Humans, Nature, and Ecofeminism in Selected American Literary Works: Linking Theory to Practice

Abstract

This study investigates ecofeminism as a reconstructionist theory that aims to reform society. The researchers claim that ecofeminism is a continuation of the philosophy of the nineteenth-century American transcendentalism. Though it emerged in the late twentieth-century women movements, ecofeminism, as the researchers argue, had its roots earlier in American transcendentalism as demonstrated in selected literary works. The article highlights the relationship between humans and non-humans in Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophical essay, "Nature" (1836), Henry David Thoreau's book Walden (1854), and Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself" (1855). Furthermore, in order to demonstrate that the nineteenth-century transcendental philosophy constitutes the seeds of the twentieth-century ecofeminist thought, this article investigates such ecofeminist ideas in the American novels of Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) and in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) that have transcendental themes. In these novels, much focus is given to the efficiency of ecofeminist beliefs in interconnectedness and interdependence of all members of society in order to have a healthier society. The importance of this study comes from recognizing that ecofeminism can be a successful theoretical standpoint for diagnosing the problem responsible for such divisions between man and woman and between culture and nature and for offering a way out.