Ecofeminism: Earth and Women's Body
...their heads to him, the earth and the sky to stretch themselves out humbly at his feet.” (page 54) She does not use nature to describe who and what men are, but as something that they feel they can control and manipulate. The notion that women are one with the earth and that men see themselves as not only separate but in control over nature is a very important aspect of ecofeminism and creates a dilemma between men, women, and nature. This problem of control and domination is clearly depicted in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Her main character Sethe has fallen victim to the male need to control what they consider domestic animals, either determined by race or gender. “The development of plow agriculture and human slavery very likely took this connection of women and nature another step. Both are seen as a realm, not on which men depend, but which men dominate and rule over with coercive power. Wild animals which are hunted retain their autonomy and freedom. Domesticated animals become an extension of the human family.” Sethe being both African American and female, had her freedom taken away in her youth and a form of a freedom was not returned until she was older. She bears scars that give her past painful experiences a solid and physical shape. The scars on her back are formed to look like a chokecherry tree. The representation of her painful experiences through a tree shows how they became a source of protection and life to Sethe. Men’s insistence on over ruling the relationship between women and earth is shown by Morrison, in Paul’s denial of Sethe’s scars resembling a tree. He refuses to see the scars as anything but a hideous clump on her back. Her scars symbolize her pain as becoming a motif for her to see herself as a women and an African American, who is at one with the earth, with nature serving has her protector and in turn her serving as a protector to herself and even more so to her children. In Octavia Butler’s Dawn earth (and planets collectively) are described as being our womb, where we are allowed to grow and develop. The extra-terrestrials who abducted the last surviving humans, believe that their originating plant was their mother. This ‘mother’ figure birthed them in her ‘womb’ until they had developed enough to emerge from her and become a separate entity. “It was a womb. The time had come for us to be born.” The notion that earth is a womb directly links the earth with the body of the female, as they are both creators and providers of life. This connection is further demonstrated in the writers’ symbolic representation of women through nature. Saadawi, with nature imagery shows the bond between women and nature. She uses nature to create a picture of women and the earth existing as one. In the following quote, a woman (who is both a woman and a child at the same time) merges into nature, finding a place where she truly can exist and feel life. “She would fall asleep as thought slipping into a warm sea. She swam like a fish, then opened her wings and flew over the water. She flapped her wings like a butterfly under the sun; the sky was a clear blue. She ran over the grass with naked feet. The ears of corn danced in the wind. The smell of living green invaded her. She continued to run without stopping. Behind her she could hear his voice hunting her down, and words that hit her in the back like bullets.” (page 31) The ability of women to be one with the earth is interrupted by man’s need to control it. Man’s plight for domination (through man-made, nature defying creations) over nature interferes with this connection between women and earth. “This fusion is a response to discourse endorsing alienation amongst human-to-human and human-to-nature relations. Alienation, ecofeminists suggest, encourages hierarchical relations of power, thereby enabling the domination of “others” such as women, nature, and indigenous cultures.” Saadawi represents this battle, when she disturbs the woman and nature with man, whose words become the bullets they created to rule over the earth. Saadawi’s awesome concoctions of words create a strong image of the tight relationship of female and nature. In Beloved, Sethe’s daughter, whom she killed to protect, is born again. Her rebirth is represented as she emerges from the stream, like a baby from the water of the womb. “A fully dressed woman walked out of the water. She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree. All day and all night she sat there, her head resting on the trunk in a position abandoned enough to crack the brim in her straw hat.” The fact that Beloved was born again by mother earth symbolizes Sethe’s connection as mother with the earth’s role as mother. Nature throughout the novel is a source of freedom, unity, and protection to its characters. This needed comfort from nature appears when one has it take away, and realizes the huge value it is to them. In Dawn when Lilith is awakened to find herself in a controlled environment, she has a craving for nature. Before she is taken out among the aliens she feels that the only colors that really exist are the colors of her skin and her blood, not the colors of her cell. “There had been little color in her world since her capture. Her own skin, her blood—within the pale walls of her prison that was all. Everything else was some shade of white or gray. Even her food had been colorless until the banana. How, here was color and what appeared to be sunlight.” The first color she claims to see is that of a banana, which makes a distinction of what women feel matters, as both true and real. This attempt of women to live as one with the earth runs into conflict when men try to dominate all that exists outside of them. As women struggle to live peacefully with natur...