I stumbled upon this work two years ago and became instantly entranced.
I was in the middle of finals at the time, and was relatively broke, but
I bought it anyway, knowing I would read it later. Until now I have
not found the time or energy to complete the reading (for it is a book
that you can't just read, but must experience fully, so it becomes quite
interactive and an emotional/bordering on physical experience.) I'm
glad I've had the opportunity to complete the journey with Griffin.
The book left me sometimes angry, often in a daze or frustrated or vindicated,
but I never felt alone. The author was present and invested throughout
the book, and her creation allowed for the voices of many women a
common, or rather collective, voice to guide the reader through centuries
of oppressive belief systems, through our current patriarchy, and
beyond.
Adrienne Rich, a poet and feminist herself, praises Griffin's work
by saying, "WOMAN AND NATURE is about memory and mutilation, female anger
as power, female presence as transforming force. It embraces ritual
and science, history and imagination, calling up the voices and body of
our earth and restoring to us knowledge of her beauty and our own."
Rich suggests that this book is a response to the movements which have
"lumped women and nature together in a view negative for us both."
The first section of the book is called "Matter", and it deals with
the ways "man regards and makes use of woman and nature." Griffin
manages to present a collage of the history of scientific and philosophic
thought, (the thoughts of the men who governed all science and philosophy),
and begins toward the end to weave in an emerging voice of woman, a chorus
of women. So, there are at least two seperate voices going on throughout
the book the voice of the patriarchy, written as simple fact, usually
beginning with, "It is decided..." or "It is said..." and the quiet, almost
frightened voice finding its way into the text in parentheses or italics.
Here's an example of some of the ideas included in "Matter" so you
can get an idea of the style and focus of this opening section which sets
the tone for the book:
It is
decided that matter is passive and inert, that all motion originates from
outside matter.
It is
decided that the nature of woman is passive, that she is a vessel waiting
to be filled.
And it
is stated elsewhere that Genesis cannot be understood without a mastery
of mathematics.
"He who
does not know mathematics cannot know any of the sciences," it is
said again, and it is decided that all truth can be found in mathematics....."
It is
decided that in birth the female provides the matter (the menstruum, the
yolk) and that the male provides the form which is immaterial, and that
out of this union is born the embryo.
And it
is written in the bestiary that the cubs of the Lioness are born dead but
on the third day the Lion breathes between their eyes and they wake to
life.
It is
decided that the minds of women are defective. That the fibers of the brain
are weak. That because women menstruate regularly the supply of blood
to the brain is weakened.
All abstract
knowledge, all knowledge which is dry, it is cautioned, must be abandoned
to the laborious and solid
mind of man. "For this reason," it is
further reasoned, "women will never learn geometry."
And so on....you get the picture. It could get infuriating.
One of the points Griffin makes in the book is the same thing Ortner was
attempting to prove in her essay, that women and nature are linked, as
man is linked to culture. The main difference, other than Griffin's
obviously more abstract style, is that she doesn't try to prove this hypothesis
as her own, but instead arranges the history of thoughts on the subject
in man's own voice, so that the patriarchy speaks for itself in a way (through
the author of course, which does allow for at least minimal biases or personal
statements). But Griffin lists her sources in great detail, although
she doesn't even go so far as to say that this is purely a work of nonfiction,
as she humbly states in the preface that "this is just a book and thus
just a fiction" but that the "feelings which enter into these words are
very real."
Her sources include everything from lumbering manuals, gynecology texts,
the pronouncements of early theologians, annals of American exploration,
office manuals, the dreams of scientists and etiquette journals, to important
works by Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Friedrich Nietzche,
to name a few. She also lists a book by Loren Eisley, whom we've
read in class, as one of her main points of reference.
Both of the selections from the book which were assigned for class,
"The Hunt" and "Use" are dealing with man viewing both woman and nature
as his possession. "Use", although second in our list of Griffin's
readings, comes before "The Hunt" in the actual text. "Use" is a
subsection of "Land: Her Changing Face," dealing with the ways man
has shaped the earth (and always read woman as an inner subtext of any
mention to nature here) to his use. It's not difficult to see, and
probably annoying to some, that Griffin is talking not only about the way
man has tried to "break the wilderness" or conquer that which is wild,
as regards to soil, but also to women.
In "Use" man enjoys the power and control he has created for himself.
Man believes he is the one who has turned "waste into a garden." He has
named the land, the plants and animals, and his wife and children,("Whatever
she brings forth he calls his own. He has made her conceive.") and
all of it he owns. The second and third paragraphs illustrate how
man thought he was learning all of the secrets of nature, and kept all
scientific thought to himself hidden from women. It is about
women being kept separate, excluded, and silent. The list of names:
"Phosphoric acid, nitrogen fertilizers, ammonium sulfate..." were created
by men. Woman and land both called out to men in need and pain (or
this is what the men heard in the story), so man gives her medicine, chemicals
which are a mystery to her which she is not "capable" of understanding,
or even pronouncing, but the chemicals seem to work; so she becomes indebted
to him.
Griffin likens this to man ridding woman and land of pests. This
becomes more clear with the quotations at the beginning of the section.
(Each section begins with quotations which reveal the duality of the passage
to follow). "Use" begins with a message about farming and pesticides and
a line from a work called "Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth."
Sandwiched between these two land references is a quote from Simone De
Beauvoir about one of the ways women are used in society.
"The Hunt" is also about conquering the wildness. It begins with
two quotations, one from MOBY DICK, the other from LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER:
"And at last she could bear the burden of herself no more. She was
to be had for the taking. To be had for the taking." Griffin's
sources for this particular essay, if anyone is interested, were a story
of the deer and her fawn being shot published in the New York Times,
a story of English schoolboys breaking the back of a hare in "Beasts for
Pleasure", a description of methods of hunting elephants from AMONG THE
ELEPHANTS, and a list of extinct and vanishing species.
One section of "The Hunt" is echoed in other parts of the book:
"He makes her grateful to him. He has tamed her, he says. She
is content to be his, he says." It basically says the same thing
as the lines in "Use" referring to medicine and "give me something."
This line of thought is also illustrated in an earlier section called "The
Show Horse" wherein the ettiquette taught to girls in Emily Post is reflective
of horse training in "The Riding Teacher," which are the sources of the
two opening quotations. Grooming is shown as it applies to women
and horses.
Throughout the book, man's relationship to woman is also compared to
his relationship with timber, wind, cows, mules, etc. Griffin makes
special reference to the fact that women did not even name their own body,
that men wouldn't let women midwife for a time, that anatomy was only named
and understood by men when medicine had its beginnings. The book closes
with a chapter entitled "Matter Revisited" after woman has found her voice,
and this circle of ideas becomes an empowering one in the end.
One final passage from the book itself....this one is from the dedication:
"These words are written for those of us whose language is not heard, whose
words have been stolen or erased, those robbed of language, who are called
voiceless or mute, even the earthworms, even the shellfish and the sponges,
for those of us who speak our own languague..." (That reminded me
of the dolphin language that the women shared in Peterson's essay.)
Additional information about the author that may or may not be helpful:
Susan Griffin was born in Los Angeles in 1943. She was raised in
California, where she now lives in the Berkeley Hills with her daughter,
Chloe. She's not primarily known as a nature writer, as she writes
in many different genres on various subjects. The common link between
them all seems to be her womanhood. Her poetry is also dense and
sensual, with an earthy quality or tone, if not earthrelated subject matter.
She's written books on pornography, the nuclear crisis, and won an Emmy
Award in 1975 for her play, VOICES. WOMAN AND NATURE was published
in 1978.
Sources: WOMAN AND NATURE, Susan Griffin
GAY & LESBIAN
POETRY IN OUR TIME, Morse and Larkin
UNREMEMBERED
COUNTRY, Susan Griffin