Women Writing Nature

A Feminist View

Barbara Cook

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9780739162620
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Feminist Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Since Silent Spring was published in 1962, the number of texts about the natural world written by women has grown exponentially. The essays in Women Writing Nature: A Feminist View argue that women writing in the 20th century are utilizing the historical connection of women and the natural world in diverse ways. For centuries women have been associated with nature but many feminists have sought to distance themselves from the natural world because of dominant cultural representations which reflect women as controlled by powerful natural forces and confined to domestic spaces. However, in the spirit of Rachel Carson, some writers have begun to invoke nature for feminist purposes or have used nature as an agent of resistance. This collection considers women's writings about the natural world in light of recent and current feminist and ecofeminist theory and finds a variety of approaches and perspectives, both by the scholars and by the authors discussed, culminating with the voices of two women, activist and scientist Joan Maloof and Irish poet Rosemarie Rowley, who both write about the natural world from a feminist perspective.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• 1 - Introduction: Nature Writing from the Feminine
• 2 - Modernist Women, Snake Stories, and the Indigenous Southwest: An Ecofeminist Politics of Creation and Affirmation
• 3 - Littoral Women Writing from the Margins
• 4 - Multifaceted Dialogues: Toward an Environmental Ethic of Care
• 5 - Wild Women: Literary Explorations of American Landscapes
• 6 - Louise Gluck, Feminism and Nature in Firstborn’s “The Egg”
• 7 - Ecofeminism, Motherhood, and the Post-Apocalyptic Utopia in Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and Into the Forest
• 8 - Natural Resistance: Margaret Atwood as Ecofeminist or Apocalyptic Visionary
• 9 - Touching the Earth: Gloria Anzaldúa and the Tenets of Ecofeminism
• 10 - Teaching the Trees: How to Be a Female Nature Writer
• 11 - Confessions of an Ecofeminist
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Contributors