor, standing for female liberation in the
former novel, is employed to describe a situation of pigeon-­holing,6 when
Mr. Fortune realizes that by forcing European ways on Lueli he had “enslaved
him,” “kept him on a string … tormenting him with that damned geometry”
(MFM, 195) in an attempt to discipline him into a docile body of the other:

Yes, parrot! You may well whistle. But be careful. Don’t attract my atten­
tion too much lest I make a pet of you, and put you in a cage, and then in the
end, when you had learned to talk like me instead of whistling like a wise
bird, wring your neck because you couldn’t learn to repeat Paradise Lost.
(Ibid.)

Here, one should not overlook the allusion to Milton’s masterpiece treated
ironically: paradise may be lost not to disobedience, but by obeying culture.
Neither should we disregard the symbolic implications of the island’s name:
Fanua may be an inversion of fauna,7 a paradise in which humanimals and
earth’s others are in harmony for as long as the harmony is not disrupted,
inverted by the intrusion of civilization with its principles, geometry, and hierar­
chical religion.
The theme of intrusion of civilization upon nature prominent in the colonial
account of Mr. Fortune’s Maggot is also quite strong in Lolly Willowes, e.g., in
the Turneresque vision of a train as a mechanic monster slashing through the
serenity of the countryside: “The wind and the moon and the ranging cloud pack
were not the only hunters abroad that night: something else was hunting among
the hills, hunting slowly, deliberately, sure of its quarry” (LW, 112). Turner,
whose Rain, Steam and Speed (1844) comes to mind as a mirror of this descrip­
tion, had a dual attitude to progress and trains: next to apprehension, he shared
his contemporaries’ enthusiasm about technological progress providing greater
opportunities for travelling, getting inspiration from “real” nature, and painting
 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity   77
truthfully in plain air. The duality is prompted in the painting by the contrasting
color scheme, and the image of a hare running for its life ahead of the train pre­
sented as a slow but noisy, magnificently threatening monster. Laura’s emotion
rather resembles that of Turner’s peasant, raising from his work to stare in
amazement and apprehension at the passing train. As a modern woman, she
cannot share the 1850s peasant’s wonder—hers is already the time of automobile
and relatively easy travel. But she does suddenly share the horror, the inappro­
priateness of a train intruding upon her peace, the quiet and season-­bound life
she is now leading: “Loud, separate and abrupt, each part of the engine trampled
down her wits” (LW, 112).
A modern middle-­class woman with a two-­decade experience of London life,
Laura now finds comfort and domestic familiarity in the fields, hen farm, and
fantasy of a witch’s hut on hen legs, and apprehension in the formerly familiar
sight and sound of a train, thus reversing the hierarchy of nature/culture, pro­
gressive/bygone, technology/tradition, science/mysticism.

Nature: from possession to “encounter”

Examining the relationship of nature and civilization, their conflict in works of
literature, one must not forget that this approach, though aiming at disrupting
hierarchies, is itself dualist. As Patrick Murphy (1995) rightfully points out,
there is a difference between “nature” writing and ecological writing. The latter
is mostly associated with the tradition of the pastoral, which tends to idealize
nature, while what is needed for an ecological text is not idealization but “a true
encounter with it” (1995, 25). While Murphy (ibid.) is certainly insightful on the
role of the point of view in classic pastoral texts as dominating/anthropocentric
and thus not truly “ecological,” it would be probably too limiting to claim that
“self-­conscious ecological writing … [is] a phenomenon primarily of the late
twentieth century and that which precedes it … mostly protoecological” (ibid.,
26). In examining the two novels by Warner, we can find, in my opinion, a truly
ecological/ecofeminist angle, differentiating between anthropocentric possession
and a caring “encounter.”
In Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, the protagonist progresses from a possessive atti­
tude to, if not care, then at least realization that a Euro(anthropo)centric approach
is erroneous and even harmful. Upon arrival on the island of Fanua, his greatest
wish is similar to Laura’s: to be left alone in this newly discovered place they
are determined to love. There is a significant difference in attitude, however:
Mr. Fortune’s “love” for the island is that of ownership: when the party of Euro­
peans helping him install on the island depart, he sees them off “with a renewed
sense of ownership” (MFM, 10), declaring firmly that he wishes to be left alone
“for at least a year” (ibid.). Departing after three years of unsuccessful mission,
Mr. Fortune realizes how wrong that attempt at a “love” has been. He now feels
that Fanua was everything “that was real, everything that was significant”
(MFM, 249)—a sense of “place” that is more real than the now remote Europe
with a war breaking out (he cannot make sense of who is fighting who, or what
78   J. Tofantšuk
they are all fighting about, 248). However, he also realizes his ultimate tragedy
at having been unable to approach the place with dignity, to have a true “encoun­
ter” with the place, led by his mind, the Superego that had ideas about Euro-­
Christian superiority, which in his case proved destructive:

For man’s will is a demon that will not let him be. It leads him to the edge
of a clear pool; and while he sits admiring it, with his soul suspended over it
like a green branch and dwelling in his own reflection, will stretches out his
hand and closes his fingers upon a stone—a stone to throw into it.
(MFM, 193)

The passage addresses the common 1920s idea supported, for instance, by D.H.
Lawrence, who believed that modern man was unhappy because he had lost
touch with his natural Id and could only approach nature through his rational
mind, subduing it to his will, through violence. In a brilliantly allegoric poem,
Snake (1923), a man is both instinctively fascinated by a snake, “earth-­brown,
earth-­golden from the burning bowels of the earth,” and rationally led by the
“voice of his education” ordering him to take a stick and kill the snake “if he
were a man,” which he does, and the result is not a sense of victory but, like for
Mr. Fortune, “a pettiness.” Warner returns to the theme in a 1930s short story
The Salutation, written as a sequel to Mr. Fortune’s Maggot. The protagonist,
travelling across a South American landscape, identifies himself with a large,
clumsy rhea being shot before his eyes (Warner 2000, 80–81). On the one hand,
the rhea is but another failure in a world where only the perfect is accepted:

There was no need to look for the motive. Opposite slays opposite.…
Slender, fiercely erect, racked with youth and pride, the boy with the gun
stood in a trance of hatred, defying a world of rheas, a world of harmless­
ness, dowdiness, ungainliness.

On the other hand, we can see the harmful dualism exposed here: the rhea
represents nature as the other, the protagonist a failure as the other (not “man
enough” to shoot or hit with a stick or throw a stone); both are “Downs” in the
hierarchical Up/Down logic of western discourse.
In Lolly Willowes, the complexity of possession vs. encounter is explored
through the character of Laura herself, who undergoes transformation, and
nephew Titus, who is not capable of one. Laura’s transformation begins with
purchasing gorgeous chrysanthemums in London, making her want to move to
the village where they come from. But there is a significant difference between a
place in imagination and a real place of care. The episode with cowslips serves
as a turning point: Laura encounters them in the field; she does not buy them,
does not bring them home to put in a vase, stroking and loving, in a word, pos­
sessing, as she did with lilies and chrysanthemums back in her London days.
Instead, she kneels down to the wild flowers, in a symbolic act of catharsis and
liberation, laying her face “close to their fragrance” (LW, 123). She is first
 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity   79
amazed at their simple yet complex beauty, and how they chose to grow in the
particular field (not where she was looking for them), without observing the
calendar (she expected to find them in May but only did in the first summer
days). To be more accurate, she does not kneel down to them, but among them,
becoming one of them, a “self-­in-relation.” Here in the field, Laura is again like
Ophelia (Kordecki, this volume), “like a creature native.” However, she is much
more fortunate than Ophelia, sinking into the earth not “to muddy death,” but to
a new life. Touching the earth, reuniting with it, Laura simultaneously reunites
with her own deeper identity, which is the beginning of her liberation. At the end
of the novel, she burrows herself into the earth—to slumber there “among mur­
muring leaves overhead” (LW, 203), for it is autumn and she, having finally
departed from culture, embraces the natural rhythms of the seasons.8
The arrival of Titus, who abandons his art studies in European capitals to
follow “Aunt Lolly” to Great Mop, makes her aware of the difference, which
surfaces during their walks in the countryside. If Laura walks in full awareness
of the spirit of the place, grateful to be accepted by the woods and leaves as part
of an ecosystem, Titus discusses the landscape, illustrating it “with possessive
gestures” (LW, 176), loving it “as if it were a body” (LW, 134), wishing “to
stroke it” (ibid.), like Laura was stroking her chrysanthemums at the initial stage
she had overcome. We can see parallels with Mary Austin’s Ford (1917) pub­
lished a decade prior to Lolly Willowes and discussed earlier in this volume
(Geçgil): land is a mistress to be cherished and courted, but is more often com­
pelled and mastered as a result, subordinated to sexist human desires. As Titus
keeps talking about Fuseli, the romantic painter he is working on, who special­
ized in images of witches sacrificing babies and women having nightmares,
Laura starts having nightmares about Fuseli (culture) coming to kill village hens
and turn the hills into a golf-­course (133). That intrusion of Titus’s psycho-­
sexual fantasies (comparable with frontier conquests discussed by Koldony and
capitalist “owning” of the land touched upon by Geçgil) and his pastoral, cul­
tural attitude makes Laura feel as if the spirit of the place is withdrawing from
her (LW, 135) and only “silence” is heard where she used to converse with hills,
woods, and the moon. Instead of living, talking nature embracing her, she now
perceives Great Mop as “a place like any other place, a pastoral landscape where
an aunt walked out with her nephew” (LW, 136).
The only radical solution is to call out for help—which Nature does send. If
in Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, nature’s weapon is the earthquake, in Lolly Willowes
it is Satan, king of soil, woods, and bees who he sends to drive out Titus and
restore peace, returning Laura to the ecosystem she had nearly lost a place in.
This fantastic outcome brings us to the last point—the role of religion and spirit­
uality in the two novels.

Religion, spirituality, and care

Karen J. Warren (2000) exposes the patriarchal nature of Judeo-­Christian reli­
gions that put down, in addition to women, “other others”—children, animals,
80   J. Tofantšuk
plants, and the earth itself, with stars and God being above all. In this vertical
hierarchy, earth and Satan are both “down,” and so are pagan gods, which are
made of wood or stone and are material rather than spiritual. In Mr. Fortune’s
Maggot, the protagonist realizes the dualism, which demystifies his mission and
possibly faith:

… such a superior invulnerable God, part of that European conspiracy

which opposes gunboats to canoes and rifles to bows and arrows, which
showers death from the mountains upon Indian villages, which rounds up
the negro into an empire and tricks him of his patrimony.
(MFM, 140)

It is amazing to find such clear postcolonial insights in a novel written as early

as 1927. Considering the role of Christianity, particularly the Bible, in coloniza­
tion, Huggan and Tiffin (2010) point to the “control of textual interpretation”
(163) as patriarchy’s way to subdue women and animals, producing “the indoc­
trinated notion of inferior races” (162) and a “hierarchy that will eventually be
accepted as ‘natural’, indeed as what constitutes the very ‘nature’ of human
beings” (ibid.). If narratives of power we live by today are but product of
assumed interpretative power over a historical record, they can be demystified
through the same method—which is exactly what Warner does in Lolly
Willowes.
The novel ends with Laura sensing that she had always been a secret witch,
from her early interest in healing herbs to attending a Sabbath at Great Mop
(where she meets most of the villagers, including the local clergyman). She also
makes acquaintance with Satan himself, who does not appear with horns and
hooves, as clichés would have it, but rather as a kind keeper of the woods, and
the only creature who would listen to Laura’s speech on the position of women
without interrupting and take it seriously. Depicted by Warner, who was not par­
ticularly religious, God and devil appear as constructs to illustrate the philo­
sophical hierarchy of matter/spirit, in which Satan, “enemy of the soul” (LW,
201) belongs to the “lower” former. As spirit is associated with the divine,
matter would automatically be “diabolic,” equaling nature that is, as ecofeminist
theologian Elizabeth Gray put it (qtd. Warren 2000, 30) “not only at the bottom
of … pyramid but … the most full of dirt, blood and such nasty natural surprises
as earthquakes, floods and bad storms.” Playing on the Modernist public interest
for the gothic and the Uncanny, Warner cleverly links her witches and Satan to
earth, which is reminiscent of Lawrence’s Snake/Serpent—“the grass [was] in
league with him” and “his roots went down to a pit” (LW, 200). The pit repres­
ents the unknown, but in this novel, it is the eternal and the caring, as Laura con­
cludes, realizing that Satan is not death, neither is he of death—being immortal,
“his mind brooded immovably over the landscape and over the natures of men,
an unforgetting and unchoosing mind” (LW, 201). Thus, he believes that Folly
Wood, cut down during the war, is still there, part of the ecosystem and people
are part of that wood. Because “there is no appeasing his witness” (ibid.) of what
 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity   81
earth was like, “at one stage of civilization people said he was the embodiment
of all evil, and then a little later on that he did not exist” (ibid.).
Thus, writing on such controversial topics as religion and demonology,
Warner is in tune with ecofeminist ideas of alternative spirituality. Laura is a
witch in that she refuses to be a “docile body”—“not to run round being harmful,
or to run round being helpful either” but “to escape all that—to have a life of
one’s own” (LW, 196), which is rebellious and, therefore, “diabolic.” As
Foucault maintains, there is no master without a slave. Paraphrasing, there is no
God without Satan, and no “good women” without “witches.” There would be
no such categories if there were no dualism. A possible alternative to dualism is
ambiguity, encountered with sufficient degree in Lolly Willowes, as in the allu­
sion to Baba Yaga9 (LW, 122), the witch from Slavonic/Russian folklore, resid­
ing in the woods (borderline between life and death) in a hut on hen’s legs that
can go anywhere at her will. Baba Yaga is an ambiguous creature: she is both
evil and wise, a child stealer and destroyer of men, but also the one who tells
riddles and who men turn to as the last resort, when all in the human world has
failed them. A keeper of the woods, she is accompanied by animals at her serv­
ice—black birds, cats, owls, snakes, frogs—creatures embodying both menace
and wisdom (Laura, too, adopts a black kitten she calls Vinegar). This
ambiguous, borderline position makes the witch/Baba Yaga a perfect ecofemi­
nist character. Living deep in the woods, we can never imagine her burn them,
cut, destroy, or sell to people. In the same way, witch Laura adopts an “ethic of
care,” approaching the woods as woods, and herself as one at rest there, neither
disturbing nor being disturbed.

Conclusion
In Warner’s novels I’ve discussed, those “outside” culture, religion, and civiliza­
tion are in tune with themselves and the environment, as true “selves-­in-
relation.” When culture attempts to turn them into a “docile body” (mold a good
Christian Theodore out of the intuitive naked Polynesian Lueli, or domesticated
Aunt Lolly out of the dreamy, herb-­witting Laura), it is nature that comes to the
rescue—sending an earthquake or earth-­rooted Satan, subverting all possible
binaries and pigeon-­holes. In the same way, Warner herself can be viewed as a
“writer-­in-relation,” resisting labels and eschewing dualism by working at the
“tectonic plates” of feminism, anti-­imperialism, anti-­centrism and (proto?)ecolo­
gical writing. Focusing on women and “other others”—middle-­aged failures,
“non-­manly” men, ungraceful animals and indigenous people—Warner resorts
to natural imagery to underscore their strong link with nature as a source of
agency.
Problematizing the nature/culture, as well as men/women and norm/other,
dichotomy, Warner creates narrative situations of backgrounding (of traditional
religions, female identity, and so on) or violence against land and animals. Like
her contemporary Mary Austin, she brings forth the idea of “love for the land,”
resisting the essentialist equation of women with nature, which would eventually
82   J. Tofantšuk
result in backgrounding and subordination. She shows how an affinity with
nature can be both complicating and liberating—in a culture of reason, those
“others” outside rationality are labelled “mad,” like Ophelia, or “a witch,” like
Laura. At the same time, these characters act as counter-­forces who not only
restore the organic unity with their own identity, but also challenge the very
binary of culture/nature, cleverly sliding around the two concepts towards repre­
senting them as a continuum rather than a binary.
Agency is possible for an ecological self, who does not succumb to standard,
hierarchical ways of thinking and living. Subverting the dualism, Warner creates
fantastic situations and a spirituality that does not exist apart from the ecosystem
and materiality of the earth.

Notes
1 Also used by Plumwood (1993, 122) and compellingly by Gaard and Terblanche in this
volume.
2 The two novels will be referred to as LW and MFM respectively for convenience.
3 At that point, Sylvia, a talented musician, composer, and music historian, was in a rela­
tionship with Percy Buck, a married man twice her age, which was both an enriching
and a stifling, disheartening experience, as one can gather from this comment and her
diaries of mid- and late 1920s.
4 Women are traditionally associated with the moon, with symbolism as well as preju­
dices coming from the cycles of the female body, the enigma leading to moon/madness
and moon/witch associations, which will prove helpful in understanding Laura’s char­
acter further on.
5 One may argue, however, that the native boy Lueli is clearly feminized and the main
character himself is mildly (latently) gay. This may have to do with the prevailing erro­
neous stereotype in the 1920s that homosexuals were like women. As gay agenda in
STW’s writings has already been discussed by other scholars (e.g., Swaab 2010) and
for lack of space, it will not be elaborated on in my chapter.
6 In Hall’s terms, being forced into an identity and judged according to a restrictive
category, always hierarchical.
7 I wish to thank Ann Torday Gulden for this insight and other valuable suggestions.
8 It is easy to denounce such an ending ecocritically, especially bearing in mind Mur­
phy’s (2010) illuminating critique of Thoreau’s Walden. For Murphy (ibid., 20), indi­
vidualistic isolationism is not enough; being simple requires much complication and
healthy social interaction. But for a woman (Thoreau puts man foremost) “dissolving
in nature” is the only alternative to being enslaved by culture, at least at that point in
history/herstory.
9 Nesbitt (2014, 23) believes that Warner benefitted from Ralston’s Russian Folktales
(1873) for the image of Baba Yaga.

References
Buell, Laurence. 2005. The Future of Environmental Criticism. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 1984. The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow. New York:
Pantheon.
Hall, Stuart. 2003. “Who Needs Identity?” In Questions of Cultural Identity, edited by
Stuart Hall and Paul de Gay 1–17. London: Sage.
 Ecofeminist philosophy and issues of identity   83
Harman, Clare. 1991. Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography. London: Minerva.
Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Women, Nature and
the Environment. London: Routledge.
Kolodny, Annette. 1984. The Land Before Her. Chapel Hill and London: North Carolina
University Press.
Lawrence, David Herbert. 1993. “Snake” (1923). In The Norton Anthology of British
Literature. 6th ed., vol. 2, 2123–2125. New York: Norton.
Murphy, Patrick D. 1995. Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques. Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Murphy, Patrick D. 2010. Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies.
Plymouth: Lexington Books.
Nesbitt, Jennifer P. 2014. “A Critical Edition for Lolly: In the Benefits of Being Unre­
garded.” In: The Journal of Sylvia Townsend Warner Society. Staffordshire: Panda
Press.
Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York:
Routledge.
Plumwood, 2002. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. London and
New York: Routledge.
Swaab, Peter. 2010. “The Queerness of Lolly Willowes.” In The Journal of Sylvia
Townsend Warner Society. Staffordshire: Panda Press.
Townsend Warner, Sylvia. 2000. Salutation (1932). Carlton: The Tartarus Press.
Townsend Warner, Sylvia. 2010. Mr. Fortune’s Maggot (1927). London: Virago.
Townsend Warner, Sylvia. 2012. Lolly Willowes (1926). London: Virago.
Vakoch, Douglas A. 2012. “Introduction: A Different Story.” In Feminist Ecocriticism:
Environment, Women, and Literature, edited by Douglas A. Vakoch. Plymouth:
Lexington Books.
Warren, Karen J. 2000. Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What it is and
Why it Matters. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.
6 “Taking mighty strides across the
world”
Positioning Zora Neale Hurston in the
ecofeminist tradition
Nicole Anae

Black voices speaking the natural world

In the hand-­drawn image decorating the Christmas card that Zora Neale Hurston
sent to Fannie Hurst in December 1926, it appears deeply symbolic that Hurston
omits from the woman’s face any anatomically distinguishable features
(Hurston 1926). That this faceless woman almost merges into the surrounding
ecology by virtue of her anonymity and her neutrality appears to symbolize an
equilibrium between the orders of lifeforms as much as the worlds of the human
and nonhuman. Yet, the faceless woman seems to also personify the silencing
of women’s voices in the expression of female interactions with the natural
environment. The elision of black voices from expressing their relationships
with the land, the seasons, and the natural environment, is a concern Hurston
(1955) tackles in her essay, originally published in 1950, “What White Pub-
lishers Won’t Print,” claiming “That a great mass of Negros can be stirred by
the pageants of Spring and Fall; the extravaganza of summer, the majesty of
winter … is ruled out” (Hurston 1979, 169–173). The statement memorializes
Hurston’s position not only concerning expanding the Black American literary
canon but concerning the narrative possibilities to effectively blend the cultural
and the environmental with broader pressing questions about social justice,
racial inequity, and the interconnectedness of people of color (and minorities)
with the natural environment. Concomitantly, Hurston’s stance regarding the
powerful relationship between literature and the environment emphasizes
women’s authorial power in reimagining a “new” genre beyond nature writing:
“Literature and other arts are supposed to hold up the mirror to nature,” claimed
Hurston (1995, 955), referring not only to human nature, but the direct relation-
ship between people of color and the natural environment. For Hurston: “With
only the fractional ‘exceptional’ and the ‘quaint’ portrayed, a true picture of
Negro life in America cannot be” (955).
Selected letters from Hurston’s catalogue reveal that she eliminates various
forms of negation in bringing together inter-­racial perspectives of the natural
environment, and raising the possibility of “seeing” the natural world in order to,
if not redefine, then certainly contest hierarchical categories of race—blackness
and whiteness—in appreciating ecological lifeform. In Hurston’s letter, for
 “Taking mighty strides across the world”   85
instance, this time to the author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953) con-
cerning her autobiographical novel Cross Creek (1942), Hurston expresses a
close cross-­racial identification with Rawlings’ view of flora and fauna:

Whether it pleases you or not, you are my sister. You look at plants and
animals and people in the way I do. You are conscious of the three layers of
life, instead of the obvious thing before your nose. You see and feel the
immense past, what is now, and feel inside you something of what is to come.
(Hurston 2003, 486)

Race categories in a like-­minded vision of the “three layers of life”—the ecolo-

gical past, present, and future—are eliminated in a kind of kinship sisterhood
encouraged by this concurrent seeing and feeling of the natural world. While
Hurston (1991, 45) argued “There is no single face in nature because every eye
that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle,” here, literature offered a way in
which to bridge those discretionary visions toward appealing to a collective
sense of self and the living world. So acutely, for instance, did Hurston affiliate
with Rawlings’ realization of her “Negro characters,” and the “ ‘picture-­talk’ ” of
the “Negro dialects,” that she claimed that in Cross Creek Rawlings had “written
the best thing on Negros of any white writer who has ever lived” (486). By this
Hurston appears to meditate beyond what Carol J. Adams (2006, 120) identifies
as “definition by negation,” to rethink the means by which race politics defines
the level to which living human beings not only afford one another moral con-
sideration but see and feel their natural world and the nonhuman beings within
as collectively significant.

The question of anti-­speciesism in Hurston’s literatures

“[E]xtending moral consideration to non-­human nature and promoting represent-
ative thinking beyond species boundaries” (Smith 2003, 70)—that is, “anti-­
speciesism”—represents the eco-­critical approach adopted in this examination of
Hurston’s literary and textual representation of human and nonhuman animals.
From this perspective I explore the ecofeminist implications of the ways in
which Hurston’s work might be re-­read to examine the ways in which sexism,
racism, and the subordination of nonhuman animals intersect and overlap. My
aim here is not to define Hurston in terms of absolute partisanship—as, for
instance, a deep ecologist, biocentric, ecofeminist, or some other eco-­ethical
affiliate category—nor to enforce conventional dualisms by drawing figurative
parallels between women and animals, nor to conflate women and/with nature.
Rather, my aim is to critically examine how the relations between people and
animals in Hurston’s work can be reappraised metaphorically against the broader
picture of patriarchy and mechanisms of exchange, commodification, suppres-
sion, and speciesism. Hurston does, after all, make this metaphorical allusion
quite clear in Their Eyes Were Watching God in the character Nanny’s folkloric
observation:
86   N. Anae
So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up.
He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his wom-
enfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.
(Hurston 1937, 19)

While Robert Hemenway (2003, 76) argues that “Many stories and sayings
about mules became allegories exhibiting the creative capacities of black story-
tellers defying their treatment of animals,” the mule allegory as applied by
Hurston illustrates not only the ways in which forms of subjugation traverse
racial and speciesist lines, but also how oppression mediates forms and iterations
of human and nonhuman representation. The mule—sterile progeny of a male
donkey and a mare—links beings that are associated with exploitation (domest-
icated animals), with the gendering of human beings (women and men), as well
as recalling folkloric mythologies of the mule as miscegeny metaphor, thus cre-
ating a three-­way nexus interlocking both species with subjugations (labor,
power, oppression). But the nexus itself is fundamentally ambivalent; mules also
represent admirable qualities in black folklore: human and nonhuman willful-
ness, power, endurance.
Hurston’s work therefore does not offer clear-­cut examples of what is
speciesist and what is not, but rather her anthropological and personal literatures
illustrate the complexities around inter-­species relationships which can some-
times include caring for animals (nonhuman and human) while simultaneously
exploiting them. For instance, while Hurston’s mule allegory likens women’s
suppression to animal’s servitude, she also sometimes conflates woman and
animal for specific effect—particularly in reference to herself. Her personal
letters and correspondences, for instance, include her allegorical allusion to the
mule in her own labor efforts. To the educator and librarian William Stanley
Hoole (1903–90), for instance, Hurston (2003, 366) wrote:

I think I must be God’s left-­handed mule, because I work so hard. That’s

[sic] very funny too, because no lazier mortal ever cried for breath. But the
press of new things, plus the press of old things yet unfinished keep me on
the treadmill all the time.

In a letter to her editor Burroughs Mitchell she wrote, “If you find a mule tied to
a tree, wring his tail and think of me” (563). The dualistic application of the
mule allegory might illustrate that systems of production rely on the labor efforts
of both the human and nonhuman being. Yet, the very fact that the mule tied to a
tree may be symbolic not only of the animal’s own oppression—but that of
human willfulness, power, and endurance—craftily illustrates the interconnect-
edness of gender, labor, and speciesism in forms of literary representation.
Many of the African-­American folktales Hurston collected during her anthro-
pological field work in and around Jacksonville, Florida, beginning in February
1927, underscore the various figurative interconnections between gender, oppres-
sion, and speciesism: “In Mississippi a black horse runaway with a white lady.
 “Taking mighty strides across the world”   87
When they caught the horse they lynched him, and they hung the harness and
burnt the buggy” (Hurston 2002, 110).1 This short tale in Every Tongue Got to
Confess, and others like it, illustrates the extent to which anthropomorphized
animals in African-­American folktales become subjected to forms of human
oppression while simultaneously projecting racist hierarchies of exclusion.
Animals thus delineated also present probative possibilities in analyzing ideolo-
gies of race politics and orders of marginalization:

De gopher waz called intuh court. De judge an’ all de jury wuz all turtles. An’
de gopher got up and looked around, an’ ast de court could he be excused. De
judge ast him why, an’ he told de judge: “Blood is thicker dan water.”
(252)2

First coined by clinical psychologist Richard Ryder in 1970—in deploring

animal exploitation and animal experimentation abuses—“speciesism,” simply
put, is a form of anthropocentrism, that is, “an ethics completely centered on the
interests of human beings” (Yu and Lei 2009, 247). For Tony Mulligan (2011,
226), speciesism might provisionally be regarded as

the endorsement of (or action in line with) any belief whatsoever that is nor-
matively equivalent to regarding humans as the only creaturely bearers of
value or as creatures whose value as humans systematically trumps the
value of all other creatures.

It is from an ecofeminist reading of her work that I examine how Hurston realizes
human and nonhuman encounters “to demonstrate that sexism, racism, classism,
speciesism, and naturism (the oppression of nature) are naturally reinforcing
systems of oppression” (Gaard 1993, 5). From this position, the ecofeminist
implications of Hurston’s literatures and writings do not suggest a “single issue”
movement, to quote Greta Gaard (1993, 5), but “rests on the notion that liberation
of all oppressed groups must be addressed simultaneously.” I am suggesting two
separate but interrelated points here: that Hurston’s representation of human/
nonhuman relationships bears more than a coincidental interconnectedness between
the concepts of racism, sexism, challenging “quaint” (stereotypical) representation
of blackness, and notions of environmental politics; and, by extension, the recogni-
tion of “additional similarities between those forms of human oppression and the
oppressive structures of speciesism and naturism” (Gaard 1993). This position is
structured around Hurston’s anthropological interests and expertise documenting
and preserving African-­American folkloric culture.

Anthropology, folklore, and human/nonhuman relationships

Hurston assisted in mobilizing and launching the Harlem Renaissance movement
between 1925 and 1927 while studying anthropology at Barnard College: then
this institution’s only black scholar. In February 1927 she successfully applied
88   N. Anae
for funding with the Carter Woodson’s Association for the Study of Negro Life
and History, and together with the support of German-­American anthropologist
Franz Boas (1858–1942), Columbia University’s eminent anthropologist,
Hurston spent two years travelling to the Bahamas, as well as New Orleans,
Florida, Alabama, and Georgia undertaking field research and collating artefacts
of black folklore. Hurston (2002, 52) wrote in a letter to Langston Hughes on
March 17, 1927: “I am getting some gorgeous material down here, verse and
prose, magnificent.” In 1935, while on a field recording assignment in Florida,
Hurston undertook studies in folk musicology under Alan Lomax (1915–2002),
whose father was the pioneer folksong archivist and curator John Lomax
(1867–1948) and then honorary consultant for the Archive of American Folk-­
Song, Library of Congress. In 1938, Hurston agreed under contract to participate
in the Federal Writers’ Project, Florida, coordinated by Dr. Carita Doggett Corse
(1891–1978). While the project’s main initiative was to provide work for unem-
ployed white-­collar writers and professionals in producing “a series of sectional
guide books under the name American Guide” (Library of Congress 2015), one
of its greatest contributors to informing the cultural history of the Florida region
was Hurston. Corse (1939) recalled that given the rich scope of black folklore
Hurston’s fieldwork had yielded: “We took her ‘potlikker’ and sprinkled it liber-
ally for seasoning all through the Florida Guide.” From the sheer scope of black
folklore Hurston collated she published seven books during her lifetime: one
autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942); two books on folklore—Mules
and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938)—and four novels: Jonah’s Gourd
Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the
Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948).
For Hurston, forms of black folklore, such as music, dance, and oral narratives,
represented a real, tangible, quantifiable collection of oral and kinetic cultural
documents with traceable lineages back to Bahamian and West Indian origins.
Much of this cultural history documents the unique relationships between the black
community and the natural environment. Hurston was fascinated with the cross-­
cultural seepage of black folk culture into the very fabric of African-­American life,
particularly West Indian and Bahamian resonances in folk arts forms. In “Bone
Fish,” Hurston (1999, 91) observed: “Nightly in Palm Beach, Fort Pierce, Miami,
Key West, and other cities of the Florida east coast the hot drumheads throb and
the African-­Bahamian folk arts seep into the soil of America.”
The natural environment plays a vital role in the kinesthetic and mimetic evo-
lution of folk arts forms among black communities: “The singing grew like this,”
observed Hurston (1999, 69) in Go Gator and Muddy the Water,

First a singing word or syllable repeated over and over like frogs in a pond;
then followed sung phrases and chanted sentences as more and more words
were needed to portray the action of the battle, the chase, or the dance.

Then, “Somewhere [in time],” she claimed, “songs for sound-­singing branched
off from songs for story-­telling until we arrive at prose” (71). The natural
 “Taking mighty strides across the world”   89
environment and the nonhuman beings that live within the ecological world each
represented twin underlying sources inspiring black folklore as forms and
expressions of a black national consciousness. In the realm of black folklore, for
instance, animals are afforded moral consideration precisely because of the
importance of the animal as protest figure in the history of the oral narratives
traceable to the early slaves. According to folklorist Lawrence Levine (1997,
115), for instance, oral stories featuring the animal trickster motif:

… were not merely clever tales of wish-­fulfillment through which slaves

could escape from the imperatives of their world … They underlined the
dangers of acting rashly and striking out blindly, as Brer Rabbit did when he
assaulted the tar-­baby. They point out the futility of believing in the sincer-
ity of the strong, as Brer Pig did when he allowed Fox to enter his house.

Much of the existent animal trickster folklore therefore effectively maps unique
relationships: inter-­species understandings and human/nonhuman interactions
while effectively codifying moral parables via the amorality of the animal trick-
ster trope.
The place of animals in Hurston’s collected and original folkloric literatures
also illustrates that the “interspecies peers” relationships identified by Gail
Melson (2001, 97) between human and nonhuman animals often brings to the
fore the sometimes harsh realities of life—issues of prejudice, patriarchy, colon-
ization, partiality, and inequitable treatment. Animals make possible the re-­
recognition of the accepted relational affinity between human and nonhuman
beings we are socialized as children to embrace while repositioning this rela-
tional affinity as an important part of adulthood. It is only really possible for an
“interspecies peers” relationship to exist, however, if it is predicated on the anti-­
speciesist logic of human moral consideration for the nonhuman animal. The
position of ecocentric theorists, such as Robyn Eckersley (1996, 25), for
instance, argues that while it is possible to extend moral consideration to non-
human nature,

… it is not necessary that a being be a morally responsible agent in order to

receive recognition as a moral considerable subject or being … it is enough
that a being is a centre of agency, however rudimentary, with its own life
and special mode of flourishing for it to be recognised as a morally consider-
able being, deserving recognition and consideration in human deliberation.

It is the contention here that Hurston’s literary animals provide dual functions as
both actual animal signifier (for instance, domesticated animals such as
Hurston’s own pets, her dog, “Spot,” and her cat, “Kitty”) and folkloric signifier,
that is, as concepts used to stand in for the actual animal in black folklore. By
this I argue that in the former, the actual bodies of animals counterpoint the con-
temporary distancing from the “real” nonhuman animal being. Hurston docu-
ments her encounters with real animals as both corporeal and visceral
90   N. Anae
experiences of “the real” as much as real interspecies relationships with her
animals. While in the latter, animals as folkloric signifier, or “cultural referents”
to adopt the term used by Carol J. Adams (2009, 50), represent a form of
“extreme distancing from the experience of most nonhuman animals at the same
time that people express and act upon deep longings for connections with others,
including nonhuman animals and the rest of ‘nature’.” Actual animal referents
help to bridge the modernist gap between the mere “appearance of the ‘actual’,”
which Adams argues “displaces the actual experience of nonhuman animals as
the referents for our relationships with other animals, feelings of alienation and
separation from humans, as well as a deep longing for connection, intensify”
(50). This comes to express a defining significance of the representation of the
animal in black folklore—as cultural referents maintaining specific links to
African-­American folkloric culture of allegorically significance.
Yet even as cultural referents, the corporality of Hurston’s nonhuman animals
take metaphoric pride of place in Go Gator and Muddy the Water. For instance,
her accounts of black folklore never let readers forget that we ourselves are
animal beings. “Folklore,” writes Hurston (1999, 69), “is the boiled-­down juice
of human living.” Neither does she allow her readers to forget that other animals
are also beings. In Hurston’s account of “The Crow Dance,” for instance, which
features “The Crow Song,” she explains that because of its background in West
Africa, the song’s signature bird, the crow,

is actually what we know in the United States as the buzzard. And the
buzzard comes to get something to eat and they [the performers] are talking
about it, and they dance it. And one person gets in the center and imitates
the buzzard, and the rest of them fall in the background.
(174)

In this particular performance, the human and nonhuman relationships are inti-
mately connected to both nature and the life cycle:

The dancers costume themselves to represent human beings, birds, animals,

and even trees. In short, all nature is taking part in spring. All nature is
choosing itself a partner. So the movements of the dance say something
about the procreation of life.
(156)

However, here, animals as cultural referents do not signify the alienation of the
human animal from the song’s nonhuman beings given the dance itself encour-
ages human dancers to express and act upon direct corporeal connections with
others, including the symbolic referents of nonhuman animals and the natural
world. The dance is not an expression of displacement, but rather a symbolic
expression of human/nonhuman unity.
This crystalizes a defining significance of the representation of the animal in
black folklore: as a dual actual/cultural referent maintaining specific links to
 “Taking mighty strides across the world”   91
African-­American folkloric culture of allegorical significance. That “The Crow
Song,” for instance, also offers a particularly illustrative example of a common trope
in black folklore blurring the boundaries between human animal and nonhuman
animal beings is significant here. Theriomorphy—the shapeshifting from human to
nonhuman—“performs a metanarrative function. It embodies the very hybrid aes-
thetic of the beast fable that combines the animal as a defamiliarising figuration and
the human as the allegorised common ground of experience” (Avlamis 2013, 266).
The singer’s chant—“Dis crow, dis crow, goin’ to fly tonight”—personifies the the-
riomorphic power of transforming the human self into the nonhuman self: a bird in
the final triumphant cry: “Oh ma-­ma-ma come see dis crow/See how he flies!/
Cawh!” (Hurston 1999, 156). In fact, this folkloric song and dance linking hier-
archies of race and speciesism effectively challenges the crow trope as a disparaging
racial epithet to instead reify the crow’s significance in African-­American folklore
as intimating divine deliverance, transformation, and emancipation.
The nonhuman animal of black folkloric as “culture heroes” (Hurston 1997,
62)—rabbit, bear, fox, lion, buzzard, among others—can sometimes affect the
elision of the “human” as a way to remind readers that the human animal is an
animal. Hurston, for instance, conspicuously transplants animals as culture heroes
in her own personal writing. A letter Hurston wrote to Burroughs Mitchell, her
editor at Scribner’s, about her dog (“Spot”) is particularly illustrative of this point:

Animals are much more like us (or we like them) than we grant. For
instance, fondness for excitement. A small female dog is in heat in my
neighborhood. Three or four mornings lately, she and a band of hopefuls
have arrived in front of my house. Thsi [sic] morning, the poor little dog
was discouraging her suitors by tucking her tail between her legs. Spot,
desiring the drama to proceed, went back of her and caught hold of her tail
and raised it up. Never [in left margin: “in animals,”] have I seen a thing
like that before. I have seen humans egging on excitement in the same way.
(Hurston 2003, 685)

The sexual allusions to human lust and “excitement” in the allegory of the rela-
tions of dogs in heat make clear to readers the equivalencies between human and
nonhuman animal behaviors. Hurston’s representation of human “animal” nature
acknowledges that these behaviors are more than simply carnal or instinctive
impulses over which human beings have no control; they are both conscious and
organized. What is “egging on” if not an act of deliberate intent?

Theorizing animal bodies in Hurston’s folkloric canon

Re-­reading Hurston’s works utilizing feminist and advocate Carol J. Adams’
“definition of negation” as a conceptual paradigm reveals that Hurston appears
to challenge the hierarchies delimiting the extent to which living animals—
human and nonhuman—are afforded (or otherwise) moral consideration. For
Adams (2006, 120),
92   N. Anae
the concept of the “animal” or “animal beings” usually exists in relationship
to concepts of human beings in a dyadic dance of definition by negation.
When we eliminate the negation that animal has meant to the human, the
absence of the human (qualities) that being animal has meant, how does this
also redefine, and perhaps dethrone “human”?

Hurston, I argue, explores from the position of anthropology the embedded cul-
tural standards by which nonhuman beings are commonly characterized in
opposition to “the human.” From this perspective, her literatures thus raise as a
central concern the imperative of acknowledging and recognizing the human
animal body, and the bodies of nonhuman animals. One of Hurston’s most vivid
examples of this imperative is memorialized in a letter she wrote to the editor of
the Orlando Sentinel on August 11, 1955, in response to the United States
Supreme Court decision to end segregation in public schools in the South that
year. Hurston’s position in her letter to the editor entitled “Court Order Can’t
Mix The Races” was one of fundamental opposition based on the argument that
such a decision was ineffective without fundamental changes to other social
hierarchies. Hurston (2003, 611) contended that: “The whole matter revolves
around the self-­respect of my people. How much satisfaction,” she asked, “can I
get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me
near them?” Hurston makes her point by again calling on the “mule” allegory,
but for very specific political ends that metaphorically connect human bodies
with animal bodies (mule and mare), while simultaneously deploying the animal
metaphor (mule and “white mare”) to express her opinions about the need to
address pressing social justice issues:

Since the days of the never-­to-be-­sufficiently deplored Reconstruction, there

has been current the belief that there is no great[er] delight to Negros than
physical association with whites. The doctrine of the white mare. Those
familiar with the habits of mules are aware that any mule, if not restrained,
will automatically follow a white mare. Dishonest mule-­traders made money
out of this knowledge in the old days.
Lead a white mare along a country road and slyly open the gate and the
mules in the lot would run out and follow this mare. This rule being con-
ceived and brought forth in a sly political medium with eyes on ’56, and
brought forth in the same spirit and for the same purpose, it is clear that they
have taken the old notion to heart and decided to act upon it. It is a cunning
opening of the barnyard gate wit[h] the white mare ambling past. We are
expected to hasten pell-­mell after her.
(Hurston 2003, 739)

Hurston’s aim appears not to metaphorically conflate the bodies of human beings
with those of animals, but rather to identify a tactic of race politics—in this
instance “the white mare technique”—to challenge the means by which the
government structures human hierarchies along racist lines. This ideological
 “Taking mighty strides across the world”   93
configuring defines and delimits the extent to which living beings—human and
nonhuman—are afforded (or otherwise) moral consideration. Whereas the dis-
honest mule-­traders exploited to bodies of animals by exploiting an instinctual
behavior, Hurston takes clear issue with “the white mare technique” as a way of
disguising racist ideologies undermining her contention that not only were the
State’s “Negro schools … in very good shape and on the improve,” but the fact
that the “the white mare technique” only emphasized deeply embedded racial
disparities in educational obligations, bureaucracies, and funding. “The Supreme
Court would have pleased me more,” argued Hurston (2003, 740), “if they had
concerned themselves about enforcing compulsory education provisions for the
Negros in the South as is done for white children.”
By linking sexism, racism, and speciesism, I re-­read Hurston’s missive as
adopting an ecofeminist reversal of “the standard self-­aggrandizing definition
of our species, exposing humans’ negative traits, connecting our history of
devastation and cruelty to those with the mentality of dominance” (Dunayer
1999, 22). By this I argue that Hurston challenges this conviction of primacy
by reversing the “white mare” device, and undermining the analogy altogether
in her claim:

Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream

race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and
self-­association. That old white mare business can go racking on down the
road for all I care.
(740)

The allegorical reversal is perhaps even more potent given its ecofeminist allu-
sions to suppression (human and nonhuman) as much as to challenging existing
hierarchical power structures which frame racial oppression. Just as Gaard
(1993, 1) argues that “no to attempt to liberate women (or any other oppressed
group) will be successful without an equal attempt to liberate nature,” Hurston’s
application of a familiar animal parable appears to cut across deeply embedded
systems of racism that impede attempts to liberate educational equity and effi-
cacy for people of color. The application is also symbolic of the importance of
nonhuman beings in Hurston’s own literary activism and their probative possib-
ilities in analyzing race politics and orders of marginalization:

While it goes without saying that “humans are animals” the way this insight
has been used has been hierarchically, i.e., racial and sexual distinctions
were used to equate people of color and women with other animals or to
impute animal characteristics on those who were not white, propertied men.
“Human” became a definition not only about humans versus (other) animals,
but also defining who among Homo sapiens would have the power to act as
“humans”—voting, holding property, making laws, committing violence
with impunity. Human has always been a label that is tied to power.
(Adams 2006, 120)
94   N. Anae
The point made by Adams assists in elucidating the voice of the “Other” that
simultaneously grounds and challenges Hurston’s commentary on the animal
question, and particularly the relation between “the discourse of animality …
[and] living and breathing creatures” (Wolfe 2003, xx). Lynda Hill (1996, 80),
for example, has noted that within Hurston’s anthropological fieldwork through-
out the 1920s and thereafter, Hurston observed “the difficulty of finding tales
resembling the animal lore of bygone days but also noted that tales were ‘usually
quite brief, sometimes no more than four of five sentences in length.’ ” Hurston’s
folktale called “Uncle Monday,” in Go Gator and Muddy the Water, offers a
vivid narrative of the complexities of the intersections of the human and the non-
human animal, as well as centralizing African-­American folkloric culture, spirit-
ualism, nature, and the importance of place.3 Hurston gathers together a number
of oral folktales told to her by locals during the course of her anthropological
fieldwork as part of the Federal Writers’ Project, Florida, in the late 1930s. In
this folkloric telling of an African spellbinder—a “hoodoo doctor”—claiming
the theriomorphic power of transforming himself into an alligator, she invites
her reader to witness a kind of coming-­of-age narrative about a character called
“Old Judy Bronson.”
Judy is envious not only of Uncle Monday’s hoodoo powers but experiences
professional jealously as herself a hoodoo doctor given he attracts more fol-
lowers among the local peoples of Eatonville and Maitland.4 Judy slanders Uncle
Monday with claims that her power is not only stronger and better than his, but
that the “work that he might do, she could not only undo it, she could and would
‘throw it back on him’ ” (Hurston 1991, 115–116). One day, but against her
better judgment, Judy feels compelled to go line-­fishing at Blue Sink Lake,
which is

startling to all of her family, for she had given up going fishing years ago
and said repeatedly that she could not be bothered sitting on fish ponds and
having the red bugs and the mosquitoes eating her old carcass up.
(115–116)

As the sun goes down, and the light grows dim, Judy becomes frightened by the
“brush” after dark and feels the darkness “slipping up on her and grabbing hold
of her like a varmint.” Just like Uncle Monday, Judy too shares a close proxim-
ity to nature, and particularly its secrets.
While it is through the body of an animal that Uncle Monday asserts both his
masculine power as much as the strength of his hoodooism, this power is ulti-
mately only as convincing as its corporeal presence. It is, for instance, only
through Judy’s own body that the veracity of Uncle Monday’s hoodooism is
accorded full force. Without Judy’s corporeal experience between her human
body and the almost therianthropic animal/human body of Uncle Monday, the
allegory loses cogency. Judy is perhaps the only character within the “Uncle
Monday” tales that actually experiences firsthand the theriomorphic power of
transforming himself into an alligator body. All other references are only witness
 “Taking mighty strides across the world”   95
account—such as Jim Gooden, a hunter who “claims to see Uncle Monday turn
from an alligator into a man” (Croft 2002, 53).
It is within this tale that Hurston realizes, at least in part, a “place where lan-
guage, gender, and culture merge to give full voice to the otherwise often-­
marginalized black female self ” (McKay 1990, 54). Hurston’s folkloric
literatures offer many examples of the role animals play in cultural meaning. In
this sense, the contacts between humans and domesticated and wild animals
come to suggest Melson’s (2001, 97) concept of “interspecies peers”—that is,
interpersonal experiences of the nonhuman species as living animals bringing to
the fore fundamental questions of human morality, raising “issues of just, fair,
right, and kind conduct.” As Hurston (2003, 685) has written:

I have read that domestic animals are not imitative, but I find the animal
psychologists wrong in that respect. Spot, seeing me go out to get the paper
every morning, now goes for it without coaching.… It is now my conviction
that domestic animals would be much more imitative if encouraged by us,
and understand what we are doing.

The “interspecies peers” trope as evident in Hurston’s missive makes possible

the re-­recognition of the accepted relational affinity we are socialized as children
to embrace while repositioning this relational affinity as an important part of
adulthood, or perhaps even human-­ness.

Conclusion
In this chapter, I have argued that like ecofeminism, the literary anthropological
works of Zora Neale Hurston make inextricable connections between women
and nature and women’s commitment to environmentalism and the natural
world. Also like ecofeminism, Hurston’s literatures inform ecological under-
standings not only relative to Hurston’s own lifetime, but contribute to broader
discourses theorizing the contested ideologies of race, gender, and speciesism in
determining environmental imaginaries and ecofeminist engagements by and for
women. While Hurston argued that no solitary expression of nature exists by
virtue of the fact that nature is essentially the construct of the discrete gaze by
the disparate observer, she explores literature’s potential to bridge the multiplici-
ties of the discretionary gaze in appealing to a collective sense of self, both
within and unifying with the living world. But Hurston’s further claim that, “I
picked up the reflection of life around me with my own instruments, and
absorbed what I gathered according to my inside juices” (45), accords with her
anthropological conviction that the articles of black folk culture as well as the
performance and circulation of this cultural capital was materially significant in
recovering the origins of black folklore traceable to African and West Indian
forebears. Folklore, for Hurston, was “the boiled-­down juice of human living,”
although not belonging “to any special time, place nor people” (1999, 69). But
her literatures do establish fundamental connections between identity and
96   N. Anae
cultural heritage, not only in the politics of writing about, and for, black folk
culture—which in turn exemplified her splits with various key figures of the
Harlem Renaissance movement—but in the significance of ecology itself in
black folklore as both cultural capital and cultural referent. From this per-
spective, I have explored Hurston’s unique vision of nature as a way of theoriz-
ing the ecofeminist implications of Hurston’s literary imagination, while also
aiming to contribute to the dearth in scholarship exploring the ecofeminist
possibilities of her position within contemporary ecofeminist debates about the
environment as a feminist concern. “For a woman who had been exposed since
early childhood to folktales involving human and animal characters,” asserts
Brian Roberts (2002, 40) of Hurston’s anthropological interests, “one of the
most salient aspects of any culture must have been the narratives surrounding the
relationships between humans and animals.”
In the final analysis, the larger question that Hurston may arguably posit, from
my reading, is whether or not it is possible to include “species” as a comparable
taxonomy within the hierarchic categories of gender, race, and class. Alterna-
tively, it is also plausible to suggest that Hurston locates the categories of
gender, race, and class within a broader theoretical agenda of anti-­speciesism
framing inequities against nonhuman animals. In this light, it is possible to argue
that Hurston advances a central question in ecofeminist thought: “the relation-
ship between … the discourse of animality … and the living and breathing crea-
tures who fall outside the taxonomy of Homo sapiens” (Wolfe 1998, xx).
Hurston does pay attendant focus on “the animal” as a site in which struggles for
human and nonhuman identity play out, as well as a site figuring struggles
against power structures and hierarchies of negation. So while from an environ-
mentalist perspective Hurston “engage[s] all life forms seriously, respectfully
and equitably” (Hicks 2010, 122), taken a step further, the prevailing taxonomies
of gender, race, class, and speciesism underlying Hurston’s ecofeminist sensibil-
ities re-­envision the inextricable connections her literatures chart between
women and nature, and women’s commitment to environmentalism and the
living ecology. While Hurston (1978, 3) claimed “From the earliest rocking of
my cradle, I had known about the capers Brer Rabbit is apt to cut and what
Squinch Owl says from the house top,” it was through anthropology that she
both examined these human and nonhuman relationships and identified animals
as “culture heroes” (Hurston 1997, 62). Her writings therefore prove highly
fruitful in arguing that the mapping of these lines of enquiry—sexism, racism,
classism, and speciesism—within Hurston’s literatures both aligns with con-
temporary ecofeminist debates about the natural world as well as raises compel-
ling questions about the geopolitical and cultural entanglements of speciesism in
contemporary thought well worthy of further ecocritical inquiry.

Notes
1 Massa and white folk tale told to Hurston by Arthur Hopkins.
2 Animal folk tale told to Hurston by Martin White.
 “Taking mighty strides across the world”   97
3 The version of “Uncle Monday” appearing in Go Gator and Muddy the Waters was
included in the guidebook, providing for tourists shortened retellings of Florida folk-
lore produced by the Federal Writers’ Project (coordinated by Carita Doggett Corse).
Also see Huggins (1995, 244–249).
4 This character is in fact a version of “Ant Judy Bickerstaff.” Also see Huggins (1995,
249–251).

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7 Ecofeminist sensibilities and rural
land literacies in the work of
contemporary Appalachian
novelist Ann Pancake
Theresa L. Burriss

Appalachians’ attachment to place has endured throughout centuries. Loyal

Jones identified mountain residents’ love of place as significant in his seminal
essay, “Appalachian Values.” In his description he explains:

We are oriented around places. We never forget our native places, and we
go back as often as possible. […] Our folksongs tell of our regard for the
land where we were born. It is one of the unifying values of mountain
people, this attachment to one’s place, and it is a great problem to those who
urge mountaineers to find their destiny outside the mountains.
(Jones 1975, 512–513)

Even though Jones penned “Appalachian Values” in the early 1970s, and admit-
ted the values could be interpreted as overly simplistic and essentialist, he
asserted the necessity of countering decades of reductive, negative stereotyping.
And despite Central/South Central Appalachia’s1 evolving, dynamic cultures that
respond to regional, national, and international influences, residents’ love of
place has persisted over time and was re-­energized by the 1960s and 1970s-era
counter-­cultural “back-­to-the-­land” movement.2
This strong cultural value is evident in the region’s literature, where the
natural environment figures prominently, often assuming character status equal,
if not superior, to humans. A long tradition of both male and female Appalachian
authors3 highlights the deep connections between women and nature. During the
preparation of her work, The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism,
and Appalachian Literature (2003), Elizabeth S.D. Engelhardt explains:

What I have come to believe—and what this book is about—is that Appala-
chia’s women writers and activists from the turn of the past century defined
a philosophy of living that can help address social and environmental justice
issues at the turn of this century.
(2)

Engelhardt concludes her work with analysis of two strong early-­twentieth-

century representatives, Emma Bell Miles and Grace MacGowan Cooke, but
100   T.L. Burriss
also includes Mary Noailles Murfree and Effie Waller Smith in her assertion in
the Afterword:

In all four women’s texts, humans are not separated from nonhumans in
Appalachian communities. Nature has agency in their stories, which results
in decision making that consults whole communities. Environmental and
social justice issues are tackled by those whole communities, and structures
of power that oppress, damage, and silence community members begin to be
criticized.
(170)

Moving into the mid-­twentieth century, Harriett Arnow’s novel The Dollmaker
appeared in 1954, in which she captured male and female relationships with the
land and articulated differences in their responses to modernity and mechaniza-
tion. The year after, yet seven years before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was
released, Wilma Dykeman published her nonfiction work on an important water
artery in Tennessee and North Carolina, The French Broad. The text contains a
chapter titled, “Who Killed the French Broad,” with Dykeman issuing an indict-
ment which holds everyone accountable: “One by one we allowed ourselves and
others to begin the rape which finally (in places) ended in the murder of the
French Broad” (281).
In a similar vein, Ann Pancake is a contemporary Appalachian writer with
ecofeminist sensibilities and a keen awareness of gendered nuances that distin-
guish her characters’ interactions, or lack thereof, with the natural abundance
that is at risk of destruction. Many of her characters possess both practical and
spiritual knowledge of the land, thus demonstrating a land literacy whereby they
read the mountains that surround and envelop them. Although land literacy or
land-­based literacy is typically identified with native and/or aboriginal peoples,4
many rural Appalachians make meaning of their landscapes, honoring and
tapping into the wisdom of the natural world. In this sense, they subscribe to an
ethic of bioregionalism, “the practice of ‘learning to become native to place,
fitting ourselves to a particular place, not fitting a place to our predetermined
tastes’ ” (Diamond and Orenstein 1990, xiv).
Pancake develops sophisticated and complex characters, refusing to fall prey to
simple binarisms such as women/men, nature/culture, or emotion/reason, even
though she does include various forms of oppression and exploitation intimately
linking women and nature. Nevertheless, Pancake’s Strange As This Weather Has
Been (2007) includes male characters who exhibit a seemingly innate connection to
Nature that is just as strong as certain female characters’ ties. Not all women in the
novel demonstrate a love of or reliance on Nature. And approaches to motherhood
and views on the life-­giving ethos of women are similarly as varied. As a result,
Pancake eschews female and male essentialisms and a belief in the inherent connec-
tion between women and nature. Instead, she aligns herself with a rational feminist
view, which is “grounded in the potentiality of human beings to consciously and
rationally create a free ecological society” (Vakoch 2012, 5). Additionally, those
 Ecofeminist sensibilities, rural land literacies   101
characters who display an affiliation with the natural environment possess faculties
of reason, as well. As Lockwood (2012, 134) asserts, “Ecofeminists do not reject
reason; they simply and convincingly advocate balance. They call for us to be fully
human by attending to all of our being—feeling as well as thinking.”
Without following a rigid chronological timeline, the novel contains chapters
devoted to various characters. While most of Pancake’s narrators speak from
first-­person point of view, three chapters are presented in third person, including
two prepubescent boys who are sons in the nuclear family and one grown man
who has left the region but returns briefly to encourage his aging and ailing
mother, Mrs. Taylor, to leave with him. Given the advantages of first-­person nar-
ration, readers gain intimate insight into the characters’ thoughts, feelings, and
actions. However, the characters are bound by both the limitations of their self-­
knowledge and skewed awareness of themselves. Pancake does include chapters
later in the novel that reveal certain characters’ transformations, developing self-­
awareness, and subsequent commentary on the past and present. Although the
novel ends tragically, Pancake concludes with outcomes that are realistic but still
offer seeds of hope. She moves beyond mere critique to “identify and articulate
liberatory ideals that can be actualized in the real world, in the process trans-
forming everyday life” (Vakoch 2012, 3).
The eco-­social landscape of Pancake’s Strange As This Weather Has Been
documents the ravages of mountaintop removal coalmining in contemporary
southern West Virginia and a nuclear family’s conflicting reactions to this form
of resource extraction primarily by absentee landowners. Such absentee land-
ownership has persisted in the region since the early 1800s, when federal policy
affirmed colonial-­era surveys and large land grant rewards for Revolutionary
War veterans. Although underground deep mining was the predominant method
used through the early twentieth century, surface mining increased in Central
Appalachia as early as the 1950s to satisfy the insatiable demand for steam coal
that accompanied the development and growth of the Tennessee Valley Author-
ity (TVA) network of power plants. Mountaintop removal (MTR), an extreme
form of surface mining that has been described by many individuals as strip
mining on steroids, involves bulldozing all trees and topsoil, what the industry
calls overburden, so explosives can be strategically placed to literally blow off
the tops of mountains to reveal thin seams of coal. Obviously environmentally
devastating, MTR is also socially destructive as communities in these single-­
industry, economically depressed areas become divided between those few who
are employed by the coal industry or coal service industries and those who work
to stop the obliteration of their homeplaces.
The long history of and pride in Appalachian coalmining, especially related
to organized labor and the formation of the United Mine Workers of America in
the early twentieth century, contribute to the tensions. However, opponents of
MTR stress another form of cultural annihilation that results with a loss of the
commons and mountain residents’ way of life, which has been dependent upon
the flora and fauna for generations. Pancake reveals all these struggles and more
in her novel as she highlights the real-­life complexity of the issues. In fact,
102   T.L. Burriss
Strange As This Weather Has Been mirrors Gaard and Murphy’s explanation of
ecofeminism as a “practical movement for social change arising out of the strug-
gles of women to sustain themselves, their families, and their communities.
These struggles are waged against the ‘maldevelopment’ and environmental
degradation caused by patriarchal societies, multinational corporations, and
global capitalism” (1998, 2). Despite the persistent myth of Appalachia as an
isolated region, it has been and continues to be connected to and driven by global
market forces that have scant regard for the people or environment.
Two of the female narrators, Lace and Bant, a mother and daughter, reveal the
personal and social sacrifices of opposing the seemingly absolute power of absentee
corporate coal in their community. Just as intensely, they share their internal strug-
gles as they navigate new terrain, whether literally in their discovery of the vast
destruction of the mountains or metaphorically in their burgeoning self-­confidence
and consequent willingness to take a stand. Both women obtain their mountain
knowledge from the matriarch of the family, Lace’s mother, Bant’s grandmother,
who exhibits a spiritual as well as physical relationship with the landscape. Even
after Grandma dies, her voice and lessons remain acute within the characters, espe-
cially as they find their own voices and places within the anti-­MTR movement,
places often dangerous and life-­threatening. In many regards, Lace and Bant
embark on parallel journeys, more like sisters than mother and daughter. After all,
Lace was only 19 and a single mother when Bant was born.
Early in the novel, Bant recalls:

I’d started running this mountain when I was still inside Lace. […] [A]nd
they carried me back up just weeks after I came out. If I said it out loud,
Lace would say I couldn’t remember, but I could […]. I helped my grandma
from the time I could walk. Good little helper, Bant. Such a good helper,
creasies, Shawnee, poke, ramps, molly moochers in spring, blackberries in
summer, mayapple and cohosh, then ginseng and nuts—hickory, black
walnut, butternut, chinquapin, beech—in the fall. Yellowroot after the sap
went down. Sumac and sassafras in November, come Christmas, holly and
greenery. I knew these things before I could read. You can live off these
mountains, Grandma’d say. And in bad times, she’d say, meaning layoffs,
strikes, but also, I knew, the year I was born, we did.
(34–35)

Bant acquires this woods knowledge, a mountain literacy, before she even
embarks on a traditional education path. She reads the plants and seasons just as
if she is reading a primer. Describing her grandmother as one who “wasn’t a
talker,” Bant further explains how her grandmother educated her. “But even
without the talking, she taught me to let into my insides the real of this place.
From her I learned the deep of here” (36).
In her quiet, reflective way, Grandma passes onto Bant an ecofeminist ethic,
for she recognizes the interconnectedness of all living things and refuses to place
humans at the top of some socially constructed hierarchy. The lessons Bant
 Ecofeminist sensibilities, rural land literacies   103
learns from Grandma are indelibly imprinted on Bant’s psyche, especially as she
recounts the three times Grandma whipped her, all three in the woods with
switches she made Bant cut herself. The first two were sparked by Bant’s dis-
regard for the land by first throwing Easter candy wrappers on the ground and
second for carelessly digging up plants that would not even be used. Not only
did Bant get whipped for the indiscriminate plant digging, she also had to replant
every single one. The third whipping, as Bant remembers, “was the worst not
because of how long and hard she whipped, but because it was the first time I
saw she was honestly surprised, a bad sad surprise, at something I had done”
(38). That something was the random killing of a spring-­sluggish garter snake
sunning itself on a rock. “I must have been about six, old enough to know how
Grandma felt about snakes, but I knew how Jimmy Make felt, too. […] I was
acting out of the Jimmy Make part of me” (38).
Grandma’s words to Bant resonate within her long after they are spoken.
When she is 15 and reflecting on her last violation of Nature, Bant remembers
the scene vividly, as if it were recent:

After the whipping, me sniffling, that snake body still moving, Grandma
said, “You know way bettern that. You don’t kill what can’t harm you. And
you shouldn’t kill what can harm you unless it’s a threat to you right there.
Snakes eat up other things that give us problems, like mice and rats.” And
even later, when we were heading home, the hurt gone from my behind but
the shame still burning, she had to bring it up again. “Go around just killing
stuff, it’ll eventually come back on you. It throws things out of whack.” She
shook her head. “As much time as you’ve spent with me up on this moun-
tain …” And there she stopped, like what I’d done was so bad she couldn’t
even think what else to say. She shook her head again, not looking at me.
“You know way bettern that.”
(39)

It is symbolically significant that this last whipping was over Bant’s senseless
and brutal killing of a snake, a creature defiled and demonized in Judeo-­Christian
traditions. Even though Grandma adheres to a strong, fundamentalist Christian
faith, she does not forsake the natural world for that faith. Additionally, she
exhibits the foundational ecofeminist principles Gaard and Murphy (1998) cite
from Ynestra King in their introduction to Ecofeminist Literary Criticism.
Grandma takes on “the life-­struggles of all of nature as [her] own.” She
recognizes that:

life on earth is an interconnected web, not a hierarchy; [… that] a healthy,

balanced ecosystem, including human and nonhuman inhabitants, must
maintain diversity; [… and] the survival of the species necessitates a
renewed understanding of our relationship to nature, of our own bodily
nature, and of nonhuman nature around us.
(3–4)
104   T.L. Burriss
Mogey, Grandma’s nephew, who Lace and Bant affectionately refer to as Uncle
Mogey, is the only other character in the novel who displays such a profound
compassion toward and spiritual connection with the nonhuman world.
In Bant’s retelling of her third whipping, Pancake establishes the schism
between the reverence for nature held by Grandma and the disregard, if not out-
right abhorrence, harbored by Jimmy Make, Bant’s father. Establishing his self-­
worth through the size of his truck, the collection of his tools, his ability to
master machinery, Jimmy Make represents historical patriarchal Appalachian
mountain culture. Following in his father’s footsteps is Corey, the ten-­year-old
third-­born child of Lace and Jimmy Make. Even Bant refers to her brother Corey
at one point as the “Jimmy Make copycat [who] did not understand” (154).
Although Pancake devotes chapters to Corey, they are presented in third-­person
point of view, allowing readers a much greater perspective of the child’s
thoughts and actions. Tragically, Corey longs to interact with his father and be
allowed into his man world; yet, Jimmy Make does not make the time or effort.
Idolizing his father’s F350 truck, Corey boasts through his little big man stream
of consciousness:

Can that man handle a truck, you better just get in and hang on. Dad could
power that truck over any terrain, using nothing but two-­wheel ninety
percent of the time, Dad could drive it anywhere, shit, Dad could drive it
nowhere, that’s how good Dad could drive […].
(61)

Corey even interprets nature’s sounds as machines during a summer storm,

“[…] all that empty violence, thunder and lightning, motor noise in the sky”
(67). And despite his brief, intense fear when yet another flood descends upon
their modular home due to the strip mining above, huge logs and metal parts and
trash converging on them, he moves to the front window to witness the event:

Corey stood in the sill on his knees and watched the wild water split around
the house, and that was when he saw how it was like driving a boat. Like
piloting a big old boat, not some little open boat, no, but like a captain in a
pilothouse with a wheel. Corey put his hands on his wheel and steered.
(68)

Perhaps Corey represents the patriarchy/technology binary to the extreme due to

his father’s inability or unwillingness to establish a relationship with him. As a
result, Corey substitutes the machine for the father.
This replacement is poignantly demonstrated when Bant takes Corey up
Yellowroot Mountain to attempt to see the extent of the extraction taking place
above their home. Because the coal company has fenced the area and maintains
guards 24 hours a day, the family has been unable to view the actual damage.
Contrary to what Bant hopes to accomplish, however, Corey expresses pure
delight, even giddiness, in what he witnesses. “As soon as he sees, he can’t see
 Ecofeminist sensibilities, rural land literacies   105
enough. […] It is a great grand giant thing, here in his place of puny things, you
can see big things on TV, but this place full of sorry-­ass piddly things” (162).
For the first time in his life, Corey sees a dragline, a massive piece of machinery
used to remove the overburden.5 In this instant, he recalls a conversation with his
father:

When Corey’d seen it in the paper, Dad had told him its real name was
dragline, but its nickname was Big John. Like something out of Star Wars,
Dad said, maybe the biggest piece of machinery ever built, twenty stories
tall, for sure the biggest shovel in the world, and we have it right here in
West Virginia. And they call us backwards, Dad said.
(163)

Clearly, Corey and Jimmy Make fit the patriarchal paradigm in their obsession
with the mechanical.
Entranced by the magnitude and power of the dragline, the very machinery
that is destroying their homeplace, Corey longs to operate it. Choosing words
that articulate a desire to possess, Pancake gives readers insight into the extent of
Corey’s captivation. After surveying all the equipment on site, and daydreaming
of running every piece, he looks longingly toward the drag line:

And, finally, he’d scale Big John. That vast mountain-­handling piece of gor-
geous machinery. And as Corey climbs it, the smell of its fluids, the good
grease he’d get on his clothes. And maybe he’d cut himself a little on some-
thing. Maybe he’d bleed a little there. He’d crawl in, settle in the seat, take a
look at how it ran, push his legs to the pedals, grip the sticks and handles.
That giant, his body in that gigantic body, his body running that body, and
the size, the power of that machine: inside Big John, Corey can change the
shape of the world. Corey can.
(164)

In addition to articulating a phenomenological6 perspective, Pancake positions

Corey to symbolically embody the patriarchy in a real corporeal sense through
his dreams of “his body running that body.” Given a male name with imposing
significance, Big John represents the patriarchy and its efforts to be in absolute
control of everything, and in this particular case, the natural world. Yet the
words Pancake selects could also be seen as man’s possession of woman in both
a material and sexual sense, thus linking the oppression of both Nature and
women. Big John’s power is so great and far reaching that it can even “change
the shape of the world.”
A postcolonial ecocritical analysis is useful here as well to critique the
concept of development. Throughout not only the region but the world, the coal
industry has spun its rhetoric on progress and the so-­called backwardness of
many Appalachians, who the industry claims interfere with and prohibit eco-
nomic growth. In this regard, the industry capitalizes on the ignorant hillbilly
106   T.L. Burriss
stereotype to justify the extraction of the natural resources, and, consequently, the
exploitation of both people and environment. Ironically and sadly, Jimmy Make
exhibits the postcolonial concept of mimicry whereby he internalizes the indus-
try’s rhetoric and views the presence of the machines in the mountains as evid-
ence of Appalachians’ progressiveness. Huggan and Tiffin (2010) define three
forms of ecological imperialism in their introduction to Postcolonial Ecocriti-
cism. Their reference to Australian ecofeminist Val Plumwood is particularly rel-
evant as she cautions against “dualistic thinking that continues to structure human
attitudes to the environment to the masculinist, ‘reason-­centered culture’ that once
helped secure and sustain European imperial dominance […]” (4). The authors
continue:

As Plumwood argues, the western definition of humanity depended—and

still depends—on the presence of the “not-­human”: the uncivilized, the
animal and animalistic. European justification for invasion and colonization
(sic) proceeded from this basis, understanding non-­European lands and the
people and animals that inhabited them as “spaces,” “unused, underused or
empty.”
(5)

Such is the history of Appalachia, what some scholars have deemed an inter-
nally colonized region. Although the internal-­colonization model does possess
pitfalls, such as simplistic categorizations of “insiders” and “outsiders,” much
holds true with a denigration of the culture, oppression of the people, and
extraction of natural resources in “underused” spaces that leaves communities
in destitute poverty.
Pancake aligns herself with Huggan and Tiffin’s argument that “the righting
of imperialist wrongs necessarily involves our writing of the wrongs that have
been done” (22). By exposing the real-­life tragedies perpetuated on Appalachi-
ans and their environment by global corporate entities, she speaks back to such
power by documenting life-­threatening floods, whether in the form of rainwater
unchecked due to erosion or in the failure of earthen dams built high in the
mountains and only tenuously holding sludge, the toxic soup that remains after
coal is “cleaned.” She catalogues the violence perpetrated by industry represent-
atives on peaceful marchers at rallies, as well as on individuals whose brake
lines are mysteriously cut or dogs mysteriously poisoned. Not only does Pancake
unflinchingly write the wrongs, she also celebrates “alternative knowledges and
knowledge systems” (Huggan and Tiffan, 20) in such characters as Grandma and
Mogey. Huggan and Tiffin describe literature that is not “anti-­developmental,”
but rather “counter-­developmental,” (emphasis original) to recognize “the exist-
ence of alternative social and environmental knowledges that are neither
acknowledged nor necessarily understood by development experts in the West”
(20). Recognizing different ways of thinking about and being in the world
represents many postcolonial and feminist theorists’ belief in the vital import-
ance of unshackling the imagination and freeing it from the colonizer’s rhetoric.
 Ecofeminist sensibilities, rural land literacies   107
Postmodern feminist bell hooks explains the power of literature and her deliber-
ate decision to become a writer herself in the essay, “Narratives of Struggle”
(1991):

Poetry and novels brought me close to myself, helped me to overcome the

estrangement that domination breeds between psyche and self. […] My
mind became a place of refuge, a sanctuary, a room I could enter with no
fear of invasion. My mind became a site of resistance. [Books] let me know
firsthand that if the mind was to be the site of resistance, only the imagina-
tion could make it so.
(54–55, emphasis added)

Only when the oppressed liberate both their bodies and their minds will they be
able to envision another way of living. Consequently, they will be inspired to
write about that life in a language different from the oppressor’s.
Pancake demonstrates her own mastery of creative, anti-­oppressor language
as she describes the relationship between Mogey, Grandma’s nephew, and the
natural world. Through the character of Mogey, Pancake problematizes the tra-
ditional patriarchal binaries male/culture and female/nature. He has only one
chapter in the entire novel devoted to him in his own voice, but it is one of the
most poignant, eco-­conscious ones of the text. Although he, like Grandma, grew
up in a strict, traditional Christian religious tradition, he articulates a deep
struggle to reconcile the church’s teachings with his feelings in the woods. When
he was younger, he internalized the learned Christian guilt over this, noting, “To
walk in woods was a prayer. But I knew it was wrong. Some kind of paganism
or idolatry. I didn’t know what you’d call it, but I knew it must be sin” (168).
Agonizing over his thoughts, Mogey decides to talk with the preacher, who
merely parrots an imperialist interpretation of the Bible, noting man’s dominion
over the earth and its natural resources. Mogey still cannot accept such a view:
“[P]art of me knew, even back then, that’s not what it is. I knew we wasn’t sepa-
rate from it like that” (168). Again, similar to Grandma, he intuitively under-
stands the interconnectedness of all living things and demonstrates a rural land
literacy that deepens with time. Mogey’s knowledge of the natural world tran-
scends mere seeing to include sensing. At first he is only able to sense how a big
animal “throws something off himself,” what Mogey can only describe as a
“hum because I don’t got no other word for it” (169). He goes on:

As I got older, I’d catch it off small creatures, too, and after I got to be a
man, I mean really a man, got past the early man and come to know myself
and settled down, I could catch it, just quieter, even off trees and dirt and
stone.
(169)

Contrary to conventional patriarchal socialization, Mogey refuses this indoctri-

nation to honor what he knows as real and true.
108   T.L. Burriss
Mogey goes on to describe his first spiritual melding with Nature, signifi-
cantly on Thanksgiving, when he was only ten years old. After he and his cousin
apparently have shot a buck, they lose sight of the animal and take different
paths to track it. When both return without any evidence of the buck, not even a
blood trail, the cousin stomps off on Mogey’s path, believing Mogey simply did
not look hard enough. While Mogey laments the situation, especially because he
believes the buck is injured and “it is a very bad thing for a hunter to clip a deer
and never find him again,” he stumbles upon a mystical space in the woods, “a
little sunken-­down place like a room,” where he believes the buck will be lying
(172). However, he reveals, “The buck was not there in body. But something
else was” (172). He describes that “something else” as a “mild electric” that cur-
rents throughout his body and explains:

It blended me […] right on out into the woods. It took me beyond myself
and kept going, so I wasn’t no longer holed up in my body, hidden […]. It
made me feel bigger in myself, and it made me feel more here even though
you might have expected such a thing to make me feel gone. And with it
came total sureness. And with the total sureness came peace.
(172–173)

Editor of The Green Studies Reader (2000) Laurence Coupe cites both Ching-­
yuan and Wordsworth as authors who understand such a spiritual awakening in
Nature. Coupe explains, “The point is to learn from nature, to enter into its spirit,
and to stop trying to impose upon it the arbitrary constraints which result from
our belief in our own importance” (1). Of particular significance for readers
attempting to understand Mogey’s experience, Coupe includes John G. Ruby’s
commentary on Wordsworth’s poetry:

To encounter “the light of things” themselves, one must shed the notion of
light as emerging from a separate source. Indeed, one must relinquish the
idea of separateness itself. To come into the light of things, one must
become the things themselves, must see through things as things.
(1)

Indeed, Mogey surrenders his separateness willingly to allow for a total synthe-
sis of himself with all that surrounds him. Contrary to traditional patriarchal
beliefs in man’s need to control and reign over the natural world, Mogey under-
stands the arrogance and error of this way of thinking.
And as a result of witnessing and living with the annihilation of the moun-
tains, his homeplace, Mogey suffers from solastalgia,7 an intense emotional dis-
tress caused by environmental change while he continues to live in that
environment. Although initially he was physically injured in an underground
mine from a kettle bottom8 falling on him, he later begins to have mini-­strokes
that affect him both physically and mentally. Consequently, Mogey endures
debilitating headaches and night terrors. He remarks, “As the headaches get
 Ecofeminist sensibilities, rural land literacies   109
worse, the dreams do, too” (178). In his dreams, Nature has gone awry, with
animals sporting plastic bags for bellies, snarling with metal teeth, and leaving
piles of scat made of glass. Clearly, his nightmares symbolize man’s interference
with and desecration of the natural world, resulting in freakish animals donning
manmade materials. Ultimately the dreams contain no images at all and only
become “an alarm going off ” (179). Mogey is able to admit to himself that he
knows his love of the land and Nature is “not paganism or idolatry or sacrilege
or sin. It’s just what I know. And what they tell me, these things I finally let
myself trust, is what we’re doing to this land is not only murder. It is suicide”
(179). Because Mogey is intimately connected to the natural world, is one with
it, the destruction of Nature is the destruction of self. Such a position corres-
ponds with a burgeoning movement among evangelical Christians called
Creation Care9 but also is aligned with many Christian denominations that exist
in the region. Mogey explains:

So when I’d first walk into the woods, I’d say to myself, “Look here what
God’s give us.” But just about as fast as I could have that thought, this
second one would come from deeper: “This is God.” And then, from under
that thought, from deeper yet, […] “I go here. This is where I go.” And last
of all, the most certain thought, but also the most dangerous: “This is me.
This, all this, is me.”
(173)

Accordingly, Mogey’s physical and emotional illness and agony are mani-
festations of the violence against the natural world.
Pancake directly links this patriarchal violence against nature with violence
against women in one of Lace’s chapters. Conceding that her husband, Jimmy
Make, does have legitimate reasons to be fearful of her involvement with groups
fighting mountaintop removal, groups he calls “shit stirrers,” Lace lists real-­life
examples of the viciousness of the pro-­MTR industry folks. She then reveals a
confrontation in a gas station/convenience store on her way back from grocery
shopping. When she exits the bathroom, which is located in a remote corner of
the store, a man dressed in a suit, and looking out of place, blocks her way.
Thinking he doesn’t see her, Lace speaks to him with an “excuse me.” However,
he refuses to move, knowing full well she is there and seeming to have sought
her out. She goes on to relate:

He had his hand in his pants pocket, big loose dress pants. I felt his hand
move in the pocket and press against my leg, his hand still behind the cloth,
and, lord help me if I didn’t think at first it was his dick, and I just pushed
harder to bust past and get away. But then he blocked me with his whole leg
and pulled out enough of the gun that I could tell what it was. Then he
dropped his leg and let me go.
(305)
110   T.L. Burriss
Throughout history men have sexually violated women in times of war and
siege. The gun, symbolic of the phallus, the ultimate representation of the patri-
archy, has been utilized as a weapon to control and oppress women. In fact,
patriarchal power has misappropriated the penis as a part of Nature and its life-­
giving capacity. Pancake makes the abuse blatant in Lace’s scene, especially as
Lace herself first believes the gun to be the man’s penis. Although the man’s
assault initially has the intended effect on Lace, after several days pass and she
recovers from the encounter, she grows even more determined to fight to save
the mountains of her birth.
In one of Lace’s chapters (181–199) where she offers painful yet realistic
observations of several years of her life, readers come to understand, among
other things, the connection Lace has with the mountains, a bond firmly reestab-
lished when she was pregnant with Bant and gathering medicinal plants with her
mother. She notes:

When I first got started, it was just plants I’d expected Mom to reteach me,
things I could sell, but she knew she couldn’t teach that without the other, and
when I look back now, I see how much else I relearned. The names of all the
little streams off Cherryboy. How the game paths went. Where you could find
you a safe drink of water, where you could duck under overhangs to shelter
out of storms. It was shortcuts across ridges from hollow to hollow, it was
how easiest—footholds, handholds—to scale a particular draw. And although
before that year I’d never been the type of person listens any closer than to
what comes out of a mouth, all those quiet hours in the woods, I couldn’t help
paying other kinds of attention. I started listening in other ways.
(139)

Similar to her daughter Bant’s experience, Lace is schooled by the family’s wise
matriarch as she shares her knowledge of the landscape and encourages Lace to
read and understand it as well.
Lace’s connection to the natural world is particularly evident during the
family’s brief stint in Durham and Raleigh, North Carolina, because her husband,
Jimmy Make, had been laid off at the coalmine back home and sought employ-
ment elsewhere. She expounds, “That North Carolina, I tell you. Down there,
you just can’t get any grip on the land. No traction. No hold” (190). And further
on Lace notes:

[…] I learned fast, you couldn’t ever really get outside. Couldn’t even get in
trees, in brush, much less get into hills, you weren’t ever out of sight or
sound of a road, a building, a parking lot, and sometimes I’d miss backhome
woods so bad I’d feel land in my throat.
(193)

Tragically, Lace’s mother dies suddenly from a heart attack back in West
Virginia while Lace, Jimmy Make, and the four children are in North Carolina.
 Ecofeminist sensibilities, rural land literacies   111
As a result, Lace plunges even deeper into depression. When they return to West
Virginia to help Lace’s sister ready their mother’s trailer to sell, Lace identifies
the intensity of her attachment to the mountains and announces to her husband
she cannot leave again, despite their almost insurmountable debt and lack of
jobs. After recalling all those who had left the mountains to find work, as well as
acknowledging her dead father and now dead mother, Lace perceptively
remarks:

But I’d already figured out it wasn’t just me. How could only me and my
thirty-­three years on that land make me feel for it what I did? No, I had to
be drawing it down out of blood and from memories that belonged to more
than me. I had to. It must have come from those that bore me, and from
those that bore them. From those who looked on it, ate off it, gathered,
hunted, dug, planted, loved, and bled on it, who finally died on it and are
now buried in it. Somehow a body knows.
(199)

This ancestral bond to the mountains, apparently borne through DNA, pulses
fiercely within Lace and provides her the strength and perseverance to educate
herself and join the efforts to stop mountaintop removal coalmining.
Although Bant experienced this intimate relationship with the landscape when
she was young, she finds herself struggling to maintain that connection as she
grows older, particularly as she becomes aware of the destruction of the
mountains:

[W]hen I was real little, moving over this land, I never saw myself, never
felt myself, as separate from it. I didn’t even know to think about it at that
age. It wasn’t until I got older that something started rising up between it
and me […]. For a while I wondered if growing up would mean I just
couldn’t open to it anymore. Now I was thinking something else was going
on. As it was being taken, seemed I was drawing away.
(100–101)

Bant is conflicted in her response to her birthplace, with her grandmother’s

mountain spirit and her mother’s activism tugging at one part of her and her
father’s and brothers’ opposing viewpoints or outright fear wrenching another
part. When she admits that the Martin County, Kentucky, slurry impoundment
break scares her, an event that actually happened in 2000,10 she also confesses
her sense of helplessness, particularly because she knows about the Buffalo
Creek Flood disaster that killed 125 people in West Virginia in 1972.11 Bant
declares, “And from helpless, I had learned, what a short step it was to I don’t
care. How else could you grow up, how you could walk around in your body
every day, unless you learned not to care” (346).
Despite her internal struggle to care, which at times rages like a war much
like the battle between her parents, at the end of the novel Bant consciously
112   T.L. Burriss
chooses to stay with her mother, Lace, instead of moving again to Raleigh with
her father, Jimmy Make, who is taking her brothers. When Jimmy Make asks,
“ ‘You coming, Cissy?’ ” Bant relates, “I felt myself shake my head. The dull
roar in my ears. Then something told me that, serious as this was, I should speak
to him, too. ‘I’m staying here, Daddy’ ” (350). After an awkward hug good-­bye,
Jimmy Make drives away, leaving Bant and Lace on the old homeplace. And
this is when Bant flees into the woods, heading to the active mountaintop
removal site above them, searching for the slurry impoundment she and Lace
both believe is there. She discovers not one but “at least four good-­sized sedi-
ment ponds under the logjam. Bigger than any of the ones in the hollow” (353).
Because she cannot see much below the ponds’ surfaces, she tries to snap off a
tree branch to check their depths.

But the branch wouldn’t snap from the tree, I had to twist the branch until it
tore off, and then, sudden, it came to me how green those trees were, and
that put a hurt in me. A hurt for those pitiful trees, how short they’d been
dead. Then that hurt started pulling after it the other ones. They started, I
felt my self coming back to me, and I inbreathed quick and deep, bit my lip,
and back-­stepped my self away.
(353)

Bant’s surge of hurts floods over her, possessing her thoughts as she reflects on
her life and the people who have shaped it. In the midst of this she begins to
rediscover herself, rejoicing, “Then I was moving the way I used to in the
woods, before the distance came between me and it, the way I moved in woods
and woods only” (355).
Of particular importance, she conjures both Mogey and Grandma, the two
most influential people in her development and her relationship with Nature.
Bant exclaims, “I could feel what was nearby, its size, its closeness, its give,
beech, poplar, oak, holly hickory hemlock laurel, touching nothing, tripping
nowhere, what Mogey always said about the hum” (355). She goes on to recall
Grandma’s lessons and words, especially “You can live off these mountains”
(355). In an existential moment, Bant ponders, “Was it worse to lose the moun-
tain or the feelings that you had for it? Now that I’d lost this much, I realized
that to not care wasn’t to save yourself at all. It was only another loss” (356).
Such wisdom belies Bant’s age of only 16. This is partly attributed to the tragic
circumstances she and her family have endured but also due to that same ances-
tral bond to Nature Lace acknowledges. Pancake blends both Grandma and
Mogey in Bant’s reminiscences at the very end of the novel. After Grandma’s
funeral, when Bant begins to realize the scope of devastation in the mountains
and believes everything in her life is dying or being destroyed, Mogey tells her,
“Bant, I’ve learned something about times like these. In times like these, you
have to grow big enough inside to hold both the loss and the hope” (356–357).
Thus it is with literature such as Ann Pancake’s Strange As This Weather Has
Been, infused with ecofeminist sentiments, that readers are gifted with
 Ecofeminist sensibilities, rural land literacies   113
“liberatory ideals that can be actualized in the real world” (Vakoch 2012, 3).
Pancake provides a roadmap to navigate the difficult terrain of our world, one
filled with patriarchal and corporate exploitation of people and environment.
Readers are advised to grow, the most natural of phenomena, so they can incorp-
orate both the loss and hope, instead of succumbing to despair, hopelessness, or
“don’t care.” As Pancake vividly portrays in her novel, both women and men are
inspired to transform everyday life. Characters like Grandma, Mogey, Lace, and
Bant become role models, inspiration, for readers who strive to right/write
wrongs, who work to end the domination and oppression of the environment and
all people.

Notes
1 See Appalachian Regional Commission’s “Subregions of Appalachia” webpage at
www.arc.gov/research/MapsofAppalachia.asp?MAP_ID=31.
2 For a simple definition, see http://cr.middlebury.edu/es/altenergylife/definition.htm;
and for how the movement affected Appalachia, see www.wvencyclopedia.org/
articles/322.
3 In addition to the authors noted in this paragraph, see works by James Still, Jim
Wayne Miller, Wendell Berry, and Lee Smith.
4 See Fitzgerald and Wyss (March 22, 2010) “Land and Literacy: The Textualities of
Native Studies” in Early American Literature, and Rios (March 2015) “Cultivating
Land-­Based Literacies and Rhetorics” in LiCS 3.1 (licsjournal.org/OJS/index.php/
LiCS/article/download/65/87).
5 See this History Channel excerpt on Big Muskie, the largest dragline created, www.
youtube.com/watch?v=jcmGKsHZXZ8; and see this video of Big John, as noted in
Pancake’s novel, which operates on a Boone County, WV, mine, www.youtube.com/
watch?v=LojPk2VQe5g.
6 See works by Maurice Merleau-­Ponty, for example.
7 Neologism coined by Glenn Albrecht; see www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18027145.
8 See www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1196.
9 See the Creation Care website: http://creationcare.org/.
10 See www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/MartinCountyCoalSlurryRelease/MartinCountyCoal
SlurryHC080706.pdf; and the documentary, Sludge, produced by Appalshop in 2005,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sludge_%28film%29.
11 See www.wvculture.org/history/buffcreek/bctitle.html.

References
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Coupe, Laurence, ed. 2000. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriti-
cism. New York: Routledge.
Diamond, Irene, and Gloria Feman Orenstein. 1990. Reweaving the World: The Emer-
gence of Ecofeminism. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Dykeman, Wilma. 1955. The French Broad. New York: Henry Holt. 1992/1999.
Newport: Wakestone Books.
Engelhardt, Elizabeth S.D. 2003. The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and
Appalachian Literature. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Gaard, Greta, and Patrick D. Murphy. 1998. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory,
Interpretation, Pedagogy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
114   T.L. Burriss
Greene, Amy. 2010. Bloodroot. New York: Vintage.
hooks, bell. 1991. “Narratives of Struggle.” In Critical Fictions: The Politics of Imagina-
tive Writing, edited by Philomena Mariani, 53–61. Seattle: Bay Press.
Huggan, Graham, and Helen Tiffin. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals,
and Environment. New York: Routledge.
Jones, Loyal. 1975. “Appalachian Values.” In Voices from the Hills, edited by Robert J.
Higgs and Ambrose Manning, 507–517. New York: Ungar.
Lockwood, Jeffry A. 2012. “Afterword.” In Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women,
and Literature, edited by Douglas A. Vakoch, 123–135. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Pancake, Ann. 2007. Strange As This Weather Has Been. New York: Shoemaker &
Hoard.
Vakoch, Douglas A., ed. 2012. Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Liter-
ature. Lanham: Lexington Books.
8 Essentialist tropes in At Play in
the Fields of the Lord
Karl Zuelke

Peter Matthiessen’s celebrated career as naturalist and travel writer was founded
on an engagement with the natural world earned through extensive travel, and
this gave rise to several remarkable novels and works of non-­fiction that chron-
icled the degradation of landscapes he came to understand. His novel, Far
Tortuga, for example, features a group of twentieth-­century Caribbean turtle
fisherman hunting a dwindling population of green turtles, a species which had
provided a measure of economic support for Caribbean communities for centu-
ries. The spare prose of that novel arises from Matthiessen’s impression of the
sand-­scrubbed, sun-­blasted austerity of the seascape of the novel’s setting, and it
underscores as well the difficulties faced by fishermen whose quarry was
growing harder and harder to locate. At Play in the Fields of the Lord is set in
the biologically riotous Amazon rainforest of Peru, and the novel’s language and
complex plot reflect the abundance of the forest in which the novel is set. Most
interesting is that in its treatment of women, the forest, the forces arrayed to
exploit the forest, and the treatment of the native tribes that inhabit the rainforest
landscape of the novel’s setting, Matthiessen’s novel, published in 1965, antici-
pates ecofeminist conceptual tropes that would only first be articulated by cul-
tural critics more than a decade later. Greta Gaard credits Susan Griffith’s
Woman and Nature (1978), Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature (1980),
and Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology (1978) as among the founding texts of ecofemi-
nism that “linked oppressions of gender, ecology, race, species and nation”
(Gaard 2011, 28). Gaard notes that Merchant’s text, especially, “exposed the
historical and cross-­cultural persecution legitimized by the various male-­
dominated institutions of religion, culture, and medical science” (Gaard 2011,
280). Oppressions of gender, ecology, and race are central to Matthiessen’s art-
istic purpose, and his understanding of the complex interplay of oppressive patri-
archal Western encroachment with the forest and the indigenous people who live
there, as well as some female characters in the novel, provides for an illumin-
ating reading of At Play in the Fields of the Lord in an ecofeminist context.
Gaard outlines in detail the varied criticisms that soon arose to challenge the
promise that a nascent ecofeminism seemed to hold in its early stages as a potent
feminist system of cultural critique, “building on and transforming the anthropo-
centric critiques of first- and second-­wave feminism with an ecological
116   K. Zuelke
perspective” (Gaard 2011, 31). One of the predominant criticisms leveled against
ecofeminism as it developed concerned essentialism. Essentialism, the assump-
tion that women or indigenous peoples share essential characteristics with nature
in ways that are unique to them, depends on a superficial, culturally constructed
notion of the natural.
Even though Gaard maintains that:

The charges against ecofeminists as essentialist, ethnocentric, anti-­

intellectual goddess-­worshippers who mistakenly portray the Earth as
female or issue totalizing and ahistorical mandates for worldwide
veganism—these sweeping generalizations […] have been disproven
again and again in the pages of academic and popular journals […] yet the
contamination lingers.
(Gaard 2011, 32)

When viewed through an ecofeminist lens, At Play in the Fields of the Lord is
unsparing of its criticism of patriarchy’s treatment of women and the environ-
ment. The linkage of female and natural is not done in defense of women and
nature, however, which would open up the novel to the essentialist critique that
Gaard notes is often leveled, fairly or not, against ecofeminism. The other branch
of essentialism’s two-­pronged simplification of human/nature relationships, the
linking of indigenous peoples with nature along essentialist lines almost ident-
ical to the woman/nature alignment, is critiqued in the novel as well. Matthies-
sen sees both linkages as symptomatic of the dominant patriarchal system’s
domination of women, nature, and indigenous people, with the ultimate aim of
an unimpeded exploitation of natural resources. The novel’s critique of essential-
ism, then, planted the seeds of a defense of ecofeminism’s “contamination” by
essentialism even before ecofeminism had been recognized as a conceptual
framework.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord concludes with an image of one of the
novel’s main characters, Lewis Moon, kneeling lost on a beach in the midst of
an uncharted stream deep in the rainforest: “He felt bereft, though of what he did
not know. He was neither white nor Indian, man nor animal, but some mute,
naked strand of protoplasm” (372).
Lewis Moon here has escaped the conventional Western orientation toward
nature that refuses to take it into account beyond mere resource. Passing through
several societies in a symbolic movement eastward towards the wilderness—one
of them, the indigenous Niaruna tribe, which has been destroyed—he has also
passed through a number of tormenting and failed personal identities that arose
from his immersion in societies that failed to integrate him into their social
matrix because of his heterogeneous ethnic makeup. Leaving culture behind,
Moon reenters nature on its own terms. He recognizes a “protoplasmic” self
located within nature, which Matthiessen intends primarily as a spiritual revela-
tion. In other aspects of the novel, attributes of “wildness” and “femaleness,”
and “wildness” and “indigenousness,” are linked in an essentialist way with
 Essentialist tropes   117
nature, and Matthiessen shows the negative ramifications of these intersecting
tropes that serve ultimately to bring the Niaruna and their forest to destruction.
The destruction of the Niaruna in At Play in the Fields of the Lord is prim-
arily the result of aggression, with profit as the motive, but Matthiessen’s novel
examines how invented, in Umberto Eco’s term, “absolute fake” (Eco 1986, 8)
cultural tropes play into the hands of those persons who ostensibly mean the
Niaruna well—from the missionaries who travel to the forest in order to save the
Indians’ souls, to Lewis Moon himself, who has unconsciously internalized a
version of the “noble savage” fantasy. Matthiessen’s depiction of the destruction
of the Niaruna recapitulates the histories of countless tribal peoples who have
met a similar fate, and the interaction of Moon, the missionaries, the forest, and
the Niaruna starkly presents the ways in which cultural misunderstanding, the
products of which are hyperreality and essentialism, can lead to genocide. While
hyperrealities only obliquely pertain to nature/culture relationships, they apply to
this novel in the ways they confuse the picture of native societies, who are vic-
timized by Western encroachment. Matthiessen’s aim for the novel is a decon-
structive one—both essentialist and hyperreal constructs are shown to be false,
and Moon is the instrumental character in accomplishing the novel’s deconstruc-
tive purpose. Moon, who is part white and part Cheyenne, has internalized
hyperreal images of the noble savage, which he then desires to become, but,
because of his whiteness, he confuses this goal with an unconscious imperialist
motive—he allows himself to be set up as a god. Moon thus ends up perceiving
the Indians with whom he lives through a hyperreal and an essentialist lens.
A critical turning point in the novel comes when Moon, having been black-
mailed by the local Comandante into attacking the Niaruna with this airplane, is
on his bombing run against one of their villages. He looks down and sees a
Niaruna warrior shoot an arrow at his airplane, and the sight is so extraordinary
that Moon abandons the mission, thinking that he may have found a living
example of that “lost reality” his Indian side despaired of finding. Ultimately,
Moon’s perception of the Niaruna is reminiscent of Gerald Vizenor’s critique of
the ways that the dominant Western paradigm appropriates images of indigenous
societies. Vizenor borrows Umberto Eco’s concept of hyperreality to describe
contemporary Western culture’s appropriation of tribal cultures and literatures:
“Native American Indian literatures have been pressed into cultural categories,
transmuted by reductionism, animadversions and the hyperrealities of neocolo-
nial consumerism” (Vizenor 1989, 5). Eco attributes the American journey into a
multitude of hyperrealities as stemming from the situation whereby the American
cultural imagination “demands the real thing, and to attain it, must fabricate the
absolute fake” (Eco 1986, 8). Vizenor maintains that “tribal cultures, in this
sense, have been invented as ‘absolute fakes’ ” (Vizenor 1989, 5).
Thus, Moon’s initial contact with the tribe is based on an internalized stereo-
type that ultimately dehumanizes the tribe. This initiates one of the novel’s main
conflicts. But At Play in the Fields of the Lord is remarkable in the ways that a
number of conflicting oppositions come into play. Two major plot lines oppose
one another in the novel, pitting Moon and his partner, Wolfie, against the
118   K. Zuelke
aspirations of Leslie Huben, leader of the local mission, his wife, Andy, and
Martin and Hazel Quarrier, missionaries newly arrived from North Dakota, who
have come to South America to help in the reaping of a “harvest of souls.” The
Protestant missionaries also imagine themselves in competition for those souls
with the Catholic church, represented in the novel by Father Xantes, and they
find themselves at odds as well with the bullying local government official,
Comandante Rufino Guzmàn, who is under pressure to “pacify” (i.e., disperse or
exterminate) the fiercely resisting Niaruna while still adhering to the letter of
Peruvian law. There are also conflicts within the relationships between the mis-
sionaries themselves.
It was Guzmàn who had blackmailed Moon and Wolfie early in the novel into
using their airplane for a bombing run against the Indian village. The unexpected
arrival of Moon and Wolfie had presented a potential opportunity that Guzmàn
attempted to seize to help disperse the Niaruna. A sign painted on the fuselage of
the Americans’ airplane, “Wolfie & Moon, Inc., Small Wars & Demolition,”
shows that their services are for hire, and the two Americans are all too ready to
perpetrate a “small war.” At first glance this would seem to put them fundament-
ally at odds with Leslie Huben’s mission of Christianizing the Indians, on moral
grounds if nothing else, and Huben does understand early on that he can hardly
make converts of a tribe if its members have been murdered.
Guzmàn is portrayed as a foul and swaggering small-­time dictator, with little
real concern for the Niaruna or for the forest. Moon’s partner, Wolfie, describes
Guzmàn as “some terrible kind of a jungle beast” (33), and we see well enough
the hypocrisy when Guzmàn tells father Xantes, “The Indians, in my heart I love
them, they are my brothers, but this great land must be made safe for progress”
(40). While Guzmàn implies in this utterance (and shows elsewhere by his
actions) that he will murder and enslave the entire tribe the moment the oppor-
tunity presents itself, Wolfie recognizes Guzmàn’s “beastliness,” showing him
as the truly aggressive Westerner, representative of the West in its most naked
and unsophisticated incarnation.
Moon’s initial regard for the Niaruna is as callous as Guzmàn’s, as is clear to
the missionaries. When Martin Quarrier confronts him in the saloon, Quarrier
asks, “Do you really think attacking the Indians is going to pacify them?” Moon
responds, “No … but killing them is” (57). Quarrier, as missionary, is motivated
in his defense of the Niaruna by an abhorrence of genocide, and he wishes to
bring them the Word in sincere regard for their souls. The leader of the mission
is Leslie Huben, however, and there is reason to think that Huben’s attitude
towards the Niaruna is less genuine than the more sympathetic Quarrier.
During a prayer, the four missionaries overhear Wolfie shout, in reference to
the upcoming bombing mission, “and blow them little brown pricks to Kingdom
Come,” to which Leslie mistakenly answers “Amen” (23). Theresa L. Burriss’s
observation elsewhere in this volume that, “The gun, symbolic of the phallus,
the ultimate representation of the patriarchy, has been utilized as a weapon to
control and oppress women” (p. 110) is applicable here. The guns of an old P-­51
Mustang fighter are at one point employed against the Niaruna. If the phallus is
 Essentialist tropes   119
symbolic of a weapon, indigenous people whose “little brown pricks” have been
blown “to Kingdom Come” are rendered figuratively “impotent” in their ability
to resist Guzmàn’s military advances, and their subsequent castration aligns
them in a particularly degrading way with the feminine. And, as Burriss
observes, “Throughout history men have sexually violated women in times of
war and siege” (this volume, p. 110) John Cooley, in Earthly Words, makes the
point that the ominous approach of the forces behind Guzmàn and Huben toward
the jungle, and the Niaruna, fits a pattern that has been historically repeated,
where paternalistic, European concepts regarding the land tend to feminize
it—and that the feminized landscape becomes penetrated, conquered, and subse-
quently owned (Cooley 1994, 171). Cooley argues that in Wolfie’s emasculating
shout of “Blow them little brown pricks to Kingdom Come,” Matthiessen
extends the metaphor of sexual violation outward to include not only Guzmàn’s
prostitutes and the forest landscape itself, but the whole Niaruna tribe. Cooley
maintains that, “Violated women and castrated males should make easy targets
for the word of God” (Cooley 1994, 172). At Play in the Fields of the Lord
makes extensive use of the connections between nature and the female, linking
these as well with sexuality, and with innocence, all of which are victimized
together at the hands of Huben’s and Guzmàn’s versions of patriarchal cultural
aggression.
Beyond the validation alluded to by Huben’s slip, there is more evidence of
an agenda more in line with Guzmàn’s than the missionaries might be prepared
to admit. Huben’s attitude towards the Indians makes of them a kind of spiritual
commodity, another product of the forest, like lumber and gold. “I am enjoying
the profits of a business deal entered into with the Lord,” Huben had declared in
a letter to Mission Fields magazine. “Invest to Gain. The Lord has impressed
upon Andy and the Undersigned the command to Go” (10). At one time a
success in the business world before feeling the call to missionary work, Huben
retains a capitalist-­style profit motive, albeit one that traffics in souls rather than
money. His stance towards the spiritual “profits” available from the Niaruna still
links him thematically with the merciless industrial/capitalist forces driving
Guzmàn. Hazel also demonstrates that she arrives with the same intention of
reaping spiritual capital when she exclaims, “the Mart Quarriers are here, and
they mean business!” (19).
This linkage of missionary work with the violent drive for profit is made more
explicit in a conversation with Quarrier, as they plan a strategy for contacting the
dangerous Niaruna. The naïve Quarrier is appalled at news of Guzmàn’s parti-
cipation in the slave trade, and at the news that Guzmàn plans to bomb the
Niaruna into submission. Huben remarks that “if the Niaruna can be cowed a
little, they will be softened up for an outreach of the Word, and this will make
our work […] a darn sight easier” (24). Richard F. Patteson notes, “Huben never
sees that his mission constitutes cultural aggression of the rankest sort” (Patteson
1979, 7). Huben intends to “infect” the Niaruna “with a need for cloth and beads,
mirrors and ax heads” (154). The metaphor of infection is especially apt, since
it hints at other literal infections that will follow—syphilis, the disease of
120   K. Zuelke
alcoholism, and the devastating influenza epidemic that sweeps through the
Niaruna tribe towards the end of the novel. Ironically, it is the cretin, Wolfie,
who most clearly sees the damage that “softening up” and missionary contact
does to the Indian tribes:

You and them Catholics both. Some holy men! All their lousy backbitin and
knifin over people who maybe they don’t want no part of neither of you;
well, maybe you ought to think of that before you come sneakin around here
criticizin! Maybe them people are better off bein run back into the jungle
where they got a little human dignity, for Christ sake, and not where you
bastards can make beggars out of them, not to mention all the booze and
slavery and syphilis […] that comes after. How long do you think these
Neo-­rooneys are gonna last once you’ve softened them up for all these
jungle cons?
(54–55)

There is ample evidence to support Wolfie’s assessment of the effect the mis-
sionaries, and civilization in general, have on native tribes once they have been
contacted. Madre de Dios, the town in which the missionaries first arrive, is
filled with Indians living in the most squalid imaginable conditions, and the aptly
name Remate de Males (Culmination of Evils) is even worse. Having been
“tamed” (a word used often in the novel to describe the status of Indians lured or
forced away from tribal societies), they exist in poverty or depend on the limited
resources of the missionaries. Even the prostitutes with whom Guzmàn sur-
rounds himself are all young Indian women. Of missionaries, Matthiessen said
in an interview:

It is very hard to argue they’ve done anything but serious harm. What they
really do is lay those people open to the worst abuses of civilization; booze,
thieving, jail, corruption of all kinds. And because they’re uneducated and
unsophisticated they’re easy prey to every two-­bit shyster.
(Cooley 1994, 171)

Part of Moon’s problem is that his Cheyenne and Choctaw ancestors a century
earlier had been subject to the same “taming” influences to which the South
American tribes are currently subject. During a series of hallucinations induced
by the drug ayahuasca, Moon hears a voice tell him, “There is a lost reality, a
reality lost long ago” (94). The pride that Moon senses in his past has been
replaced by the catalogue of woes so eloquently described by Wolfie. Leslie
Huben’s mission functions in the end as another instrument of subjugation,
working hand in hand with the more direct methods of Guzmàn and his hired
bombs. Whether the missionaries or the pilots reach the Indians first is not espe-
cially important; Matthiessen’s implication is that the results will be equally
destructive. Matthiessen has shown that the apparent opposition of Guzmàn and
the missionaries is at bottom false—the work of the missionaries puts them in
 Essentialist tropes   121
line with the hypocritical Guzmàn when he proclaims that above all this great
land must be made safe for progress.
Moon’s decision to join the tribe comes during a night spent under the influ-
ence of ayahuasca, which is brewed by the Indians from a local plant, and which
has been used by them for generations as part of certain religious ceremonies.
For Moon, ayahuasca provides for a non-­rational glimpse into his past and into
his identity which leads him to cut his last ties to Western civilization for an
uncertain future with the Niaruna. He abandons his airplane while under the
influence of the drug, parachuting into the village.
His astonishing descent from the sky convinces the Niaruna that he is
the embodiment of their sky-­god, Kisu-­Mu, which leads them to adopt him into the
tribe. His integration into the tribe ultimately becomes a step on his journey
through it, culminating in that momentary, if tormented, triumph as he kneels on
the riverbank, but since this comes at the cost of his life and the lives of the
tribespeople who had adopted him, the novel seems to hold strong reservations
about the possibility of meaningfully maintaining awareness of the self wholly
within nature, given that as humans beings, we are forced to live in a cultural
milieu. While culture is sustaining, it also obscures the essential “bedrock of
existence” Moon gets a glimpse of with complex layers of reified linguistic and
conceptual constructs that can be penetrated with only the greatest, often tragic,
difficulty. We see in Matthiessen’s novel that the realistic fictional mode is
instrumental in perpetuating these constructs, and that the drug-­induced percep-
tions that Moon experiences, and that the reader participates in, eventually arise
as simply a momentary lifting of the veil. Western rational causality—Moon’s
predominant means of forming an understanding of himself and his world—
returns, and this helps precipitate his slide into tragedy.
Western rational causality and the myth of progress are appealed to in a number
of ways in the novel, but it’s more the Western suspicion of what is perceived as
non-­rational that justifies the ongoing aggression. Nature and the indigenous native
populations are perceived as non-­rational and thus engender intense fears. At one
point, Huben absurdly goes to great trouble to enclose his jungle compound with
barbed wire, symbolic of his fear of both the jungle and its native inhabitants. Both
are feminized as well, through essentialist categorizations and the figurative emas-
culation of the natives. These fears are underscored in the novel by the roles played
by the women characters. The wives of the missionaries, Andy Huben and Hazel
Quarrier, represent quite clearly the ways that sexuality, the female, and femininity
are linked with nature. Andy is “Leslie Huben’s pretty wife, by far the prettiest
face in the pages of the [Mission Fields] magazine” (10). Martin Quarrier falls in
love with her, due in part to difficulties in his own marriage. Martin’s love for
Andy underscores her sexual attractiveness at the same time that it demonstrates
Hazel’s relative lack of it. Hazel is big-­boned and awkward, and she sees herself as
ugly. One gets the impression that her husband does as well. Quarrier recalls a
moment when he had heard Leslie and Andy making love in an adjoining room,
and felt “goaded” by it into making love with his own wife, which he later recalls
as the most sordid moment of his life.
122   K. Zuelke
Andy’s sexuality, as compared with Hazel’s, is meaningful only in the context
of the ways they relate to the world beyond the intimacy of their marriages. The
novel’s ecological context often makes use of sexuality and femininity as meta-
phors that gauge the degree to which characters are in touch with nature. A scene
where Andy takes a bath in a forest stream demonstrates the degree to which she
is at ease in the forest:

After her bath, having no towel, she sat down on a log to dry herself in the
pale sun. In her private world of leaves and warm wood and clear water, she
felt happy and relieved for the first time in weeks. Sabalo trout were drifting
in the shallows, and she could see bright shells of the fresh-­water mussel. A
sandpiper came and teetered cheerfully along the margin, and a tiny emerald
hummingbird perched near her head.
(259)

The scene becomes sexually charged when Moon appears naked, as a Niaruna, and
puts his hands on Andy’s body, and perhaps kisses her—an advance she welcomes
before coming to her senses and running away. The paradisiacal details of Andy’s
bath, and the way her mood in the midst of nature leaves her receptive to Moon’s
advance, reveals her orientation towards nature in sharp contrast to Hazel’s.
Hazel sees nature as monstrous, filthy, and evil. Horrified after a visit to the
latrine:

she would not tell Quarrier what the matter was; it was just too awful, too
disgusting. But later she said that she had seen two giant frogs or toads
squatting half buried in the fecal muck. Trapped in the water of the pit, they
had grown fat on the swarming flies and were living out their lives buried in
excrement.
(135)

Hazel’s hatred and fear of nature are infused with her fear of sexuality. Deep in
the forest, under unbearable tension from the living conditions and difficulties
encountered from the hostile Niarunas, Hazel loses touch with reality:

Their suspense and fear were made still worse by Hazel, who spoke wildly
of the jungle and could talk of nothing else, describing obscenely the
obscenity of the flowering and rot, the pale phallic trunks and dark soft
caverns, the rampant hair, the slime and infestations. Once she ran naked
from the hut at noon to sprawl and roll in the center of the clearing, writhing
and howling, her arms extended to the forest, shivering as in a fit. “He is
here,” she cried, “Satan is in this place and he will take me!”
(256)

Matthiessen further develops the association of nature with sex. Hazel and
Martin are in the forest living with a partially converted group of Niaruna who
 Essentialist tropes   123
had broken away from the main tribe. Hazel becomes “obsessed with shorts and
dresses, once she perceived how sensual these Indians were” (Matthiessen 1965,
148). Disgusted with the open sensuality of the Indians, Hazel strikes away the
hand of a young woman who is stroking the genitals of her young son, Billy.
Upbraided by her husband for the very real danger of striking an Indian, Hazel
responds “Do you want him watching these filthy tricks?” (149). She goes on to
call the Indians “nasty little monkeys,” making her orientation towards them
clear: A people living naked, in open sensuality, and so close to nature, are
indistinguishable to Hazel from animals, and all are filthy. A key thematic scene
follows closely upon this incident, involving a dream Hazel has after being
“lavishly befouled” by a troop of real monkeys overhead, “and this so suddenly
that it seemed to Hazel that the heavens had opened up and voided on her” (151).
That evening Hazel dreams she is standing in the “cold clean light” of a North
Dakota church listening to the choir. She is enraptured with the beauty of the
experience until she notices that the choir members are not the innocent cherubs
she imagines, but loathsome creatures that “sniggered and itched and hitched
soiled cassocks to scratch hairy white legs, and some broke wind” (151). She
looks up to the vaults to “ease her pain,” and a hole opens in the roof and spews
a foul slime all over her, the choir, and the church, yet “the voices remained
brave and pure, and a light shone everywhere, inextinguishable, illuminating the
slime itself, transfiguring it, infusing the very stink of it with eternal life” (152).
The associations between the rain forest and the church of Hazel’s dream are
clear: both had spewed slime on her, and if a church is the traditional dwelling
place of God, it follows from Hazel’s dream that God dwells in the forest as
well. In telling Martin of her dream, Hazel declares, “Oh Martin, help me, that
hole was the hole of God!” (152). Hazel’s dream serves to connect the attractive-
ness of an Edenic forest and the beauty that one senses in a church with an asso-
ciated ugliness: the excremental toads and monkeys that also live there, and the
slime that falls from the church ceiling. Hazel’s dream infuses both aspects of
church and forest with holiness, though, which can be read as a message to her
that in the details of the natural world God is found in the foul as well as in the
beautiful. In focusing on the foul, and finding it evil, and rejecting the
beautiful—at one point she pulls the wings off of a pet blue Morpho butterfly
Andy and Billy had been admiring, saying, “That lovely color isn’t real […] It’s
nothing but gray dust” (152)—Hazel in fact rejects God. Her rejection of the
inspiriting presence of God in nature, despite her empty piousness, leads her to
madness. Once again, as with Guzmàn and the missionaries, Matthiessen recon-
ciles apparent opposites: A natural world which can include both the loveliness
of a Morpho butterfly and the horrifying spectacle of toads growing fat in a
latrine. Hazel’s dream demonstrates that in the deepest levels of her conscious-
ness she is aware of the spiritual potential of accepting that God resides in all the
details of the natural world, but her culturally derived abhorrence of part of it,
based on her Puritanical fundamentalism, leads her to reject all of the natural
world, and in so doing she rejects God as well. The consequences of this deci-
sion cause Hazel to locate her faith in the rules and dogma of religious teaching:
124   K. Zuelke
Had Hazel been reared away from the Protestant heartland of the Great
Plains, she would have made a redoubtable Catholic or even Communist; it
was the dogma that attracted her, the security of righteousness, for she felt
no need to understand her faith.
(65)

Although Leslie Huben never descends into the madness that swallows Hazel,
his attitude toward nature, sex, and religion is similar to hers. We hear about this
through Andy in a scene where she talks to Martin about her husband:

There’s an awful lot of things he thinks are dirty, that he can’t even talk
about, things he can’t eat, you know […]. Well, I mean, he’s fastidious […].
Sometimes—I don’t mean really but—you know he even finds me a little
dirty!
(250)

Andy’s speech further demonstrates Huben’s abhorrence of the natural (i.e.,

food, his wife’s sexuality) on the same fundamentalist grounds as Hazel, and
develops as well the link between a healthy sexuality and a healthy regard for
nature.
The degraded sexuality of Wolfie and Guzmàn is associated with their fear of
the forest and its people, and their willingness to destroy it. Hazel and Leslie
also see the wildness of the forest, and the “wildness” of sexuality, as things that
elicit loathing. Andy and the Niaruna, on the other hand, are linked with the wild
through their more open expression of sexuality. To say that the Niaruna are
more closely associated with Nature than Guzmàn seems obvious, but in fact
such an assertion does the Indians the same disservice that causes ecofeminists
to question the association of the female with nature. The Indians become
“othered,” and this provides justification for their destruction. The Niarunas are
acculturated people, not the “monkeys” of Hazel’s bigoted estimation.
The Niarunas themselves are sensitive to the ways their culture distinguishes
them from the wild creatures of the forest. Aeore, the Niaruna who shot the
arrow at Moon’s airplane, tells Moon, “We are naked and have nothing! There-
fore we must decorate ourselves, for if we did not, how are we to be told from
animals?” (269). Pindi, the young Niaruna woman who sleeps with Moon,
becomes pregnant and gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, but she buries the
girl alive in the forest. Her justification is that “only animals drop more than one.
I was ashamed” (266). This action is justified in the eyes of the tribe because
until a child is painted it is not a “New Person.” It is “nothing” and may be
returned to the forest. On one hand Aeore and Pindi are asserting the distinction
from nature that is bestowed upon them by the cultural act of face-­painting, but
at the same time they seem to reveal a relative lack of confidence in that distinc-
tion. “There it was,” thinks Moon after hearing Aeore’s explanation of face-­
painting:
 Essentialist tropes   125
The unbearable thing was not the fear that the Great Spirit had forsaken
man, nor even that in granting awareness of death He had made man’s hope
ridiculous, but that from the beginning He had made no real distinction
between the mindless animals and mankind.
(269)

Acculturated people, the Niaruna nevertheless manage to maintain a close rela-

tionship to the natural world. But this is mainly a result of the contingencies of
living in close contact with the forest with a technology that adapts easily to it.
Their relationship to the forest is maintained by their traditions and spiritual
beliefs, in marked contrast to the spiritual beliefs of Huben, whose religiosity
equips him to understand nature as merely the abode of the devil, the simplistic
opposite of God and civilization. In the end, Matthiessen’s conception of the
Niaruna is sensitive to the kind of criticism of the essentialist “Ecological
Indian” as defined by Shepard Krech III: “While this image may occasionally
serve or have served useful polemical or political ends, images of noble and
ignoble indigenousness, including the Ecological Indian, are ultimately
dehumanizing” (Krech 1999, 26).
After Moon’s brief erotic encounter with Andy Huben during her bath, he
returns to the village filled with lust, which he directs toward Pindi: “In this
world where the plants writhed, where seeding and flowering, life and death,
were all entwined, one could copulate as naturally as one could sleep” (280).
Moon makes love with Pindi before an audience of Niarunas curious about
Kisu-­Mu’s unusual gesture of having sex in the dark. Moon hadn’t been able to
tolerate spectators before, but this time, “before he lost himself and screwed the
world, he had pretended that he held not the rank brown Pindi, but the clean
pious flesh of Andy Huben” (281).
The meeting of Moon with Andy, and his subsequent union with Pindi, has
deep ramifications in the novel, not only because Andy passes an influenza virus
to Moon, who in turn passes it to Pindi. From her it sweeps through the entire
tribe, which has no resistance, and the Niaruna are effectively destroyed by the
disease. The thematic ramifications are profound as well. The opposition of the
victimized female/nature connection, at odds with the aggressive male/culture
connection, becomes ironically deconstructed by this scene when we see that the
momentary, but open, expression of Andy’s sexuality is the effective agent of
the Niaruna’s demise—and it is much more thorough than bombs or preaching.
Moon’s whiteness is also a participating agent in this unwitting but thorough
complex of what amounts to cultural aggression. In the end it is Andy’s white-
ness that attracts Moon’s whiteness, and their fleeting union is enough to elicit
tragic consequences among the Indians. Andy’s behavior, while shocking to
Huben and Quarrier (for different reasons), and most uncharacteristic of a “good
Christian woman”—it is in fact a brief moment of rebellious adultery, of the
kind of fornication that so incenses Leslie—nevertheless serves to connect Andy,
in a negative way, to white culture. All of the Western influences that arrive in
the jungle work toward the Indians’ downfall, and Andy, even with her natural
126   K. Zuelke
sexuality, is no different. Western influence proves insidiously pervasive, and
always destructive. Concepts such as culture, the natural, the female, and sexual-
ity combine into an interrelated system of culturally situated phenomena that
work together. From the broadest ecological perspective it has become clear that
all societies are threatened by culture’s destructive advance on nature. Indi-
genous peoples, such as the Niaruna, are the most vulnerable, and fall first, but
the implication is that the others are linked, and may not be far behind. Ulti-
mately culture is self-­destructive when it fails to take the enormous fact of nature
into account. The novel is ultimately anti-­pastoral in this sense: The pastoral
middle ground that would mediate for Moon between nature and culture turns
out to be part of a disintegrating cultural complex. There is no middle ground.
If Moon’s quest is only for cultural belonging, it is a complete failure. His
presence among the Niaruna leads to their demise; the cultural milieu he seeks
disintegrates upon his entrance into it. The ending of the novel, though, hints
at a spiritual fulfillment for Moon that he couldn’t have predicted. Floating
eastward towards the remote depths of the vast rainforest, in a flotilla of burial
canoes filled with rotting corpses, Moon experiences a kind of rebirth. Moon
is bereft, finally, of the constraints of culture. He has found a way across the
divide that separates him from an inspirited natural world—the way towards
life is finally open. “Laid naked to the sun and sky, he felt himself open like a
flower” (373). But, freed from the strictures of culture, Moon is also no longer
supported by it. Nothing in the text suggests that Moon will return to the civi-
lized world; he is naked and alone in an enormous wilderness, and will surely
die there, but his death marks a real triumph of spirit. The way towards a life
freed from culture must lead as well towards death, but it is a death filled with
a kind of meaning Moon never had in his life. The price paid for Moon’s
moment of tragic freedom has been enormous, however, entailing the destruc-
tion of an entire tribe of indigenous people. It is clear that Moon brought a
white colonial ethic to bear on his dealings with the Niaruna, and the tone and
the consequences of his fleeting but disastrous union with Andy underscore
this. Moon’s “Indianness” is undeniable, and in one sense it justifies his
approach to the Niaruna, but his “whiteness” controverts his own experience.
Since the Niaruna no longer exist, because of their contact with Moon and the
missionaries, it appears that in the end Moon has recapitulated the careers of
earlier white explorers, and his appropriation of Niaruna experience, more
than anything, appears hyperreal and essentialist and is thus ultimately tragic.
Matthiessen implies that rational causality, the hallmark and triumph of
Western civilization, may ultimately make Western civilization a victim of its
own success. From an ecological standpoint, we see that its downfall may very
well come from its inability to envision itself in harmony with the environ-
ment that supports it. It is also destructive when viewed from a societal stand-
point. While some societies have fallen before others, the novel’s implication
is that all societies are linked. Since the fictional predicament of the Niaruna
has been repeated in countless situations around the globe, there is some
urgency to Matthiessen’s fictional warning.
 Essentialist tropes   127
Matthiessen’s novel remains an important fictional expression of the
ecocritical project that, according to Lance Newman, engages contemporary,
ecologically concerned writers who see the present ecological crisis as stemming
from “destructive habits of thought” (Newman 2002, 2). This matters, because,
according to Scott Slovic, the revolution in thought that is needed to change the
ecological relationship of humans to the earth will depend upon the “power of
awareness” (Slovic 1992, 169) that art can accentuate, and upon which nature
writers pin their hopes. Art in this case accentuates as well the pitfalls of a mis-
taken construction of an essentialist connection between women and nature and
indigenous peoples and nature.

References
Cooley, John. 1994. “Matthiessen’s Voyages on the River Styx: Deathly Waters, Endan-
gered Peoples.” In Earthly Words. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Eco, Umberto. 1986. Travels in Hyperreality. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.
Estok, Simon C. 2009. “Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and
Ecophobia.” ISLE, 16: 203–225.
Gaard, Greta. 2011. “Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-­Placing
Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism.” Feminist Formations, 23: 26–53.
Krech, Shepard, III. 1999. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: Norton.
Matthiessen, Peter. 1987. At Play in the Fields of the Lord. 1965. New York: Vintage.
Matthiessen, Peter. 1987. Nine-­Headed Dragon River. Boston: Shambala.
Newman, Lance. 2002. “Marxism and Ecocriticism.” ISLE, 9: 1–25.
Patteson, Richard F. 1979. “At Play in the Fields of the Lord: The Imperialist Idea and
the Discovery of Self.” Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, 21: 30–38.
Slovic, Scott. 1992. Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing. Salt Lake City, UT:
University of Utah Press.
Vizenor, Gerald. 1989. “A Postmodern Introduction.” In Narrative Chance: Postmodern
Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures, edited by Gerald Vizenor, 3–16.
Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
9 Cyborg-­goddesses, Linda Hogan’s
Indios, and Jade Chen’s
Mazu’s Body-­guards
Peter I-­min Huang

In “New Directions for Ecofeminism: Toward a More Feminist Ecocriticism,”

an article published in ISLE—the distinguished outlet journal of the Association
for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)—Greta Gaard points out
the failings of mainstream ecocriticism. One of those, according to Gaard, is the
lack of address of “the analytical frameworks for gender, species, and sexual-
ity” (2010, 644). The given shortcoming is not merely “a bibliographic matter
of failing to cite feminist scholarship.” It signifies in addition a “profound con-
ceptual failure to grapple with the issues being raised by that scholarship as
feminist, a failure made more egregious when the same ideas are later celeb-
rated when presented via non-­feminist sources” (644–645). A second weakness
of mainstream ecocriticism that Gaard identifies is it underrepresents indi-
genous, African-­American, Chicana, Asian-­American women, and other
minority writers (646).
Echoing Gaard’s critique of the two main failings of mainstream ecocriticism,
Noël Sturgeon observes that ecofeminism, more so than any other area of
ecocriticism, focuses not only on minority writers and artists but also on why
and how environmental problems—for example, rural poverty, urban slums, air
pollution, and toxic drinking water—disproportionately affect women and other
minority populations: “people of color … poor people, Global South people,”
and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (2009, 9).
In “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-­Feminism in the
Late Twentieth Century”—a writing first published in 1985 and a posthumanist
feminist statement that is as relevant today as it was a quarter of a century ago—
Donna Haraway embraced the concept and idea of “the cyborg”—the part
human and part machine—at a time of great anxiety about and hostility towards
new technologies and the rising sun of digitalization and computerized know-
ledge. Gleefully and audaciously, in a brilliant deconstructive argument,
Haraway defended the cyborg by representing it as something that stood for and
embodied a way thinking and being in the world that transgressed patriarchal
boundaries between “the discursive” and “the material” and “the imagination”
and “material reality” (1985, 150). Her essay inspired an entire generation of
poststructuralist feminist thinkers, and it remains a founding work for post-
humanist feminists. It also complements recent work by ecologists, cognitive
 Cyborg-goddesses, Indios, Mazu’s Body-guards   129
scientists, behavioral scientists, social scientists, anthropologists, literary studies
scholars, and cultural studies scholars who question conventional boundaries
between the material world (so-­called base nature) and the immaterial world (the
human mind and soul) that promote oppressive hierarchies. Their questions
include a wide range of interdisciplinary interrogations of gender, ethnicity, ani-
mality, the environment, and so forth, and so beckon humans to be a part of
“otherworldly conversations”; for any “coherent conversation” between humans
and other beings, and putative things or objects, as Haraway argues in another
essay, “depends on our recognition of the ‘otherwordly’ status of beings besides
humans” (2008, 178–179).
Material feminist scholars Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, adding to Hara-
way’s early contributions to ecocriticism (and posthumanism, which in fact does
not emerge as a distinct disciplinary area of inquiry for another 15 years after the
publication of “A Cyborg Manifesto”), also call for more consideration of
“material-­discursive” approaches to being in the world that celebrate “the body”
(2008, 5). They point out that “the body” is an entity and concept that patriarchal
institutions historically have denigrated. In contrast to that dismissal, material
feminism embraces “the body” and the materiality of being (5). At the same
time, it rejects ontological thinking and desire for origins.
In further introducing the theoretical foundations of and frameworks for
material feminism, Alaimo and Hekman critique “the linguistic turn” that
occurred in literary and cultural studies in the 1990s. One of the most “serious
liabilities” of that turn was the embrace of patriarchal constructions of “the dis-
cursive.” Combined with the retreat from engaging with material conditions and
states of things and beings, gender-­biased interest in “the discursive” hindered
literary and cultural studies scholars from engaging with the nonhuman or other-­
than-human world.
For sure, the rejection of materialist thinking was productive in the sense
that scholars challenged prejudices rooted in essentialist forms of thinking.
However, the hyperbolic emphasis on “the discursive” was equally counter-
productive in the sense that “more often than not,” poststructuralist thinkers
denounced work that gave credibility to “the body” and finitude. Mainstream
poststructuralists thus more often than not implicitly or explicitly accused
scholars who were comparing the history and treatment of women with the
history and treatment of the environment of undermining poststructuralist
theory and regressively re-­founding feminism “upon a naïve, romantic account
of reality” (Alaimo and Hekman 2008, 4). Their “flight from nature” version
of poststructuralism overshadowed other kinds of poststructuralism that in
effect recognized that poststructuralism had insufficiently accounted for prob-
lems of gender, race, and class. The latter direction of poststructuralism
included feminist thinkers such as Haraway. Indeed, they were the most inter-
ested in disentangling reductive, patriarchal material definitions of “the
female” from equally crude material understandings of “nature,” but they also
were interested in theoretical and practical positions that did not essentially
separate the material from the discursive.
130   P.I.-M. Huang
Making a point similar to that which Alaimo and Hekman make, Joanna
Latimer and Mara Miele discuss Haraway’s “natureculture,” which stands for
the belief that materiality is deeply implicated in cultural realities and “no part of
being human … is unaffected by its material interaction with other materialities”
(Latimer and Miele 2013). Like Haraway’s more well-­known term and theoriza-
tion of “the cyborg,” “natureculture” speaks particularly loudly for female
experience, for, in modern societies, under patriarchal constructions of “the
human,” or under legislation that determines who has the full rights—civil, legal,
moral, and so forth—of “the subject,” women often are compared with nature
and so treated as if they are not fully human. In this specific sense, women share
in common with the environment and the cyborg the stigma of impurity, hybrid-
ity, baseness, or baser material existence, and the experience or ascribed state of
the object or second-­class subject. In this same sense, as I will argue in the
remaining paragraphs by way of illustration of Taiwanese writer Jade Chen’s
Mazu’s Body-­guards (2002) and Native American writer Linda Hogan’s long
poem Indios (2004), patriarchal dismissals of female identity are critically tied to
common pejorative and condescending attitudes toward and treatment of the
environment.
Indios and Mazu’s Body-­guards both implicitly articulate that patriarchal
institutions marginalize and suppress “the female” under various social, political,
cultural, and environmental frameworks. They denigrate “the female” for being
a mixed, incomplete, and derivative identity and they privilege “the masculine”
identity, or the identity that historically was granted the full rights of the subject.
For Chen and Hogan, as for Haraway, as I argue here, patriarchal constructions
of “the female” parallel speciesist constructions of “the cyborg” that privilege
“the human” above all other things and beings in the world. Like Haraway, Chen
and Hogan take those constructions, turn them on their head, and re-­appropriate
them. “The female” in their narratives speaks for, and celebrates, hybridity, or
the sharing, diffusing, recycling, and de-­hierarchizing of power. “The mascu-
line” in their stories stands for accretion, amassing, centralization, hierarchically
enlisting, and wasting of power. I thus read Indios as an ecofeminist revision of
mainstream patriarchal interpretations of the classical Western myth of Medea as
well as a primary narrative about the genocide and ecocide of Native Americans
by AngloEuropean colonizers. Indios critiques those interpretations through the
figure of the central eponymous character, a Native American woman who
marries a “foreigner” and bears children by him. Similarly, in my reading of
Mazu’s Body-­guards, I point out content in the novel that functions as a subtle
critique of colonial, neocolonial, patriarchal, and environmental policies and
practices in Taiwan. That content refers to the three main human female charac-
ters as well as to a fourth female character, Mazu, an indigenized goddess whose
origins trace to China, and an ecofeminist identity, or material-­discursive and
natural-­cultural identity.
In the preface of Indios, Hogan states that one of the reasons why she wrote a
work inspired by the myth of Medea was because it was “a story from many of
our histories … common to all continents” that housed a great untruth (2012, xv).
 Cyborg-goddesses, Indios, Mazu’s Body-guards   131
In the most famous account of the myth by Euripides, which Hogan has been
familiar with since childhood (xv), Medea is a barbarian who falls in love with
Jason and helps him to obtain the coveted “golden fleece.” She leaves her father,
her two brothers, and her homeland to return with Jason to his country. She bears
him two children before he abandons her to marry the daughter of Creon, king of
Corinth. In grief, despair, and rage, Medea presents Jason’s new bride with a
gift—a poisoned wedding dress and coronet—and kills her children.
As Hogan implicitly argues in Indios, Euripides’ famous version of the myth
of Medea exemplifies patriarchal discourses that demonize and ostracize women
who marry outside their ethnic and racial communities. Culturally, through texts,
and ritualistically, through the performance and codification of those texts, the
discourses sometimes center on or include the theme of infanticide and show
little or no empathy for the protagonists who kill their offspring (xv). Hogan’s
Indios challenges that discourse and perdurable “monologue” (xv). It is a story
that, like Medea, is “never the story of just one woman./It is the telling of many
worlds, peoples, and lands” (Hogan 2012, 12) that have been blamed and framed
under numerous patriarchal frameworks for acts that they did not commit or for
which they are not alone responsible. Thus Hogan takes the official patriarchal
story of Medea, adapts it, and transforms it into a work about a young North
American Native woman betrayed by a newcomer who takes her children from
her and destroys her country.
Captured and imprisoned on false charges that she is the murderer of her chil-
dren, Indios, which means In God (In Dios) (Hogan 2012, 37), tells her story
from a prison cell. Years before, she fell in love with a foreigner: “When I saw
him the first time/As he stood there in all his finery, shining./And the sun was
behind him … My heart jumped … I knew no better./I was like one of the fish
that jumped from water” (7). She is enchanted by, not repulsed or threatened by
or envious of, his beauty or difference: However, her father has seen many men
like him come to their country and seduce or buy Native American women and
then abuse and abandon them. He has never known one who has given some-
thing in return for what he has taken from his and Indios’ people. He fears that
one day all of his people will be killed, moved, or unjustly “contained” by the
AngloEuropean newcomers (11). Already, they have cleared vast tracts of land
to raise cattle, and the Native Americans cannot find unpolluted water or wild
animals and they can no longer cultivate their own crops. Retelling that history
as an older woman, Indios writes: “There would be no more room in our world/
For birds and owls, for wolves or the elk with antlers” (16). It would be psycho-
logically, ethnically, culturally, and ecologically “killed by what [the white men
had] done” (18). It is that world that Indios greatly loved: “The land, and all the
small animals” (18).
Indios calls attention to the parallel histories of AngloEuropean imperialism
and ecological imperialism (Garrard 2004, 123) and to the materially as well as
ideologically fraught devastation that imperialism brings and leaves behind.
Indios’ marriage to the foreigner is not recognized under dominant racist,
speciesist, and patriarchal laws. When the foreigner falls in love with a woman
132   P.I.-M. Huang
from his own ethnic community, he leaves Indios and seizes their children.
Indios follows them to their new home, to their father’s “mansion” (Hogan 2012,
33). She lives in the trees, secretly watching her children’s comings and goings.
Rarely, she is able to meet them and hold them to her breast. One day, she sees
the woman who has replaced her hit her (Indios’) son. A “chamber of [her]
heart” breaks (33). Another day, she sees a look on her daughter’s face “As if
she’d become one of them” (33). “Another chamber of [her] heart” breaks (33).
She watches among the trees with a sense of terrible ostracism, disenfranchise-
ment, and despair. She has “slip[ped]” in status “from queen to pawn” (33). The
environment that she has grown up with, which included animals, likewise has
been stripped of status. The animals are disappearing or under threat because of
the ecocidal practices of the foreigners: “the bear … wandered out of her den
[and found] the land changed … [t]he wolf mother [tried] to protect her small
ones/As they were being smoked out” (33–34). Indios sees no separation
between herself and “the environment.” According to the ecological principles
and practices of her people, “the human” and “the environment” share or consti-
tute a seamless identity. If her people compromise the environment, they also do
a disservice to themselves. The newcomers have different views of the world.
They subordinate the interests of the environment to an incompatible and unsus-
tainable set of interests.
Not long after Indios’ foreign lover marries another woman, Indios prepares a
gift for her. It is a robe made of gold cloth and poisonous local plants. When her
children come to her, Indios gives to them the robe enclosed in a box to carry to
their stepmother. She instructs them not to open it. Here, at this point in the nar-
rative, Hogan does not make it clear if the woman for whom the robe is intended is
poisoned by it or if her children touch the cloth, for she says, “They died from their
love of gold” (Hogan 2012, 42). After this, men come and take her children and
stone them to death. The men are relieved that Indios’ mixed-­race children will not
inherit anything: “those large men … feared/A mixed-­blood child would come to
rule” (47). Indios desperately tries to stop the men from killing her children, but
they hold her back. She screams and begs them to take her life and spare those of
her children. She writes, “I will never forget the sound of stones against the body./I
would have died with them if I could” (43). The men then place the corpses of her
children on Indios, who has fainted. When she revives, they charge her with the
infanticide and inform her lover of the charges brought against Indios. He shows
no interest in why or how his children were killed, for, as Indios says, “We were
minor stars/Nameless in the dark matter of his universe” (43).
Indios is a woman caught between two worlds and punished by the people of
the second because she embraced its people and accepted one of them as her
lover and partner. Now, both a victim and a perpetrator of violence, Indios is
infected by the hatred and prejudice of those who betrayed her. She represents
one of the most terrible outcomes of the “collision of continents” or violent
history of colonialism in the time of the settling and conquest of North America
by AngloEuropean people. She “contains” or suffers that outcome in prison, “in
the silence of a body” (2012, 15).
 Cyborg-goddesses, Indios, Mazu’s Body-guards   133
The narrator of Jade Chen’s semi-­autobiographical novel, Mazu’s Body-­
guards, the youngest of the three main characters, tells the story of the suffering
and punishment of a generation of three women under the rule of colonial and
postcolonial governments in Taiwan. Through all three characters, Chen makes
ecofeminist as well as postcolonial arguments that challenge the official history
or “national myth” of Taiwan.
As postcolonial and feminist scholar Liang-­ya Liou argues, mainstream and
official accounts of Taiwan’s history are disingenuous fabrications that reduce
and suppress the multiple histories and transindigenous identities of Taiwan
(2014, 239–240). Those accounts, which are patriarchal as well as colonialist, do
not fully or adequately represent Taiwan or Taiwanese people, the majority of
whom are of mixed ethnic and racial descent (Liou 2014, 238–244). In Chen’s
alternative foundation myth, Taiwan is a very old indigenous place in the world
whose people graciously accepted or were forced to accept newcomers—Spanish,
Dutch, Portuguese, Han Chinese, Japanese, and so forth—and in return were
denigrated for being a lesser kind of human and for belonging to a lesser kind of
country or place in the world. Many of the newcomers did not embrace and
respect, as the oldest indigenous people did, the belief and value that material
and cultural identities could be mutually and productively shared and embodied.
The narrator of Mazu’s Body-­guards first introduces her grandmother, Ayako,
a Japanese woman from Okinawa, an island that is now part of Japan but was
once annexed by China. She comes to Taiwan to search for her fiancé. She learns
that he was killed in the battle at Wu-­she, a reference to the genocidal war that
the Japanese colonial army together with Taiwanese of Han Chinese descent
waged against indigenous people, forcing them into smaller and smaller areas
and then rooting them out and killing them. Subsequently, Ayako marries a local
Taiwanese man. Loyal to the Japanese colonial government, he fights alongside
Japanese soldiers during World War II. When he and other Taiwanese soldiers
return to Taiwan, the Chinese Nationalists, who have taken control of Taiwan,
execute them for treason. (This episode also refers to a real incident, the “228
massacre” or “White Terror,” in which the Chinese Nationalists purged Taiwan’s
intellectual classes, killing hundreds of artists, writers, and scholars on February
28, 1947.)
Earlier, when her husband is with the Japanese imperial army, Ayako has an
affair with her husband’s younger brother. Differently from his brother, he
despises Taiwan’s Japanese colonizers. He joins a secret underground Commu-
nist group in Taiwan, and when it is defeated he flees the island to avoid capture
and punishment. Ayako remains in Taiwan and gives birth to a daughter by her
husband. Her granddaughter, the narrator of the novel, grows up in a military
compound for mainland Chinese (KMT) soldiers and their dependents. Her
daughter (the narrator’s mother) has two names, a Japanese name, Shizuko, and
a Chinese-­Taiwanese name, Lin Fen-­fang.
Shizuko’s husband is a soldier from China who came to Taiwan with the
Chinese Nationalist army (Kuomintang) (KMT) after World War II. The com-
pound where the narrator lives with her mother Shizuko and father is separated
134   P.I.-M. Huang
from the housing for other Taiwanese people. The narrator is indoctrinated by
the education that she receives at the public schools run by the KMT govern-
ment. She dislikes Japanese people and resents her grandmother Ayako when
she sees her for the first time. She also resents her Taiwanese lineage. She speaks
the privileged language of Mandarin only, so she cannot communicate easily
with Ayako, who is fluent in both Taiwanese and Japanese and does not speak
Mandarin. She internalizes the colonial Han Chinese government’s hatred of
Japanese and contempt and disdain for Taiwanese (Han Chinese people who
migrated to Taiwan before the nineteenth century who are of either “pure” Han
Chinese descent or mixed Han Chinese and Aboriginal descent as well as older
people who are of mostly of Aboriginal descent). When she secretly peeps into
her grandmother’s room, it strikes her as “a foreigner’s room” (Chen 2004, 66).
She calls her grandmother a “Japanese ghost” (66).
Colonization has played a very important role in shaping a transethnicity
identity for Taiwan (Liou 2014, 246). As Chen’s novel explores that aspect of
Taiwanese history, the present government, dominated by Taiwanese people of
Han Chinese descent who have deep cultural, familial, historical, political, and
other connections with people in China or Japan, or both, pays tremendous atten-
tion to that history and very little to the oldest people and environments of
Taiwan. The characters of the narrator, her mother, and her grandmother articu-
late the need for the Taiwanese government as well as other governments in the
world to more actively recognize, value, and support transethnic identity rather
than to spurn it. In addition, they articulate the contribution that women have
made and can make to fostering more peace and accord in the world.
Ayako is ostracized by her in-­laws and others in the post-­World War II decades,
the 1950s and 1960s, because of her Japanese ethnicity. In that time, the Chinese
Nationalists took over control of and “resinicized” Taiwan. When a police officer
comes to the family home to take a census, he warns Ayako in satirical tones,
“Okinawa belonged to China in the past. Don’t pretend that you are a Japanese”
(Chen 2004, 283). Ayako’s daughter Shizuko also confronts discrimination because
of her mixed ethnicity. She feels very lonely, especially so after her father is
executed in the 228 incident. Ayako, who constantly worries that Shizuko (Lin
Fen-­fang) will be sexually harassed and otherwise abused in school, forces Shizuko
to abandon her schooling to work in a barber’s shop. Longing for love, Shizuko
falls in love with the young Chinese soldier despite her mother’s strong opposition
to the Chinese “foreigner.” He belongs to a highly privileged, post-­1950s popula-
tion of Chinese newcomers. Many of this population believe that they are socially,
ethnically, racially, and culturally superior to and more sophisticated than older
Taiwanese people of either Han Chinese or indigenous Taiwanese descent. Shizuko
internalizes that prejudice. She is attracted to the mainland Chinese youth because
he is a “pure” Han Chinese and speaks perfect Mandarin. She is enchanted by his
gentle manner and “perfect” Mandarin accent. When her mother Ayako learns of
her love for the Chinese soldier, she locks Shizuko in a room for three days and
nights. Shizuko breaks a window in the room and escapes from the house by crawl-
ing across the roof (158).
 Cyborg-goddesses, Indios, Mazu’s Body-guards   135
Similar to the character of Indios in Hogan’s narrative, Shizuko gives up her
family and country for a privileged patriarchal “outsider-­insider,” or for an indi-
vidual who represents the colonizer who becomes the legitimate “indigene” of
the places he or she inhabits. Shizuko’s husband pays her back with domestic
violence and countless betrayals. He returns to China and only comes to Taiwan
when he is poor and ill. He seeks Shizuko only in these times because she never
refuses him care. A Taiwanese woman of mixed Han Chinese, Japanese, and
indigenous Taiwanese descent, Shizuko embodied ecofeminist principles of
embracing the land she lived in, accepting and respecting the people who came
before her to that land, and embracing transindigenous and transethnic values
when she married someone who was of a different ethnicity. In return, she is
treated as if she is stupid for doing so. At one point in the narrative, her daughter
asks her, “Why don’t you live your own life? Why do you carry my father’s
problems on your shoulders?” (Chen 2004, 140).
The narrator, daughter of Shizuko and granddaughter of Ayako, represents
the lives of many women under patriarchal institutions. They internalize the
values of those institutions. Many become mouthpieces for the language-­lords,
landlords, and gender-­lords that those institutions favor. However, the narrator
moves away from those values. Slowly, she comes to value her female and
ethnic cyborg identity, one that her father and others dismissively compare to a
“broken,” “tainted,” and “cracked” piece of porcelain. She begins to critically
identify and question the patriarchal and ethnocentric values that she once
embraced.
The single-­most important figure for the narrator in addition to her mother
and grandmother is Mazu, one of the three most loved gods in Taiwan, and loved
equally by her mother and grandmother. She learns to recognize and appreciate
ecofeminist values based on her learning about the goddess Mazu. When Han
Chinese people migrated to Taiwan over a period of several hundred years, they
brought with them their gods and goddesses. One of those was the ancestor of
Mazu. Today, Taiwanese worship Mazu, a sea goddess who protects them when
they are out at sea fishing and a rain and agricultural goddess who looks after
their farming communities (Liou 2014, 261).
The narrator’s great-­uncle (her mother’s uncle and Ayako’s lover), once
carved a statue of Mazu and her two body-­guards and gave the sculptures to
Ayako. When the narrator travels to Europe, she takes the amulets of the two
body-­guards with her. In the narrative, it is implied that the figures of Mazu’s
two body-­guards are Ayako’s husband and lover, and that Ayako is “Mazu.”
Perhaps, also, they represent Ayako’s daughter and granddaughter, for although
the relationship between the three women is a difficult one, undermined by the
racist and ethnocentric prejudices that they have internalized, Mazu represents
their ability to overcome and respect difference in the face of tremendous racial,
ethnic, and geopolitical prejudice.
Mazu represents a force that especially speaks for the ties between the female
and the environment, ties that ecofeminists emphasize. Those connections often
are broken by dominant patriarchal, hierarchical powers. When the narrator
136   P.I.-M. Huang
returns to her maternal grandmother’s old house in Taichung, all of the trees
have gone except for a single ancient banyan tree. Her aunt tells her that her
grandmother insisted on protecting the banyan tree at the time of a Mazu proces-
sion. The tree and the house, which are what are left of the old neighborhood,
stand for the continuation of resistance to development that seems to want to
completely shut out, destroy, or incarcerate the nonhuman world. As Liou notes,
in Chen’s novel Mazu is a metaphor for the connections between women that
cross political, cultural, and ethnic barriers (2014, 261). It also is a metaphor for
the connections between women and environmental thinking and action.
Indeed, the popular worship of Mazu in Taiwan has played an important role
in Taiwan’s environmental movement. A landmark victory for that movement
refers to a protest in the 1980s, the decade that gave birth to Taiwan’s modern
environmental movement. It concerns the U.S. company Du Pont, which had set
up factories in central Taiwan in 1986. Environmentalists staged a protest in
opposition to the Du Pont plant. On August 17, 1986, the protestors were
blocked by the police. In response, the protestors moved to a local Mazu temple,
where they gave speeches and drew large crowds in support of their activism.
Both the protestors and those who gathered to listen to the protestors’ arguments
against the Du Pont company comprised many ordinary Taiwanese people.
Those who attended were persuaded by the protestors’ arguments and more
people gathered at the protest site. The massive protest finally ended on March
12, 1987, when Du Pont announced that it would close down its factories in
Taiwan (Chang 2008, 192).
More recently, in Kong Liao, a small remote fishing village on the northern
coast of Taiwan, protests by worshippers of Mazu, who are in a sense “main-
stream” environmental activists in Taiwan, have been objecting to the govern-
ment’s plans to complete Taiwan’s controversial fourth nuclear power plant.
These local people, their local knowledges about Taiwan, and their local histo-
ries are key to mounting successful campaigns against the nuclear industry and
other industries in Taiwan that are anti-­environmental. Mazu is particularly
relevant to this issue because she has many different, or “cyborg,” forms in
Taiwan.
Hsun Chang, a renowned Mazu scholar, a research fellow at Taiwan’s pres-
tigious institute, Academia Sinica, analyzes various local indigenizations of
Mazu. Differently from Kuang-­ying, goddess of mercy, which is the most
popular deity in Taiwan in addition to Mazu and the Earth god, Mazu is a less
“universalized” goddess and a more various, indigenized, and local deity that is
critically materially or environmentally shaped by the different regions of
Taiwan where people worship her (2008, 8). That is to say, she is a more corpo-
realized, materialized, or “embodied” goddess than other deities in Taiwan. In
comparison with the relationships that define other deities and their worshippers,
the relationship between Mazu and her worshippers is also more like that of a
relative than a deity (Chang 2008, 8). Her typically dark-­skinned face also sym-
bolizes her closeness to her people, who light candles near her face and, in a
symbolic sense, turn her skin dark with their desire to see and be near to her (9).
 Cyborg-goddesses, Indios, Mazu’s Body-guards   137
Also differently from the worship of other deities, in many processions, in which
Mazu is carried by ordinary Taiwanese on the streets in the form of an effigy,
worshippers press their bodies on the ground under her chariot to receive her
blessings.
In the final sentence of “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Haraway says, “I would rather
be a cyborg than a goddess” (1985, 181). In the East, differently from in the
West, many local deities are not understood or related to in immaterial or so-­
called spiritual or transcendental terms. Constructions and conceptualizations of
them are more embodied, corporeal, material than the constructions and concep-
tualizations that one finds in counterparts to them in the West. This is especially
true of Mazu.
Asian studies scholar Sheng-­mei Ma provides one of the most exciting
descriptions of a Mazu procession. Unused to the sound of the firecrackers, when
he arrives close to the big crowds of people, he trips, falling flat down on the
street (2015, 48). Limping and trying to catch up to the place in the procession
where people carry an effigy of Mazu, he is overwhelmed by the sea of devotees
who reach out their hands to touch the sedan chair of Mazu (49). He waits in the
long line to “perform the ultimate obeisance” of crawling under Mazu’s sedan
chair so that her form might pass over his prostrate form. He writes:

Once curled up in a fetal position, I was unto myself, strangely uncoiled by

the utter humiliation and self-­abjection, awaiting her sedan chair to pass
over. It was very quiet with my face down to the pavement, all noise
somehow muffled, chaos receding.
(49)

Then “she came,” Ma writes. “I dared not touch her, she touched me, twice with
the front and back drape of her chair” (49). Her touch was like that of “a mother
[who] waves a fan over her child, humming a lullaby, the fan tip, drowsily, scrap-
ing, tickling the child’s back” (49). The “act of crouching to forgo oneself ” before
Mazu, as Ma writes, helped him to transgress the boundary between materialism
and transcendentalism (49). That kind of act questions or makes less rigid the
dividing line between material and transcendental actions as well as beliefs.
Haraway’s cyborg and “natureculture” are concepts that are very useful for
addressing deity worship in the East such as the worship of Mazu in Taiwan, a
deity that is understood in both material and conceptual, human and other-­than-
human, and cultural and natural terms. The worship of her has increased since the
time, during the Ching dynastic period, when more than 400 temples were built in
Taiwan in her honor. Today, there are more than 800 temples built in her honor,
and one of the biggest annual festivals in Taiwan is devoted to her. In 2014, on
March 23, the date of Mazu’s birth, more than 1.5 million people participated in
the Mazu festival and procession. That number represents about 5 percent of the
population of Taiwan. The procession is a pilgrimage that covers a distance of 300
kilometers. Worshippers gather at the Jenn Lann Temple (鎮瀾宮) in the town of
Dajia (大甲), in Taichung County (臺中縣) at 10 p.m. From there they walk to
138   P.I.-M. Huang
26 townships in central Taiwan. Many of the organizers are vegetarians, and one
of the main ancillary activities is the preparation of vegetarian meals for the
people who take part in the procession. This work, and almost all of the work
that the organizers and other participants commit to and carry out for the entire
week, is work that is freely given and undertaken. The participants receive no
holiday pay, no hourly wage for their labor. They are not medically or otherwise
insured against a mishap. There is very little government support of the proces-
sion activities, or of the thousands of other similar activities—smaller but no less
significant—that Mazu worshippers organize for their communities. They
represent what is most needed in our world today, yet they are the least institu-
tionalized or institutionally supported. Middle-­class, industrialized, and secular-
ized, Taiwanese are embarrassed of deity worship in Taiwan except when it
takes the form of a public holiday celebrated much like Christmas is celebrated
in the United States and other countries in the West. They do not consider that
they perform a deity worship of such gods of modern culture as nuclear power
plants, naphtha cracker plants, coal plants, and the computer industry. These
gods and their many smaller gods (cars, domestic products that are made with
toxic metals, plastic bags, and oil-­based products) have critically compromised
the coastal regions, mountains, rivers, and plains in Taiwan.
There are signs that Taiwan’s most privileged urban industrialized middle
classes are changing their attitudes. Many are recognizing that preserving and
respecting deity worship of Mazu can be used and already is being used to
strengthen values of community and foster greater awareness of environmental
rights, animal rights, and women’s rights. As ecofeminists Greta Gaard and
Patrick Murphy point out in their early and groundbreaking collection of
essays entitled Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Peda-
gogy, “feminist attention to the concept of the ‘other’ ” is one of the most
important characteristics of ecofeminism (1998, 5). That kind of attention is
important for scholars of religion, theology, and deity worship, disciplinary
areas that are seeing a comeback in recent decades after a time of considerable
suspicion and derision among secular thinkers and the academic world as a
whole. Distinguished ecofeminist thinkers such as Alaimo and Hekman,
Gaard, and Haraway draw attention to that interest in their arguments about
the various kinds of patriarchal and speciesist beliefs that continue to be social
foundations for many people. Ecofeminism speaks more for what all beings
and objects in the world share more than for what distinguishes them and for
what can be used against them in order to subordinate them. It speaks for
more-­than-human realities and materialities and a belief in more-­than-human
agencies. Indios is a rewriting of Medea by Linda Hogan that stands for recog-
nizing and paying more attention to the cyborg or trans-­species, transethnic,
and transgeneric bonds between humans and nonhumans, humans and environ-
ments, and humans and gods. Jade Chen’s Mazu’s Body-­guards also repres-
ents, in the portrait of Mazu and her avatars, a cyborg-­goddess, or a both
more-­than-human and human, cyborg being-­thing.
 Cyborg-goddesses, Indios, Mazu’s Body-guards   139
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Haraway, Donna J. 2008. “Otherworldly Conversations, Terran Topics, Local Terms.” In
Material Feminisms, edited by Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, 157–187. Indianapo-
lis: Indiana University Press.
Hogan, Linda. 2012. Indios. San Antonio, TX: Wings Press.
Latimer, Joanna, and Maria Miele. 2013. “Naturecultures? Science, Affect and the Non-­
human.” Theory, Culture & Society, 30(7/8): 5–31. Retrieved August 7, 2017, from
http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/30/7-8/5. DOI: 10.1177/0263276413502088.
Liou, Liang-­ya (劉亮雅). 2014. Belated Postcoloniality: Post-­Martial Law Taiwanese
Fiction (遲來的後殖民:再論解嚴以來台灣小說). Taipei: National Taiwan Univer-
sity Press (台北:台大出版中心).
Ma, Sheng-­mei. 2015. “Mazu’s Touch, Taiwan Nezha and Crying.” In The Last Isle:
Contemporary Film, Culture and Trauma in Global Taiwan. London: Rowman & Lit-
tlefield.
Sturgeon, Noël. 2009. Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality,
and the Politics of the Natural. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
10 Wolves, singing trees, and
replicants
Ecofeminist readings of contemporary
Spanish novels
Carmen Flys Junquera

Spain is not known for either a strong environmentalist tradition or a feminist

one, and much less an ecofeminist consciousness.1 Environmental historian
Joaquin Fernández in his book Ecologismo Español (1999) claims that the Civil
War marked a fracture between any previous incipient Spanish activism and that
real consciousness only started in the 1970s, together with democracy and the
“Spanish miracle” (economic boom). An early study by Josep Vicent Marqués,
Ecologia y lucha de clases (1978), illustrates the leftist, Marxist influence in
most initial environmental movements, clearly linked to social injustice.
Environmental impact became an issue only as the result of rising urban specu-
lation and massive construction, which threatened the entire coast together with
the uncontrolled growth of cities and highways. And as such, most debates and
writing dealing with these issues are closely tied to social and economic prob-
lems rather than with the preservation of wilderness agenda which resonates so
strongly in the United States.
Even if environmental awareness did grow at the end of the twentieth century,
the humanities and arts in Spain were largely disconnected from this trend. There
have been very few ecocritical studies of Spanish literature until recently.2 In the
journal Ixquic (2000), critics Jorge Paredes and Benjamin McLean assert that
environmental literature in Spanish could only come from Mesoamerica and was
virtually impossible in the Iberian Peninsula, given its strong Judeo-­Christian tradi-
tion, and the importance of humanism, rationalism, capitalism, and positivism
which made the culture insensitive to the environment (2000, 25). However, things
are changing. Environmental concerns now appear frequently in literary texts,
though it is true that the financial and economic crisis has obscured some, privileg-
ing social issues and the increasing economic gap. Nevertheless, in the early
twenty-first century with the progressive first legislature of Rodriguez Zapatero
(2004–08) some feminist issues came front stage, such as the increase of maternity
leave (to be shared with fathers), non-­privileging the order of surnames (tradition-
ally first the father and then the mother),3 strong action to reduce gender violence,4
open debates on gender bias in language, and more egalitarian electoral lists.
However, ecofeminism, as such, is still relegated to small academic circles and to
philosophy departments. Major Spanish ecofeminists are Celia Amorós and Alicia
Puleo. Puleo published a major philosophical ecofeminist study, Ecofeminismo
 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants   141
para otro mundo possible [Ecofeminism for another possible world] in 2011. In
Puleo’s last edited book, Ecologia y género en diálogo interdisciplinar [Ecology
and gender in interdisciplinary dialogue] (2015), she has brought together authors
from multiple disciplines to highlight the dialogue between ecofeminist philosophy
and economics, medicine, activism, literature, and the arts. In 2013, the journal
Femenismo/s devoted a special issue to ecofeminism, both from a philosophical
and literary point of view.
At the same time, the twenty-first century has brought a surge of writing,
mostly by women, which can be read, to differing degrees, from an ecofeminist
lens. Issues of environmental justice and the logic of domination appear together
with literary strategies focusing on how to improve our relationship with earth
others. An early precursor could be Juan Cobos Wilkins’ novel, El Corazón de
la tierra [The heart of the earth] (2001).5 This chapter will focus on three
Spanish women writers: well-­known and widely read journalist and novelist
Rosa Montero Gayo (1951–); famous young adult novelist Laura Gallego García
(1977–); and an unknown biologist and secondary school teacher, Concha López
Llamas (1955–). Their novels belong to very different genres, none of which
have been popular nor abundant in traditional Spanish literature: Montero’s only
science fiction novels, Lágrimas en la lluvia [Tears in rain]6 (2011) and its
sequel El peso del corazón [Weight of the heart] (2015); Gallego’s feminist
fantasy for young adults, Donde los árboles cantan [Where the trees sing]
(2011), and López Llamas’ realistic nature writing novel, Beatriz y la loba
[Beatriz and the she-­wolf] (2015). The choice of three very different authors and
genres is deliberate as it will highlight the scope of ecofiction being written in
the last five years.
This chapter will primarily use ecofeminist ideology from Val Plumwood and
Karen Warren. One issue that almost all ecofeminists agree on, according to
Warren, are the “interconnections among the unjustified dominations of women,
other human Others and non-­human nature” (2000, 43). This parallel oppression
is clearly seen in the three7 narratives I am analyzing, most clearly in Beatriz and
the She-­Wolf.8 This novel highlights most blatantly the parallel oppression of
women and nature. Moreover, the novel is focused on three types of domination
and violence: against women, against wolves, and against traditional cultures
(language and lifestyle).
In this novel, López Llamas clearly and repeatedly makes the point of the
parallel violence and oppression of women, wolves, and rural lifestyles. For
López Llamas, domestic violence against women is rooted in a similar logic as
hatred against wolves (and other species) and against traditional lore. The nar-
rative revolves around a young woman, Beatriz, who has recently lost her
mother, job, and home, and who rather hastily marries a young man, Santiago.
Santiago takes her to his village, where she becomes almost a recluse as he con-
tinuously checks up on her through phone calls while he is travelling (transport-
ing wine all over the country). Bored, yet afraid to incur his wrath when he
comes home, she decides to secretly explore his childhood home, locally named
the “wolf den,”9 which he had insinuated could become a rural lodging for
142   C. Flys Junquera
tourists. There she meets his great uncle Manuel and learns about rural traditions
and language and about Santiago’s difficult adolescence under the abusive figure
of his grandfather. His grandfather, Severino, who abused his wife, introduced
Santiago to hunting and to an irrational hatred of wolves. Manuel becomes the
only friend for Beatriz and she takes great joy in learning rural customs and
noting words which are becoming extinct. Her project of the rural hotel is aimed
at keeping rural knowledge and lore alive. When she learns of Severino and San-
tiago’s hatred of wolves, she feels empathy for the wolves:

by empathizing with that species, she could distance herself from Santiago,
although she denied that to herself and justified the desire to know more
about them because they were the most representative animal of those hills,
who seemed to call her by name.10

Therefore, hidden from Santiago, she begins to read about wolves and tries to
track them in the woods to observe them.
The structure of the novel reinforces this parallel oppression. All the chapters,
except for one centered on Santiago, alternate their focus on the two female prot-
agonists, Beatriz and Oak, the she-­wolf. At the end of the novel, the last chapter
shares the focus on both Beatriz and Oak as they meet. Oak had also become an
orphan, losing family, home, and habitat, when an “upright animal” (the term
used to designate humans from the wolves’ perspective) catches her brother in a
trap and she runs and hides. The novel alternates the parallel narratives of the
two females, using a slightly different font for each. However, chapter titles do
not signal the focus, which is only perceived on reading. While the reader learns
of Beatriz’s life and feelings, the reader also learns about Oak’s difficult survival
as a young pup growing into adolescence without the guidance of parents, both
in hunting and wolf social skills. For example, the text tells us that Beatriz’s
mother chose silence to avoid attracting the attention of her husband, who
abused her, and “that [silence] was picked up by her daughter.”11 Likewise, when
Oak is alone in the forest, we find a similar description and she listens to the
howl of other wolves and remains hidden and silent.12 The parallel is often made
explicit, such as:

The greed with which Santiago took his wife, the minute he entered the
house, can only be compared to that of a wolf, hungry for weeks, who after
taking stock of each body part of his prey, then abandons himself to sleep.13

True to the nature writing tradition, Beatriz finds solace, inspiration, and
renewed strength in nature. The natural “wildness” liberates her from social con-
straints. As she becomes increasingly more autonomous, she lies and listens and
admits that she “admires the pride of the wolves that protect their territory, even
though so many have hunted them down and denigrated them.” She compares
wolves and women as the locus where unsatisfied and insecure men could
 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants   143
exercise their aggressiveness and lack of trust in others. She hopes that by
“looking into a wolf ’s eyes, she might find some of that strength and pride.”14
While the chapters focusing on Beatriz trace the progressive abuse she
suffers and her attempts to reaffirm her own potential, the chapters on Oak do
the same. Moreover, the novel teaches the reader much about wolf behavior.15
The support of Manuel and his teachings about rural culture are parallel to the
instructions that Vecio, an old lone wolf who teams up with Oak, gives her on
her social behavior and hunting tactics. All the wolves have proper names and
distinct personalities, emphasizing the social structure of wolves but also
placing them at the same level as the human animals, Beatriz, Manuel, Lucia,
and Santiago.
For López Llamas, the violence exerted over wolves is also parallel to the
progressive extinction of rural traditions. A reality in much of Spain, small vil-
lages have lost their population, reduced to old people. Most of the homes have
been abandoned and there are no children or young adults. The villages only
regain a semblance of their past during the summer holidays, and particularly
during the local festivities which take place in almost all of Spain during August
and September, associated with harvest festivals. Then the village is full of life,
if only for a few weeks. Here Manuel’s role is essential, as Beatriz learns the
local dialect and customs and forges ahead with her project of a rural hotel,
which would not only give her a goal in life but also help preserve local customs
and knowledge, much of which has valuable ecological content.
In Laura Gallego’s young adult fantasy, Where the Trees Sing,16 the parallel
domination of women and nature is clear but perhaps not as forceful, as the
novel takes us to a kind of medieval romance, where male dominance is to be
expected. However, the protagonist and heroine of this feminist novel is clearly
Viana, a young woman. In the story, Viana belongs to a noble family but very
early on she lost her mother. The novel begins with the winter solstice festival in
the Royal Court, where the diverse characters are introduced and the threat of
invasion by the barbarians is mentioned. Through conversation the reader learns
that marriages are arranged, though Viana has no objection since she is in love
with her future husband. When the barbarians do, in effect, conquer the kingdom,
killing most of the nobles and men, their first act is to gather all the noblewomen
and marry them off to prominent warriors, who are given both a bride and the
land, to legitimize the new rule through their children. They show no mercy in
their treatment of the women, who are only prizes for the military conquest.
Likewise, the barbarians overrun the land, pillaging crops and livestock. Viana,
with the aid of her servant, an older and wise woman, avoids being raped by her
husband, and thus an unwanted pregnancy, by drugging him. When she is found
out, she defends herself and kills him, having to escape to the woods. Here, her
helplessness as a delicate noblewoman condemns her if it weren’t for the rescue
by Lobo,17 an old friend of the dead king who had been banished because of
marriage rivalry and for warning the king of the barbarian threat. Lobo not only
teaches Viana but brings out her self-­confidence and independence. Because of
her folly and altruism, she learns of the secret that protects the barbarians. But
144   C. Flys Junquera
throughout the novel, the oppression of women, the poor, and nature is obvious,
albeit expected because of the setting of the novel.
Finally, in Rosa Montero’s Bruna Husky story, the oppression of women is
less obvious, but that of the poor, or human-­alien others and nature, is clearer.
As Karen Warren states, an ecofeminist ethic is “anti-­naturist, anti-­sexist, anti-­
racist, anti-­classist (and so forth, for all other ‘isms’ of social domination)”
(1996, 32). Bruna Husky is a combat android, usually referred to as a replicant,
who, after serving her term for the company, is licensed and becomes a detec-
tive. In the futuristic Madrid of 2109, there is no outright gender discrimination
and, “[l]ike most humans and technohumans, Bruna was more or less bisexual;
only a few individuals were exclusively heterosexual or homosexual” (TR, 101).
However, on one of the floating space platforms, the Kingdom of Labari, where
much of the second novel takes place, women are clearly oppressed. Bruna, who
travels there on a mission, has difficulty understanding that she cannot speak
face to face with the men, that all quarters, schools, and sports are segregated by
gender, and that married women have their feet loosely bound together with
elaborately embroidered hobbles, according to wealth and status, to ensure small
dainty steps walking behind their husbands. Replicants are also prohibited in
Labari, unless travelling on a United Nations of the Earth mission. Nevertheless,
in both novels the oppression of the poor or those othered is clear. Nature, as
generally understood, barely exists as most plants and animals have become
extinct. The novels, however, do abound in the use of animal symbolism.18 There
are some remains of the centuries-­old Madrid park, “El Retiro,” “traditional
gardens, dusty and withering in the drought” (WH, 23), but most people prefer
the new lung-­parks, where the “artificial trees were much more efficient at
exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen than natural ones” (WH, 23). Ironically
these artificial parks were the equivalent of “natural spaces,” with signs calling
for silence:

“This is an ecological, pure space. Please respect the peaceful environment.”

Lung-­parks were the only urban spaces where there was a ban on the instal-
lation of public screens, which blasted the airspace everywhere else with
stupid images uploaded by citizens.
(WH, 23)

Since there are no birds, people attend virtual exhibits where holograms present
the extinct flora and fauna. Bruna’s difficult relationship with her memorist19
usually takes place either at the zoo or at these exhibits, where her focus is
divided between the social behavior of gorillas and the crucial information Paul
is giving her. The traditional (and current) symbol of Madrid is a bear and a
strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo). The statue can be found at the central Plaza del
Sol and on the coat of arms of the city.20 In 2109, bears and strawberry trees
have become extinct and the new symbol has shifted to a polar bear. In the zoo,
there is a large pool with a replicant polar bear, an exact genetic copy of the last
polar bear to live, again providing a fascination and attraction for Bruna.
 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants   145
Another clear example of othering is the fact that, even though the Constitu-
tion of the “United States of the Earth” in 2098 declared all technohumans and
aliens as sentient and therefore deserving of human rights, Bruna often com-
ments on how replicants are disdained by most humans. Although by 2109 all
committees have established parity of humans and technohumans, sexual rela-
tionships between them had been considered miscegenation until recently and
now “they were simply frowned upon—except, of course, when it came to the
ancient and venerable practice of prostitution” (TR, 16). Moreover, replicants
cannot have children, and they can rarely legally adopt children, only “a sick
child or one with some problem—because of the early use-­by date of replicants
prevented them from garnering the points necessary for a normal adoption” (TR,
18). Even now, when calling the Samaritans for emergency health care for a
dying replicant, Bruna shows anger as once again, the privileging of humans
becomes clear: “ ‘Human or technohuman?’ Again the fury, again the rage. ‘That
question is anticonstitutional, as you well know’ … Everyone knew that they
prioritized humans…” (TR, 7–8). In fact, the plot of the first novel is based on a
terrorist cell from Cosmos, the other Floating Platform, which alters memory
implants for replicants, inducing them to kill other replicants and then humans,
to heighten this hatred and end all replicants. In addition, there are also aliens in
Madrid, who suffer clear discrimination by humans and by many replicants.
Similarly, the poor suffer oppression. The air of Madrid is highly polluted
and living in the clean-­air zones implies payment of very high taxes. The novel
brings in environmental refugees, who illegally enter the clean zone—separated
by high fences of “reinforced plexiglass, with very thick armour plating—maybe
2.6 centimeters” (WH, 1)—with their children so they can breathe clean air.
These so-­called “moths” ran:

the risk of living clandestinely in Clean Air Zones they couldn’t afford, it
was for fear of the undeniable harm pollution cause to children. They ille-
gally abandoned their contaminated cities with permanently gray skies and
appeared, just like moths, attracted by the sunlight and the oxygen, only for
the vast majority of them to go up in flames, because the tax police were
incredibly efficient.
(TR, 179)

Public employees, such as “[m]agistrates, like doctors, police and other socially
necessary professionals, were posted to the Dirty Air Sectors on double salary,
and for no longer than a year, to prevent any health repercussions” (TR, 57). We
also encounter “billboard-­people”—people who carried “screens on [their] chest
and back [that] played the company’s damned commercials on a perpetual loop”
(TR, 27). These “billboard-­people were only allowed to take off their outfits for
nine hours a day” and in return they got a meager salary but could get “free air
as well” (TR, 27). These people are condemned to walking the streets since few
bars or cafeterias will tolerate them. In the second novel, Weight of the Heart,
Bruna enters the contaminated zone, where masses of refugees try to assault the
146   C. Flys Junquera
electrified fence (WH, 4),21 and ends up rescuing and adopting a feisty little girl
who is trying to enter the clean-­air zone. Montero makes a strong critique of
sexism when we learn that Gabi, the sick ten-­year-old Russian orphan, was not
only suffering from severe radiation contamination, but had scars from a
previous rape. In this way, Montero links the exploitation of the poor and women
to violence.22 Therefore, the novels touch on most kinds of domination and
exclusion, allowing Bruna to work through them and change many of her initial
attitudes.
However, the parallel dominations of women, poor, and nature are not the
more interesting ecofeminist aspects of these novels, in my opinion, rather the
multiple examples of an ethics of care and the literary strategies these writers
employ to endow earth others with respect and moral consideration, much as in
Val Plumwood’s “counter-­hegemonic strategies” (2002, 194). Karen Warren’s
seventh characteristic of an ecofeminist ethic is that ecofeminism “makes a
central place for values of care, love, friendship, trust, and appropriate recipro-
city” (1996, 33). Warren emphasizes the importance of being in relationships
with others. Marilyn Frye refers to this as the gaze of a “loving eye” which is
non-­invasive, and one which knows “the complexity of the other as something
which will forever present new things to be known” (1983, 66–72). Plumwood,
in her chapter “Towards a dialogical interspecies ethics” in Environmental
Culture (2002), suggests that we need a counter-­hegemonic methodology in
order to decenter the human within the human/nature dualism, rather than try to
bring more species into the “similar to human” category. She rejects the
“studying down” method to find what parts of nature qualify for our ethical con-
sideration. She asks herself if it would not be more productive to “study up” and
determine if humans are “good enough” for ethically rich relationships (2002,
168). She argues that our anthropocentric prejudices are “obstacles to interspe-
cies justice and which prevent us from relating to earth others as fully and ethi-
cally” as we should (2002, 168). Therefore, she sets out to find a variety of
“contextually specific ethics” which could be applied to an interspecies relation-
ship. She suggests some strategies to come to know nature in less biased ways
and acknowledge our embeddedness in nature. In the closing of this chapter she
sums up a series of “counter-­hegemonic” stances which would help us move
from a monological and reductionist conception of the human self to a more dia-
logical conception, which would facilitate the development of richer relation-
ships with earth others (2002, 194–195) and eventually change the cultural
paradigm that our western civilization has developed.
Plumwood begins suggesting that we recognize and emphasize the continuity
and similarity between the human and non-­human, accepting our animality while
at the same time embracing differences, by regarding earth others as “other
nations” in a non-­hierarchical way. Many of Plumwood’s stances are those of a
communicative openness. She emphasizes being attentive and listening to the
other, inviting communication, seeing the other as potentially an intentional and
communicative being. Together with this is a stance of generosity and willing-
ness to share or redistribute resources, negotiate the relationship, and be attentive
 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants   147
to the complexity of the other. These stances coincide with Frye’s “loving eye”
and Warren’s emphasis on giving importance to values of love, care, reciprocity,
and relationships. In the remainder of this chapter, my objective is to analyze
how these Spanish writers “study up” humans and view others as deserving of
care and ethical consideration, despite their differences.
In Beatriz and the She-­wolf, the title and structure of the novel places both
Beatriz and Oak on the same plane, dispelling any hierarchical domination. The
reader is invited to empathize with both woman and wolf and understand their
parallel plights. By naming all the wolves and showing their social structures
and habits, wolves are raised in our eyes. Beatriz often identifies with Oak,
further reinforcing this relationship. For example, Chapters 4 and 5 [“Lone
wolves” and “San Pedro festivities”] both end in similar terms: Oak has met
Vecio and they seal a pact, sleeping together as a show of trust, as does Beatriz,
who meets Santiago, and “as animals” lick each other and fall asleep.23 Both are
victims of Santiago’s abuse and both try to learn about the other. As Beatriz
explores the slopes, she imitates the wolves, choosing dawn or dusk in order not
to be seen.24 López Llamas does not create a false relationship. She does not fic-
tionalize an impossible friendship. The relationship is created as Beatriz reads
and learns about wolves and then actively hikes the forest looking for wolf scat
and prints. When she does find them, she keeps her distance. Her only goal is to
observe and learn and try to find her own self-­esteem. On the other hand, Oak
clearly avoids Beatriz, but at the same time observes that “upright” animal with
the flaming red hair that does not take a menacing stance but simply bathes in
the river and stretches in the fields. One could say that Oak is “studying up”
Beatriz, as she observes her. When a male upright animal appears, both females
hide behind the bushes.25 The relationship does develop into an unspoken under-
standing at the end, when the author does poetic justice. Santiago has captured
Navia, one of Oak’s pups. Oak and her small pack (her mate, Cedric, Vecio, and
all the pups) are trying to find her. They trace the scent to a storage building
where Santiago is hiding and where he has many wolf pelts from the wolves he
has tortured and killed. At that moment, Beatriz had just discovered what San-
tiago is hiding. When the wolves are studying how to enter, Beatriz and Oak
look at each other in the eyes and each one experiences something, an impercep-
tible recognition.26 Beatriz opens the gate and the wolves enter, attack Santiago
and rescue Navia. Beatriz, when the wolves have left, now liberated from her
abuser, calls the police to report the discovery of her husband’s illegal hunts and
his death. The novel seems to suggest that by returning to nature, women and
animals gain the strength to rebel and shake off their parallel domination.
Thus, in the novel we see Beatriz acknowledging the complexity of the
wolves and establishing a visual and empathic communication with Oak. Clearly
Beatriz realizes that the interests of the wolves are not hers, except for this one
final case of poetic justice. But she, with her “loving eye,” is willing to negotiate
their shared space, recognize their intelligence and needs. On the other hand,
Beatriz also shows interest and respect for old Manuel and his traditional rural
culture. She does not assume an arrogant position of superiority, as a city girl,
148   C. Flys Junquera
and takes authentic joy in learning the rural traditions and dialect. Many ecocrit-
ics turn to indigenous wisdom as a guide for adopting more respectful attitudes
towards nature. In Spain, as in most of Europe, it would be difficult to find indi-
genous peoples (there are some exceptions in the Canary Islands); however, the
closest we could probably find are rural cultures. While they can’t be assimilated
to indigenous peoples, particularly with regards to their belief systems because
of the overall predominance of Christianity, some rural communities (such as in
the Sierra de la Cabrera within the Galician Massif, where the novel takes place,
or in the Iberian Chain with areas of lower population density than Lapland)
have had little contact with the city and modernity and have kept pre-­industrial
lifestyles up to the mid-­1970s. Beatriz’s respect for old wisdom, foods, and life-
styles is another way of a non-­hierarchical and open stance.
In Laura Gallego’s fantasy, Where the Trees Sing, we see other interesting
aspects. On the one hand, as previously mentioned, Viana cannot stand by any
injustice and often foolishly charges, in a very quixotic way, to undo any wrongs,
getting herself and others into trouble. While she, under Lobo’s guidance, learns to
live in the forest and learns all about the flora and fauna, she initially doesn’t pay
too much attention. When Lobo banishes her from the growing number of rebel
camp followers, Viana decides to enter the forbidden heart of the woods in search
of a legend. This becomes a life-­changing experience and her attitude shifts. She
encounters a young man fallen in a river, who remembers nothing and does not
know how to speak, survive, nor has any social manners. Viana sets out to teach
him, regardless of his strange appearance—a greenish tint to his hair and mottled
brown skin. With patience, she learns to communicate with Uri, both the little lan-
guage he learns and his facial and body language. Because of an injury, Viana is
forced to return to camp, where everyone looks strangely on Uri, although he is
tolerated because of Viana. Eventually she falls in love with this strange youth,
being blind to what he really is even though there are numerous hints: Uri had told
her “my people … don’t feel this way. Don’t feel this—he tried to explain, hitting
his chest with his hand.—You can’t love? But that … But then … Why can
you?—I am different.”27
Later when Uri leads her into the forest, he seems at home—“I come from the
forest. There are my people”28—and the trees open way for them and create pro-
tective barriers. Finally, Uri leads her to a grove where the wind in the trees
sings and the leaves and branches dance to their song. Uri shows her the secret
of the barbarians: the sap of the tree heals wounds and the leader has become
invincible since he uses the sap to protect himself. The barbarians are now col-
lecting all the sap for the final battle, and the trees are dying. Viana and Uri
return to inform Lobo, and Uri is kidnapped. When she finds Lobo and tells him,
insisting they save Uri, a sorcerer laughs at her foolishness for having fallen in
love with a tree: “She closed her eyes, breathed deeply and counted to three and
assumed she had to accept the impossible. Uri was not a person. Uri was a tree.
And all the parts suddenly connected.”29 Indeed, when the barbarians are
defeated and Uri is rescued, he says good-­bye to Viana and he begins his meta-
morphosis into a tree again.30 Viana hugged him all night, and by sunrise, he had
 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants   149
become once again a singing tree, one who had become human in order to save
his people. Viana acknowledges his gift of love by remaining in her courtyard,
where she would spend the evenings sitting under the tree and singing. As the
months passed, Viana gave birth to twins to which she gave no explanations.
The children grow up playing in the tree, who witnessed their games and lives.
Viana never married; she sat by the tree every evening and died among its roots,
where her son buried her. Viana’s heirs kept the tree in the courtyard, even when
it died, and it became part of the family’s coat of arms.
Obviously, the story has a romantic ending appropriate for a fantasy tale.
However, Uri never becomes “prince charming”—rather the opposite. He had
become human to save his people and when his mission had ended, he returned
to his natural state, a tree. But Viana’s attitude is what is interesting. Despite
realizing the fact that her lover is a tree, she doesn’t reject him. She has learned
about the complexity of earth others, their sentience and intentionality, and she
accepts it. Uri had shown her other life forms, and she had seen them, but only
because they had shown themselves to her voluntarily.31 During their trip in the
heart of the forest, she learns to see the other beings, noting their individuation
and character. Thus, the novel stresses the intentionality and complexity of the
earth others and shows Viana accepting that fact and rejecting any notion of
human superiority. Viana sorrowfully accepts that Uri’s space and needs are
different and that she really can’t keep him to herself as a human. There is a
clear negotiation and mutual respect. Viana shows a loving eye to all oppressed
people and to earth others, once she can leave behind her fear. And she is willing
to accept that reality.
In the case of the Bruna Husky narrative, the story carries many layers. The
narrative has the usual trappings of science fiction, such as advanced technology:
moveable sidewalks throughout the city, taxis with no driver, and watches with
computers that have personal identification, GPS, make economic transactions,
download files, and so forth.32 Teletransportation to other planets is a reality, but
regulated as excessive frequency causes physical mutations, and there are space
shuttles to the “floating platforms” where alternative societies live. It is also a
clear meditation on death, since replicants only live ten years and Bruna is con-
tinuously counting down the years, months, and days she has left. Humans live
much longer, and thanks to plastic surgery, never look old. Signs of ageing are
socially reprehensible. The narratives also address individuality and genetic
engineering, not only with the technohumans, but also when Bruna discovers
Clara, a clone of herself. The first novel also questions the writing and re-­writing
of history, as the archives are sabotaged and many aspects re-­written to include
racist attitudes towards technohumans. What is understood by the concept of
progress and capitalism is also questioned33 and there are frequents allusions to
many current social issues. For example, the topic of a privatized health insur-
ance34 is central, where only the rich have full coverage, while the poor either
have very limited or no coverage.
The story also has multiple references to climate change. Madrid has no water
and vapor is used for showers because water is much too expensive. Madrid
150   C. Flys Junquera
experiences occasional abrupt polar episodes yearly, “with one or two days of
heavy snowfalls, howling gales, and plummeting temperatures that in Madrid
could easily reach minus four degrees Fahrenheit” (TR, 288), and what most sur-
prises Bruna is:

people’s lack of foresight; there were at least two polar crises each year, but
people lived as if they were a one-­off occurrence, something abnormal that
would never happen again. And so, every time a cold snap arrived, supplies
of the thermal articles sold out.
(TR, 288)

Already mentioned are the privatization of breathable air and the extinction of
animal species. While nuclear energy had been banned in 2059, discovering that
the little girl, Gabi, has suffered severe radiation sets Bruna off on the case. As
to be expected, certain parts of the earth have hidden nuclear cemeteries that are
leaking radiation, and the Kingdom of Labari runs on nuclear energy, which is
commercialized illegally. The series also offers a comment on the nature/culture
dualism, where culture-­technology has almost completely substituted nature, as
most food is synthetic, as are the remaining trees, and obviously the replicants
themselves. The background of the events are a prolonged political and financial
crisis due in part to “global warming, submerging about 14 percent of the Earth’s
surface, inundating the most fertile coasts of the planet, provoking mass migra-
tions, famine, disease, and violent confrontations that end the lives of about two
billion people” (WH, 315).
From an ecofeminist point of view, the more interesting aspect is the learning
process that Bruna undertakes towards an ethics of care. Bruna presents a con-
tinuous dialog with herself and with the diverse situations she is in, where she
engages in debates about her feelings and ethics, much as Bakhtin’s dialogic and
chronotopic relationships, as discussed by Murphy (1991, 45). Initially, Bruna is a
rather aggressive loner, as many replicants, “solitary beings, islands inhabited by a
single castaway in the midst of a motley sea of people” (TR, 18), refusing to engage
in caring relationships since her lover, Merlin, died of massive organ destruction
(the death of technohumans after ten years). Most people in her society are loners,
to the degree that a new profession has arisen, that of tactiles. When Bruna goes to
her “psyche-­guide” to renew her license, he requires that she visit a tactile:

What? A touchy-­feely, a tactile? No way! … Going to a tactile was an

embarrassment. Old folks abandoned by everyone went to a tactile … tac-
tiles were for humans, for their wretched, loud mouth needs, for their broken
and confused emotions. For their sly sentimentality…
(WH, 17)

Bruna is highly suspicious of any emotional outbursts and avoids contact. She is
physically disgusted when in a drunken and drugged spree she wakes up realiz-
ing that she just had sex with an alien, an Omaá (called bichos [bugs]).
 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants   151
She had slept with a bicho.
She felt like throwing up.
But had she really slept with a bicho? What she meant was, had she…?
Merely exploring the idea in her head turned her legs to jelly.
(TR, 113)

Eventually, as Maio tries to find refuge with her, she struggles to ignore his
strange physical appearance (his skin is translucent and one can see all his
organs) and appreciate his musical talent, finding him a place with fellow musi-
cians. Likewise, at the beginning of Tears in Rain, she is left with an intelligent
talking alien pet, a bubi, commonly known as “greedy-­guts” since they chew on
everything. She kicks him around, refusing to build a relationship despite her
instinctive reactions:

The animal leaped up into her arms; Bruna felt his warm breath on her neck.
Embarrassed and annoyed, she removed the bubi and put him on the floor.
All she needed was to become attached to a creature she was going to get
rid of right away.
(TR, 207)

However, the pet is so warm, loyal, and persistent that she opens up and accepts
his presence, caring for him, “ ‘Bartolo good,’ whispered the greedy-­guts in
Bruna’s ear, his voice still choked. Okay. Okay! The android resigned herself.
She’d keep the bubi—for now” (TR, 400). Later “[a]stonished, Bruna realized
that this absurd alien creature had just saved their lives” (WH, 93). She ends up
defending him—“‘He’s not a stupid bicho. He’s Bartolo,’ she said to her own
amazement”—and accepting their mutual relationship: “He was her bubi”
(WH, 95). Her relationships with humans are similarly distanced. Nevertheless,
she feels strangely attracted to the replicant polar bear, Melba, manufactured
using genes from the last polar bear on earth, and now floating in an indoor cli-
matized pool. The androgynous spiritual tattooist, Natvel, tells her that her
animal spirit is that of a bear, something Bruna had unconsciously known, and

Bruna pressed her palms up against the glass, sensing the weight and push
of the water, the turbulent power of that other life. And for an instant, she
was herself next to the bear, the two of them floating in the blue of time.
(TR, 405)

A clear example of Bruna realizing herself as “individual-­in-the-­world,” partici-

pating in the formation of the other, discussed by Murphy (1991, 45). However,
although Bruna experiences discrimination against technohumans and aliens—as
Chi, leader of the RRM says that they were “a secondary species and third-­class
citizens”—Bruna is able to realize that it is part of a larger scale of oppression:
“But she felt that the discrimination against reps encompassed a greater discrim-
ination—that of the powerful against the wretched” (TR, 48). Bruna undertakes
152   C. Flys Junquera
the risky trip to Labari when she is promised full medical coverage for Gabi, since
her own insurance would not cover the girl. Although Bruna Husky, as her name
indicates, is not only strong but rather gruff with a menacing aspect, reluctant to
show any emotional attachment, she does begin to care for the emotionally scarred
child, precisely through narrative—being cajoled into having to invent a story as a
promise to Gabi, Bruna begins to sort out her own feelings and relationships,
forcing her to come to terms with ethical issues and find a solution.35 Her favorite
hangout is Oli’s bar, the one place where androids and humans, aliens and mutants
came together: “This mélange was a trademark of the establishment, a collateral
effect of the expansiveness in both body and spirit of Oli, who shared her magna-
nimity with all beings” (TR, 80). Thus, the two novels constitute one long learning
process, from an aggressive and lonely Bruna to a very caring person, accepting
humans, aliens, and replicants. She learns to adopt a more open stance and be
willing to listen, pay attention, and recognize the interests and values of those
othered, even when they do not coincide with her own.
These novels also present multiple voices and different perspectives, what
McDowell would call a Bahktinian dialogics (1996). In Beatriz and the She-­
wolf, the author attempts to imagine and represent what the wolf perception of
humans might be. Oak refers to humans as “upright animals” and to the shep-
herds’ dogs as humiliated traitors. She describes what we would consider as a
pastoral scene, as one of domination, of humans over dogs and these over
sheep.36 Another interesting perspective is how the wolves perceive the road, as
a row of lights advancing at great speed over a uniform dead piece of land.37
While López Llamas undoubtedly focuses on two females, Beatriz and Oak, her
novel is not overly simplistic. She makes an effort to understand, though not
justify, Santiago. She goes to lengths to describe his childhood, abandoned by
his parents who migrated to France, taking only their daughter and leaving
Santiago in the hands of his abusive grandfather. At the same time, Santiago’s
cousin, Teresa, defends him, ignorant of details, and explains away things as
being part of the family or local tradition. Manuel, Beatriz’s main support, has
difficulty in realizing what is happening, as does Beatriz’s friend, Lucía. The
novel thus presents different human and non-­human perspectives in a polyphony
of voices that encompass the complexity of the lives intertwined in the area.
Similarly, in Where the Trees Sing, Gallego presents the perspectives of the
humans, mainly those who have been conquered but have different opinions on
how to rebel. In fact, the one person who made Viana suffer the most, her fiancée
who sold out to the barbarians, is given a voice to justify that he did it to save his
mother and sister, and Viana forgives him. But more interestingly is the per-
spective of the singing trees and the other creatures of the forest who mistrust
Viana until she is capable of changing her attitude and respecting them. While
only Uri learns to speak, the other creatures of the forest have a “language”
among themselves and do manage some communication with Viana, when she is
ready to listen. One could also say that they observe and “study up” Viana to see
if she is deserving of their contact. As far as the Bruna Husky narrative, we
clearly hear the voices of the different peoples of that society, particularly those
 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants   153
who have been othered, and who teach Bruna to see other perspectives and even
accept herself and her illegally cloned other.
So, while each novel has a clear protagonist and the narratives are focalized on
the protagonist, the authors allow other voices and viewpoints to enter in dialog
with the main voice. The protagonists change throughout the stories, significantly
enriching their relationships with other human others and non-­human others. And
these changes are a result of adopting counter-­hegemonic strategies. Beatriz and
the She-­wolf can clearly be considered an ecofeminist novel, despite the fact that
the author had never heard of ecofeminism when she wrote the novel.38 The other
novels have significant ecofeminist aspects, without being wholly so. Rosa
Montero has expressed her concern over climate change indirectly in previous
works. In her realist novel, Instrucciones para salvar el mundo [Instructions to
save the world] (2008), the characters are always commenting on the unseasonal
warmth of Madrid, of flash storms and so forth, but the environmental concern is
limited to that. However, following the title of the novel, the salvation of the world
lies in caring human relationships and relational identities, and as such, is consist-
ent with ecofeminist philosophies, as Warren highlights. In these recent science
fiction novels, as mentioned, nature has virtually disappeared, but the importance
of caring relationships focuses the plots. In the case of Laura Gallego, even though
the novel is fantasy, the twist of perspective, placing non-­human others in the same
plane as the protagonist, certainly responds to Plumwood’s counter-­hegemonic
strategies. Beatriz and the She-­wolf clearly responds to environmental issues.
López Llamas is currently working on a collection of short stories addressing the
specific issues regarding wolves in the different parts of Spain, such as debates
with shepherds, species extinction, and so forth. In Rosa Montero, who is currently
working on the third novel of the series, the bias of Spanish environmentalism
strongly linked to social issues and critical of capitalism is patent. Regardless of the
different emphases in these three writers, what remains clear is that Spanish liter-
ature is changing and is beginning to address environmental issues and, knowingly
or not, ecofeminist ones.

Notes
1 The research for this chapter was made possible by the funded project: “Environ-
mental humanities. Strategies for ecological empathy and the transition towards sus-
tainable societies; Subproject 2: “Stories for Change”. Ref: HAR2015–67472-C2–2-R
(MINECO/FEDER).
2 See Pratt and Gordon (1998), Carretero González (2000), Pérez Abad (2000), Hen-
riquez (1997), and Prádanos (2012, 2013) for earlier ecocritical studies of Spanish
literature; see Flys Junquera and Raquejo Grado (2016) for a current overview of
environmentalism in Spanish literature and art and the last issue of Ecozon@ on
“South Atlantic Ecocriticism” Vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 2017).
3 Traditionally Spaniards carry their father’s surname followed by the mother’s; but the
first one is the more significant (persons are alphabetized by the first one) and it is the
one to be carried to the next generation. Often people only use the first if it is unique
enough. The law has recently abolished the automatic preference for the father’s
surname.
154   C. Flys Junquera
4 Although statistics support the fact that domestic violence is not very high, compara-
tively speaking, in Spain, public consciousness is very high; see: http://nytlive.
nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/11/09/tens-­of-thousands-­take-to-­madrids-streets-
­to-protest-­violence-against-­women/.
5 For an ecocritical and ecofeminist reading of this novel, see Flys Junquera (2012).
6 The title of the novel Tears in Rain is an explicit homage to the film Blade Runner.
7 I will often refer to three narratives since the two novels by Rosa Montero are one and
the same story. Also, since both novels are about the same detective, Bruna Husky, I
will at times use that reference to not have to repeat both titles. Nevertheless, I will
cite each one by title in specific references.
8 I will be using the following abbreviations to simplify citations, privileging the
English translation of the novel in order to facilitate recognition for the reader:
Beatriz y la loba [Beatriz and the She-­wolf] (BSW), Donde los árboles cantan
[Where the Trees Sing] (WTS). Montero’s novels have been translated to English
so I will use the English version to facilitate reading. These novels will be abbre-
viated as Tears in Rain (TR) and Weight of the Heart (WH). The other novels have
not been translated to English, so all translations are my own. I will use para-
phrases and translations and provide the original text in Spanish in a footnote. In
the case of Laura Gallego, the book is an e-­book and no pages are provided, only
location numbers.
9 “la guarida del lobo” (BSW, 144).
10 Poniéndose del lado de aquella especie, se desvinculaba de Santiago, pero eso se
lo negaba a sí misma y justificaba su afán de conocer las andanzas del lobo por ser
el animal más representativo de aquellos montes, desde donde comenzaba a sentir
que la llamaban por su nombre.
(BSW, 160)
11 “[Rosa e]ligió el silencio en su hogar para pasar desapercibida y contagió de aquella
actitud a su retoño” (BSW, 37).
12 “[Oak] acostumbrada a pasar desapercibida, su cerebro bloqueó las cuerdas vocals”
(BSW, 42).
13 La avidez con la que Santiago tomaba a su mujer, nada más entrar en casa, solo
era equiparable a la de un lobo hambriento de varias semanas que, tras dar cuenta
de cada parte del cuerpo de su presa, se abandonara a un sueño reparador.
(BSW, 121)
14 Animales que defendían su espacio en el mundo, por el hecho de ser; que campea-
ban por aquellas tierras, sintiéndose con derecho a hacerlo, el que ellos se habían
concedido a pesar de que otros seres se empeñaran en someterlos, adiestrarlos,
denigrarlos o exterminarlos. Seres como Severino, como Santiago, como tantos
otros humanos que habían hecho del lobo y de la mujer el locus donde desarrollar
la agresividad, expresión de insatisfacción eterna, de desconfianza sembradas en
el otro, de miedos atávicos, de inseguridad en si mismo. Por eso, Beatriz deseaba
encontrarse con aquellos animales indómitos. Verlos, aunque se quedara sin habla:
buscar sus ojos para encontrar su fuerza, su orgullo de ser.
(BSW, 244)
15 The novel has multiple references at the end from scientific studies on wolves.
16 The title is inspired by Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, as the prologue of the
novel indicates.
17 It is interesting to note that Lobo means wolf in Spanish, and the banished noble
indeed acts as a lone wolf, teaming up with young Viana and teaching her how to live
in the wild—much as Vecio teaches Oak in Beatriz and the She-­wolf.
18 See Irene Sanz Alonso (2017) for a study of this.
 Wolves, singing trees, and replicants   155
19 Replicants are not allowed to know who wrote their memories, but Pablo Nopal, one
of the most famous memorists, confesses to Bruna that he used his own life and mem-
ories to write hers, something which sets her aside as being more complex than most
technohumans.
20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Madrid.
21 Here Montero is evoking the continuous assaults on the fence in Melilla, separating
the Spanish city from Morocco, or the other many walls built to keep the poor out, all
over the world.
22 For more on this aspect of the novel as well as the corporatization of basic resources,
see Leone (2017).
23 “La alianza se había sellado con un sueño de confianza mutua. Entre lobos, eso era
sagrado” (BSW, 48); “Hambrientos, cada cual lamía y devoraba la piel al descubierto
del otro…. Las primeras luces del alba se filtraban a través de las ventanas.…”
(BSW, 60).
24 “Beatriz había aprendido que, para dar una vuelta por el monte sin ser vista, debía
hacerlo al amanecer o al anochecer, como los lobos” (BSW, 217).
25 Las dos le detectaron a la vez y se cubrieron cada una a su manera para no ser
vistas. La hembra erguida eligió el salgueral, situado a unos pasos de donde ella
estaba, rio abajo. Mientras, la joven loba conservó su posición en el retamar que la
venia cobijando desde el principio.
(BSW, 231–232)
26 Fue así como Beatriz, a medio camino entre niña embelesada y mujer aterrada, se
topó de frente con la mirada de Oak, mientras esta apoyaba sus patas sobre la
pared tras la que ella se escondía. Sus pupilas se fundieron en el orificio abierto en
la fachada, punto de mira de la joven. El encuentro fue minúsculo, casi imaginado,
de no ser por lo que cada hembra acabada de experimentar en los más recóndito
de su ser, capaz de devolverle el aliento vital a Beatriz y de bloquear el impulso
iniciado por Oak para acceder al tejado desvencijado de la casa que servía de
refugio a la joven, y desde allí abordar el del pajar donde Navia se encontraba.
Las dos se habían reconocido.
(BSW, 306–307)
27 “Mi gente … no siente esto. No siente así—trató de explicar, golpeándose el pecho
con la mano. –¿No podíes amar? Pero eso … Pero entonces … ¿por qué tú sí?—Yo
soy distinto” (WTS, loc. 3786).
28 “Vengo del bosque. Allí está mi gente” (WTS, loc. 3793).
29 “Cerró los ojos, inspiró profundamente, contó hasta tres y asumió que tendría que
acepar lo imposible. Que Uri no era una persona. Que era un árbol. Y todas las piezas
encajaron de golpe” (WTS, loc. 4860).
30 “Su piel se volvió más oscura y rugosa y el cabello comenzó a crecerle hacia arriba de
forma desordenada. Sus pies se hundieron en la tierra, sus brazos se alzaron hacia el
cielo, buscando la vivificante luz del sol” (WTS, loc. 5620).
31 “la chica no podría haber visto nada si ellos no se hubieran mostrado antes sus ojos
voluntariamente” (WTS, loc. 4352).
32 Note that the novel came out in 2011 and Apple’s smartwatch came out a year later.
33 See Leone (2017) for more on this.
34 Spaniards used to have universal health coverage—something which changed in 2012
with the economic crisis—and this remains a politically sensitive and debated topic.
35 See Jim Cheney (1987) on the importance of narrative for this purpose.
36 Oak nunca había visto una escena de dominación similar. Sus posibles presas se
sometían, sin levantar la cabeza de la hierba de la pradera, a las órdenes que los
canidos expresaban mediante persecuciones decididas; responsabilidad, en último
156   C. Flys Junquera
grado, del animal erguido que, con piedras lanzadas al aire y sonidos poderosos
que salían de su garganta, les indicaba hacia donde debían dirigirlas.
(BSW, 117)
37 “Una hilera de luces, como caídas desde lo alto, se desplazaba a gran velocidad sobre
una franja de tierra de un gris uniforme, desprovista de vida” (BSW, 82).
38 Personal comment. The author, since hearing about ecofeminism, is reading and
working on it.

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11 Ecofeminist moorings in
globalized India
Literary discourse and interpretations
Swapna Gopinath, Sony Jalarajan Raj,
and Soumya Jose

Ecofeminism is a practical movement for social change arising out of the strug-
gles of women to sustain themselves, their families, and their communities. These
struggles are waged against the “mal-­development” and environmental degrada-
tion caused by patriarchal societies, multinational corporations, and global capit-
alism. They are waged for environmental balance, heterarchical and matrifocal
societies, the continuance of indigenous cultures, and economic values and pro-
grams based on subsistence and sustainability.
(Gaard and Murphy 1998, 2)

India, oft-­cited and celebrated as the land of spirituality, speaks of its complex
and deep-­rooted insights into the relationship between humans and their environ-
ment through its various texts. Ecological concerns repeatedly surface in the
ancient texts and destruction of nature is believed to precede the day of Apoca-
lypse. Nature and the female energy are linked, both respected and treated with
awe and often venerated, especially in matrilineal societies. Indian experience of
colonialism and the exposure to rationalistic utilitarianism initiated changes in
perception and large-­scale exploitation of the Other—be it the subaltern, women,
non-­human beings, or nature. The tendency to exploit and suppress the weak has
been ingrained in the Indian soil by the colonial power. The centrality of the
male and a society built upon a hierarchical structure of power normalized
oppression and suppression. Even before ecofeminism started formulating itself
as a theoretical discourse, ecofeminist activism lodged its presence in the Indian
soil. The overwhelming participation of women who belong to the lower strata
of society make the movements to conserve the environment more effective.
Women writers have portrayed these deep connections between woman and
nature in texts that highlight them in a sensitive manner. Among dystopic visions
of modernity, they stand out for the poignancy and sensitivity in their portrayal
of these harmonious relationships.
Indian society shares a unique relationship with its environment, and the texts
from ancient India bear testimony to this bond, which was once considered
divine. Hindu puranas speak of ecological destruction portending an apocalypse.
Kurma Purana says: “then greed and passion arose again everywhere, inevitably,
 Ecofeminist moorings in globalized India   159
due to the predestined purpose of the Treta (Third) age. And people seized the
rivers, fields, mountains, clumps of trees and herbs, overcoming them by
strength.” Cyclical patterns of life and death are repeatedly narrated with
emphasis on destruction of nature being linked to destruction of life. The
Mahabharata depicts such a destruction:

At the end of the Eon the population increases.… At the end of time all
men—there is no doubt—will be omnivorous barbarians.… All people will
be naturally cruel … without concern they will destroy parks and trees and
the lives of living will be ruined in the world.

A vision of doom is repeatedly mentioned as a consequence of dharma losing

significance in society. “We … notice in the Hindu texts a close correlation
between dharma (righteousness, duty, justice; from dharma, or that which sus-
tains) and the ravaging of Earth. When dharma declines, human beings despoil
nature” (Narayanan 2001, 181). Hindu sacred texts venerate elements of nature
and ascribe holiness to primal forces beyond the control of the ancient Indian.
“Hindu sacred texts starting with the Vedas (c.1750–600 bce) speak extensively
about the sanctity of the earth, the rivers and the mountains” (Narayanan 2001,
182). Earth is revered in Hindu tradition and veneration to all living beings is
exhorted. Untamable resources of nature are ascribed purity and divinity and
rituals are built around them. The prevalence of the Siva-­Sakti image, of the har-
monious blend of the male and female, challenges the notion of binaries and
establishes the omnipotent presence of a universe in harmony with nature and
the transcendent god thus transforms itself into a single source of energy.
Puranas have several passages dedicated to the cause of the environment.
Matsya Puranam has a tale where Goddess Parvathi says thus: “One large reser-
voir of water is worth ten wells. One son is like ten reservoirs and one tree is
equal to ten sons. (Dasaputra, Samodruma). This is my standard and I will
protect the universe to safeguard it”. Similar references are found in
VarahaPurana and Vishnu Dharmottara, and the Dharmashastras condemned the
act of destroying the ecology. Ancient India incorporated lessons of preserving
the environment in its religious texts and the weaving of these insights into the
rituals and ceremonies of the community has helped the humanity to have a
harmonious relationship with nature resulting in the least infringements upon the
natural habitat. But the ideological framework which sought to sustain life
through preserving nature began to crumple under the rising hegemonic patriar-
chal power. With male supremacy, equations began to change, and women, once
venerated for their reproductive ability, began to get marginalized. The semiotics
of this new discourse affected the bondage man had with nature as well.

Though Motherhood is highly honored in Hindu kinship systems, it seems

this honor is based on her self-­negation, the ability to endure privations for
the family, the willingness to give sustenance, no matter what the sacrifice,
with no thought of her own needs. … Whether it is Bhumidevi or a
160   S. Gopinath et al.
Bharatmata or a sacred grove, the expectation is that the sacred site will
bless, nurture, purify or perform any other supportive material act without
any requirement for sustenance in return.
(Sherma 2000, 97)

Western philosophical discourses that seeped into the Indian thought processes
post-­colonization accelerated this attitudinal change. A shift in focus was initi-
ated from the oral traditions carried across generations in a community to the
holy texts, written and preserved by the elite castes. Hindu religious treatises
began to establish themselves as fundamental texts, and their custodians consoli-
dated their positions in the hierarchy of power. Colonization of the Indian mind
erased the ecological concerns of an earlier time and replaced it with ideologies
that placed man at the center of the universe. This resulted in bountiful nature
getting displaced from its place of veneration and relegated to a subservient posi-
tion. Women, by virtue of their reproductive capacity, were also marginalized in
this process. This attitude is reflected in the constitutional provisions, post-­
independence. Environment has not been given its due position in the constitu-
tion. It was later added as the 42nd amendment in 1976. Act 48A was inserted,
which stated: “The state shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment
and to safeguard the forests and wild life of the country.”
The binaries of nature and culture which captured the essence of ecofeminism
to some extent is detectable in the words of major Indian ecofeminist activists.
Vandana Shiva is among them.

The vast and powerful yet sublime and caring nurturer as against the puny
and insignificant yet callous and cruel destroyer. The binaries are built to
foreground the ecofeminist concerns but often they are subtle and poly-
morphous. Fluidity of these concepts like right and wrong confuses
mankind. Since the age of Enlightenment and the colonization of the world,
the White Man’s concept of emancipation, of freedom and equality, is based
on dominance over nature, and other people and territories. The division
between nature and culture, or civilization, is integral to this understanding.
From the early women’s movement up to the present, a large section of
women has accepted the strategy of catching-­up with men as the main path
to emancipation. This implied that women must overcome within them-
selves what had been defined as “nature,” because, in this discourse, women
were put on the side of nature, whereas men were seen as the representatives
of culture.
(Mies and Shiva 1993, 65)

But major ideological displacements in social institutions demanded novel

understandings of altered circumstances. Globalization and postmodernism, with
their ideologies of consumption and commodification, demanded more complex
readings. Ecofeminism thus grew beyond binaries to perceive the dynamic
power centers that demand a flexible and dynamic perception.
 Ecofeminist moorings in globalized India   161
Indian ecofeminist concerns strongly rooted in a deeply spiritual tradition
date back to pre-­Vedic times, and social structures were built around a respectful
communion with nature in all its magnificence. While colonial discourses rup-
tured this connection with the environment, women and other marginalized
groups in the community still cherished the delicate ecological balance with awe
and devotion. Nature as a repository of wisdom and life was still venerated and
regarded as their source for sustenance by the Others, while the hegemonic
forces swept aside such concerns. India experienced grassroots environmental-
ism even before ecofeminism gathered momentum around the world. The
Chipko (tree-­hugging) Movement witnessed the presence of women in large
numbers and their concern for the environment surprised many:

The state’s increasing commercialization and underdevelopment of the

Garhwal region was instrumental in the conceptualization of this movement,
where local women were affected by state-­level decisions such as granting
private contractors harvest rights for the trees to manufacture cricket bats.
(Chanda 2014, 33–35)

Significant contributions to the cause from various activists like Vandana

Shiva helped to foreground the issue. Shiva used the platform to highlight the
Indian context of assigning divinity to nature and preserving life through prop-
agating the values of ancient India. The next major movement was Narmada
Bachao Andolan (1985), led by Medha Padkar. It was against the dam that
was to be built across Narmada, which would lead to the displacement of a
large section of the tribal population. It captured the attention of the nation
and led to debates on the feasibility of constructing dams as a sign of mod-
ernity as well as raised concerns about the marginalized community of the
tribal people. Medha Padkar brought to the attention of the world the destruc-
tive nature of large dams as well as the sociocultural loss along with immense
destruction to the ecology of the land. The magnitude of the displacement
threatening the indigenous communities of the area was repeatedly reported
by Padkar. Along with Padkar, Arundhati Roy lent her voice to the cause. She
constantly airs her concerns about the nation turning away from the multi-
dimensional nature of exploitation of natural resources as well as the othering
of minorities.
Another major movement which created a furor was that to save the Western
Ghats in 1988, which alerted the nation to the delicate balance of the ecosystem.
This was followed by several others spearheaded by women activists diligently
contesting destructive human forces, be it the nation or multinational corpora-
tions. Although the national identity forged prior to independence built itself
around the conceptual framework of a spiritual India, the connection with a
nature considered divine was ruptured against the tide of modernity.

Social and community reformisms and the expansion of the state’s infra-
structural power from the mid-­19th to the 20th centuries, and the expansion
162   S. Gopinath et al.
of the rationality of nationalist development since the mid-­20th century—
which crucially shaped the “modern” in this context—had ensured that most
conceptions of the good life in this society were instrumental and functional
to the imperatives of production and development. The languages of reform
and development were deeply gendered—gender was, and still is, deeply
implicated in the process of making individuals governable. If male indi-
viduals were assigned the task of “conquering Nature” for production,
female individuals were directed into the space of the home and assigned
“active domesticity.”
(Devika 2010, 752)

Women, conditioned to enact the role of nurturer, remain alert and conscious to
the rampant destruction and abuse of the environment, which they understand as
an essential component for survival. Their acute sensitivity to the environment in
which they live, be it rural or urban, equips them to sense intuitively calamities
that can result from disturbances in the delicate ecological structures. The roles
and duties assigned to them are socially created and their identities are culturally
constructed, but it also prepares them to foresee disasters that arise from human
indifference and callousness.
In Shashi Deshpande’s novels, female heroes return to their native homes,
leaving their husbands at home, suggesting a return to nature, which will give
them the security and courage to challenge norms and values established by a
society patronized by patriarchy. They struggle against these ideologies that
stifle their natural selves and the return encourages them to resist and challenge.
Their anguish is so deep that there is no anger left but only an uncanny silence.
In That Long Silence (Deshpande 1988), the protagonist Jaya’s decision to
explore her creative self takes her closer to her authentic self. These heroes with-
draw from the stifling surroundings for introspection and resultant self-­
realization. Their journey is towards their true identities. Patriarchy opposes and
challenges the woman’s quest for introspection and her journey towards her real
natural self. Jaya in That Long Silence has abandoned her name, her anger, and
her tantrums, and marriage has altered her personality. Deshpande’s women
withdraw in order to draw succor for their struggles with the social environment.
They always return, but their retreat to nature reveals their deep-­felt realization
of the springs of life hidden within the woman in communion with her inner self.
Sarah Joseph’s Kunjimathu presents another face of womanhood. She repres-
ents the woman-­nurturer who communicates with the fish and fowl and holds a
strong will to challenge the destructive forces of development. Despite Kuma-
ran’s betrayal, Kunjimathu survives as a strong resisting energy that offers to
combat any infringements on their land and water. Even when her fish is killed
by a strong chemical, endosulphan, she refuses to surrender. The destruction of
her land and her fish turns “her into a Mahakali” (Joseph 2011, 170), who will
avenge the injustice.
Institutions of female exploitation transform themselves as instruments of
exploitation of nature as well. Marriage as the foundation for families and
 Ecofeminist moorings in globalized India   163
societies emerges as a tool for exploitation. Arundhati Roy speaks about such
physical and verbal abuse by Ammu’s father, a socially respectable etymologist.

He (father) was charming and urbane with visitors, and stopped just short of
fawning if they happened to be white. He donated money to orphanages and
leprosy clinics. He worked hard on his public profile as a sophisticated,
generous moral man. But alone with his wife and children he turned into a
monstrous, suspicious bully, with a streak of vicious cunning. They were
beaten, humiliated and then made to suffer the envy of friends and relations
for having such a wonderful husband and father.
(Roy 1997, 178)

In Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, Jemubhai, the anglicized Indian, with impec-
cable manners borrowed from his colonial masters, symbolizes the elite hege-
monic minority that unscrupulously exploits the resources as well as the
voiceless majority. His ill-­treatment of his wife and his alienation from the world
around him completes his identity as a modern Indian embedded in a web of
power hierarchies typical of a postmodern social structure. Sarita of The Dark
Holds No Terror escapes from her abusive husband, Manu, who rapes her at
night and faces her without qualms during the day. In the age of globalization,
families evolve as micro units of oppression of women and destruction of nature.
Commodification of human relations has led to the corrosion of values and
nurture is pushed to the periphery.
Anita Desai is another novelist who portrayed women characters as introspec-
tive, sensitive, and sometimes almost eccentric in challenging the accepted social
structures. They retreat from the conventionally patterned society and relation-
ships and her characters long for a communion with their inner natural selves. In
Fire on the Mountain, Nanda Kaul “asked to be left to the pines and cicadas
alone. She wanted no one and nothing else” (Desai 1997, 3). Desai’s female
heroes are alienated beings, attuned to their innate consciousness and therefore
feel rootless and alone in the social interactions. Monisha, the protagonist in
Voices in the City, is lonely and feels detached from the joint family in which
she lives. She is intelligent and well read, hence the angst over being distanced
from nature. Nanda in Fire on the Mountain departs on a journey of self-­exile,
and Sita of Where Shall We Go this Summer? withdraws into herself. Raka,
Nanda’s granddaughter, prefers “to be left alone to pursue her own secret life
amongst the rocks and pines of Kasauli” (Desai 1977, 48). For her, rejecting
social life is “so natural, instinctive and effortless” (Desai 1977, 30). Monisha in
Voices in the City says: “I think what separates me from this family is the fact
that not one of them ever sleeps out under the stars at night. They have indoor
minds, starless and darkles” (Desai 1965, 139).
Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize-­winning novel, The God of Small Things,
captures the harmonious blend of nature and the other in all its complexities. The
novel travels from an early period of an interconnected existence of man and
nature to a later phase of commodification and neo-­colonization that has further
164   S. Gopinath et al.
complicated the delicate relationship. The novel explores and unravels the green
wet lands on the banks of Meenachal, and Aiymanam, the village, presents a
striking visual image as a land rich in foliage and natural habitation. It speaks of
the god of small things, the young subaltern, the lower caste Parava, who leads a
bunch of other marginalized individuals, Ammu, her young twins, and the nature
around them. They are the voiceless tangled in the world of sophistication, hypo-
crisy, and deceit. They communicate with one another without words and share
their angst of living below the social structures.
The God of Small Things is an intricately structured novel with nature and its
infinite dynamic transformations woven into it with precision. Social constructs
of civilization interfere and often disrupt the deep passions and simple pleasures
which are enjoyed by people living in the periphery. Ammu and her twins are
reluctantly accepted by the community that fails to comprehend life in its mes-
meric infinite possibilities. Ammu belongs to an orthodox Christian family
bound by traditions in Aiyamanam, near the river Meenachal. She defies conven-
tions and marries a Bengali Hindu, who reveals himself to be an alcoholic. After
her twins are born she deserts him and returns to her ancestral house, where she
is unwillingly accepted. Ammu’s brother Chacko jokingly says: “What’s yours
is mine and what’s mine is yours” (Roy 1997, 57). In their community, married
women can lay no claim on their ancestral property. The cruel subjugation of the
female population by denying them economic independence acts as a deterring
factor in asserting their independence.
The God of Small Things has transgressions and transcendence as themes.
Ammu and her twins transgress and trespass the rules and customs ascribed by
culture. Such transgressions are normalized in the presence of nature and their
close affinity to the primordial harmony of nature is vividly described in the
novel. Ammu’s children Estha and Rahel share her spirit and passions for life.
They are fascinated by the elements of nature and their curiosity leads them
towards their destiny of separation and angst. Chacko sees them sleeping next to
his bed.

A hot twin and a cold one. He and She. We and Us.… They dreamed of their
river. Of the coconut trees that bent into it and watched, with coconut eyes, the
boats slide by. Upstream in the mornings. Downstream in the evenings.… It
was warm, the water. Greygreen. Like rippled silk. With fish in it. With the
sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.
(Roy 1997, 122)

In Gift in Green, Kunjimathu assimilates this understanding of life in its totality

and the interconnected webs of energy. “The rising of the full moon churned her
womanhood” (Joseph 2011, 192), and her passions were in harmony with the
ebb and flow of life in the natural habitat around her.
Innumerable references to the life-­giving nourishing quality of water is men-
tioned in Gift in Green. “Water knows everything and forgets nothing” (Joseph
2011, 21). The storyteller narrates the story of life and says: “For God is life, and
 Ecofeminist moorings in globalized India   165
life, water” (Joseph 2011, 12). In an interview to The Hindu, Sarah Joseph said:
“At one level, the novel deals with the socio-­political aspects of human right to
water. At another, it is an attempt to explore man’s spiritual connection with
water” (Santhosh 2011). The image of the mother-­nurturer abounds in the novel.
Water is the signifier of maternal love and sacrifice and the reverence due to
one’s mother is to be accorded to nature. Dinakaran’s death is poignantly
described. “In the lap of his mother he lay. The mother’s lap: from time imme-
morial, the final resting place for the burden of every sacrifice and the refuge of
every innocent person broken and bruised by the depravity of man” (Joseph
2011, 347). But the qualities of this element of nature are aplenty. It is peace to
an anguished soul, like Kayal, the abused child of Geethanjali. Aathi is that
primordial space where darkness and water thrives in silence. The inhabitants of
the land cohabit with this powerful presence and have learned to respect the
vibrant yet still life around them. This empowers and strengthens them and pro-
vides them with a primitive force to survive against all odds. The novel thus
narrates this tale of resistance against the localized powers of globalization. The
grand narrative of development and modernization has been abandoned by the
novelist. She chose to speak of the liminal voices that accumulate their power
from nature and emerge as protectors of their land and water.
Ammu (The God) as a woman challenges the structure of binaries that char-
acterized the colonial discourses. She shares stories from classics with her chil-
dren, insists upon following the rules of decorum but places herself at the fringes
of this civilized community. She communicates with the wild unpredictable river
Meenachal and nurtures her passion for Velutha, the paravan who symbolizes
the strength and vigor of the river. Baby Kochamma, while condemning the
affair between Ammu and Velutha, exclaims: “How could she stand the smell?
Haven’t you noticed, they have a particular smell, these paravas?” (Roy 1997,
78) She shudders at the thought and grimaces “like a child being force-­fed
spinach” (Roy 1997, 78). Ammu calls it the smell of the river (335) and is
entranced by it. Apart from Ammu, other characters, such as her twins and the
subaltern Velutha, also defy categorization. Velutha, as a victim, exposes the
caste-­infested Indian society and its oppressive patterns of existence where polit-
ical, economic, and cultural discourses conspire to maintain the rigid hierarchy.
He is dangerous, since he thinks and has gained a little education. His clandes-
tine affair with Ammu is an act of resistance against the whole social order, and
Marxist leaders as well as the local police destroy him to reinstate social
harmony. But Velutha perceives the inherent strength of nature and imbibes it
within him, which also challenges the power centers. Roy writes: “Feelings of
contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear—civilization’s fear of nature,
men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness. Man’s subliminal urge to
destroy what he could neither subdue nor destroy” (Roy 1997, 308). Voices from
the periphery are silenced thus throughout history and the twins lost their inno-
cence witnessing this act of suppression and brutal injustice. “(It) was a clinical
demonstration … of human nature’s pursuit of ascendancy. Structure, order,
complete monopoly” (Roy 1997, 309).
166   S. Gopinath et al.
Roy captured the immense transformation the river and the land underwent in
a few years. Forces of capitalism and the neo-­colonialism wiped away traces of
concern for the delicate ecological system and new equations were written. Pro-
ductivity, where preservation became an obsolete terminology, was embraced
and Rahel returns to her homeland to witness the depletion of the river and its
contaminated corrupt form. “Years later, when Rahel returned to the river, it
greeted her with a ghastly skull’s smile, with holes where teeth had been, and a
limp hand raised from a hospital bed” (Roy 1997, 124). The river is merely “a
thin ribbon of thick water.… Its spirit spent. It was just a slow, sludging green
ribbon lawn that ferried fetid garbage to the sea. Bright plastic bags blew across
its viscous, weedy surface like subtropical flying-­flowers” (Roy 1997, 124).
Globalization with its consumerism and neoliberal policies altered the Indian
identity. The decline in status of stylized elite art forms such as Kathakali
(a form of classical Indian dance) is also a consequence of these permutations in
the social structures. In The God of Small Things, Kathakali artists are delineated
in their pathetic plight. “In despair he turns to tourism. He enters the market. He
hawks the only thing he owns. The stories that his body can tell” (Roy 1997,
230). India as a nation shifted allegiances and a capitalistic wealth-­driven society
emerged as the hegemonic community. The hierarchy was a complex one, with
caste, gender, and class thriving in various forms and adapting themselves to the
altered sensibilities. History House, which belonged to Kari Sayippu and had
been long abandoned, was now reclaimed with a history of its own. It closed its
doors on Aiymanam and was advertised as a tourist attraction. Roy elaborates on
the developments in the estate, focusing on the development of the property into
a tourist destination maintaining globally accepted standards of luxury.
Histories are carved out of nothingness, cultural markers are created, and the
writer ironically adds: “History and Literature enlisted by commerce. Kurtz and
Karl Marx joining palms to greet rich guests as they stepped off the boat” (Roy
1997, 126). The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai addresses major challenges
posed by development along the lines of modern city states across the world.
Globalizing patterns of growth are accompanied by large-­scale destruction and
degradation of the environment:

In order to accommodate the population boom, the government had recently

passed legislation that allowed an extra story to be built on each home in
Darjeeling; the weight of more concrete pressing downward had spurred the
town’s lopsided descent and caused more landslides than ever.
(Desai 2006, 196–197)

As King points out:

Ecofeminism is all about connectedness and wholeness of theory and prac-

tice. We see the devastation of the earth and her beings by the corporate
warriors … and the threat of nuclear annihilation by the military warriors as
feminist concerns. It is the same masculinist mentality which would deny us
 Ecofeminist moorings in globalized India   167
our right to our own bodies and our own sexuality and which depends on
multiple systems of dominance and state power to have its way.
(King 1983, 10)

Gift in Green is a tale of Aathi, a land that had as its inhabitants people who
believed in sustainable development, discerned the delicate ecological web of
life, and preserved the precious balance in nature. Aathi is surrounded by water
and mangroves and life has not lost its purity and innocence. Into their midst
comes Kumaran, the native who had failed to grapple the meaning of existence,
and his return portends danger since he symbolizes the evils of modernity. The
novelist Sarah Joseph creates a world in all its complexities, where corruption,
exploitation, and wealth justify and rationalize destruction and depletion of
resources. His plan is to turn the temple into a pilgrimage center where sacred
spaces get converted into hot spots where profanity can thrive in the form of
commerce and trade. The bridge that Kumaran struggles to build becomes the
path towards irrational, blind development that fails to look beyond the greed
and treachery of man.
In India, class-, caste-, and gender-­based subordination and subjugation are
closely interlinked with the massive destruction of the environment. Develop-
ment indices also point to the environmental destruction and abuse of women.
Ecofeminism, in this context, becomes a practice, an ideology that facilitates a
deeper understanding of the innate androcentric behavior patterns of man and its
connection with the destruction and exploitation of nature. Women writers over
the decades have written extensively on this kinship between man, woman, and
nature, and the composite patterns of subjugation and desecration of woman and
nature by the man wielding authority over both. Globalization, with its manifold
and multipronged impact on human existence at various levels of community
living, has a major influence on thought processes and representations as well.
Ecofeminist writing in the age of globalization in India expresses grave concerns
over the exploitative nature of multinational conglomerates and the large-­scale
destruction of marginalized, silenced communities, including women and dalits,
and their deep affinity to environment that borders on being a spiritual commun-
ion. Literature produced in various parts of India by women writers share this
agony of alienation and loss and laments the callous indifference of an ignorant
majority. But ecofeminist concerns receive considerable attention from the com-
munity which instils optimism in the writers to some extent. “Ecofeminism …
(no doubt) is becoming conspicuous as women and men resist the waste, injus-
tice and cultural impoverishment of global capitalism while attempting to pre-
serve indigenous lifeways or create new, sustainable ones” (Carr 2000, 15).

References
Carr, Glynis. 2000. New Essays in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Lewisburg, PA:
Bucknell University Press.
Chanda, Priyanka. 2014. “Ecofeminism in Indian English Fiction.” International Journal
of Educational Research and Technology, 33–35.
168   S. Gopinath et al.
Desai, Anita. 1965. Voices in the City: A Novel. London: P. Owen.
Desai, Anita. 1977. Fire on the Mountain. New York: Harper & Row.
Desai, Anita. 1982. Where Shall We Go This Summer? Delhi: Orient Paperbacks.
Desai, Kiran. 2006. The Inheritance of Loss. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
Deshpande, Shashi. 1988. That Long Silence. London: Virago.
Deshpande, Shashi. 1990. The Dark Holds No Terrors. New York: Europa Editions.
Devika, J. 2010. “Caregiver vs. Citizen? Reflections on Ecofeminism from Kerala State,
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Dimmitt, Cornelia. 1978. Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Purāṇas.
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Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, edited by J. Plant.
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of-love-­seeps-through/article2157429.ece
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The Matsya Puranam. 1916. Allahabad: Pāninī Office, Bhuvaneśwari Āśrama, Bahadurganj
12 The vocation of healing
The poetry of Malika Ndlovu
Deirdre Byrne

The Cape Town-­based South African poet, Malika Ndlovu, refers to herself as
an “applied arts practitioner,” saying that she

strategically and intentionally employ[s] a variety of artistic media (creative

writing, written and performance poetry, theatre, sound/vocals, multi-­media
presentation/production) for the purposes of psycho-­emotional healing, for the
creative processing of trauma, grief, conflict resolution and navigation of
significant growth or change cycles within the life of individuals and groups.
(Byrne 2016)

Ndlovu’s various creative endeavors testify to her commitment to healing. One of

her workshops is called “WORD WELL: therapeutic creative writing sessions” and
“encourage[s] participants to explore their biographical journeys as a treasure hunt,
a medicine walk, a mission of discovery/recovery and adventure.” Another is
“SINGING OVER THE BONES: Storytelling for Personal and Community
Healing.” While her commitment to healing through art is well known, Ndlovu’s
poetry is not widely acknowledged, and Barbara Boswell is the only commentator
to take note of the relationship between her work and environmental themes.1
Further, many of her creative projects are ephemeral, taking the form of workshops
and performances: and printed poetry forms only a small part of her endeavors. In
addition, as Nicole Anae argues in this volume, there is a tendency in white-­
dominated cultural and textual studies to silence the voices of black writers—a
tendency that must be actively resisted. As a result of all these factors, Ndlovu’s
contribution to South African poetry is not valued as, I believe, it deserves. My
chapter will address this gap in critical responses to her work.
I discern a powerful connection between Ndlovu’s writing and ecofeminism,
and in what follows, I will demonstrate that this link is most clearly expressed in
the healing agenda of her work. First, though, it is necessary to examine how
ecofeminism, as a complex body of scholarly thought, conceptualizes healing.
Françoise d’Eaubonne is credited with inventing the term “ecoféminisme” out
of her realization that “women have historically been wedded to other people
and nature through a social imperative requiring caring and consideration and
that this acculturation in caretaking persists” (Gates 1998, 17). Although
170   D. Byrne
ecofeminist thinking has moved considerably beyond this early prolegomenon,
two features of d’Eaubonne’s thought are still pertinent. The first is an emphasis
on womanhood as socio-­historically constructed, rather than natural or given, in
d’Eaubonne’s recognition of “a social imperative requiring caring.” The second
is that there is an enduring “acculturation in caretaking.” Later ecofeminist
theorists, such as Susan Griffin, agree that there is a demand for women to adopt
a nurturing position towards others in preference to other subject positions, and
that this places them in a defined and confined position that is similar to the way
nonhuman nature has traditionally been perceived.
Douglas A. Vakoch (2012, 4–5) explains how later ecofeminist theorists have
built on d’Eaubonne’s initial term to expand the range of ecofeminism:

According to cultural ecofeminism, there is an innate connection between

women and nature…. But some argue that by identifying these traits as
innate, however ecologically positive they may be, the social and historical
factors that have led to women’s oppression are obscured.
Vakoch uses the epithet “rationalist” for non-­essentialist ecofeminist approaches.
In my discussion, I will demonstrate that Ndlovu reveals some aspects of cul-
tural ecofeminism in her valorization of the inherent connection between women
and nature.
Recent ecofeminist philosophy has shifted its emphasis on healing away from
imagining and representing women as healers to concern for healing the damage
that has been sustained both by women and by nonhuman nature. Greta Gaard
and Patrick D. Murphy define this concern as follows: “Ecofeminism is a prac-
tical movement for social change arising out of the struggles of women to sustain
themselves, their families, and their communities” (1998, 2). D’Eaubonne’s
interest in how women are constructed as healers, as well as Gaard and Murphy’s
perception of the need for change in the way patriarchal society relates to women
and nonhuman nature as “others,” provide important points of connection
between ecofeminist literary criticism and Ndlovu’s work. Gaard and Murphy
explain how ecofeminism intersects with literary criticism:

We can relate ecofeminist principles and interpretation to existing literary

study by building on feminist attention to the concept of the “other.” This
concept is prevalent in literary study as a result of the influence of psycho-
analytic theory and feminist critique. But the “other” must be rethought
through grounding it in physical being.
(1998, 5)
Ndlovu portrays the physical being of the “other” as wounded, yet possessing
the capacity for wholeness, and as powerfully gendered—female. These “others”
are at the center of Ndlovu’s creative projects, such as “And the Word Was
Woman” and “WEAVE: Women’s Education and Artistic Voice Expression”
(2008, 88). Women’s embodiment is registered in poems such as “A Woman’s
Path,” where the geophysical lineaments of Tradouws Pass are equated with a
woman’s body, and the rain that washes down the pass is metaphorically
 The vocation of healing   171
associated with a woman’s blood—both menstrual and in childbirth—a “growing
river of red” (2008, 13) that brings life to the land. Similarly to Izabel Brandão’s
response in this volume to Jackie Kay’s poetic evocation of Saartjie Baartman,
Ndlovu’s poem resists and subverts “the … expansion of the oppressive imposi-
tion of patriarchal and imperialist society towards nature and its dominated crea-
tures” (Brandão, this volume) in the association between women and nature.
Ndlovu’s ethic of healing does not have the same confining overtones as
d’Eaubonne’s view of women’s socially prescribed role of nurturing. A large part
of Ndlovu’s art is aimed at empowering women so that they can use art to heal
experiences of trauma within the South African socio-­political “body.” To this end,
she uses ritual, bodily movement, music, and narrative to craft a multimodal2
experience of art and language (Byrne 2016). Nature plays an important part in
these healing interventions: the poet recognizes that medical practitioners often
prescribe exposure to nature for victims of trauma and says that applied arts practi-
tioners would make the same recommendation (2016). Aspects of the nonhuman
natural world are used as the basis for what Vivian Marcow-­Speiser, in her fore-
word to Truth is Both Spirit and Flesh, calls “mythical themes” (Ndlovu 2008, 9).
The poems evoke the poet as a shaman, drawing on elemental energies (fire, water,
air, and earth) and dialectically synthesizing opposites in the creative act. Ndlovu’s
vision of the poet as a healer demonstrates a sustained association between creativ-
ity and the elements (fire, water, earth, and air). This ancient association draws on
the historical and mythological roots of human understandings of creativity.
In my view, Ndlovu draws on what Gayatri Spivak refers to as “strategic essen-
tialism” in some of her poems in order to convey the urgency of the need for indi-
vidual, social, and political healing. “Strategic essentialism” is one of Spivak’s
most celebrated scholarly interventions, and may be defined as a strategy that
embraces “the ways in which … gendered subjectivity can be mobilized as part of
a political strategy” (Morton 2007, 126). Ndlovu is a well-­known South African
performance poet, and has been commissioned to write poems for several occa-
sions in honor of dispossessed South African minorities, including Art for Human-
ity’s Women for Children Project, “a South African writer and visual artists [sic]
collaborative project centred on children’s rights” (Ndlovu 2008, 15). In addition,
she has founded a number of South African women’s writing groups, such as “And
The Word Was Woman Ensemble, a Cape Town based woman poets’ group”
(Ndlovu 2008, 23) and the “original poetry and music production Womantide”
(Ndlovu 2008, 40). As these projects indicate, there is a distinct emphasis on
womanhood and poetry in her work. Before exploring the resonances of these
poems, I will briefly explain the South African relevance of an emphasis on gender
and the nonhuman natural world.

Gender and nature in South Africa

South Africa has a vivid and painful history of the conjunction of environmental
and gender exploitation in the mining industry. The country derives most of its
wealth from mining precious and industrial minerals, especially gold. In 2013 it
172   D. Byrne
was estimated that the mining industry was worth “$2.5 trillion, with the mining
sector contributing 18% of GDP and over 50% in foreign exchange earnings.
The sector brings in an annual income exceeding R330 billion and accounts for
20% of all investment in the country” (KPMG 2013). The migrant labor system
under apartheid (1948–94) and post-­apartheid has meant that many thousands of
men left families behind them in the rural areas when they went to work on the
mines. They would visit their wives and families infrequently, with various dele-
terious consequences for family life, including alcoholism, infidelity, HIV and
other STIs, and children growing up with absent fathers. The system of migrant
labor and its unfortunate consequences are described in a number of texts, such
as Families Divided: The Impact of Migrant Labour in Lesotho (Murray 1981),
Charles van Onselen’s Randlords and Rotgut, 1886–1903: An Essay on the Role
of Alcohol in the Development of European Imperialism and Southern African
Capitalism, with Special Reference to Black Mineworkers in the Transvaal
Republic (1976), Zakes Mda’s novel The Madonna of Excelsior (2007) and
Darrell Roodt’s film Yesterday (2004). Texts such as these ensure that the history
of the South African mining industry is writ large in the South African national
psyche. It is a history of the twinned exploitation of the land, which has been
eviscerated, and the gendered exploitation of the all-­male migrant labor popula-
tion, their wives, and children.
The enormous role of the mining industry in shaping the South African col-
lective unconscious cannot be overestimated and has ensured that imperial domi-
nance of the environment has worn the face of gender and racial oppression.
Within this context, there has been no sustained opportunity to develop a coher-
ent movement for environmental change. For example, the country’s Green
Party has not managed to garner significant support; in fact, they did not even
raise the required amount to contest the 2014 national election (Jordan 2014).
The overall impact of environmental activism in South Africa is fairly slight,
with corruption and the consequences of inequality receiving the highest prior-
ities on the national political agenda.
In addition to the specific intersection of land and gender abuse in the South
African mining industry, the country does not have a history of actively promo­
ting gender equality and many women are held in low esteem as being “natur-
ally” inferior to men. The still-­patriarchal nature of many gendered interactions
in South Africa is often rationalized on the grounds that women are essentially
domestic or maternal, thus reinforcing the exact stereotypes that feminism has
worked to destabilize and subvert. These stereotypes are probably at least partly
to blame for the extraordinarily high rate of gender-­based violence in South
Africa, where, the Law Commission estimates, there are as many as 1.7 million
rapes a year, even though only approximately 54,000 victims lay charges
because of the unsympathetic treatment they often receive (Smith 2015). In addi-
tion, the national rate for young people (15–24-year-­olds) who are not in
employment, education, or training is much higher for young women (34.5
percent) than for young men (29.9 percent) (Statistics South Africa 2014). This
means that a significant proportion of South African women are not making any
 The vocation of healing   173
contribution to the economy or seeking to do so by means of education. One
means of addressing these different inequalities lies in the empowerment of
women, and in order to achieve this, poets such as Ndlovu adopt, at times, an
essentialist stance towards women.
Women in South Africa, possibly more than in other countries, are a hetero-
geneous group covering a wide range of professions, cultures, and classes, and
are further riven by racial divisions, not least the legacy of the apartheid past,
which pitted black and white members of the society against one another.
Ndlovu thematizes these divisions in her creative work, most notably in her
début collection Born in Africa But (2000). In view of these complexities,
Ndlovu has created a strategic alliance between South African women from
diverse social groups in poems such as “And the Word was Woman,” “Girl
Child,” and “Fire Tongue.” A strategic commonality among women, who are all,
though to varying degrees, positioned as inferior by patriarchal practices such as
gender violence, enables Ndlovu to write about idealized visions of womanhood
in lines such as “and the word was woman,” which subvert phallocentric associ-
ations of women with the body or emotion instead of with logos. By writing in
this way, Ndlovu attempts to administer healing to the traumatized collective
female psyche of South Africa.

But is Ndlovu an ecofeminist poet?

It is a truism that ecofeminists foreground the way both nature and women have
been seen as lesser second terms in hierarchical binaries at the core of western
thought and civilization, such as culture/nature, man/woman, and human/animal.
Further, they try to bring about social and philosophical change by interrogating
and subverting the systems of thought, discourse, and power which position
women and nature as neglected second terms in these binaries. Within these
general boundaries, there are a number of ecofeminist positions, usually with
differing levels of emphasis on the various components of an ecofeminist ana-
lysis. As many theorists have recognized, women are connected to nature in
ways that go beyond their shared propensity for nurturing. For example, they
share resistance to domination, portrayed in Ursula Le Guin’s poetry as immuta-
ble wildness3 and in Griffin’s writing through the resonant metaphor of a female
lion’s roar (1984, 105), which, in its distance from linguistic precision, articu-
lates anger, resentment, and a refusal to be analyzed by the male scientists
(mouthpieces for patriarchal thinking) which would take her apart to locate the
source of the roar.
Val Plumwood’s sensible overview, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature
(1993), offers a well-­balanced overview of “four tectonic plates of domination
theory—those concerned with the oppressions of race, class, gender, and nature”
(1993, 1) and sets out to provide “a better theory” (1993, 2) to silence accusations
that ecofeminism is theoretically weak. In Plumwood’s opening insistence on the
intersection of a plurality of three axes of domination and identity lies, in my
opinion, the most productive branch of ecofeminist thinking: one that emphasizes
174   D. Byrne
intersection and complexity rather than focusing on a single form of oppression,
and also, following Murphy, employs dialogics rather than dualism to address
difference. Murphy asserts: “A dialogic method can recognize that the most funda-
mental human relationships are not resolvable through dialectical synthesis:
humanity/nature, ignorance/knowledge, male/female, emotion/intellect, conscious/
unconscious” (1991, 148). Murphy treads a complex line between homogenizing
difference (which is the same as subsuming it into a dominant concept or
identity) and hierarchizing it. In this way, he goes on, “A dialogical orientation
reinforces the ecofeminist recognition of interdependence and the natural neces-
sity of diversity” (1991, 149). Karla Armbruster, in similar vein, proposes that
poststructuralist insights into the shifting nature of identity and domination can
be productively combined with ecofeminist insights into the interlocking nature
of these axes (1998), and it is this approach that I will adopt in exploring
Ndlovu’s poetry. Armbruster (1998, 106) mentions four criteria for ecofeminist
literary theory and criticism to keep in view when choosing texts to explore.
Two of these are particularly relevant for Ndlovu’s creative project:

– Does the text convey a sense of the human subject as socially and discur-
sively constructed, multiply organized, and constantly shifting?
…
– Does the text avoid reinscribing dualisms and hierarchical notions of
difference?

In my view, Ndlovu’s poetry exhibits both of these qualities: her vision of the
human subject is shaped by the awareness of multiple axes of organization along
race, class, and gender lines; and she actively works against dualities and hier-
archies of difference, especially in the arena of gender. In addition, she draws on
several strands of ecofeminism. First, she frequently connects women and
nature, as Boswell notes. Second, she draws on the tradition of ecofeminist
writing as resistance to male and colonial domination. Finally, while at times the
archetypal resonances she creates between women and natural elements may be
seen as essentialist, her writing conforms to Armbruster’s two criteria cited
above with regard to the constantly shifting, always-­provisional, and multiply
inflected nature of identity, nature, and forms of domination.

Strategically essentialist
The first section of Born in Africa But (Ndlovu’s first collection of poetry) is
entitled “Initiation” and is narratively linked by the story, told in italics
between the six poems, of an unnamed “riverchild.” By drawing an analogy
between a river and a woman’s life trajectory, Ndlovu draws on well-­
established feminine archetypes. The first italicized section informs the reader:
“To all these different people, this river was an immortal mother who blessed
and nourished their lives…. She, the carrier of ancestral stories, the keeper of
sacred messages, feeding the treasures of the past into the present ” (2000, 9,
 The vocation of healing   175
original emphasis). Equating the river with the maternal, as Ndlovu does when
she calls it “an immortal mother who blessed and nourished [human] lives,”
draws on traditional associations between femininity and fluidity, with the
attendant meanings of being easily influenced and even passive. It also evokes
female fecundity. Ndlovu is aware of all these meanings, and her maternal
river does more than fertilize crops: by transporting stories, she fertilizes the
imagination. As the italicized sections unfold, we learn that the mother-­river
has a human “riverchild” who is receptive to the stories carried by the river.
This child is a girl, as though to reinforce the capacity of the archetypal fem-
inine imagination to embrace literary creativity. Her bond with the river—and,
by extension, with the rest of the natural world—is intuitive and immediate.
However, as she grows, so do “her responsibilities.” Ndlovu does not need to
expand on these as “this business of womanhood is a heavy burden”
(Dangarembga 2004, 16), encompassing responsibility for the well-­being of
her family, and these duties take her away from the river. When she returns to
the river-­mother, she is reminded that “she was a part of the river and the
river would always be a part of her” (2000, 15), a realization that enables her
to “nourish” her children “with these stories.” This deceptively simple-­looking
parable encodes powerful ecofeminist insights. The insistence that the river­
child and the mother-­river interpenetrate one another reminds the reader of the
intimate connection between humanity and nonhuman nature, while the river-
child’s nourishing her children on stories accentuates the role of imaginative
narrative in producing well-­rounded offspring. A critic might consider that
this parable draws on essentialist or stereotypical associations between
women, fluidity, and maternity, to which one might reply that “Riverchild” is
a deliberately and deceptively simple parable, designed to offset the complex
poems that it weaves together and also to make far-­reaching points about the
life-­giving properties of emplaced narrative.
Ndlovu has written several other poems that draw on mythical, apparently
essentialist visions of nature and/or womanhood in the service of healing. In
“And the Word was Woman,” Ndlovu writes (2008, 23):

Everywhere
And in everything — In the universe outside and within
I hear the word echoing
In the temple of my body
At the centre of the circle
At the foundation of the world
At the essence of the melody
Out of the sacred silence
I hear the word echoing
And the word will be
And the word is
And the word always was
Woman
176   D. Byrne
These lines draw upon an archetypal vision of language as feminine, which has
been articulated by Hélène Cixous in “Sorties” (1994, 42):

… today, writing is woman’s. That is not a provocation, it means that

woman admits that there is an other…. Writing is the passageway, the
entrance, the exit, the dwelling place of the other in me—the other that I am
and am not, that I don’t know how to be, but that I feel passing, that makes
me live—that tears me apart, disturbs me, changes me, who? … which is
indeed what gives me the desire to know and from which all life soars.

Both Cixous and Ndlovu use the strategy of reversal powerfully to subvert estab-
lished dichotomies, such as the gendered dichotomy between language and
feeling, which has traditionally opposed “masculine” language and “feminine”
emotion. In this poem Ndlovu claims women’s right to speak, not from an over-
simplified standpoint of oppression, but against a centuries-­old convention that
has silenced them and still, within many South African cultural traditions, seeks
to do so. The poet’s vision encompasses “the universe,” suggesting that it
embraces the whole of non-­human nature, but this is not located externally to the
speaking subject: rather, it is to be found both outside and within the poet-­
speaker, who is also located in a foundational, central space “At the centre of the
circle/At the foundation of the world.” Through a subtle invocation of the
cadence of Genesis 1 (“And God said …”), Ndlovu here challenges the pur-
ported masculinity, not only of creativity, but of divinity as well, suggesting that
it should be gendered as feminine.
In another poem, “A Woman’s Path,” Ndlovu writes about “Tradouws Pass,”
which she glosses as follows:

Although the pass was renamed to Southey Pass (after a former Colonial
Secretary), the indigenous Khoi San people kept referring to it as Tradouws
Pass (from taras, a woman and daos, a poort) and that is the name by which
it is known today.
(2008, 13, original emphasis)

Here Ndlovu makes a firm but subtle point about the inappropriateness of colo-
nial names for South African natural phenomena, and identifies the spirit of
emplacement in the pass as feminine, having previously called it “majestic”
(2008, 13). The poem begins with the mythical figure of an archetypal woman,
associated with darkness and the moon, that is, with yin qualities that are the
opposite of light and rationality:

shards of light
penetrate her shroud
solitary silhouette
standing on a dark mound
waiting for her moon
 The vocation of healing   177
In this ambiguous, shadowy atmosphere, the poem follows the woman’s path
over the pass, accompanied by rain. The poem refers to the rain as “cleansing”
and equates it with blood (“the growing river of red”), which refers both to
women’s propensity to bleed and to the violence that has characterized South
African history. The poem ends:

she follows her heart-­breath-beat

and feet
they know the way
they will not stop
not until the dark descends again
when time will play her trick
of dejavu
(2008, 13)

The poem combines popular notions of African women as rain-­makers with a pro-
found sense of emplacement, which Casey (1997, 242) defines as follows: “Just as
a place is animated by the living bodies that are in it, a lived place animates these
same bodies as they become implaced there.” Casey’s observation, like Ndlovu’s
poem, emphasizes the mutual influence of place and people. In Ndlovu’s case,
though, an added layer of meaning is added by representing the spirit of the pass as
a woman, thus gendering the landscape as well as the figure of its ultimate healer.
The essentializing tendency of “And the Word was Woman” is also evident
in “Girl Child,” which Ndlovu wrote for Art for Humanity’s Women for Chil-
dren Project. The poem is a paean to an essentialized girl child, whom Ndlovu
describes, drawing on nature, as a “wild virgin flower” and enjoins to:

Trust that as you shed skin

Lose parts of yourself to threatening winds
These seasons of sorrow will change
You were destined to be here
In this moment
In this place
In this body
In this time
You are the fountain source
The life force
Of all that is woman
Shining in her fullness
With her innate resilience
Bearing miraculous fruit
(2008, 15)

Several significant points emerge from a close reading of this poem. First,
Ndlovu’s description of the girl child as a “wild virgin flower” is not necessarily
178   D. Byrne
essentialist, but mobilizes wildness and resistance as part of girl children’s being.
This is salutary in South Africa, where child marriage is all too common
(UNICEF reports that in 2015, 6 percent of girls were married by the age of 18
(Girls Not Brides 2015)). In this context, and bearing in mind the alarming popu-
lation explosion in Africa, a woman’s virginity takes on added significance.
Ndlovu undoubtedly has this in mind when she writes that a girl child in Africa
“more than her brother/Suffers the scorching of a dominant Sun” in a context
“Where innocence and youth/Is harvested with brutality” (2008, 14). These
images conjoin Africa’s famously sunny climate with gendered images of male
domination in a way that simplistically depicts masculinity as harsh or brutal,
but may be justified in the climate of rampant gender-­based violence. Later in
the poem Ndlovu encourages the girl child to “Open your petals with courage/
Under Moon’s glow,” evoking conventional, maybe stereotypical associations of
the moon with femininity. While these lines evoke a conventional, gendered
opposition between Sun and Moon, Ndlovu actually undoes the hierarchy that
these images conventionally encode. These associations may be read as encour-
aging girls and women to develop their talents and natures in secret, away from
public scrutiny, in a way that may work against the public agenda of women’s
liberation, especially from abuses such as child marriage. Significantly, Ndlovu
does not racialize the girl child to whom she addresses the poem (or any other
person in her writing). This strategy enables her to participate in what Anae (this
volume, p. 85) calls “re-­think[ing] the means by which race politics defines the
level to which living human beings not only afford one another moral considera-
tion but see and feel their natural world and the nonhuman beings within as col-
lectively significant.” Finally, this poem, along with “A Woman’s Path,”
inscribes women as part of what Julia Tofantšuk identifies as Karen Warren’s
ecofeminist vision of “ecosystem as a process that also includes the human com-
ponent” (this volume, p. 70), where humans are integral parts of the natural
world, instead of separated from it. Ndlovu, in the same inclusive manner as
Warren, sees women as crucial parts of the solution to ecological and social
alienation.
Another poem where Ndlovu demonstrates her solidarity with women who
are in abusive relationships is entitled “Next Door.” The evocative title draws on
what Njabulo Ndebele refers to as “Rediscovery of the Ordinary” (1994), in his
resonant focus on oppression as a quality of ordinary South African life. The
phrase “next door” implies that emotional abuse in intimate relationships takes
place daily, in dwellings close to ordinary people. The poem’s 24 lines are
divided into couplets, each describing “he” and “she” in the relationship. The
first couplet reads: “He enters/She falls” and the poem delineates, through a
series of alarming verbs, the increasing levels of abuse meted out by the man to
the woman until the final chilling “She dies/He lives” (Ndlovu 2000, 42). The
fact of having “he” begin and end the poem typographically suggests that the
man is the driving force in the relationship, encircling the woman until she can
no longer escape, and that he has emotionally drained her of life in order to
sustain his own life.
 The vocation of healing   179
Elements from the natural world abound in other poems by Ndlovu as well.
Just as “A Woman’s Path” depicts the spirit of Tradouws Pass as an elemental
woman who brings rain and healing to the land, “Fire Tongue” depicts fire, a
symbol of destruction and recreation, as appropriate for a woman poet in the
following lines:

Set alight
Burnt at the stake
Resting on a floating pyre
Borne of love, passion desire
Now turning to the ash
Of her beloved
(2008, 71)

The poem plays with diverse meanings of “tongue” (a language and the shape of
a flame) as well as the various symbolic meanings of fire. The association
between women and fire recalls the pyre of sati or widow-­sacrifice (Spivak 2010,
2,201) and is combined with the image of fire as an alchemical force which may
turn dross into gold, and in the case of the woman poet, may enable her to be
“Truth teller/Soothsayer/Mystic/Psychic/Visionary” (Ndlovu 2008, 70). There is
also the connotation that the woman poet may, by acting as a soothsayer, bring
about the salutary destruction of the social order in which she lives, in order to
bring about a new and more egalitarian one. In this poem, Ndlovu does not
specify what kind of social change she would like to see: rather, she takes it for
granted that human society needs to change and that the woman poet’s “fire
tongue” can describe, and in so doing help to bring about, such a change.

Specificities of oppression
In “Born in Africa But” (the titular poem of Ndlovu’s first collection), she explores
a specific form of oppression associated with “coloured”4 South African identity.
This poem meets Armbruster’s requirement that a text for ecofeminist literary criti-
cism should “convey a sense of the human subject as socially and discursively con-
structed, multiply organized, and constantly shifting” (1998, 106). It also
demonstrates the discursive and social interconnections between different discur-
sive regimes, challenging the colonial hierarchy between cultures.
In an interview with Sam Umukoro, Ndlovu speaks disparagingly of “the so-­
called coloured identity that I was dumped with and adopted” (2015). Ndlovu is
not alone in her ambivalence towards “coloured” identity: fellow writer Zoë
Wicomb’s essay “Shame and Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South
Africa” (1998) also associates “mixed race” with shame and inferiority, not as
innate features, but as important aspects of the social construction of “coloured”
existence. Mixed racial ancestry makes Ndlovu, like many South Africans in the
post-­apartheid era, a liminal person, with attributes of both “black” and “white”
identity, but finally, belonging to neither racial group. The poem subverts the
180   D. Byrne
easy, taken-­for-granted association between Africans and the continent in which
they live by reflecting on the effect of colonial ideology on Ndlovu’s experience
of land. She exposes these complexities through a delicate balance between “a
designated cultivated patch” and “the indigenous tree” (2000, 11). Her liminal
and provisional identity has arisen as a result of the polarity of the “cultivated
patch,” which harks back to Africa’s colonization, and “the indigenous tree.”
Between these two polarities, she prefers “the indigenous tree” of Africa, which
recalls the mythological tree of life and can encompass diverse branches and
roots. The poem ends as Ndlovu designs a new African identity for herself. In
recognition of the provisionality of all boundaries, this identity is not confined to
the African continent, but stretches “before and beyond” so that she can encom-
pass an entire cosmos as she “unfold[s] the sacred map” and proclaims “a uni-
verse awakens in me” (2000, 11). The semantic field of “patch,” “tree,” and
“universe” alert the reader to the importance of environmental and contextual
considerations, but also illuminate a neo-­Romantic privileging of the interior
world over the exterior, consonant with Ndlovu’s project of healing individuals
and communities through applied art. The poem ends on a note of celebration of
Ndlovu’s poetic capacity for resilience and for transcending the specificities of
her own oppression as “coloured.”
Ndlovu also portrays the shifting nature of the human subject in her tribute5
poem “Lydia in the Wind.” Written as a tribute to Lydia “Ou Tamaletjie”
Williams, who was born a slave in the nineteenth century, the poem links
Lydia’s spirit to the wind, which is archetypally associated with Cape Town in
the form of the relentless, unforgiving South-­easter. For Ndlovu,

this wind is a wounded witness

she will not be still
not until we are listening
are we listening
will we recognise her
circling the crevice between two worlds
our reality and hers
howling around this empty plot
this hole in our history
…
this wind is a haunted woman
she is wild with rememberings
(Ndlovu 2008, 153)

In this complex poem, Ndlovu endows a natural element—the wind—with

gender and with the human power of speech. The wind is portrayed as the
spirit of Lydia, a woman, who was probably treated worse than her male coun-
terparts and was susceptible to rape and gender-­based violence from her
master. It is also significant that the poem bestows the power and responsib-
ility of healing on a historical woman whose task is to find relief “when all our
 The vocation of healing   181
ghosts are put to rest/when their stories are re-­collected.” The wind/Lydia’s
nature as a “wounded witness” refers to the testimony of trauma suffered by
South African slaves (brought, predominantly from Malaysia and other
African countries, to work as manual laborers in the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries). The wind is a shaman, crossing boundaries between the
human and the nonhuman, as well as “our reality and hers” (life and death; the
present and the past; democracy and enslavement). Its desire, and Lydia’s, is
to tell the story of slavery, bringing past injustice to “the light of conscious-
ness.” We, who must perforce listen to the narrative of the relentless howling
wind, are the amnesiac post-­apartheid South African nation, who have wilfully
forgotten the mistreatment of others that laid the foundation of our past. The
poem is situated in the present, but looks back to the past, when women like
Lydia were wounded by systemic injustice. Only when the full weight of
trauma occasioned by slavery has been acknowledged can “the path/of
recovery” be found. Only then, Ndlovu suggests, can we fully understand “you
am I/through you am I” (2008, 153). These closing lines evoke the slogan of
Ubuntu: “a person is a person through others,” but also insist on connection
between people who were forcefully separated by apartheid, and now need to
recognize “you am I” in a shared past, present, and future. “Lydia in the
Wind” transcends binary oppositions and hierarchical dualisms, taking the
polarity between the self and the non-­self (“I” and “you”) as prototypical of
the racial, gender, class, and ethnic divisions that remain entrenched in South
Africa more than 20 years after democracy. By attending to women and to
nonhuman natural elements, Ndlovu implies, South Africa may lay its ghosts
to rest and achieve socio-­spiritual healing.

Conclusion
In my view, Ndlovu’s poetry articulates a unique and steadfast project of resolv-
ing conflicts and transcending power hierarchies between mind and body, nature
and culture, men and women, colonizer and colonized. In this way her writing is
strikingly different from the work of other South African writers, such as Zakes
Mda and J.M. Coetzee, whose attention is focused more on the damaging ves-
tiges of colonialism than on healing these (as discussed by Laura Wright, 2010).
Ndlovu harnesses two strategies in the service of her vision of healing through
poetry. The first is a strategic deployment of essentialism. Growing from a belief
that the maladies that plague South African society are ancient and archetypal,
Ndlovu draws on images of the poet as an alchemical healer who can summon
mythical resources. Some of these resources include the mythical associations
between women and creativity, women and nurturing, and women as bearers of
memory. Although these connotations may appear essentialist, I believe Ndlovu
uses them to provide women, and particularly black women, with a voice in a
society which has historically denied it to them. Ndlovu’s second poetic strategy
is to insist on corporeality and connection, as she does in the concrete poem
“Spinal Secrets” (2008, 37–39), where the spine is physically evoked as the
182   D. Byrne
poem winds down the page, uniting the imaginative and the embodied archives.
“Spinal Secrets,” like many of Ndlovu’s poems, ends by evoking wholeness:

for
every
life
a
single
storyline
a
yearning
for
home
certainly
mine
(Ndlovu 2008, 39)

The “home” Ndlovu evokes here is neither material nor geophysical, but a spir-
itual condition of wholeness, in which the body, the other, and historical context
are all given a place as necessary parts of the individual’s, and society’s, well-­
being. In poems such as these, the political interests of feminism, Ndlovu’s
vision of the healing power of creativity, and her environmental themes come
together to create a significant corpus of ecofeminist poetry.

Notes
1 Like my chapter, Boswell’s (2011) article also focuses on ecofeminism. Boswell,
however, links Ndlovu’s poetry to “African ecofeminism,” arguing that there is a spe-
cific brand of ecofeminism that has been promulgated in Africa. For my purposes,
African ecofeminism is too narrow, and I prefer to focus on global ecofeminism, spe-
cifically its North American manifestations, in this chapter.
2 My use of the term “multimodal” draws on Brian Street’s (2012) understanding of the
connection between literacy and multimodality.
3 See, for example, Earthsea Revisioned (Le Guin 1993, 22) and the poem “Read at the
Award Dinner,” which exhorts the reader to avoid recognizing women artists because
of their familiarity with dangerous wild animals (Le Guin 1999, 11).
4 “Coloured” describes the phenomenon of mixed racial ancestry. It was associated,
under apartheid, with miscegenation and thus carried a heavy weight of opprobrium.
5 The third section of Ndlovu’s second collection of poetry, Truth is Both Spirit and
Flesh, comprises “Tributes” to particular South African individuals who have
inspired her.

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Boswell, Barbara. 2011. “Re-­Memory and an African Ecofeminist Poetic of Healing in
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13 Grace Nichols and Jackie Kay’s
corporeal Black Venus
Feminist ecocritical realignments
Izabel F.O. Brandão

“the body has its own rhythm … in correspondence with the outer universe.”
(D.H. Lawrence)1

The early 1990s introduced me to the poetry of the Caribbean Grace Nichols,
and since then part of my research time has been dedicated to delve into her
poetics of the body, a theme which is one of the cores of her work.2 Recently I
came across a poem by the Scottish Jackie Kay, whose focus is also on the body,
and curiously both poets addressed the same woman from a different but dialogi-
cal way. The poems are “Thoughts Drifting through the Fat Black Woman’s
Head While Having a Bubble Bath” (Nichols 1984), and “The Hottentot Venus”
(Kay 1991, in Kay 2007). The woman is the South African Sartjie Baartman
(1789?–1815). Her voice is heard (re)telling her story, making herself visible for
the contemporary reader in these poems.
The poets’ views of the body of this black woman are alternative yet com-
plementary, especially when read from a feminist ecocritical perspective. Here
the body can be addressed as a “cultural text” (Bordo 1993, 288), a part of nature
that discloses not only society’s contradictions, but also allows the poets to
reweave this connection through images that although portraying a long story of
oppression, show ways of escaping from it.3
Thus considering that women’s bodies belong to a “relational ontology”
(Gaard, Estok, and Oppermann 2013, 8), the poems show a discursive percep-
tion of the resisting body of the represented woman. My reading of them is inter-
disciplinary and follows both feminism and feminist ecocriticism. In this sense,
women’s bodies can be viewed as “complex sites of ideological, ecological, and
discursive power relations whereby we are encouraged to rethinking the materi-
ality of bodies interconnected with their discursive formations” (Oppermann
2013, 77).
Sartjie Baartman, the “Black Venus,” the “Hottentot Venus,” the Steato-
pygous woman, has become a name to remember for different reasons. Born in
South Africa, among the Khoisan people, she was taken to London in 1810, and
had her life turned upside down because of her unusual body, considering the
European standard. Locked in a cage she was exhibited in freak shows to a
186   I.F.O. Brandão
public who behaved outrageously towards her, humiliating and downgrading
her. Her body became what can be defined as a “commodity” for those who
exploited her. Taken to France, she became an object of scientific study, and
when she died at the age of 26, her body was modelled in plaster, and had parts
of it preserved for the sake of research. Sartjie Baartman’s body was only
returned to her African origins in 2002, after Nelson Mandela negotiated with
François Mitterrand the terms for the return to her country.4
Books have been written about Sartjie Baartman’s life; films have been made;
poems have been written about this unique woman—all of them to pay some
sort of homage to her. The poems about this woman chosen for analysis in this
chapter aim to discuss the different ways the technology of gender5 works as far
as the body is concerned. Jackie Kay’s “Hottentot Venus” was published later
than Nichols’ “Thoughts Drifting through the Fat Black Woman’s Head while
Having a Bubble Bath,” but it will be examined first because of the relevance of
its graphic dimension which plays with Baartman’s body image almost as though
it were a photograph. The second poem will be read through its ironic discourse
whose symbolic dimension discloses the damage women’s bodies may be
subject to.
Kay’s poem was written in 1991, and is in the collection Darling, published
in 2007. Here the Scottish poet gives voice to Sartjie Baartman so that she can
tell her own story, moving, as it were, from her death towards her past life while
still in South Africa, reporting the events which culminated in her public exhibi-
tion in London. Underlying the humiliating human display of the South African
woman is a discussion that clearly situates the notion of Western—global—
dualisms, along the same lines as put by Monique LaRocque (2012, 94), who,
resorting to Val Plumwood’s theorizing, points to this “long-­standing tradition”
as associated with the oppression of nature, as well as of women, and “character-
ized by a logical structure of otherness and negation, where the undesirable other
is made inferior and is subjugated” (original italics). Such is also the case of
Baartman, who is forced out of her country, but whose part in her own oppres-
sion has to be examined critically. Such an analysis is made possible by the
poem’s language, for it helps to understand the idea of collaboration6 between
oppressor and oppressed, in that Kay’s Baartman accepts the terms of her
coming to England, as she mimics the colonizer’s language before coming to
Europe:

They asked me in my own bush tongue

If I wanted to be exhibited in this fashion
I said the English words I’d heard them say often.
Money. Freedom.…

And yet, such an acceptance is not naïve: “only an overly simplistic view of sub-
jectivity can claim that any human being is completely innocent of complicity in
dominant ideologies” (Armbruster 1998, 102). So, Kay might be calling atten-
tion to a re-­examination of Baartman as a victim, along the lines of what Donna
 Nichols and Kay’s corporeal Black Venus   187
Haraway says as regards such power ideologies, which means that “the position-
ing of the subjugated are not exempt from critical re-­examination” (quoted in
Armbruster 1998, 102). Hence the reader has to hear Baartman’s voice with an
edge of irony, to be understood as a counterdiscourse, for the oppressor only
knows how to deal with others by means of buying their conscience and appeal-
ing to such a collaboration. Furthermore, here it is also implicit what Theresa
Burriss (this volume), in her chapter on novelist Ann Pancake, defines as
“humanity,” following Val Plumwood: such a definition depends “on the pres-
ence of the ‘not-­human’: the uncivilized, the animal and the animalistic. Euro-
pean justification for invasion and colonization proceeded from this basis,
understanding non-­European lands and the people as ‘spaces’ ‘unused, under-
used or empty’ ” (Burriss this volume, p. 106). The Hottentot Venus, as one
might guess, lacks the very condition of the human that would place her South
African “humanity” along the European colonizer who “bought” her. Kay refers
in the poem to her “Boer keeper,” a clear association of the woman and the
caged animal she is to become in London. Irony is also present in her being
called after a goddess’s name, long known for her sexual license.
But more than that, the irony here has to be seen within the context of opposi-
tionality referred to by Hutcheon (2005), because the reader already knows for a
fact that, in Baartman’s future, there is no freedom. Instead all she has is the
maintenance of her body within the constraints of a society that will never accept
her differentness. Thus she ironically accepts to exchange her “freedom” by a
cage where her “Boer keeper” “could still walk [her], dance/hold his stick to
[her].” Her body becomes a “site of abuse” (Romero 2013, 166) in which woman
and animal are likened and to be seen as interchangeable: a spectacle in which
human and animal are downgraded and humiliated by the “civilized” European
public. Such a derogatory association informs the oppressive charge channeled
for both disempowered beings.7 Hence, the irrationality associated with animals
finds here an expansion of the oppressive imposition of patriarchal and imperial-
ist society towards nature and its dominated creatures. One cannot forget the
notion of women’s double colonization here either.
The body of Kay’s “Hottentot Venus” is also within the notion of the female
grotesque, which Russo (1986) associates with three forms in whose contexts
women are involved: pregnant, ageing, and irregular. The latter form defines the
Scottish poet’s woman, because of the concept of normality which is current in
Western—global—society.8 Butler’s definition of norm is also helpful here, for
it is associated with the social practices that normalize life: they are usually
implicit, and unreadable, but whose effects are clear and dramatic, not to say
destructive, especially for those who are outside the norm (Butler 2004). This is
a paradox, for it is the norm that defines what is excluded. In this sense Baart-
man’s is a paradoxical (and grotesque) body too.
The poem unveils such ideas as the poet gradually dresses the African woman
with different bodies: first, in a plaster one molded from a corpse: it reveals her
irregular “genitals and anus,” her “anomalous buttocks”; her life sucked out “till
the last sigh left my body,” a white body as one might suppose, as shown in the
188   I.F.O. Brandão
first line. The second appears in the closing stanza which shows Baartman
wearing another body, as she is forced to dress a “thin skin coloured dress,”
which somehow approximates her to the identity of the English woman, the
white lady who “poked her parasol into my privates,” and whose cold look
expressed through her “stone eyes,” is denied by her “English squeal of surprise
at my size.”
This “new” body can be read along the lines of Bakhtin’s transgressive body
whose limits are transposed so that a new one can begin. It belongs to a techno-
logy of gender produced for the purpose of survival inside the oppressive context
Baartman had to get along with. This body is also present in Nichols’ poem, as
we shall see.
Baartman’s new body allows her to wear an identity mask which destitutes
her of her African origins, and makes her lose her sense of belonging: her own
country, “a dream now. Or maybe it did not exist.” The last drop is the loss of
her own name: from Sartjie Baartman she becomes “Sarah Bateman”: “Like an
English woman. A great actress,” as attests the last line of the poem. So, no
country, no language, no body (nobody)—indeed “a cartoon,” an actress: “A
great actress.”
Her new body—grotesque and doublecoated—reveals the extent of the pain
caused to this woman, and yet the poem also shows a feminist (re)construction
of Saartjie Baartman as she literally embodies the persona (mask) the oppressor
wants her to have for the sake of survival. This can be read as an act of resist-
ance. Kay’s representation of Baartman indicates that she is to be seen inside
and outside gender, as argued by de Lauretis (1987), a woman whose black body
is framed as “ugly, deformed, a cartoon,” by a society she does not belong to,
and whose definition of human does not include blacks. Unless this person fits
(or is framed) in a new identity, such as Baartman, who becomes Sarah Bateman,
wearing her English skin (dress) and acting within this context. Her transforma-
tion, in this case, is to be read as an act of survival. The English mask fits her
perfectly.
Grace Nichols’ poem, “Thoughts Drifting through the Fat Black Woman’s
Head While Having a Bubble Bath,” on the other hand, deals with Baartman’s
body in a totally different way. Nichols’ Baartman is also given voice, but the
lines of the poem reveal no name, which may be an indication that some kind of
universality can be associated with this woman. The poem is part of the collec-
tion The Fat Black Woman’s Poems, published in 1984, a book that deals with
“a longer history of representing the black female body” (Lawson Welsh 2007,
40). The long title indicates an unusual use of language in that it works as a
headline, somehow summarizing the content of the poem, as in a newspaper’s
lead,9 telling (more or less) what to expect from what is to come. The rest of the
poem is quite “slim”: the verses are short, words are repeated as to demarcate
the content, as well as Nichols’ ironical turns.
The main image of this poem is conveyed by the use of the word “Steato-
pygous,” which starts and ends the poem, in two stanzas that are exactly
the same:
 Nichols and Kay’s corporeal Black Venus   189
Steatopygous sky
Steatopygous sea
Steatopygous waves
Steatopygous me

This word means the “excessive development of fat on the buttocks, especially
of Hottentot [or the Khoi-­Khoi people of southern Africa] woman.”10 Nichols’
use of “steatopygous” is a rehabilitating appropriation of the word. Hence, the
addressing of the woman’s steatopygous body,

although it carries the “pain of history” it is also used as a positive term of

self-­identification, as the fat black woman realizes in her own body a history
of representing the black female form. This is what Michel Foucault would
term an example of reverse-­discourse.
(Lawson Welsh 2007, 41)

However, “rehabilitating” the word is clearly not enough: its repetitive use (eight
times in two stanzas of four lines) indicates that this woman is not just fat; her
fatness is part of the process of engendering a “counter-­technology” discourse in
order to defend a political position by means of the use of irony. In this sense the
poem can be associated with the “emancipatory strategies” that feminist ecocriti-
cism readings make possible, as Murphy (1991) argues. It is definitely one of
those “hopeful ecological narratives” (Vakoch 2012, 3) for what its subversive
language does to a once sad and distorted story, such as Baartman’s.
Nichols’ ironic edge (following Hutcheon 2005) is crucial for the under-
standing of her questioning history and its oppressive discourse towards women
who, like Sartjie Baartman, have been dislocated from their countries (be it in
South Africa or anywhere else in the world) in order to live in places where their
identity meant nothing for the oppressor. In Nichols’ poem nothing is said liter-
ally, but the playful lines disclose the historical/anthropological/religious distor-
tion which was behind the show:

O how I long to place my foot

on the head of anthropology
to swig my breasts
in the face of history
to scrub my back
with the dogma of theology

The penultimate verse is also ironical with the cosmetic industry (more techno-
logy to control and oppress women)—since “her” soap (she is fat, she is black)
does not sell, she would want to learn how to be commercially viable: “O how I
long…/to put my soap/in the slimming industry’s/ profitsome spoke.” And she
does all this having a bubble bath…
Nichols’ sense of irony—her liberatory strategy—is disclosed as we, as
readers, see her fat black woman place herself in the seat of “normality,”
190   I.F.O. Brandão
rebelling against the social/cultural discourses of power that impose body stand-
ards upon women. De Lauretis (1987, 18) argues that such discourses “produce,
promote, and ‘implant’ representations of gender.” The fat black woman’s body
is alien to the social and cultural context which does not admit models/patterns
extraneous to its Western (white and slim)—global—bodily pattern, as also
illustrated by Kay’s poem. Hutcheon’s view of irony points to the idea of inten-
tion behind the ironist’s language. Considering Nichols’ poem, the persona/
ironist’s “intention” seems to appear in the unveiling of a critical positioning
which is opposed to the standardization of bodies. My own perception as a
reader is that “way beyond” Nichols’ criticism expressed in the poem’s language,
there is a claim to the existence of other cultures whose body standards are
different from the Western—global—standard (Brandão 2005, 115). This per-
ception was confirmed in an interview with the poet (Brandão 2011).11 In
Nichols’ own words:

For me [the fat black woman] doesn’t represent just fatness per se but rather
a largeness of spirit, a generosity of being and a sense of unbounded
freedom. I doubt that I would have written The Fat Black Woman’s Poems
had I remained in Guyana, for example, because that obsession with body-­
size doesn’t really exist. So she does come out of a particular cultural matrix
which sees in a negative light the very two characteristics that she embodies.
Namely fatness and blackness.
(My italics)

This claim also shows that despite the pattern—fat or slim—of different cultures,
there is a political protest engendered in the body which works as a sharp criti-
cism of society. Nichols’ discursive protest—her resistance, that is—occurs in
other poems as well. The subversive use of humor is what makes her poetry
sharply located within the idea of gender resistance, as a counter-­discourse,
because language is used subversively, both in the sense argued by Butler
(1990)—the same language that oppresses can free the subject—as well as in the
sense posed by Hutcheon (2005), since the discourse of irony is absorptive. This
can be seen in Nichols’ poems related to the black fat woman, as she appropri-
ates from the dominant discourse in order to express her humorous criticism.12
This fat black woman having a bubble bath is a “trickster figure watching from
the sidelines, as different values refuse and deny her” (Wisker 2000, 293). Her
irony works as resistance, for it subverts oppressive ideologies in order to be
affirmative in relation to life.13 It is as Butler points out in Gender Trouble: “The
power of language to work on bodies is both the cause of sexual oppression and
the way beyond that oppression” (1990, 158). The poet’s coming to the rescue of
the “Steatopygous woman” by means of irony calls attention to resistance in the
sense that within the patriarchal/Western—global—arena acts such as the fat
black woman who has a bubble bath serves to combat the prohibition of the
insertion of women who do not conform to the standard, as already pointed out.
The ironical body of a fat and black woman such as this is like a thorn in the
 Nichols and Kay’s corporeal Black Venus   191
flesh, a ghost reminding us as readers (at least) that the world is not so round as
it looks. The patriarchal world is at permanent war with those who do not fit in.
Considering Mary Russo’s claim for a reappropriation (realignment) of
Bakhtin’s grotesque realism as regards the female grotesque body, here in
association with Nichols’ fat and black woman, it is possible to say that this
body is not an “exaggeration.” The Hottentot woman, with her excessive but-
tocks (considering the European pattern) simply addresses a real body, a body
that does not conform to the aesthetic normative pattern of Western—global—
society. This bodily metaphor exposes an essentially political use of irony, in
the terms already presented. This kind of poem belongs to Nichols’ poetics of
resistance expressed in the body, against its confinement within the “dictator-
ship of the silhouette” (Zozzoli 2005) or the pattern “fashion-­beauty” (Bordo
1989, 1993, Sawicki 1994), that destitutes the “excessive” bodies, such as the
fat black woman’s with its extra elements, such as pubic and armpit hair
(Brandão 2005).
This woman’s body is subversive and grotesque, and represents a “second
revelation of the world” (Bakhtin 1984, 84) that builds another body (like Kay’s
Hottentot Venus), for “(when a body transgresses its limits…[,] a new one
begins)” (Bakhtin 1984, 320). This character who is “larger than life,” and “chal-
lenges all pre-­conceived notions of what a heroine should be” (Funck 1996, 3),14
lives in a world that is not located in the medieval era any more, and yet such a
world is as perverse as the Rabelaisian, in its oppression towards ex-­centric
beings who inhabit the social margins of our cities. According to de Lauretis, the
margins also produce another technology of gender, and its effects “are rather at
the ‘local’ level of resistances, in subjectivity and self-­representation” (1987,
18–19). Nichols produces a “counter-­technology” of gender as regards her
women, for they escape the pattern of Western—global—(white and slim)
Woman, and introduce another concept of woman who is outside the scope of
regularity (Butler 2004). Her woman is black, fat, and does not care.
For the sake of conclusion I would like to stress the dialogical context of Kay
and Nichols’ poems. By resorting to Saartjie Baartman as a theme, both poets
made the story of this nineteenth-­century woman visible, updating it, and at the
same time making it possible a rehabilitating reading of an experience which has
always been told before through a patriarchal viewpoint. The poems—as well as
the other artistic manifestations of Saartjie Baartman’s life, with her excessive
and ex-­centric body—show, in the language of today, simply a woman who
belonged to another cultural standard, different from the “global” norm and
oppression. Hence I consider that being the body a place where one is; a place
that is a “socially constructed location, an act of place-­and-identity co-­creation
that takes time, energy, and commitment” (Gaard 2010, 16), it can certainly be
associated with Gaard’s argument of the body as a “moral agent” (2010, 14). If
we understand the body as a kind of “home,” such a place belongs to the sub-
jective discursivity of the poetic Saartjie Baartman created by both Kay and
Nichols (Brandão 2015). Finally these poets rehabilitate the South African
woman, and this is certainly a political act that we have to acknowledge and pay
192   I.F.O. Brandão
our due respects. The Black Venus, the Hottentot Venus, has, as Ophelia
(Kordecki this volume, p. 22) been both an “icon” and a “victim”; yet she is now
out of the oppressive frame she was put to by imperialism. Both poems follow
Huggan and Tiffin’s perspective which is brought by Theresa Burriss (this
volume, p. 106): they “right” the “wrongs that have been done” in Baartman’s
past. Nichols and Kay’s poems are liberatory and emancipatory, and they help us
view the world more positively without losing our critical sense.

Notes
1 See Lawrence’s Kangaroo (2002, 261).
2 See Brandão (1998, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2009, 2011).
3 In a forthcoming chapter of a study about Brazilian women poets, I return to this same
argument because of its relevance to the analysis of the body in contemporary poems.
See Lockwood’s Afterword in Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and
Literature (Vakoch. 2012) for an explanation of the difference between “domination”
and “oppression.” The poems deal with both perceptions.
4 See Ferreira and Hamblin (2010) for a historical reading about the ambiguity in the
face of alterity, and how a perverse approximation of the notion of monster with
blacks and with women was made possible. This has generated scientific conceptual
distortions about the body considered as foreign to the European culture. Such a body
was supposedly “closer” to nature, therefore considered as “natural.” The argument
fosters the idea of the patriarchal social construction that uses science for controlling
border subjects such as women, black people, and monsters, transforming them into
commodities. Paradoxically, there is an exclusion through their inclusion, for “in their
ugliness, disproportion and disorder, the monster is the other of the civilized [subject]”
(815, my translation). Hence, in order to exclude the Hottentot Venus, she is
“included” as a commodity to be exhibited, and thus to legitimate the vision of the
European as “normal,” “beautiful,” etc. Saartjie Baartman is judged both from
the moral point of view as well as biological, political, and historical, according to the
authors.
5 My understanding of the technology of gender here follows Teresa de Lauretis’s theo-
rizing, present in her The Technology of Gender (1987), in that it encompasses not
only the ideology(ies) that produce(s) docile bodies (after Foucault), but also the insti-
tutions and practices that engender the subject, be it male or female. See de Lauretis
(1987, 2007); see Foucault (1978, 1979, 1983, 2002). See also my “The Body as a
Poetics of Resistance” (2005, 2006a).
6 The question of collaboration between oppressor and oppressed is also present in
some of Nichols’ poems in that the use of irony leads to a criticism of women who
can also be deemed as responsible for the materialization of such an oppressive ideo-
logy, when they (we) allow being coerced by it. Feminists such as Donna Haraway
(1991) and ecofeminist Karla Armbruster (1998) propose a critical re-­examination of
many women’s collaborationism in their own oppression and acceptance, as well as
perpetuation, of such models. Gifford (1995, 160), in his analysis of Nichols, argues
about “the way that ‘fat’ acts out as a complementary social stigma in an all-­white
society to being ‘black’ in a racist mixed-­race society.” Thus, it seems to me that the
fat black body of resistance finds more power in this subversion of established stand-
ards. See also Brandão (2005, 2006a).
7 Diana Villanueva Romero (2013), in her “Savage Beauty,” addresses the possibility
of empowerment in the association of women and animals in fashion campaigns. But
here such empowerment does not exist, for both human and animal are downgraded
and dominated.
 Nichols and Kay’s corporeal Black Venus   193
8 Foucault’s concept of “abnormality” (2002) considers the deviation in relation to the
norm. Deviation leads to exclusion (Albuquerque 2011, 27). Russo’s notion of the
irregular body is here too.
9 The word “lead” in the press jargon refers to the opening of a traditional issue. Six
basic questions have to be answered: what, who, when, where, how, and why. See
www.atalhocomunicacao.com.br/dicionario-­publicitario-jornalistico/ (accessed July
16, 2012).
10 As quoted by Lawson Welsh (2007, 40), from The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
11 This interview with Nichols (2011) was part of my post-­doctoral project, carried out
at Federal University of Minas Gerais (2010–2011) and is still unpublished. In my
article about the body as a poetics of resistance (2005, 115), I refer to her poetic per-
ception of the existence of other body standards that are socially ignored and
marginalized.
12 See “Watching Miss World,” in which she appropriates the notion of a beauty contest
to allow her fat black woman to win. In “Thoughts Drifting…,” the appropriation is
disclosed in the notion of a bubble bath and a black woman occupying the place of a
white Western woman.
13 As she says in one of her poems: “I must devote/ sometime to the/ joy of living”
(Nichols 1983, 36).
14 Funck (1996) is here referring to Susan Swan, Angela Carter, and Jeannette Winter-
son, but her argument suits Nichols’ fat black woman with a slight difference, which I
have already discussed in my article on Nichols’ Picasso I want my face back, pub-
lished in 2011.

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Afterword: Ecofeminism through
Literary Activism, Hybridity,
Connections, and Caring
Anna Bedford

This collection of remarkable and disparate essays offers wonderful insight into
ecofeminist readings of world literature and their importance. In this Afterword
I’d like to focus on three crucial aspects of ecofeminist literary criticism, exem-
plified by this collection, and important for further work in the field.
First, activism. Ecofeminism can never only be an academic discourse. Its
roots are in lived experiences, and harsh ones at that—in struggles for survival,
and care, for both human and nonhuman. The grassroots activism of ecofemi-
nism is necessarily part of this political and philosophical movement’s identity
and purpose. At the same time, one can recognize that nothing is really “only”
academic. Our ideologies shape our material experiences—the way women and
nature are treated cannot be divorced from the way they are conceptualized. Sug-
gestions that academia is an ivory tower secluded from the practical or “real
world” fail to recognize these connections. Learning does not take place in a
vacuum; classrooms are not spaces removed from a “real world” that happens
elsewhere, and it would be dangerous to think so. This is one more binary to be
challenged by ecofeminism. The academic can be and should be part of activist
interventions. Thus I’d like to suggest here—as I believe these essays do—that
writing, academic writing, and specifically literary theory can be a form of activ-
ism, and ought to be if it is ecofeminist.
Second, I highlight the ethic of care that several of these authors find
important in their ecofeminist criticism. I will suggest that, as Karen Warren
(2000) claimed, caring relationships can be modelled on traditionally—though
not essentially—female interactions and roles. An ethic of care in our inter-
actions with each other and the world around us is necessary to counter the rela-
tionships of subjugation, domination, and exploitation that are integral to
patriarchal and colonial forces in contemporary society.
Finally, I want to draw important connections that so many pieces in this col-
lection point to, either implicitly or explicitly. So frequently in ecofeminist dis-
courses we talk about relationships and the importance of connections, and we
use metaphors such as (re)weaving (Diamond and Orenstein 1990). We must not
forget the connections in our political, philosophical, and academic work, too.
Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey’s book, Ecofeminism in Dialogue (2017),
does the important work of making such connections. I have argued therein that:
198   A. Bedford
though ecofeminism makes women central to its analysis in ways postcolo-
nialism is not necessarily committed to, both are committed to the decoloni-
zation of land and nature, and so an allegiance between postcolonial and
ecofeminist discourses and politics yields useful strategies and possibilities.
(Bedford 2017)

In Literature and Ecofeminism: Intersectional and International Voices, many

authors practice simultaneously postcolonial and ecofeminist readings, and
recognize the two are intricately intertwined in their challenges to the domina-
tion and acquisition of land and Others. They also identify common strategies
and motifs that are mobilized to break down binaries, distinctions, and hierarchi-
cal separations; hybridity being a central such strategy.

Writing as activism
In her Foreword, Greta Gaard identifies some unifying threads through this col-
lection, the first being water. There are many facets of environmental devastation
demanding the urgent attention of writers and activists alike, but water—its
scarcity, its pollution, its privatization, and battles for control of it are some of
the primary contemporary concerns.
Water is, indeed, a timely focus. In recent years, climate change has caused
dams across the world to dry up—in Botswana, which has faced repeated
drought, the most severe in recent decades being in response to the 2015–2016
El-Nino, when people struggled to buy water and transport it from boreholes
in the capital of Gaborone; in South Africa, where 2015 was the driest year in
over a century (Fox et al. 2016); in Australia, during its “Millennial drought,”
amongst several others—droughts that have occurred alongside flooding in the
country; and the island of Cyprus suffered years of droughts and had to import
water from Greece before desalination plants were built. In Canada there have
been numerous water crises within First Nations communities.1 In 2017, data
from the Canadian government suggested there were approximately 150 drink-
ing water advisories in First Nations communities in Canada and that 71 were
long-term (McDiarmid 2017). In the United States, a water crisis in Flint,
Michigan, beginning in 2014, saw city water contaminated with bacteria, lead,
and disinfectants. Frequently, in the West especially, these problems are part
of broader patterns of environmental racism, whereby racial – and frequently
impoverished – minorities experience the effects of environmental toxins and
scarcity of natural resources at a disproportionate rate. As water and other
environmental crises become increasingly widespread, recurrent, and extreme,
they are in need of sustained, critical attention, including literary attention,
that affords them a “mirror and a lamp,” as Gaard quotes M.H. Abrams
arguing this is literature’s purpose (p. xvi).
In Chapter 3, Emine Geçgil analyzes Mary Austin’s The Ford, a narrative
with the overt topic of contested water rights and the consequences of privati-
zation. In this novel, Geçgil suggests that Austin is “blending her female
 Afterword   199
identity as an activist with her literary talents” (p. 40). Indeed, it is possible to
see in the work of so many writers, especially ecofeminist ones, and in the
work of ecofeminist critics, too, a blending of activism and literature, the
possibility of writing as activism. In Chapter 7, Theresa Burriss finds such an
approach to writing in Ann Pancake’s Appalachian fiction pulls together
ecofeminist and postcolonial imperatives in the novels. “Pancake unflinch-
ingly write[s] the wrongs,” Burriss argues, just as postcolonial ecocritics
Huggan and Tiffin have called for the writing of imperial wrongs as part of
the process of righting them (p. 106). This is a technique of bearing witness
that is a tool of the oppressed, and produces a counter-­narrative to the official
History (writ large) that is written by the victor, by the powerful, which today
increasingly means by the wealthy. One example from many writers employ-
ing such a strategy is Carolyn Forché, a human rights advocate and poet, who
edited an anthology detailing human experiences of war, torture, occupation,
and imprisonment in the twentieth century, which she titled, Against Forget-
ting: Twentieth-­Century Poetry of Witness. Geçgil writes, “Austin states that
the novel, as a form, should be concerned with human struggle,” (p. 46), and
so perhaps a literary focus for ecofeminist activists must be to concern them-
selves with not only the human struggle but bear witness to and write/right
the nonhuman, too.

An ethic of care
In his Introduction to this collection, Patrick Murphy touches upon the need to
avoid “any essentialist representations of women as inherently closer to nature,”
(p. 4) for charges of essentialism certainly plagued ecofeminism in its earliest
days. Karl Zuelke’s examination of essentialist tropes in Chapter 8 demonstrates
how tragic they can be. So, one must carefully articulate that any “closeness” to
nature that lends itself to ecofeminism is not an inherent or essential one, but a
product of our societies—in particular, I believe, women’s material practices and
roles as carers.
The ecofeminist movement began in many places as a grassroots response to
the effects of capitalism and colonialism upon ecosystems and communities, as
Gopinath, Raj, and Jose demonstrate of India (Chapter 10). Leaders of early
ecofeminist interventions were poor women not by chance but because they
were the first groups affected by environmental degradation.2 For example, the
famous Chipko movement of local women in a village in India, who, feeling the
impact of hardships arising from deforestation—walking further for water,
experiencing deteriorating soil quality, and difficulty in raising livestock—
formed protective circles around the trees, and hugged them (thus the name
“chipko,” meaning “embrace”). Women also account for the majority of the
world’s farmers, and so women are most impacted by the capitalist transforma-
tion of land from subsistence farming to cash crops. Being the people respons-
ible for farming, for collecting firewood, for raising livestock, collecting drinking
water, and feeding children, women’s material conditions often draw them to
200   A. Bedford
environmental action, and from the personal to political. As Gopinath, Raj, and
Jose argue:

Women, conditioned to enact the role of nurturer, remain alert and con-
scious to the rampant destruction and abuse of the environment, which they
understand as an essential component for survival […] The roles and duties
assigned to them are socially created and their identities are culturally con-
structed, but it also prepares them to foresee disasters that arise from human
indifference and callousness.
(p. 162)

I would also argue that the practices of caring and nurturing that are part of
women’s lives not only make them attune to the abuse of the environment as
part of their concern for the survival of those they care for, but that the inculca-
tion of caring means that women are likely to extend an ethic of care to non-
human others as well.
In environmentalism as well as feminism, all over the world, we see that the
personal is political, and often a way to political activism. In particular women,
who are overwhelmingly most likely to be responsible for child-­raising, can
come to radical activism and protest through their caring for the next generation
and the world that generation will live in. This is not to dismiss the patriarchal
and oppressive nature of Motherhood as institution, as argued by feminist critics
such as Adrienne Rich (1976), but to recognize, as I believe she does in her dis-
cussions of motherhood as experience, the potential for mothering and caring as
an experience that, rather than domesticating can be radicalizing, and can itself
become an activist practice and intervention. Motherhood has also been a
pathway to political literature by women—to write the political through the
domestic. For example, Lisa Yaszek describes “maternalist politics” in 1950s
peace activism by women, who wrote treatises against nuclear war by showing
its impact upon families, through their “housewife” fiction (2004).
The threat of environmental disasters looms large. “Maternalist politics” are
often now directed towards environmental threats by mothers who see their chil-
dren suffering from air pollution, from water pollution, and from the effects of
nuclear activity: the mother activists, known as the South Bohemian Mothers,
coalescing around anti-­nuclear and environmental issues in post-­Communist
Czech Republic (Adams and Shriver 2011); the mothers who discovered their
school was built beside a toxic dump in Love Canal, New York, in the 1970s;
the mothers mobilizing in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011;
and so many others.
In her articulation of an ethic of care, Warren cites the feminized practices of
mothering, friendship, and nursing as models for treating nonhuman others
(2000, 113). In Chapter 5, Julia Tofantšuk discusses the “ethic of care” that
Karen Warren made central to her vision of ecofeminism. In her analysis of
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s novels, Tofantšuk claims to identify “a truly ecological/
ecofeminist angle, differentiating between anthropocentric possession and caring
 Afterword   201
‘encounter’ ” (p. 77). Caring encounters, Tofantšuk shows, can be found in the
interactions between individual characters and “place” and the earth.
In Chapter 12, Deirdre Byrne reminds us that a “ ‘social imperative’ ” of
caring and caretaking is at the heart of the earliest definitions of ecofeminism
(p. 169). Among the enduring features of d’Eaubonne’s vision of ecofeminism,
Byrne argues: “The first is an emphasis on womanhood as socio-­historically con-
structed rather than natural or given, in d’Eaubonne’s recognition of ‘a social
imperative requiring caring.’ The second is that there is an enduring ‘accultura-
tion in caretaking’ ” (p. 170). Thus we are reminded that in its origins, ecofemi-
nism emphasized an ethic of care, forged from women’s experiences of
caretaking. Byrne suggests women and their writing, the creative process itself,
can be healing forces. In her essay, Byrne identifies ecofeminism in the texts of
South African poet Malika Ndlovu that is, she claims, “most clearly expressed in
the healing agenda of her work” (p. 169).
However, not all ecofeminists agree with the efficacy of an “ethic of care.”
Canadian ecofeminist Sherilyn MacGregor argues against “the rooting of public
ethics in private values like care,” and calls for metaphors that don’t connect the
work to be done so clearly to women (2006, 225). Again, the historic charges of
essentialism require us to stress that these practices of caring and of mothering,
as discussed above, are not essential biological roles but social practices of
women and feminized traits. Val Plumwood has also, convincingly, cautioned us
against privatization of ethics and responsibility, which is something we must
consider when we seek to base practices on models of what have often been
private and female relationships. That is to say that we need a deliberately public
ethic of care, not one that is relegated to the domestic sphere or as women’s
responsibility. Caring may be found in feminized practices such as mothering
and nursing but it should be extended to all relationships and practiced by men
and others, in our public, not just personal, relationships.
In Calley Hornbuckle’s essay on ecological sensibility (Chapter 2), she protests,
after Vandana Shiva, that the scientific treatment of nature is part of a “patriarchal
project” that is also exclusionary in failing to “respect nature’s processes and inter-
connectedness as science” (Shiva, quoted by Hornbuckle, p. 28). Thus Hornbuckle
suggests to us an apt example of the kind of patriarchal relationships to which
caring should be extended. Instead, “modern reductionist science,” as Shiva terms
it, has eschewed ethical considerations and excluded both nature’s processes as
science, and women as practitioners. Donna Haraway details the exclusionary
nature of Western science, and its treatment of non-­human Others in Modest_
Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and
Technoscience (1997), where she examines the kinds of bodies invested with
enough “neutrality” and universality—that is, those bodies able to be invisible and
escaped from—to be qualified as scientific witnesses. Grace Dillon (2007) has also
argued that Western conceptions of science as techno-­science exclude traditional
ecological knowledges, and those who practice it. Dillon makes the case for
“conjuring” as science, and “conjure stories” as science fiction (2014). As Jane
Donawerth noted in Frankenstein’s Daughters (1997), masculine science treats
202   A. Bedford
women as objects of study rather than participants, and the very presence of women
as scientists in literature makes them utopian stories.3 Through literature we can
imagine the possibilities for feminist, ecofeminist, and postcolonial science—one
that includes women and nature as more than objects of study, and offers scientific
interactions that don’t preclude caring.
One of the poems Hornbuckle analyzes in Chapter 2 is Anna Letitia Barbauld’s
“The Mouse’s Petition.” Within the poem, Hornbuckle describes, “a subject lined
up for scientific experimentation, the mouse pleads his case in the name of kindred
sense” (p. 30). The mouse’s plea is one for ethical consideration and, in fact, an
ethic of care from the scientists. Written in 1773, this poem offers an experimental
object in the position of narrating subject. Hornbuckle’s reading of the poem sug-
gests that “death in the name of scientific research” is exploitation and “abusive
power.” The mouse argues it is “part of an interconnected whole” and their destruc-
tion is “fraternal desecration” (p. 32). The fraternal echoes again in Hornbuckle’s
description of Julia Saunders’ argument that the poem “calls upon Priestly’s ‘sci-
entific fraternity’ to consider the wider ethical ramifications of the speculation that
all matter is interrelated and shared” (p. 32). Though the poem predates Haraway’s
Modest Witness (1997) by two centuries, the two make similar calls for what Horn-
buckle identifies as “ecological sensibility” and for ethical science. Haraway’s
depiction of the real Oncomouse, a trademarked mouse deliberately developed
with the gene for cancer, similarly cries out for an ethic of care within science:

Oncomouse™ is my sibling, and more properly, male or female, s/he is my

sister. […] Although her promise is decidedly secular, s/he is a figure in the
sense developed within Christian realism: S/he is our scapegoat; s/he bears our
suffering; s/he signifies and enacts our mortality in a powerful, historically spe-
cific way that promises a culturally privileged kind of salvation—a “cure for
cancer”. Whether I agree to her existence and use or not, s/he suffers physic-
ally, repeatedly, and profoundly, that I and my sisters may live. In the experi-
mental way of life, she is the experiment. S/he also suffers that we, that is,
those interpellated into this ubiquitous story, might inhabit the multi-­billion
dollar quest narrative of the search for the “cure for cancer.”
(1997, 79)

Haraway’s insistence on kinship and especially sisterhood stands as an ecofemi-

nist alternative that extends Warren’s ethic of care to non-­personal, and non-­
domestic relationships, to scientific relationships, and it reiterates d’Eaubonne’s
“social imperative” of caring. Sisterhood might be the solution to “fraternal des-
ecration” by a “scientific fraternity.” Caring, suggests Haraway, like the authors
in this collection, may be the solution to the patriarchal abuse of Others.

Ecofeminism and postcolonialism

The inverse of an ethic of care, as Tofantšuk notes, is possession. Opposition to
the various forms of possession of an Other is at the heart of ecofeminism and
 Afterword   203
also anti-­colonialism—whether it is a racial Other, a sexual Other, or a non-
human Other. For postcolonialists, as well as ecofeminists, nature, natural
resources, and land itself are often what are at stake in violent quests for posses-
sion. Ecofeminism demonstrates repeatedly how land is tied to the conceptuali-
zation and treatment of women, and how the feminizing of land facilitates its
colonial and patriarchal possession. For example, in her study of T.S. Eliot’s The
Waste Land, in Chapter 4, Etienne Terblanche draws the parallels between rape
and “earth-­rape.” Through careful close reading and intertextual analyses,
Terblanche argues that within The Waste Land we can find the rape of Philomela,
violence against women, and, as other critics have claimed, a warning of viol-
ence against the earth, its own rape and desertification.
Carmen Flys Junquera also identifies parallels between the treatment of
women, land, and animals in her analysis of texts by three Spanish writers in
Chapter 10, “Wolves, Singing Trees, and Replicants,” in which questions of
Otherness and postcolonial themes also abound. For example, in a novel by
Laura Gallego Garcia, Flys Junquera notes the violent possession of land and of
women is part of conquest, thus the conquering and distribution of brides and
land are concomitant. Flys Junquera also identifies the violence done to and
imminent extinction of local, rural traditions, where the fate of small villages,
their traditions, knowledges, and dialects mirrors that of the fate of the wolves in
Gallego’s novel. Furthermore, she argues that rural cultures in Europe are some-
what analogous to indigenous ones (p. 148) and that the knowledges offer ways
to interact with nature. Through another contemporary text by Spanish author
Rosa Montero Gayo, Flys Junquera identifies a futuristic depiction of an emerg-
ing crisis of environmental refugees, when in the novel the earth is divided into
contaminated and clean zones, and air has been privatized in much the same way
as water, with similar consequences for access. In this novel, human–alien rela-
tionships are used to prompt questions of Otherness, as in much science fiction.
For Flys Junquera, the most important aspects of these Spanish novels that raise
ecofeminist and environmental questions are the examples they, like others dis-
cussed in this collection, offer of ways forward through practices of care.
Lesley Kordecki similarly draws a parallel between the earth and women’s
bodies in her ecofeminist reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Chapter 1. In it
she presents a particularly powerful image for us of two men, Hamlet and
Laertes, fighting each other the grave and body of Ophelia, “perhaps crushing
her bones,” even as they protest their love (p. 21). It is such a distillation of
patriarchal and colonial violence—men fighting over a woman’s body, over a
piece of land they feel most entitled to (in this case the grave) and the women
that are tied to it. Capitalist and colonial societies, while simultaneously
exploiting the land, and protecting the wealthy, rely upon the exploitation of
certain bodies—likely those most vulnerable and devalued, and marked as
such by their race, class, gender, postcoloniality. As such, capitalism and colo-
nialism are necessary targets for ecofeminist action and critique. There are
numerous examples of how women’s bodies, and particularly the colonial
bodies of non-­white women, are used as cheap or free labor for the global
204   A. Bedford
corporate market (Mies 1981, 1986, Mohanty 2003), and like the environment,
these bodies are treated as natural resources that can be exploited for political
and financial profit—that is to say, treated as a means for profit and as if they
have only instrumental value rather than intrinsic worth (Merchant 1980,
1992, Warren 2000). In this way, the landscape that is exploited by colonial-
ism and patriarchy includes the expanded definition of land articulated by
Cherrie Moraga, who writes:

Land is more than rocks and trees, land is also the factories where we work,
the water our children drink, and the housing project where we live. For
women, lesbians, and gay men, land is that physical mass called our bodies.
(1993, p. 173)

Of course, the association of women’s bodies with the land needn’t, however, be
a negative one. Moraga suggests the land is our bodies—thus to distance our-
selves would be an impossible task, but ecofeminists would argue it’s not a
desirable one anyway. What we need instead is a better appreciation for and
treatment of the land. In her essay on Zora Neale Hurston (Chapter 6), Nicole
Anae opens with a powerful and joyful vision of Hurston’s black female body
as land.
In fact, the depiction of joyful, excessive, unbounded female bodies, and in
particular black female bodies, can be a means to resist the cultural appropriation
and demands for conformity, as Izabel Brandão also argues in her reading of
Grace Nichols and Jackie Kay’s “corporeal Black Venus” in Chapter 13.

Shared strategies: hybridity

Burriss, in Chapter 7, suggests “writing wrongs” as a shared strategy for ecofem-
inist and postcolonial writers alike, which is an important approach to literature,
as already discussed. Though Burriss’s focus is on Appalachia, Patrick Murphy
identifies it as an example of internal colonization (pp. 4–5).4 Huang notes in his
essay (Chapter 9) that ecofeminist projects are explicitly and necessarily invested
in postcolonial work. He writes:

Echoing Gaard’s comments, Noël Sturgeon observes that ecofeminism, more

so than any other area of ecocriticism, focuses not only on minority writers
and artists but also on environmental issues as those mostly affect women and
other minority populations such as “people of color … poor people, Global
South people,” and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people.
(p. 128)

In terms of strategies, in addition to bearing witness and writing of colonial,

patriarchal, and ecofeminist violence, ecofeminism shares with postcolonialism
a mobilization of hybridity. Hybridity has been an important part of postcoloni-
alism theory and literature, advocated by Homi Bhabha as a means to represent
 Afterword   205
and understand complex and contrary postcolonial relationships. It also counters
narratives of purity authenticity that have been used to invalidate postcolonial
cultures and identities. In Chapter 8, Karl Zuelke critiques the cultural appropri-
ation of Native American Indian culture, and, in Chapter 11, Gopinath, Raj, and
Jose highlight the intersection of capitalism with colonialism through the depic-
tion of the native artist’s desperate turn to tourism. Hybridity challenges the pos-
sible delineation between self and Other, between purity and inauthenticity, and
between human and “nature.” Therefore, in finding postcolonialism and ecofem-
inism very much aligned in their purposes to challenge the domination of
women, land, and Others, it is perhaps not surprising to discover that post-
colonial tools such as hybridity are crucial, too, in ecofeminist work.
Several of the authors collected here highlight hybridity in their analyses.
Kordecki shows us, in Chapter 1, how this approach is deployed in Suzanne
Lummis’s rewriting of Ophelia as a mermaid. As a hybrid creature, says Kor-
decki, she “displays the deconstruction of essentialist categories of human and
animal” (p. 19). Tofantšuk, in Chapter 5, similarly argues for the hybrid, or as
she puts it, the ambiguous, which she identifies in Baba Yaga, a character from
Slavonic/Russian folklore. Asserts Tofantšuk, “a possible alternative to dualism
is ambiguity,” and it is her “ambiguous, borderline position” that makes Baba
Yaga “a perfect ecofeminist character” (p. 81).
Peter I-­min Huang also makes hybridity as a postcolonial and ecofeminist
strategy the focus of his analysis, in Chapter 9, where he analyses two (re)writings
of Medea, mythical Western figure, and granddaughter of the Greek God Helios,
and Mazu, “an indigenized goddess” worshiped in Taiwan (p. 130). These are both
hybrid figures that link colonial, patriarchal, and environmental suffering through
their stories. In clashes of cultural forces these female figures that Huang links to
Haraway’s cyborg embody resistance to the multiple and linked dominations of
imperialism and patriarchy. The cyborg, Huang argues, can be found in these two
stories as trans-indigenous, trans-subjective, and trans-ethnic identity, which stands
opposite to the identity that strives to accrete, amass, centralize, and hierarchically
order power. It embodies shared and porous forms of power.
In Chapter 6, Nicole Anae illustrates how the work of Zora Neale Hurston sug-
gests anti-­speciesism by negotiating and crossing boundaries between human and
animal, stressing, in particular, their “affinities,” and challenging paradigms of
thought that erect hierarchies and mutually exclusive concepts of human/animal that
Carol Adams identified as “definition of negation” (p. 91). In particular, Anae seeks
to show how Hurston argues for the extension of moral consideration to animals.
Clearly ecofeminist in her approach, Anae mobilizes the postcolonial too, centering
the black female body, with which she opens her essay, and connection to the
environment. Anae argues that Hurston offers “narrative possibilities to effectively
blend the cultural and the environmental with broader pressing questions about
social justice, racial inequality and the interconnectedness of people of color (and
minorities) with the natural environment” (p. 84). Hybridity is yet again important
in breaking down boundaries and “definitions of negation,” and in Hurston’s work
Anae finds it in the characters who straddle the boundary between human and
206   A. Bedford
animal—for example, the therianthropic forms of Judy and Uncle Monday in
“Uncle Monday,” and other black folklore Hurston collects and writes. Anae,
quoting Avlamis, argues that “Theriomorphy—the shapeshifting from human to
nonhuman—‘performs a metanarrative function. It embodies the very hybrid aes-
thetic of the beast fable that combines the animal as a defamiliarizing figuration and
the human as the allegorised common ground of experience’ ” (p. 91). Such a hybrid
aesthetic is clearly at work in deconstructing the Other through defamiliarization
and commonality, be it racial other, nonhuman other, the female that is always
other, or, the combination of all three.

Conclusion
In her foreword, Greta Gaard identifies “nourishing relationships” and “life-­
sustaining connections,” which she cites as forms of “resilience” (p. xvii). It is
likely that the relationships she imagines are those that embody what Warren
calls an “ethic of care.” Caring and nourishing relationships are, I believe, as
primary to ecofeminist projects now as they were when d’Eaubonne included a
“‘social imperative requiring caring’ ” (p. 169) within that first articulation of an
écoféminisme in 1974, and when Karen Warren first advocated for an ecofemi-
nist ethic of care. The work within this new collection suggests nourishing and
nurturing are as important to ecofeminist work as ever.
The important new work being done by ecofeminists today involves nourish-
ing relationships and making connections at a meta level, too. Increasingly it
becomes clear that ecofeminism is aligning itself with postcolonialism, as part of
its shared objective of eliminating hierarchical dominations and the paradigms of
thought behind them.
This collection is particularly rich as a result of the cross-­pollination of post-
colonialism and ecofeminism, for the recommitment to activism and to caring,
and for the disparate approaches to literature by scholars from across the world.
Ecofeminism, as the authors collected here demonstrate, is dynamic, powerful,
and exciting, and perhaps more important to our world than ever.

Notes
1 The Cree First Nations community of Kashechewan, in Northern Ontario, underwent
two evacuations due to floods in 2005, and a quarter of the community was airlifted in
October 2005 due to health problems stemming from issues with their water treatment
plant, E. Coli levels, and contaminated drinking water (CBC News 2006).
2 Although Gopinath, Raj, and Jose, in their essay in this collection, point to the power of
poor women within the environmental movement, it must also be recognized that a signi-
ficant obstacle facing environmental care is that the most privileged and powerful in a
capitalist society—and thus those most able to effect change—are the same people most
insulated from the consequences of the destruction (for the same reasons that poor and
non-­white women are the first to feel its effects). To follow the theme of water outlined
by Gaard, we can consider a recent example in the United States. In 2015 and 2016, Flint,
Michigan, became a household name synonymous with water pollution, negligence of
administrators, and, most likely, criminal corruption. According to 2014 data, the town of
Flint has a median household income of $24,679, a per capita income of $14,527 (U.S.
 Afterword   207
Census Bureau). There are more people in Flint without health insurance than there are
with bachelor’s degrees, and 41.6 percent live in poverty, according to federal rates.
Meanwhile the largest owner of private water in Michigan is the multinational corpora-
tion, Nestle, which continues to bottle water in Michigan, for a permitting fee, while
thousands of residents are unable to drink their water. Many activists have noted that the
Michigan spokesperson for Nestle is married to the Governor’s chief of staff. In situ-
ations of water scarcity and other consequences of climate change or environmental
degradation, those with the monetary resources to purchase bottled water—perhaps even
to profit from other people’s purchases of bottled water!—to buy organic food, and to
live in less polluted areas, can insulate themselves from the effects of environmental
destruction … temporarily. In this respect we can see how, just as practices of caring can
make women more attuned and “closer” to the environment, some people—the wealthy,
the white, and male, in particular—can appear distanced from nature.
3 For an ecofeminist reading of alternative science in science fiction, see Bedford (2011,
2015, 2017).
4 Native American reservations and the treatment of the people and environment on such
land is one of the most egregious examples of internal colonization. Native land is often
also the site of drilling and, more recently, fracking. To return to the example of water,
although Flint, Michigan, deserves the national attention and scrutiny it receives in the
US—as a health crisis and for the narrative of entangled politics, power, and environ-
mental resources, it is not an uncommon narrative, even within North America. In fact,
two-­thirds of First Nation communities in Canada had a drinking water advisory between
2004 and 2014, according to a CBC investigation (Levasseur and Marcoux 2015), a stat-
istic that points, again, to the importance of considering anti-­colonialism as an integral
part of ecofeminist work. The Neskantaga First Nation in Ontario has been without
potable water, under a boil water advisory, for over 20 years. Children in Neskantaga also
suffer from sores on their skin, but have limited access to medical care and diagnosis, and
the community reports problems since a water treatment plant was installed in 1993 (CBC
News 2015). There are clearly parallels to the Kashechewan First Nation in Ontario, who
experienced contaminated water from a treatment plant and was under a boil water order
from 2003 to 2005. In Kashechewan, people also suffered from sores, scabies, and
impetigo, and the community made news when the Canadian government evacuated 60
percent of the population after discovering E. coli in the drinking water in October 2005.
In 2015 Isadore Day, chair of the Assembly of First Nations Health Committee,
announced, “our First Nations communities are dying because of the poor water con-
ditions in their communities” (CBC News 2015).

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Index
Abrams, M.H. xvi, 198
activism xvi–xvii, 1, 40–42, 136, 140, 172,
197–200
Adams, Carol J. 85, 90–94, 205
African-American 4, 8, 68, 90–91, 94, 128
Agriculture 44, 46–47, 51, 135
Alaimo, Stacy 49–51, 129–130
androcentrism 49–52, 167; see also
anthropocentrism
animal studies 19
animals 29–31, 44, 80–81, 85–96,
123–125, 131–132, 152, 187
anthropocentrism 2, 16, 35, 48, 77, 87,
115, 146, 200
anthropology 4, 86–88, 92–96, 129, 189
Appalachia x, xvi–xvii, 4, 99–106, 199,
204
assault xvii, 6, 55–56, 63, 110, 145
Austin, Mary 2–3, 40–52, 79, 81, 198–199
autonomy 72, 142
Bacon, Francis 27–29
Barbauld, Anna Letitia 2–3, 24–37, 202
Beauvoir, Simone de 69
binary 4, 63, 68, 70, 82, 104, 181, 197
biodiversity 5; see also extinction
biological 33, 42, 50, 115, 141, 201
Blade Runner 154n6
Butler, Judith 187, 190
California 2, 40–42, 44
capitalism xvi–xvii, 45–48, 79, 102, 119,
166–167, 199, 203–204
care 70–72, 79, 81, 109, 145–147, 197,
199–202
career 49–50, 115, 126
Carson, Rachel 100
Cartesian 27, 29
chaos 14, 137
Chen, Jade xvi–xvii, 5, 130, 133, 134–136,
138
class xvi–xvii, 87, 96, 129, 166; middle
25, 40, 43, 72, 77, 138; see also
capitalism
conservation 41–44, 48
contradiction 4, 185
culture xvi–xvii, 58, 63, 115, 124–126,
190, 204; folk 87–88, 90–91, 94–96;
nature and 24–25, 70, 73–77, 81–82,
100, 130, 137–138, 160; rural 143,
147–148; Western 9–11, 59, 118
d’Eaubonne, Françoise 169–171, 201, 202,
206
deconstruction 19, 40, 117, 125, 128, 205
democracy 140, 181
Derrida, Jacques 19, 64
Descartes, René 28, 34; see also Cartesian
development 43–46, 51–52, 65, 68–70,
105–106, 161–162, 165–167, 189
dialectic 69, 171, 174
dialogue 141; see also dialectic
dichotomies 24, 29, 37, 73–74, 81, 176
diversity 6, 103, 174
domination 28–31, 36, 116, 143–147,
173–174, 198, 205–206; logic of xvii, 6,
31, 69, 141
dualism 24, 29, 68–69, 80–82, 146, 174,
186, 205; see also binary; dichotomies;
hierarchy; intersectionality
ecocriticism 8, 10, 68, 70, 106, 128–129,
185, 189, 204
ecodocumentary xvii
ecofeminism 1–2, 40, 46, 71, 95, 102,
115–116, 140–141, 166–167; see also
d’Eaubonne, Françoise; logic of
domination; patriarchy
210   Index
ecology 25, 37, 40, 84, 96, 115, 159, 161
economics xvi, 43–44, 50–51, 102, 134,
140–141, 165; see also capitalism
education 51, 78, 93, 172–173
egalitarian 2–3, 24–27, 37, 49, 58, 140,
179
Eliot, T.S. 3, 8, 54–66, 74, 202
emotion 4–5, 30–34, 69, 108–109, 152,
176, 178
empowerment 7, 165, 173, 192n7
environmental humanities xx, 153n1
environmentalism 40, 95–96, 153, 161, 200
essence 10, 28, 34, 68, 160, 175
essentialism 5, 7, 70, 100, 116–117, 171,
181, 199
ethics xvii, 26, 87, 146, 201; see also care;
partnership
existential xx, 112
experience 32–36, 57–58, 61–62, 90–91,
94–95, 130, 171, 197, 200
extinction 143, 150, 153
feminine 3, 13, 27, 41–42, 49, 119,
174–176
feminism 1, 10, 40, 70, 72, 81, 115,
128–129; see also dualism; ecofeminism
Foucault, Michel 68, 81, 189, 192n5,
193n8
Gaard, Greta xvi, 1, 46, 93, 102–103,
115–116, 128, 191
gender xvi–xvii, 27, 86, 95–96, 115,
140–141, 171–181, 190–191; see also
feminism; intersectionality; queer; sex;
transgender
Global South 128, 204
globalization 7, 160, 163, 165–167
God 13, 27, 73, 76, 80–81, 86, 109, 123,
164
Goddess 5–6, 16, 25, 116, 130, 135–138,
159, 187
Griffin, Susan 170, 173
Haraway, Donna 5–6, 128–130, 137–138,
187
Heidegger, Martin 64
hierarchy 3, 7, 29, 80, 102–103, 160,
165–166, 178–179
Hogan, Linda xvi–xvii, 5, 128, 130–132,
135, 138
holistic 2–3, 24, 28, 70
hooks, bell 107
Hurston, Zora Neale 4, 49, 84–96, 204,
205–206
independence 7, 41, 44, 47, 50, 143,
160–161, 164
India 116–126, 158–163, 166–167
interdependence 174
intersectionality xvi, xix–xxi, 68, 85, 94,
172–174, 198
intersubjectivity 32–34; see also
subjectivity
intimate 47, 56, 65, 90, 100–101, 175, 178
justice 37, 84, 92, 99–100, 141, 146–148,
205
Kay, Jackie 7–8, 171, 185–192, 204
language 10–11, 14–18, 25, 65, 179,
188–191; body 148; patriarchal 61; sign
22
linguistic 59, 69, 121, 129, 173
literary criticism 8, 50, 68, 170, 179, 197
literature 10, 62, 68, 84–86, 95, 107, 201,
204
Maathai, Wangari xvi
masculine 27, 29, 41, 94, 130, 176, 201
mastery 27, 107
materialism 129, 137
Matthiessen, Peter 5, 115–127
mechanistic 55, 74
Medea 5, 130–131, 138, 205
media 169
Merchant, Carolyn 24, 27–28, 115
metaphor xvii, 17–18, 66, 85–86, 92, 119,
173, 197, 201
mirror xvi, 56, 60, 62, 76, 84, 119, 198
mother 11–13, 49–50, 69, 132–136, 165,
175
motherhood 42, 100, 159, 200–201
myth 5, 7, 86, 102, 121, 130–133,
175–176, 180–181
Narmada Bachao Andolan 161
nature 121–127, 129, 141–144, 158–167,
171–177, 199–204; see also culture,
nature and
Ndlovu, Malika xvi, 7, 169–182, 201
New Mexico 41–42
Nichols, Grace 7–8, 185–192, 204
normative 87, 191
nuclear 5, 101, 136, 138, 150, 166, 200
ontology 58, 68, 129, 185
organic 28, 70, 74, 82, 206n1

Pancake, Ann 4–5, 99–113, 187, 199
partnership xix
patriarchy 8, 22, 43, 57, 69–70, 104–105,
118, 162
philosophy 1–2, 25, 31–34, 70, 140–141,
160
plants 15–16, 18, 85, 110, 125, 132; power
101–103, 138
Plumwood, Val 10, 24, 27, 31, 68–70, 106,
146, 173, 186–187
politics 28–29, 51–52, 96, 200; race 85,
87, 92–93, 178
postcolonial xvi, 5–6, 80, 105–106, 133,
198, 202–206
posthumanist 128
postmodern 107, 160, 163
poststructuralist 128–129, 174
power 6, 26–29, 32, 80, 86, 93–96,
158–161, 165, 185; see also domination;
hierarchy
queer xvii
race 35, 42–43, 80, 84–87, 91–93, 115,
132, 178–179; see also class; racism
racism 85, 87, 93, 96
rape xvii, 59, 66, 69, 71, 146, 163, 172,
180
rationality 31–32, 82, 162, 176
reason 24–29, 69, 76, 82, 100–101, 106;
see also rationality
reciprocity 60, 146–147
revolution 27, 30, 101, 127
rights 7, 36, 130, 138, 161, 171; animal
138; human 145, 199; water 2, 40–41,
44–45, 198
romantic 2, 10, 18, 24, 36–37, 42, 79, 129,
180
Roy, Arundhati xvi, 7, 161, 163–166
science 24–30, 65, 77, 115, 201–202
science fiction 6, 141, 149, 153, 201
Index   211
sex xix, 12–15, 56–57, 60, 119–126,
144–146; see also sexism
sexism xx, 5–6, 9, 49, 54, 62, 96; see also
racism
Shakespeare, William 1–2, 9–18, 20–21,
58, 70, 203
Shiva, Vandana xvi, 28–29, 160–161, 201
slavery 31, 37, 120, 181; see also race
society 7, 51–52, 72, 100, 158–159,
162–163, 181–182; patriarchal 40, 170,
187; Western 10, 191
South Africa xvi–xvii, 7–8, 169, 171–181,
185–187, 191, 198, 201
Spain 140, 143, 148, 153
speciesism xx, 85–87, 91, 93, 95–96, 205
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 171, 179; see
also subaltern
Sturgeon, Noël 128, 204
Subaltern 158, 164–165
subjectivity 2, 8, 24, 36, 171, 186, 191,
205
survival xvii, 6, 27, 162, 188, 197,
199–200
Taiwan 5, 130, 133–138, 205
technology 3, 69, 76–77, 104, 128,
149–150, 186–191
transgender 128, 204
truth 25–29, 37, 64, 179
universal 136, 188, 201
universe 35, 132, 159–160, 175–176, 180,
185
vegetarian 138
Warner, Sylvia Townsend 3–4, 49, 68,
71–82, 200
Warren, Karen 24, 31, 68–71, 79, 144,
146–147, 178, 197, 202–206
wild see wilderness
wilderness 40, 49, 71, 116, 126, 140