influence of nature on women

7/29/2019 Influence of Nature on Women

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ANUPAMA.R

M.PHIL ENGLISH LITERATURE

QUEEN MARYS COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, CHENNAI

INFLUENCE OF NATURE ON WOMEN AS SEEN IN SURFACING BY

MARGARET ATWOOD.

Nature is woman's best friend. If you're having troubles, you just swim in the water,

stretch out in a field, or look up at the stars. That's how a woman cures her fears.

Fatema Mernissi,Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

Nature has always been what German-American physicist Albert Einstein calls

in his Out of my Later Years (1950)- AWell Formulated Puzzle.Nature surrounds

us everywhere. Nature has traditionally been imaged as feminine providing a clue to

the connection between the oppression of nature and oppression of women that begun

in earnest with rise of patriarchal religion and culture some six to seven thousand years

ago. Culture is both a curse and hope. Humans are shaped by the behavioral patterns,

myths, language, symbols, and rituals of cultural traditions. On one hand man enjoys

the comforts of nature while on the other hand his greediness compels him to exploit

nature.

According to Karen J. Warren, women have been naturalized and nature has

been feminized, it is difficult to know where the oppression of one ends and the other

begins. Warren emphasizes that women are naturalized when they are described in

animal terms such as cows, foxes, chicks, serpents, bitches, beavers, old bats,
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2792382.Fatema_Mernissihttp://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/171320http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/171320http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/171320http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/171320http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2792382.Fatema_Mernissi


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pussycats, cats, birdbrains, Hare-brains.[Warren 2] Similarly, nature is feminized

when she is raped, mastered, conquered, controlled, penetrated, subdued, and mined

by men, or when she is venerated or even worshipped as the grandest mother of all. If

man is the lord of nature, if he has been given dominion over it, then he has control not

only over nature but also over natures human analog, woman. Whatever man may do

to nature, he may also do to woman.

Ecofeminism is relatively a new variant of ecological ethics. In fact, the term

Ecofeminism first appeared in 1974 in Franoise dEaubonnes Le Fminisme ou la

mort. In this work, she expressed the view that there exists a direct link between the

oppression of women and the oppression of nature. She claims that the liberation of one

cannot be affected without ensuring liberation to the other. A decade or so after

Eaubonne coined the term Ecofeminism; Karen J. Warren further specified four core

assumptions of ecofeminism:

(1) There are important connections between the oppression of women and the

oppression of nature; (2) Understanding the nature of these connections is necessary to

any adequate understanding of the oppression of women and the oppression of nature;

(3) Feminist theory and practice must include an ecological perspective; and (4)

Solutions to ecological problems must include a feminist perspective.

Like multicultural, postcolonial, and global feminists, ecofeminists highlight

the multiple ways in which human beings oppress each other, but these theorists also

focus on the hegemony of human beings over the nonhuman world, or nature. Because


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women are culturally tied to nature, ecofeminists argue that there are conceptual,

symbolic, and linguistic connections between feminist and ecological issues.

In an age where nature is exploited, Atwood takes it as a mission to do some

good through her writing by bringing out the jarring effects of progress and

development on earth and its resources. Images of nature, the daring disasters inflicted

upon women and natural environment have been Atwoods topics.

The writing and publication of Surfacing(1972) coincided with the emergence

of feminist and ecological movements and obviously reflected the concerns of its time.

In this novel, the unnamed female protagonist who acts as the first-person narrator

comes back to her home in Northern Quebec in search of her missing father after nine

years. She is accompanied by her lover Joe and the couple Anna-David. At the

beginning of the novel, the protagonist feels alienated in her home ground which

becomes a foreign territory after having lived in the urban cityscape for several years.

She discovers, Nothing is the same. I dont know the way anymore. [Atwood 3] The

environmental destruction becomes apparent. As soon as she enters, the northern

landscape is described as diseasespreading up from the south referring to the

Unites States. She could see how nature has been mistreated and feels the strong

presence of American machinations. The journey revives her memory of the unhappy

past from which she feels estranged and brings to her mind recent traumatic events-a

painful relationship with her art teacher, a married man and the forced abortion. She

experiences the oppression and domination of male world lacking the strength to fight

for her survival and passively consents to abort her child. The unnatural act of her


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abortion shows the empowering and dominating nature of her ex-lover: [The unborn

child] was my husbands, he imposed it on me, all the time it was growing in me I felt

like an incubator. He measured everything he would let me eat, he was feeding it to me,

he wanted a replica of himself[Atwood 39]. Atwood emphasizes the fact that

Patriarchy exploits the bodies of women for its needs. The relationship between nature

and men is relationship of exploitation. Like nature, the female body is also seen as a

resource to be colonized and commercialized. They even control the process of

childbirth which nature has assigned only to women. The protagonist also questions the

excessive use of reproductive technologies. The modern techniques, in the guise of

assisting woman, rob her of the ability to sense her bodily rhythms.

The novel reminds the readers of the differences between natural predation and

the hunting done by the man which is done for the excitement of killing. Once in the

middle of nature, the fleeing character is disturbed by an incident that she witnesses

together with her friendssome people whom she believed to be American, kill a heron

for pure pleasure. She cannot disguise her rejection of such behavioral paradigms and

is distressed to discover that her friends enjoy having fun in the same

manner, thus condoning their act. This represents a decisive moment in the process of

her recovery as she realizes that she too has to change.

In complete isolation, away from the noise of the city, after a while, having

succeeded in leaving her friends behind, surrounded only by nature and wilderness, she

manages to recover her balance and to discover the truth about the death of her father.

Her search for her father expands not only into the discovery of the split in her own


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personality but also the tragic falling apart of nature and civilization in general. She

becomes a symbol for all those who are exploited and abused because of their

powerlessness. She expresses a deep concern for nature and enables the readers

understand the women-nature connection. She undergoes the rebirth of herself as she

discovers her piece of mind through this shamanistic experience. She deliberately goes

in search of shamanistic powers and she deliberately invokes the guardian spirits of the

earth. She says, I lean against a tree; I am a tree-leaning. I break out again into the

bright sun and crumple, head against the ground I am not an animal or a tree, I am the

thing in which the trees and animals move and grow, I am a place [Atwood 175].

After her abortion, the protagonist comes to develop deep sympathy for the flora and

fauna and realizes that regeneration through nature is the only solution for her

disintegration. Like a true ecologist, she makes the earth her literal home for she knows

that all life is interrelated, teeming with diversity and complexity in the natural world.

There is no one to boss over her and violate her physique. She becomes one with her

sacred Mother Earth. She throws away all her civilization as it is destroying the

biosphere. This relapsing process involves exploring her wild nature which helps the

protagonist to reconnect to her home ground and to discover her biological identity.

The protagonists association with nature raises her consciousness of

victimization of women. When her feminine consciousness reaches its zenith, the

protagonist prepares the ground for revolt against exploitation. She uses Joe to get her

pregnant but refuses to get married to him, possibly as revenge upon her ex-lover who

used her. The power struggle seems to have come to an end. She feels very confident


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about her own power and refuses to be a victim and says, This above, all, to refuse to

be a victim. [Atwood 249] She decides to stay back in Quebec and to give birth to the

gold fish nurturing in her womb. The power for destruction can be reconciled only

with the power for creation. She gradually comes to feel that she herself has been anti-

nature. With the protagonists determination to give birth to the child, the novelist has

hinted that germination will take place implying that both women and nature will be

protected provided they defend themselves against the onslaught of men over them.

Atwood does not want to overturn patriarchy and replace it with womens dominance.

She wants to transform nonviolently the structures of male dominance and restore the

lost balance and harmony between women and men.

Nature is filled with wonders that can take humans out of their anthropocentric

egoism.Nature is like a mother whose tender words have marvelous healing power.Nature is like a sister whose arms reach out during hard times. Therefore we must be

willing to make an emotional commitment to ecofeminist cause. For the answer is not

that women represent nature but rather that humankind is part of nature .This logic

must be used to preserve all forms of life.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Atwood, Margaret. Surfacing. USA: Anchor Books Edition, 1998.2. Bloom, Harold. Margaret Atwood. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2000.3. Erkal, Nisvan, Warren. J.Karen. Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. USA:

Indiana University Press, 1997.

4. Plumwood, Val.Feminism and Mystery of Nature. New York, 1993.5. Tolan, Fiona. Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. New York: Costerus

New Series-170, 2007.

6. Gaard, Claire Greta, Murphy, D.Patrick. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism:Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. USA: University of Illinois, 1998.

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