In defining Ecofeminist literary criticism, one cannot but notice the two prestigious scholars, Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva who wrote Ecofeminism (1993) together. The former is a social scientist, from the feminist movement, and the latter is a theoretical physicist, from the ecology movement.
As Carol J. Adams has suggested in Ecofeminism and the Sacred (1993), ecofeminism has been useful in discussing “the interrelationship of social domination and the domination of the rest of nature,” and the term, eco-feminism, refers to the studies of the “twin dominations of women” and “the oppression of the rest of nature”
(Adams 1). Ecofeminists argue that the oppression upon women and nature is based on the same logic of domination and should be highlighted while investigating such problems in literature. In addition, the domineering metaphors by patriarchal ideology, as Adams suggested, rationalize the idea in feminizing nature and naturalizing women at the same time. While scrutinizing the interconnection of the domination upon nature and the society, Ecofeminists have dedicated themselves to subverting such internalized patriarchal dominance over women and nature.
Actually, the problematic relationships between women and men, between human beings and nature are, in a sense, closely related with one another. In Ecofeminism (1993) Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva have argued that “nature is
subordinated to man; woman to man; consumption to production, and the local to global” (Mies and Shiva, 5). The problem in the modern world is that “in the resultant struggle one part will eventually survive by subordinating and appropriating the
‘other’” (Mies and Shiva, 5). But can we find a new way to break away from
“appropriating the other?” A possible answer is a new way in examining the contemporary world; that is, an ecofeminist perspective, for it “propounds the need for a new cosmology and a new anthropology which recognizes that life in nature is maintained by means of co-operation, and mutual care and love” (Mies and Shiva 6).
As Mies and Shiva have noticed, the patriarchal system is developed and cultivated through “the colonization of women, of ‘foreign’ peoples and their lands;
and of nature, which it is gradually destroying” (Mies and Shiva 2). While examining the relation of the domination between man and nature, Mies and Shiva reminds us that such oppressive domination between men and women results from the patriarchal ideology. In other words, under the logic of domination, nature and women turn into the “other,” as Ynestra King puts it, it is “something essentially different from the dominant, to be objectified and subordinated. And women, “who are identified with nature, have been similarly objectified and subordinated in patriarchal society” (King 21). In a sense, nature and women become “objectified others,” which can be exploited and dominated at the same time.
Mies and Shiva remind us of an important aspect, in which women “find it is difficult to perceive commonality both between their own liberation and the liberation of nature.” What is the main reason behind the dilemma? As Mies and Shiva suggested, “this is because capitalist patriarchy or ‘modern’ civilization is based on cosmology and anthropology that structurally dichotomizes reality, and hierarchically opposes the two parts to each other” (Mies and Shiva 5). According to Mies and Shiva, ecofeminists tend to use metaphors such as “reweaving the world” and “healing the wounds” in interconnecting the world as an organic web. Because women and nature have long been colonized and “‘opened up’ for free exploitation and subordination,”
and “transformed into the “objectified others” (Mies and Shiva 7), it is imperative for us to foreground the healing of the wounds upon nature and the whole world.
III. An Ecofeminist in the Reading of Paradise
The theory of Ecofeminism, I believe, would shed light on the investigation of the domineering praxis on women and nature in Paradise. To subvert the patriarchal concept, Ecofeminism leads us to interrogate the suppression of women and nature. In this novel, Morrison tends to deal with the intersecting issues of race, gender and the black community in its depiction of the black people’s journey from place to place, and the description of racial discrimination in their interactions with the others:
Paradise shows the intraracial prejudice, especially the one-drop rule, between
light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks. In Paradise, Morrison “explore[s] the boundaries between the past as an inspirational fantasy and as a site of oppression, denying change, preventing the realization of new opportunities and possibilities, and inhibiting growth” (Peach 169).
In terms of the problem of gender, the female characters in the novel tend to be forced to be submissive but, at the same time, eager to find a place to gain their autonomy and voice. In “Heroines of Nature: Four Women Respond to the America Landscape,” Vera L. Norwood notices that Morrison “lays open ways that racist images of blacks as animals are used to justify slavery, rape, and murder” and
“expands her critique to show how such domination of slaves is only one reflection of a general lack of respect for all of nature” (“Heroines of Nature: Four Women Respond to the America Landscape” 189).
Morrison presents the problems of the patriarchal ideology in the excluded community established by a group of narrow-minded black male characters. Such patriarchal concepts trigger the establishment of the binary opposition between “self”
and “other,” which consolidates the male’s false viewpoints towards women and nature. In “Unspeakable Things Unspoken,” Morrison once argued “what is astonishing in the contemporary debate is not the resistance to displacement of works
or to the expansion of genre within it, but the virulent passion that accompanies this resistance and, more important, the quality of its defense weaponry” (“Unspeakable Things Unspoken” 128). In this lecture, Morrison reminds us that
we are the subjects of our own narrative, witnesses to and participants in our own experience, and, in no way coincidentally, in the experience of those with whom we have come in contact. We are not, in fact, “other.” We are choices. And to read imaginative literature by and about us is to choose to examine centers of the self and to have the opportunity to compare these centers with the “raceless” one with which we are, all of us, most familiar.
(“Unspeakable Things Unspoken” 133)
As a whole, Morrison’s Paradise demonstrates not just the problematic issues in the excluded black community, but also the suppression upon women and nature in a patriarchal society. Hence, the women in Ruby fail to gain such autonomy, whereas the free-spirited women in the Convent finally regain what they have lost—autonomy, freedom and self-fulfillment.
Throughout the novel, the logic of domination triggers the domination upon women and nature. It also causes the racial division after the traumatic slavery period.
And the exclusion of a community explicates the disillusion of building a harmonious paradise. In a sense, the dream to build up an ecotopia seems to be disrupted in Ruby.
In the end, the biased and excluded Ruby town fails to function as a paradise for the townspeople; on the contrary, the harmonious relation with nature in the Convent serves as a paradise that leads to heal the wounds of the residents.
As a whole, this thesis will consist of an introduction, three main chapters, and a conclusion. The Introduction discusses the theoretical framework of ecofeminism to Morrison’s Paradise and investigates the theoretical background of Ecofeminsim, Ecofeminist literary criticism, and the application of Ecofeminism to Paradise. In
terms of methodology, this thesis mainly takes the historical interconnection proposed by Carolyn Merchant, the socioeconomic interconnections advocated by Vandana Shiva, the conceptual and political interconnections suggested by Val Plumwood and Noël Sturgeon, and the empirical interconnections asserted by Karen J. Warren.
Chapter One discusses the interrelations of nature and gender problems in Paradise. This chapter first offers a comparison of the natural environment and then
investigates the similar fate the female suffered under the patriarchal society. After experiencing the patriarchal logic of “anthropocentrism,” these traumatic women long for healing the trauma inflicted upon their body and mind.
Chapter Two mainly outlines the racial problems under the logic of colonization in Paradise. First investigating the logic of colonization, this chapter endeavors to illustrate how naturalizing the natives and the effect of denial provides the evidence of the logic of domination. This chapter also tries to explore the ways radical exclusion sprung from disallowal come to shape their identity and psyche, for it motivates the founding fathers to search a space of home. After that, this chapter also investigates the problem of identity conflict in miscegenation and the conflict between generations.
Last, this chapter also illustrates the need to reclaim one’s identity.
Chapter Three analyzes the interconnection of nature and ecotopia. This chapter first investigates the search for an ecotopia, and then discusses whether we should regard the ecosystem as a nurturing mother. In this chapter, I argue that religion can be served as nurturing power in Paradise. In addition, this chapter examines the collective and cultural identity of eco-community. In shaping the collective cultural identity, it is necessary to foreground the importance of naming and the healing from the eco-community.
To conclude, this thesis aims to investigate, from the perspective of Ecofeminism, the individual and communal suppression in gender, race, and community, and also to
scrutinize the healing process of the black community in Morrison’s Paradise. My hope is not only to subvert the patriarchal oppression upon nature and its connection with gender, race and community, but also to carve out an innovative perspective of mutual care in ecosystem. By using the approach of Ecofeminism, this thesis would, I believe, provide an insightful analytical reading of Paradise.
Chapter One
The Interconnection between Women and Nature in Paradise
Paradise aims, in part, at representing black women’s confrontation with
patriarchal society, their search for a natural and harmonious way of life, and their eventual self-realization by subverting anthropocentrism and patriarchy. In this chapter I plan to adopt the theory of Ecofeminism to examining the relationship between women and nature in Paradise, investigating the natural image presented in Ruby and the Convent, interrogating the image of garden and the animal metaphors presented in the novel. This chapter also probes women’s suppression under the patriarchal society in the two locales, and thematizes the lack of communication and the women’s deception to illustrate male domination. In addition, this chapter also investigates women’s longing for healing. An Ecofeminist investigation, I believe, would shed light on the domineering praxis on women and nature in Paradise.
1.1 The Natural Environment of Ruby and the Convent
Val Plumwood1 argues that “western culture has treated the human/nature relation as a dualism and that this explains many of the problematic features of the west’s treatment of nature which underlie the environmental crisis, especially the western construction of human identity as ‘outside’ nature” (Feminism and the Mastery of Nature 2). Under such concept of western psyche, nature seems to be
subordinated to reason. According to Plumwood,
the concept of reason provides the unifying and defining contrast for the concept of nature, much as the concept of husband does for that of wife, as master for slave. Reason in the western tradition has been constructed as the
1 Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993) expounds Ecofeminism, ecological feminism, and the other feminist theories such as deep ecology. Scrutinizing the relation between women and nature, Plumwood maintains that the connection of male domination upon women is highly related to the domination upon nature.
privileged domain of the master, who has conceived nature as a wife or subordinate other encompassing and representing the sphere of materiality, subsistence and the feminine which the master has split off and constructed as beneath him. (Feminism and the Mastery of Nature 3)
In this sense, nature is regarded as a feminine other that can be exploited and dominated by men. The ideology constructed by western civilization has viewed nature as something that can be controlled or developed. Norwood claimed that
“women’s separation from pristine nature can be traced to the belief that woman is to man as nature is to culture” (“Heroines of Nature: Four Women Respond to the America Landscape” 324). Thinking in a similar vein, Plumwood writes, “racism, colonialism and sexism have drawn their conceptual strength from casting sexual, racial and ethnic difference as closer to the animal and the body construed as a sphere of inferiority, as a lesser form of humanity lacking the full measure of rationality or culture” (Feminism and the Mastery of Nature 4). The conception of viewing nature as an inferior sphere is also represented in the language we use as a realm of epistemic violence. In an essay called “Split Culture,” Susan Griffin notices that the language we use seems to suggest we attempt to emphasize we are superior to nature. As Griffin writes, “through the words masculine and feminine, which we use to designate two alien and alienated poles of human behavior, we make our sexuality a source of separation. We divide ourselves and all that we know along an invisible borderline between what we call Nature and what we believe is superior to Nature” (“Split culture” 7-8). In this way, we seem to regard nature as inferior to human beings in our mind-set, and such incarnated ideology is, as suggested by Griffin, “a mind in exile from its own wisdom” (“Split culture” 8). Upon examining the relationship between humanity and nature, L. Teal Willoughby also points out that “Ecofeminism views exploitation of nature as connected to the oppression of women” (Willoughby 135).
According to Rosemary Radford Ruether, Ecofeminism demonstrates the “concern for the interconnection of domination of women and exploitation of nature”
(“Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature” 14). “Ecofeminist consciousness,” as suggested by Willoughby,
“would seek a greater understanding of the etiology of natural events and the possible role of humanity within it. The relationship pattern in mutuality is an awareness of interconnectedness as well as the individuality” (Willoughby 136). Thus, Ecofeminism investigates “how these natural communities function to sustain a healthy web of life and how they become disrupted, causing death to the plant and animal life”
(“Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature” 13). “Nature,” as Ruether suggested, “does not need us to rule over it, but runs itself very well, even better, without humans. We are the parasites on the food chain of life, consuming more and more, and putting too little back to restore and maintain the life system that supports us” (“Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature” 21). Thus, when we observe the natural environment of Ruby, we see “no baby’s breath anywhere,”
for “not one garden had any” (149). Such a clue “no baby’s breath” is also a pun, which illustrates the potential problems of the lower birth rate in Ruby. Through the image of
“water-hungry freesia” and “tea roses improperly dethorned” holding by Billie Delia in Arnette’s wedding, we can notice Ruby functions as an unhealthy web of life. In addition, Ruby is a place with “no public place to sit down.” And there “were closed doors and shut windows where parted curtains were swiftly replaced” (67-8). Here, the clues of the “closed doors” and the “shut windows” indicate that the town is excluded from others. This exclusion from the outside society is what Morrison intends to criticize in the novel. In short, while dominating and civilizing nature and women, the male have brought much more destruction upon nature in Ruby. Delores S. Williams has
pointed out, “the destruction of nature is rationalized on the basis of technology providing greater profits, comfort” (Williams 24). Under such annihilation upon nature, Ruby bears no life or growth. In this light, Ruby seems to be a place of infertility, sterility, and drabness.
On the contrary, the environment of the Convent displays vitality, as we see the growing of the food production such as hot pepper, and “the relish lasted years with proper attention” (11). The interdependent relation between humanity and nature is harmonious in the Convent. As the narrator says, although the townspeople in Ruby attempt to grow the seeds, “the pepper grew nowhere outside the Convent’s garden”
(11). The garden in the Convent can be linked to the Garden of Eden which provides prosperity, vigor, and affluence, since it is a place where “a breeze swept through the kitchen door, displacing the food smell with a sweeter one” (40). This is a place where
“flowers mixed in with or parallel to rows of vegetables. In some places staked plants grew in a circle, not a line, in high mounds of soil” (40). Here, Ecofeminism helps us rethink the basic self in relation to the natural system. As Ruether writes, “the sustaining of an organic community of plant and animal life is a continual cycle of growth and disintegration” (“Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature” 22). In the conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth, Morrison offers contrasting conceptions between Ruby and the Convent,
Well, Ruby has the characteristics, the features of the Old Testament. It’s patriarchal. The men are very protective of their women, very concerned about their role as leaders. The convent, as it evolves, becomes a kind of crash pad for some women who are running away from all sorts of trauma, and they don’t seek the company of men. They have been hurt profoundly by men, so that even though they quarrel and fight most of the time, they’re
in what they consider a free place, a place where they don’t have to fear that they are the people to be preyed upon, but the values are different.
(Farnsworth 157)
In a manner, the Convent is a harmless and helpful place, where people can be taken in and rest. In short, the contrasting image between Ruby and the Convent demonstrates the fact that the patriarchal domination over nature provides no euphoria and happiness the people genuinely need.
1.1.1 The Animal Metaphor
In an essay called “The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology,”
Ynestra King writes that women seem to be silenced and becomes the “others” in the modern society, and nature also become ‘other, “something essentially different from the dominant, to be objectified and subordinated. Women, who are identified with nature, have been similarly objectified and subordinated in patriarchal society. Women and nature, in a sense, are the original ‘others’” (King 21). Such “process of objectification,” of appropriating and dominating women and nature as otherness, are accentuated by men, for “they forget that they were born of women, were dependent on women in their early helpless years, and are dependent on nonhuman nature all their lives, which allows first for objectification and then for domination” (King 22).
The patriarchal domination over nature and women can also be shown through the
The patriarchal domination over nature and women can also be shown through the