ABSTRACT
As shown in Chapter 4, associating nature with the feminine has played an important role in Western attitudes to environmental exploitation. The representation of women as the Other of men – closer to nature, linked to the biological functions of reproductive fertility and subject to ‘animal’ passions and instincts – contrasts with representations of the masculine as linked to control, rationality and higher cultural pursuits. The idea of nature as female, for example, was important to the notion of America as a sort of virginal tabula rasa (Smith, 1970), on which European settlers had the chance to begin anew, retracing the natural cycle of development. This theme persisted in American history through the writings of Thoreau (see Chapter 5) and Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932). It was central to the myth, played out in endless films and books, about the heroic pioneers who carved out America. Merchant (1995, 98), for instance, showed how the language of a ‘pulsating sexuality of a laughing, vital Mother earth and virile sun’ informed the popular representations of nature for pioneer European settlers in New England.
