Women and Nature in Carolyn Merchant's "The Death of Nature"

In her book, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, Carolyn Merchant carefully demonstrates how literary, philosophical, scientific, religious, social, and political links have been drawn to connect women and nature. Merchant identifies how the images of both women and nature that are popularized operate within similar dichotomous binds: “the virgin nymph offered peace and serenity, the earth mother nurture and fertility, but nature also brought plagues, famines, and tempests. Similarly, woman was both virgin and witch… the witch, symbol of violence of nature, raised storms, caused illness, destroyed, crops, obstructed generation, and killed infants” (127). One was already complicit to the expectations placed on her; the other needed to be subdued.

Throughout history, as perceptions of nature and women have changed, it has become more acceptable to address their disorder through increasingly violent measures. Within pastoral art and poetry, nature was represented as a benevolent woman, “calm, kindly female, giving of her bounty” (7). As the earth was conceived of as a living organism and a maternal figure, certain actions, such as mining, could not be justified because they signified a threat and violence against nature/women that was not acceptable. Ethical implications led philosophers, such as Pliny and Seneca, to argue that, “while mining gold led to avarice, extracting iron was the source of human cruelty in the form of war, murder, and robbery” (31). However, these moral restraints wore down and new values approved of mining, describing it as a way to improve society. This comparison holds dangerous implications, as Merchant points out, because “sanctioning mining sanctioned the rape or commercial exploitation of the earth” which carried implications for the safety and sexuality of women.

In Aristotle’s Masterpiece, a popular handbook on sex throughout the 18th Century, it was asserted that women received more pleasure from sexual intercourse than men did; in fact, women were so “eager for sex after the age of fourteen that ‘they care not how soon they are honestly rid of [their virginity]’” (133). Through constructing images of wild women and chaotic nature, violent control mechanisms justified themselves.

Merchant identifies the influential role that Sir Frances Bacon played in connecting sexual politics to the foundation of empirical scientific research. Referencing Eve’s corrupting influence, Bacon posits that, “although a female’s inquisitiveness may have caused man’s fall from his Go-given domain, the relentless interrogation of another female, nature, could be used to regain it” (170). This heavily implies that the culture of women and nature are not only on a lower level, in need of manipulation by a more intelligent force, but also that they are incapable of performing such reflection upon themselves. Bacon does not hold back in encouraging the “new men of science” to understand that nature “must be ‘bound into service’ and made a ‘slave,’ put ‘in constraint’ and ‘molded’” (169). Through such interrogation, a superior level of knowledge is achieved and the social order is in its correct form: with man exerting authority over women and nature (171).

I find Merchant’s argument incredibly compelling and believe that her interdisciplinary exploration of this link is very important and illuminating. Throughout the book, I was reminded of one of my favorite poems, called Letter From the Wife of Noah To the Mothers Who Follow, by Clementine von Radics:

He keeps me quiet, I think, because he sees creation in my eyes.

Maybe a man can build, maybe a God can destroy, but someday the rain will stop and doves will come and I will make a world.

That is not a power he can take from me.

For all your talk of revolution there is truth in this:

I was saved by being secondary.

If you have been made to love and nurture, do so.

It does not make you weak.

I suppose this poem has its shortcomings, particularly today as new reproductive technologies are capable of sterilization and the history of particular groups of women being deemed unfit for motherhood/reproduction. However, I think that there is also something to be said for its illustration of the unique ability of women to foster creation. In spite of myriad scientific advancements, pathologizations of female sexuality and psychology, and unrelenting oppression, there is a certain hope in the power of reproduction and nurture that women hold.

I see this relating to Merchant’s work insofar as it recognizes, although much more gently, the opportunities and limits of subversion within patriarchal and scientific oppression. For all of the violently exploratory invasions of nature and women, they are still the locus of a certain type of power. Domination and innovation necessitate a subject and I believe that the reactions of nature and women to such forces have proven more than a defeated resignation to being identified and abused as this subject. In some respects, this is demonstrated through accusations of disorder and chaos. Though some of the depictions of women and nature are baseless justifications for violence, others highlight how women are uniquely situated, even if not intentionally, to resist. To speak very broadly, that type of challenge posed by women and nature has been even more powerful because of its ability to alter its formations over time – making a total conquest impossible. None of this is to say that women and nature have not been severely injured by the efforts of man to subdue and reap unreasonable and harmful amounts of what each yields. Yet, in order to maintain a hope for the future and in the possibility of change, I believe that it’s important, particularly as a woman, to remember that there is profound power in the trait that, while sought after, is typically used to write us off as weak.