ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the easily recognizable visual relationship between land forms and female features affords a more compelling rationale. In identifying the landscape as female, in effect, transforming the unfamiliar into the “familial.” “Mother earth,” however, is not the only interpretation of the feminized terrain. Exploitation can be both literal and literary; sexualized landscapes frequently objectify woman and nature for particular ends. The relationship between settler and setting is decidedly adversarial. Pioneers respond to the landscape, Barbara Smith notes, with hostility tinged with fear. Gardens have traditionally been places of privacy and retirement, where one may leave the troubles of the outer world and come to terms with the eternal cyclic round of growth. “The female landscape,” observes Ellen Moers, “knows no nationality or century”. Nor is it a literary technique utilized only by male writers; Willa Cather and Toni Morrison create some of the most striking gendered landscapes in literature.
