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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2013
Visions of Human Labor in Nature in 20th
Century American Literature
Jeremy Elliott
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
VISIONS OF HUMAN LABOR IN NATURE
IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
By
JEREMY ELLIOTT
A Dissertation submitted to the
Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded:
Spring Semester, 2013
Jeremy Elliott defended this dissertation on December 10th, 2012.
The members of the supervisory committee were:
David Johnson
Professor Directing Dissertation
Paul Outka
Professor Co-Directing Dissertation
Juan Carlos Galeano
University Representative
Frederick Davis
Committee Member
Timothy Parrish
Committee Member
The graduate school has verified and approves the above-named committee members, and
certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................v
1.
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................1
1.1 Influential Theorists ...............................................................................5
1.2 The Authors .........................................................................................13
1.2.1 Mary Austin ..........................................................................13
1.2.2 Zora Neale Hurston ...............................................................14
1.2.3 Wendell Berry .......................................................................16
1.2.4 Janisse Ray ............................................................................17
2.
MARY AUSTIN ........................................................................................19
2.1 Defining Austin’s Vision .....................................................................21
2.2 Breaking Down the Dichotomoy .........................................................21
2.3 Seyavi...................................................................................................23
2.4 The Pocket Hunter ...............................................................................26
2.5 The Walking Woman ...........................................................................27
2.6 Flora and Fauna....................................................................................28
2.7 Reimagining Human Behavior Through a
Lens of Nature............................................................................................30
2.8 Domesticity, Domestic, Domesticated .................................................31
3.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON.......................................................................39
3.1 Religious Background..........................................................................40
3.2 Moses, Man of the Mountain ...............................................................46
iii
3.3 Their Eyes Were Watching God ..........................................................54
3.3.1 Logan Killicks...................................................................................56
3.3.2 Joe Starks ..........................................................................................57
3.3.3 Tea Cake ...........................................................................................59
4.
WENDELL BERRY. .................................................................................64
4.1 Berry’s Theological Defense of Human Labor in Nature ....................67
4.2 Order and Kinship ................................................................................70
4.3 Stewardship and the Specific Duty to Tend the Land..........................72
4.4 Critiques of Berry ................................................................................80
5.
JANISSE RAY ..........................................................................................92
5.1 Poverty as Environmental Issue ...........................................................95
5.2 Structural Incorporation of Labor into Nature in Ecology of a Cracker
Childhood...................................................................................................99
5.3 Humanity and Nature in the Spaces of Ray’s Text ............................100
5.4 Complicating the Human/Nature Dichotomy Through People in
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood..............................................................104
6.
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................111
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................117
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...............................................................................122
iv
ABSTRACT
This dissertation raises the question of how environmentalists should consider the idea of
human labor in nature. This is ultimately a part of the greater question of what we consider the
relationship between humanity and nature to be. Dominant 20th century American
environmentalist draws a clear line between humanity and nature, thus rejecting any idea of the
appropriateness of human labor in nature. This is an unhelpful position, as it effective prevents
environmentalists from having any part of the conversation of how labor should proceed in
nature. As such, the contention of this dissertation is that we must fashion a less dichotomous
theoretical vision of this relationship. This dissertation considers a variety of 20th and 21st
century American literary interpretations of human labor in nature, all of which can be helpful in
structuring a more functional and complex understanding of the relationship between humanity
and nature.
v
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
John Muir’s seminal book My First Summer in the Sierra shaped modern
environmentalism in tremendous ways. It gathered support for Muir’s fledgling Sierra Club,
raised Muir’s national profile as he influenced Teddy Roosevelt on the creation of the National
Park Service, and created interest in Muir’s Yosemite glacier theory. Muir’s work is interesting
to this project, though, for another reason: the way that Muir deals with the reality of his own
physical body. Muir’s body is almost completely absent from the rhetoric of My First Summer
in the Sierra, and when it does make an appearance, it does so only long enough for Muir to
make a brief complaint about the necessity of feeding it. Moreover, the absence of Muir’s body
is in stark contrast to the remarkable presence of the shepherd Billy’s body. This dichotomy, I
think, is indicative of a broader gnostic trend in Muir’s work, in which he casts the pure, the
divine, the natural, as a spiritual presence, and the impure, the profane, the human, as a purely
physical presence.
As Lance Newman writes in his Our Common Dwelling, western culture has a tendency
to create an “imaginary geography in which a degraded and oppressive society is opposed to a
pure and free wilderness” (xiv). This trend is present to a remarkable degree in Muir’s work—
everything that Muir wants to exclude from nature (laborers, domestic animals, Native
Americans) is consistently described as dirty. Given Muir’s strict Calvinist upbringing, we
cannot read this as only a physical description. Moreover, the physical descriptions that Muir
provides are beyond belief. He writes that Billy’s grease-besotted pants are so dirty that they
have “no small geological significance,” and refers to geological formations being created upon
them (71). This is hyperbolic, presumably obviously so to all of Muir’s readers (one hopes), but
he continues along these lines in all his descriptions of these things he wants to keep out of his
vision of nature. Billy is defined by his body, by his filth. Moreover, every Native American
that Muir encounters in My First Summer is likewise described as filthy. And, delightfully for
the sake of this project, Muir goes out of his way to explain to his readers that Native Americans
are in no way more natural, and indeed, possibly less so, than any other human (124).
1
By way of contrast, Muir and everything that he defines as natural exists on a purely
spiritual level. Muir peppers his writing with references to the cleanliness of wild animals (10,
26, 33, 43, 78, 81, for a small sample). Why this point is so endlessly fascinating to him is
baffling until one realizes that, as with his concern with filth, this is not merely a physical
commentary. This is about spiritual cleanliness. Notably, Muir, despite enduring the same
physical conditions as Billy, never seems to get dirty. Moreover, consider Muir’s lack of
concern for his own physical safety. In at least two points in My First Summer, we see Muir take
absolutely unreasonable risks to his own physical wellbeing—crawling out along a 3” wide ledge
to better experience falls and running at a grizzly bear in hopes of seeing it break into a run (it
does not) (64-66, 74). Contrast this with Billy and the other shepherds’ tendency to be
perpetually armed, and Billy’s flight from the grizzly that begins to frequent the sheep camp.
Muir constructs himself as a spiritual being, but he imagines Billy and the other laborers as
strictly physical.
Finally, and perhaps most convincingly, Muir repeatedly uses ecclesiastical language in
referring to the landscape and phenomena that he observes. A grasshopper preaches him a
sermon (77). Yosemite is a temple, or a cathedral (105). And, (and perhaps we should keep this
from Muir’s father) Muir, speaking of a particularly fine day in Yosemite, refers to it as “the first
time [he has been] to church in California” (139).
Moreover, this construction of nature as a predominately spiritual entity is not unique to
Muir. To the contrary, Muir draws on a much larger literary tradition. Emerson’s work is
certainly a part of this, and to a lesser degree, Thoreau’s. Emerson famous “transparent eyeball”
passage is clear evidence of this—in it Emerson completely dissolves his own physical
personhood, leaving only an intellect. Or, perhaps more convincingly, his series of thoughts at
the beginning of his chapter “Language,” from Nature, in which he writes that nature is to the
spirit as language is to nature—a series of signs to signify a greater reality. The levels of value
that Emerson thus establishes are clear—the best that physical nature can hope to be is a means
of communicating knowledge about the spiritual world.
Thoreau, of course, does labor in the course of his writing. But consider Thoreau’s
insistence that his labor is entirely distinct from the labor of those around him—while he may
sell some of his beans at market, his experience is allegedly markedly different from the
experience of Flint, who likewise sells his produce at market. Moreover, Thoreau never
2
considers the sources of the food that he buys—does he not almost definitely support farmers
like Flint, or rather, do farmers like Flint permit Thoreau to spend his time contemplating nature
by selling him the fruits of their labor?
So what of this dichotomy? So what if Muir, as Thoreau and Emerson before him,
imagines nature as a spiritual experience? My contention is this: Muir creates an unrealistic
vision of humanity’s relationship with nature. In doing so, he suggests that humanity, and
human activities, are fundamentally disconnected from the world of nature. His vision leaves no
room to discuss how our (always physical) lives impact nature—he simply casts them out of his
preserved world. This, of course, is impossible. Nevertheless, few figures in the 20th century
shaped the environmentalist movement more than Muir did.
Environmentalists love to talk about products and services that are “zero impact.” This is
a farce. The existence of a product means that something else does not exist, regardless as to
how many trees were planted to “offset carbon emissions,” or whatever other conscious assuages
measures were taken. Environmentalists eat, drink, create waste, live in houses made from
wood, ride in cars, walk on the grass, etc. All of this has an impact. Even if you eat entirely
locally grown, organic produce, your diet still deprives the local ecosystem of nutrients it once
had. And so, however much we may wish, as Muir did, that we did not depend on bread for our
survival, we do. And any number of a thousand things. Of course, there is another side of this
critique—industrialists who believe that what they do on land they hold the deed for has little
impact on surrounding land are horribly mistaken. Fertilizers and pesticides can blend, creating
even more ferociously toxic chemicals that are horribly unaware of property lines. GMO seeds
can drift in the wind, irrevocably altering the genes of local plant species.
In this dissertation, I argue that we need to create a theoretical space between the
dichotomies that the war between environmentalists and industrialists has created. As Roderick
Nash writes in his Wilderness in the American Mind, the ends of this dichotomy do not exist—
only the spaces between. There is no place that is wholly polluted, wholly human, nor is there a
place that is wholly natural, completely untouched by humanity. William Cronon takes this
3
argument a step further with his work1 arguing that there is no clear distinction between that
which is natural and that which is human. But our environmental discourses refuse to
acknowledge this. This is no doubt in part because of concerns for self-preservation—any
ceding of ground to the far better funded enemy no doubt cannot lead to anything good. The
trouble is, when we stomp our feet and refuse to even talk about the idea of labor, we write
ourselves out of the conversation. We cannot turn the world into a park. At the same time, we
cannot disregard the limitations of the natural world if we anticipate lasting longer than a
generation on the earth, nor should we assume that it is remotely ethical, by any legitimate
standard, to be gluttons of our natural resources. Perhaps this theoretical discussion can help
create a space between these irrational extremes. Environmentalists need a way to talk about the
reality of our relationship with nature, and examining human labor in nature is the ideal means
by which to do this.
Labor2 is an ideal lens through which to view this issue of the relationship between
humanity and nature for two reasons. First, labor is completely ubiquitous—a necessary part of
living in a physical world. Everything that we consume is the product of some labor, and in
some capacity, labor in nature. Second, perhaps because of its omnipresence, labor has come to
be associated with the base and corporeal side of humanity. Labor is drudgery, that which we
like least about our existence. It is a reminder of the mythic curse placed on humanity, as Adam
and Eve fell from grace. Labor is a constant reminder that we are, in fact, not so different from
the rest of the life on earth. It is profane in the antiquated sense—horribly common. It is, in
these constructions, something completely human.3
1
Uncommon Ground, Nature’s Metropolis, and Changes in the Land all refer to this issue.
For the sake of this dissertation, labor is taken to mean participation in resource extraction,
2
For the sake of this dissertation, labor is taken to mean participation in resource extraction,
conversion, or maintenance. So, while a miner obviously fits here, so does the person driving a
truck full of ore, the person working the furnace to process the ore, someone working in a
kitchen, etc. The critical aspect of the definition is involvement in the production or
maintenance of a thing, rather than, say, a financier, a writer, or a minister of some kind. See the
discussion of productive labor in Chapter 3 of Book 2 of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations for a
fuller definition. The crux of his argument is that productive labor is that which creates or adds
value.
2
3
This dissertation is not about the practical reality of land use—there is way too much to talk
about there. I realize that publically and privately held land are under different rules, and I do
not make that distinction in this dissertation.
4
And so, in this dissertation, I use labor as a lens to see how writers think about the idea
of the human/nature relationship. Because labor is so thoroughly human, human labor in nature
is the perfect lens through which to examine how writers imagine this relationship. I examine
the work of writers who imagine a more theoretically robust, and not so dichotomous, vision of
the human/nature relationship, and so offer something of a corrective to the course upon which
Muir and those like him set twentieth-century environmentalism.
1.1 Influential theorists
There are a handful of ecological thinkers who take on the issue of labor and nature with
the necessary nuance, without whom this project would not exist. The work of these pioneering
thinkers gives room for later scholars to continue the conversation. Leo Marx, in The Machine in
the Garden, approaches the idea of nature and mechanical technology (mechanical technology
being very nearly representative of labor), and does so through literature. His goal is mostly to
describe various (largely American) writers’ perception of the intersections between the pastoral
and the industrial—the steam boat smashing Jim and Huck’s raft, or Thoreau’s dual-natured
train, for example. Unlike later writers, Marx is relatively uninterested in attempting to define
how this relationship ought to proceed. More than anything, Marx establishes the field for future
exploration.
The idea of multiple use land is the best theoretical idea, although I maintain that it is essential
that some land remain as free from human intervention as possible, out of research interest, if
nothing else. And, certainly, the history of multiple use land in the West is not a good one,
ecologically speaking (Edward Abbey’s insistence on calling the Bureau of Land Management
the Bureau of Logging and Mining is certainly apt). I recognize that what I am arguing could
have serious implications on the ground, and not good ones. Environmentalists and industrialists
have drawn strict battle lines here. I usually side with the environmentalists (who doesn’t love
an underdog?), by my argument here is that the war between the two is misguided. As William
Cronon writes in “The Trouble with Wilderness,” “By now I hope it is clear that my
criticism…is not directed at wild nature per se, or even at efforts to set aside large tracts of wild
land, but rather at the specific habits of thinking that flow from this complex cultural
construction called wilderness. It is not the things we label as wilderness that are the problem—
for nonhuman nature and large tracts of the natural world do deserve protection—but rather what
we ourselves mean when we use that label” (81). This dissertation is about theoretical space, not
about the practical realities of environmentalism.
5
Wendell Berry is a bit unusual in that he writes both fiction and as a critic. While his
fiction and essays are an essential part of this dissertation in that they the subject of the third
chapter, Berry’s critical work is likewise central to this project, as it helped shape the critical
landscape from which this project emerges. Berry’s work deals with the idea of labor in nature,
though more directly than Marx. And, unlike Marx, Berry has clear thoughts on precisely what
form the relationship ought to take. Labor and nature go splendidly well together in Berry’s
work, effectively as long as the labor has some sort of nostalgic value. Indeed, that sort of
nostalgic labor seems the best means of relating to nature in Berry’s work—better, certainly than
leisure activities or mechanized labor. Agriculture is best done on a small scale, ideally with
animal labor instead of machines, etc. Not only is this means of agriculture good for the land, it
creates a bond between the laborer and the land that leads to the laborer striving to better care for
the land. Berry puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak, as he actually does farm in this
antiquated fashion in his own life. As Richard White notes, though, in “Are You an
Environmentalist, Or Do You Work For a Living?” it is only the money that Berry has through
writing and teaching that allows him to operate a farm in this way. This farm is essentially a
large-scale hobby, not a business model. To be fair, Berry concedes that the capitalist market
will not support the kind of farming that he advocates, and thus advocates political changes that
make this kind of farming feasible for the average family.
So, Berry is interested in the ways that labor and nature can relate to one another, but as
things stand, Berry does not see room for modern labor—labor which depends on a great deal
more than animal power—in nature. This approach is somewhat reminiscent of Thoreau’s
accepting his own labor as a means of working in nature, but never practically accepting the
labor of any non-elite.
Richard White’s work is pioneering in several ways. First, he takes on the idea of labor
in more controversial ways than earlier writers have. While Berry is, in a sense, driving the thin
edge of the wedge into this conversation about labor and nature, the kind of labor that Berry is
interested in is the kind of labor that any nature-centered person could be behind. Berry’s labor
compared to the labor that produces most of what is consumed internationally is what Whole
Foods is to the Wal-Mart produce department—technically dealing in the same things, but
worlds apart. White, on the other hand, is dealing with labor in a theoretical way, including
industrial scale labor as a part of this. In doing this, he employs a very broad definition of labor.
6
White writes, in his introduction to The Organic Machine, “I emphasize energy because energy
is such a protean and useful concept. The flow of the river is energy, so is the electricity that
comes from the dams that block the flow. Human labor is energy; so are the calories stored as
fat by salmon for their journey upstream. Seen one way, energy is an abstraction; seen another it
is as concrete as salmon, human bodies, and the Grand Coulee Dam” (ix). Human history and
natural history cannot be understood outside of their relationship to each other, he writes, and
indeed, labor is among our earliest means of relating to nature. He concludes, “I...argue that it is
our work that ultimately links us, for better or worse, to nature” (x).
There is no intrinsic difference for White, other than human constructed meaning,
between the dam built with beaver labor and the dam built with human labor. Environmentalists,
though, have typically drawn a clear line between the two, with the beaver dam sacred, and the
human dam profane. This is, to White, indicative of several theoretical problems, and he wants
to revise how environmentalists approach the idea of labor, both to correct the theoretical issues,
and to give environmentalists a new way to approach the labor discourse.
Finally, Lance Newman has likewise approached the idea of labor and nature, but is
interested in labor in a more traditionally Marxist way than White or the earlier theorists. He
considers how labor affects humanity, and in turn how that shapes humanity’s conceptions of
nature, rather than, as White, looking at how human labor interfaces with nature. How capitalist
labor shapes conceptions of nature is his most interesting idea, for the purposes of this
dissertation. He writes, “I believe that wilderness and wilderness recreation are natural features,
so to speak, of capitalism. They are parts of a cultural tradition that has evolved within and in
response to capitalism over the course of the last two and a half centuries. And they depend on
an imaginary geography in which a degraded and oppressive society is opposed to a pure and
free wilderness,” (xiv). This “pure and free wilderness” of the Transcendental movement is
precisely the danger that White is concerned about in his work. This vision of nature or
wilderness as a place free from the “corrupting power” of human labor creates a dangerous
dichotomy that ultimately leads to a lack of respect for the ubiquitous, mundane nature. Failure
to revise our approach to work in nature, and continuing to view it as a place for rugged play,
White says, will lead to a world in which “Nature may turn out to look a lot like an organic
Disneyland, except it will be harder to park” (185).
7
My work draws on the work of all of these thinkers. Like White, I am concerned with the
role that labor plays in humanity’s relationships with the natural world. I see labor as an
absolutely fundamental part of what we are in the world, and something that ought not
necessarily to offend us. Further, I think, as does White, that conceiving of labor as something
separate from the romantic “pure and free wilderness” will ultimately lead to a skewed version of
our species’ relationship with the natural world. Unlike White, though, I want to pursue these
issues through literature. I want to use White’s largely ecological theory to interpret 20th century
American nature writers’ approaches to the human/nature relationship—specifically using
authors’ depictions of labor in nature as a lens to more closely examine their conceptions of
nature. As Newman considers how capitalist labor shapes our vision of the natural world, I want
to consider how that capitalist-derived vision in turn shapes our vision of labor in the natural
world. Where Newman is interested in the creation of the natural/human dichotomy, I want to
see the ramifications of that dichotomy born out in literature.
My own work, though, draws on broader theoretical influences as well, namely deep
ecology, environmental history, ecofeminism, and ecocritical race theory.
Arne Naess used the term “deep ecology” for the first time in a 1972 paper presentation
at a conference in Bucharest, beginning a movement that sought to revise how humanity
conceives of its relationship with the world. The theory underlying deep ecology is elementally
non-anthropocentrism. Deep ecology gives humanity no particularly special place in the world.
Further, deep ecology sees problems with other attempts at correcting the human/nature
relationship in that they seek to establish an environmental ethic. Environmental ethics, the
founders of the movement believe, will inevitably fail. Eccy de Jonge, in Spinoza and Deep
Ecology, writes “Whereas deep ecology seeks to analyse the ontological features that make up
the work, including the nature of value, environmental ethics seeks to determine reasons why we
ought to extend concern, from human interests to the non-human environment, or to nature as a
whole” (3). Problematically, any sort of environmental ethics rise up out of an anthropocentric
worldview. As long as humanity is insisting that the world revolves around itself, there can be
no ethical system that actually extends care to the non-human world. After all, if we agree that
fellow humans are deserving of ethical treatment, and still treat them as if they were not, what
chance does the nonhuman stand of receiving such treatment? Rather, what is needed to correct
this flawed relationship is a revised worldview does not center humanity—a deep ecological
8
worldview. It is the theoretical result of Darwin’s work—humans are nothing but a species
among many species.
Deep ecology is interesting to this dissertation because its theoretical foundation suggests
a human/nature relationship in which the two do not exist in opposition, but are ultimately the
same thing. Given this, it seems a logical extension that a human dam is as natural as a beaver
dam. With the theoretical point that humanity is not at all separated from nature—an essential
tenet of deep ecology—human labor can and must exist in nature. Practically speaking, though,
this is not typically so—as Naess and Sessions write in their eight basic principles of deep
ecology: “Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital
needs.” Practically, then our labor and lives must be more or less like the labor and lives of
birds—taking only what they need to build the nests they need to survive. This is, of course, far
out of line with current reality. Regardless as to the theoretical merits of deep ecology, it is
decidedly impractical. Attempts at its implementation have either been violent and relatively
ineffective (burning parking lots full of Hummers, spiking trees intended to be cut, sinking
whaling vessels—all of these officially opposed by the founders of deep ecology (de Jonge, 4)),
or political and nearly completely ineffective. Nevertheless, deep ecology is still an important
influence on the theoretical base of this project.
A more realistic, pragmatic, and ultimately helpful theoretical base can be found in the
environmental history work of William Cronon (whose noteworthy works include Changes in
the Land, Nature’s Metropolis, and Common Ground), in which nature and humanity are not at
all separated from each other. Cronon’s work investigates ways in which nature is constructed.
In his early work, he looks specifically at constructions in American history—the idea of virgin
land in the new world, and the rural area around Chicago vs. Chicago—and effectively
deconstructs them. In what is his most significant work for the purposes of this dissertation,
Uncommon Ground, Cronon, along with a collection of equally gifted scholars, explores further
the theoretical issues apparent in his earlier work. Essays in the collection, though, are also
concerned with the practical implications of these theoretical realities. The collection looks to
rethink of nature, based on two premises: 1. Nature is not stable, 2. Nature is usually a human
construction. In Cronon’s essay “The Trouble With Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong
Nature,” he looks both to the processes by which the significance of wilderness and nature have
been produced and altered, and to the problematic nature of our current relationship with nature.
9
He writes, “But the trouble with wilderness is that it quietly expresses and reproduces the very
values its devotees seek to reject. The flight from history that is very nearly the core of
wilderness represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can
somehow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed
before we began to leave our marks on the world” (80).
The danger of this flight to “wilderness” is expanded throughout the text. This sort of
fetishization of nature allows one to live, not as if nature is a context, but rather as if nature is a
destination. Thus, ecological problems close to home, such as 10lichéd10n cups, heavily
fertilized lawns, monocrop agriculture, and inefficient vehicles, are ignored, as long as
Yellowstone stands somewhere. This separation between humanity and nature effectively allows
for incredible environmental damage, and a surprisingly clean environmental conscience.
While Cronon shares obvious theoretical background with deep ecology, in that both see
“nature” as a human construction, the practical implications of their work are considerably
different. Cronon accepts that humans are the dominant species on the planet. His acceptance of
labor is more than theoretical. His goal is to revise how people conceive of the nature around
them, not to completely alter humanity’s worldview to a non-anthropocentric one. Humanity is
at the center of his writing.
Ecofeminism is an incredibly broad and varied collection of theoretical approaches.
Most broadly, and possibly most accurately, the word “ecofeminism” indicates only a
commitment to the causes of feminism and ecology. But, as Greta Gaard wrote in her Ecological
Politics: Ecofeminists and the Greens, the potential practical meanings of the term are myriad.
“Did it mean women were somehow ‘closer’ to nature—and if so, what were the implications for
men? Did it mean women and nature had experienced similar treatment under patriarchal
systems? Or did it mean women who were active in both feminist and environmental
movements now had a name for their dual involvements?” she writes (12).
Ultimately, it means all of these things. Ecofeminism, broadly, has rejected attempts to
narrow its meaning and focus to a “singular definition and create a set of universal rules (a tactic
antithetical to ecofeminism)...” writes Gaard (12). It has, instead, continued as a multifaceted
reality—a term for describing any number of related ways of approaching the relationship
between humanity and nature, with the unifying elements of a focus on women and the
environment. There are two quotations, though, that give some broad truths about the world of
10
ecofeminism. First, as some-times ecofeminist Donna Haraway, writes in her “Cyborg
Manifesto,” “Cyborg feminists have to argue that ‘we’ do not want any more natural matrix of
unity and that no construction is whole” (Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 157). And second,
Victoria Davion, in her “Ecofeminism” writes: “Ecofeminists agree that there is a link between
dominations of women and dominations of nature, and that an understanding of one is crucial to
the understanding of the other”—a definition that is narrow enough to have some meaning, but
broad enough to encompass the breadth of ecofeminist thought (Companion to Environmental
Philosophy 233).
Of most interest to this project, though, are the writers that focus on the treatment of
women and nature under patriarchal systems. These thinkers are effectively doing with this
work precisely what I hope to be doing with this project: using one part of our human existence
as a magnifying glass with which to study our relationship with nature. Susan Griffin’s 1978
Women and Nature is an early example of this kind of thought. The book explores the ways in
which the oppression of women and nature have been linked throughout history. Liberation, she
suggests, cannot be genuine for women, animals, or nature, until it is true for all three. The
problem is not specifically oppression of any of these three, but rather a mindset that allows it at
all. In other words, the problem is essentially as Marti Kheel stated in an interview with Greta
Gaard: “Until you address the underlying roots, what I call the psychosexual roots of our
environmental crisis, you’re not going to be doing anything but piecemeal change” (Gaard 38).
Andrée Collard and Joyce Contrucci followed in this line, with their Rape of the Wild: Man’s
Violence Against Animals and the Earth, in which they, too, link the oppression of animals and
nature to patriarchal society.
These authors are writing along theoretical lines very similar to those that I wish to
pursue. Problems with how we relate to nature are made particularly clear when examined in the
light of patriarchal oppression, in their case, or in the light of conceptions of labor, in the case of
my project. Our problems with nature go well beyond continuing whaling, or the indiscriminate
cutting of old growth forests. The problems are deep conceptual problems, and manifest
themselves in ways other than strictly environmental problems. Focusing in on these related
issues allows us to better understand the nature of these greater conceptual problems.
11
Though there is considerably less work on critical race theory and ecocriticism than there
is ecofeminism, the work that does exist helps to provide the theoretical structure for pursuing
this dissertation. Ecocritical race theory examines the connections between race and nature—
both constructions of nature by racialized writers, and depictions of race (or the perceived
absence of race) in nature. Scott Hicks, in his article “W.E.B Du Bois, Booker T. Washington,
and Richard Wright: Towards an Ecocriticism of Color,” takes the first approach, using nature as
a lens to examine each writers’ thoughts on race. In each case, the writer’s depiction of nature
reflects his greater worldview. Given that each of these writers is very deliberately writing about
race relations, elements of their arguments on race are apparent in their writing on nature.
Washington’s very clear pastoralism, waxing eloquent about the glories of nature, especially
when contrasted with the harshness of urban life, is clearly a part of his overall drive to maintain
a rural black population. Du Bois, on the other hand, as Hicks reads him, is pushing towards
urbanization, with the rural environment an encumbrance upon full development.
As Hicks is using ecocritical race theory, the lens of nature is a way of exploring the
meaning of race. Inverting that approach, using race as a means of exploring the meaning of
nature, gives a theoretical model more interesting for the purposes of this dissertation. Paul
Outka, in Race and Nature From Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance, makes use of
this race-as-lens approach (as well as the nature-as-lens approach, but there is no need to recover
that ground). His section on John Muir is an excellent example of that. Muir’s whiteness is
never mentioned in his work. It is completely without mentioned meaning—Indians are dirty,
Blacks slovenly, Muir’s whiteness is normal. Muir’s self identification with nature is evident
throughout his writing, and this sort of empty-signifier normalness that applies to his own race
(and gender and class) is likewise applied to nature. As Outka writes of Muir’s reference to
“over-civilised people...going home” to the national parks:
...those ‘over-civilised people’ were (1) mostly, if not almost exclusively, white, and (2)
were ‘going home’ to a place most of them had never been, whose actual native
inhabitants had been removed or killed, to (3) enjoy a wild experience that, despite its
implicit universality...was in historical practice no means universally available or
universally appealing... (156).
So, in Muir’s work, both nature and his whiteness have this same sort of ahistorical, universal
meaning. Understanding Muir’s nature through the lens of his whiteness, as Outka does, gives a
more nuanced reading of Muir’s work. Used in this way, ecocritical race theory gives a strong
12
theoretical model to this project in the same sense that some ecofeminist work does. Following
these influences, I intend to use the theoretically significant idea of human labor in nature to
examine how writers think about the human/nature relationship.
1.2 The Authors
For this project, I looked for authors that presented a vision of the human/nature
relationship distinct from the dichotomous vision presented by Muir, but also writers who
dedicated a significant amount of their work to the idea of human labor in nature. Along with
that, I sought a range of perspectives—racially, socially, and regionally. Though the authors are
presented chronologically, I hesitate to consider the approaches a progression—though while
some of what Mary Austin cannot see, Hurston, Berry, and Ray can, in other ways, Austin has
the most progressive vision of nature out of the four. Each of these writers fills holes that the
others cannot see.
1.2.1 Mary Austin
Mary Austin has perhaps the most progressive vision of the human/nature relationship
examined in this project. She creates what I call a “queer domesticity,” borrowing Eve
Sedgewick’s idea of an unbroken continuum between the homosocial and the homoerotic, but in
this situation, applying it to the idea of the natural and the domestic. Austin all but eliminates the
boundary between humanity and nature by extending the domestic to nature, and the natural to
the domestic. Antelope and domestic sheep are in the same theoretical category for her, and
people’s habits and cultures are as much products of the land as plants’ bizarre adaptations to the
ferocity of the landscape. Her vision of what the human/nature relationship ought to be is antiheroic. It is better to adapt one’s self to the confines of the region, by growing crops that can
handle the extremes of the desert, than it is to heroically bend the land to your will by irrigating,
and thus depriving the rest of the region of water entirely. This vision of the oneness of
humanity and nature is the most progressive of the writers considered in this dissertation, despite
Austin’s early dates.
13
Of course, Austin is not without her conceptual flaws. She conceives of laborers’
relationship with the natural world as a mutually beneficial one—to the extent of never
interrogating the environmental damage wrought by mining, ranching, or any industries she
references in her work. Perhaps because of her own class, she also assumes that an
understanding of nature is something that can take the place of virtually everything else that one
might aspire to in life. That is, in Austin’s work, having an understanding of the ways that
animals move towards springs, etc., trumps one’s desire for economic gain. In these ways,
Austin is at once the strongest and most flawed voice examined in the project. While her
theoretical ideas are potent, and her expression of them is more complete than any of the other
writers considered here, her flaws are likewise greater. There is virtually no concern in her work
for the effects of labor on the environment, or on those who labor.
1.2.2 Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston gives us a folk-centric, Southern Black approach. Labor, in her
work, forces people to be close to nature, and through that closeness, they develop significant
knowledge of nature. Hurston, though, picks up on a point that Austin misses—that labor can be
incredibly damaging to the laborers. When it is effectively slavery, as it is for Janie in her
marriage to Logan, for Tea Cake as he buries bodies in Miami, for the Hebrews in Egypt in
Moses, etc., the benefits of labor in nature are all but eliminated, and the humanity of the laborers
is seriously compromised.
In contrast to the primary means of coming into contact with nature in Hurston’s work, in
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie initially comes into contact with nature through a kind of
intuition, as revealed in the orgasm scene under the pear tree in the first pages of the book.
Notably, though, when she does have this first contact with nature, rather than approach it with a
kind of romantic pathetic fallacy, Janie sees nature reflected in herself,4 indicating a rather
different conception of nature than that of the dominant romantic discourse. This scene is
immediately followed with Nanny’s monologue on the brutality of being a black woman, and the
4
“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf…” (8), and “Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in
bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had
glossy leaves and bursting buds…” (11).
14
loathsome marriage to Logan Killicks—both of which give an incredibly negative depiction of
labor. The orgasm scene is, in the novel, Janie’s first serious encounter with nature, and,
obviously, free of labor. This is only Janie’s introduction to nature, though. Her relationship
with nature develops, and she becomes “a sort of black female update on Natty Bumpo,” (Outka
193), primarily through engaging nature with Tea Cake, that is, through hunting, fishing, and
finally agricultural labor in the muck. This scene, though significant, is inconsistent with
Hurston’s modus operandi throughout her work. Further, the extreme destructive qualities
ascribed to labor via Nanny’s speech and the Logan marriage refer to something altogether
different than the labor that Janie participates in with Tea Cake. What Nanny is referring to and
what Janie experiences in her marriage to Logan is more slavery than anything else—something
entirely different than the labor that brings Janie and Tea Cake both closer to nature.
As with Austin, Hurston occupies a sort of class between classes. Her race and gender
put her thoroughly outside of the dominant romantic discourse on nature, as typified by Muir.
Her familiarity with the effects of labor is born from a life of observation and participation in it.
On the other hand, Hurston’s anthropological training, as well as the material things that came
from her New York patrons, put a barrier between her and the laborers that she wrote about.
This division was all too clear to some of her contemporaries, who saw her work as regressive
and pastoralist. So, while she expresses some concern for the condition of laborers, there is
certainly room for growth.
Further, Hurston ignores almost altogether the negative impact of human labor on
5
nature. The land that Janie and Tea Cake farmed in the Muck was undoubtedly the product of
ill conceived attempts to drain the Everglades and convert them to farm land—an idea as bad as
trying to irrigate the California deserts. Nowhere in Hurston’s wide range of work concerning
labor in nature is concern for ecological damage expressed (one could almost see a sort of
vengeance-of-the-land element in the hurricane of Their Eyes, but even then, the concern is
solely for the human inhabitants, not the land itself). As such, there are still fairly dramatic flaws
in Hurston’s suggestion of how the human/nature relationship should work.
5
To be fair, virtually no one writing during the time that Hurston was doing the majority
of her publishing was aware of the danger of draining the Everglades (Douglas’ River of Grass
was not published until 1947, Their Eyes was published in 1937). Even people like Stetson
Kennedy, an avid environmentalist late in his life, advocated the draining of the glades to
produce productive farm lands.
15
1.2.3 Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry represents a dramatic shift in terms of the social class of the writers
discussed in this project. He is white, male, extremely educated, and wealthy enough to operate
a farm on an effectively recreational level. Berry is distinct in two other significant ways as
well, though: he writes essays directly addressing the ideas of human labor in nature (thus
spelling out his ideas more concretely than Austin and Hurston do through their narratives), and
casts himself as a laborer, through his work on his own farm. Labor is not only a means of
relating to nature in his work, it is the single best way, for both humanity and the land. Not only
is labor in nature ameliorating to humanity in any number of ways, it creates place, and when the
land is place, humans care for it. Berry, more clearly than either Austin or Hurston, considers
the ideas that human labor in nature can damage both nature and humans. As such, Berry is very
particular as to the kinds of labor that he finds permissible in nature. Problematically, the kinds
of things that Berry suggests (relying on animal power rather than external fuel sources, raising
organic lamb for high-end markets) are not feasible on a large scale, but are indeed reflective of
his leisure class status. Because of his advocacy of labor methods that effectively require the
laborer to be independently wealthy, Berry simply recreates the problematic dichotomy between
humanity and nature, rather than solving it. That is, rather than finding an environmentally
functional way to accept human labor into nature, he creates a new caste of labor—one that is
likely more environmentally sensitive, but still not one that solves the fundamental problem of
humanity’s physical needs. Moreover, Berry never sufficiently interrogates the labor that he
suggests is appropriate. Never does he adequately address the environmental impacts it creates,
nor does he appropriately consider the effects it has on those who perform the labor. While his
own recollections of life on the farm are wonderful, there are reasons why the vast majority of
Americans left the family farms in the 20th century—most saw opportunity for better life
elsewhere. This, too, seems a product of Berry’s status. And so, while Berry offers a partial
solution, and shows more awareness of the negative impacts that human labor in nature can have
on both the environment and those laboring, he still does not adequately address the issues at
hand.
16
1.2.4 Janisse Ray
Janisse Ray is the final author considered in this dissertation, and the most current. Her
work addresses most of the issues that we have seen in the earlier authors. She is not romantic
about the effects on humans that labor in nature, nor is she blind to the effects of the labor on
nature itself. Despite this, she avoids the romantic trap of looking for “free and pure nature,” and
the more seductive trap of Berry’s leisured labor. In terms of class, despite being white, Ray has
striking similarities to Zora Neale Hurston—both come from working class backgrounds, both
are educated well beyond what their backgrounds would indicate, and both return to their native
regions, where they then occupy a sort of class between. As such, Ray has a very similar
tendency to privilege the working class experience. Unlike Hurston, though, Ray has not been
accused of the sort of pastoralism that some read in Hurston’s work.
Notably, Ray does not segregate labor in the human experience—that is, labor is only a part
of life for her. And, as labor is only a part of life, laborers are only a part of a greater whole. So,
her concerns tend less towards the effects of labor on laborers specifically, and more towards
humanity generally. That said, as with Hurston, labor is a very powerful means of guiding one
towards knowing nature. In all of Ray’s work, she always consorts with local laborers—in
Wildcard Quilt crabbers lead a river conservation team and a truck driver for a logging company
helps Ray preserve first growth forests. Ray’s stuck truck is moved by local “former”
moonshiners (who know better how to drive the sandy roads, and are more familiar with the
wildlife, as well), and Ray learns much of the lore of the swamp by talking with Florida locals in
Pinhook.
Ray is more concerned with the effects of labor on nature than any other writer considered.
All of her work at least mentions the damage of ill considered practices in South Georgia—clear
cuts of first growth forests, pine plantations, etc. Finally, Ray gives a vision of an integrated
nature and humanity. Pinhook is subtitled “Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land,” and for
Ray, the fragmentation is as much about humanity as it is roads and pine plantations splitting up
the swamp. Moreover, in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood Ray alternates chapters on issues in
regional ecology and scenes from her life. This integration is more complete than Berry’s, as
Ray is concerned with the reality of labor. Where Berry allows for effectively recreational level
labor, Ray acknowledges the necessity of substantial labor. But, rather than allow it to continue
17
in the industrial sense that it has to this point, she argues for a more subsistence level—
selectively cutting every 50 years rather than clear cutting planted pines every seven years, for
example. While the former will not fill every Home Depot coast to coast with southern yellow
pine, it could, if managed well, provide for a more conservative demand.
While, as mentioned above, I hesitate to consider the work of these four authors a
progression, their work does feed on and into the work of others. Each brings her own
perspective, and sees problems that others do not. All provide a more helpful and realistic
alternative to the completely dichotomous vision offered by Muir and most of the rest of 20th
century environmentalism. And while none provides a comprehensive blueprint for what the
human/nature relationship should look like, each offers some commentary on what it could be.
18
CHAPTER 2
MARY AUSTIN
Mary Hunter Austin presents a conception of the human/nature relationship that was
distinct from Muir’s romantic vision and continues to be distinct from dominant ecological
narratives of 2012. She suggests an entirely different relationship between humanity and nature,
in which there are no clear boundaries between the two. Just as the flora and fauna of a region
derive from the conditions they develop in, so Austin believes that humans and the activities are
likewise shaped by their natural conditions. As such, she positions human labor as a natural
process. Her vision is an excellent starting point for a conversation on how human labor can and
does fit into nature. That said, her ideas of how human labor fits into nature have serious flaws:
she expresses virtually no concern for the effects of human labor on nature, and romanticizes the
plight of those who live impoverished lives defined by their labor in nature almost to the point of
absurdity. While these flaws make her vision an unacceptable conclusion to this conversation,
her work still performs well as a means of starting this conversation.
Austin was born in 1868, not in the West, where her most remembered work is centered,
but in Illinois. She, along with her family, moved to southern California when Austin was 20, in
an ill-fated attempt at homesteading. While the family’s farm in California never amounted to
anything, this move to the West created showed Austin a new way to think about humanity’s
relationship with nature. It was from this new vantage point that Austin began her writing life.
Her career has been one of the more dynamic in American nature writing. She saw some fair
popularity in her life, lecturing internationally, and consorting with major literary figures of her
day. Following her death, she slipped into near obscurity. This decline in status prompted Linda
K. Karell, in 1995, to write “Austin wrote and published in almost every conceivable literary
genre and was widely known and respected as a literary artist at her death in 1934. However,
Austin’s work has received little sustained critical attention, and today it is generally excluded
from the American literary canon” (American Women Short Story Writers 154). But Austin’s
work is no longer obscure—many of her works are back in print, her work is frequently
considered by ecocritics, and, in a sure sign that she is no literary outsider, her work now appears
in the Norton American literature anthologies.
19
Some of the foundational aspects of this argument are not new. Others scholars have
certainly suggested that Austin’s work decenters the human in nature—as Michelle Campbell
Toohey writes “...Austin, in contrast to her male contemporaries, positioned her nature writer as
part of the ecosystem she described, creating a rhetorical and political strategy that challenged
both the androcentric perspective and the attendant ecological exploitation some male nature
writers implicitly endorsed” (203). Moreover, Barney Nelson, author of The Wild and the
Domestic, sees that Austin finds more of a room for human labor in nature than do her
contemporaries. What these writers have not fully investigated, though, is the complete scale of
Austin’s revision. Austin’s vision is a dramatic reimagining of the way that humanity and nature
fit together. Eve Sedgwick writes in her Between Men, “To draw the ‘homosocial’ back into the
orbit of ‘desire,’ of the potentially erotic, then, is to hypothesize the potential unbrokenness of a
continuum between homosocial and homosexual—a continuum whose visibility, for men, in our
society, is radically disrupted” (2435). Austin, I argue, is doing something very similar for the
natural and the human. She draws both into each other, eliminating the false dichotomy, and
suggesting instead something I term “queer domesticity.” Her queer domesticity is a revisioning of how humans deal with nature—inspired in parts by the ways she saw white settlers
around her living, native ways of living, contemporary discourses on femininity, plants and
animals that are neither clearly wild or domestic, and her own failed attempts at conventional
domestic behavior. Not only does she, as Toohey and Nelson observe, suggest that the humans
are a part of nature (and she certainly does this), she attempts to read human behaviors through a
natural lens as well—reinterpreting them as seems more naturally fitting to her. That is, Austin
attempts to reinterpret human domestic actions without typical human significance attached to
them. Thus, perhaps her greatest domestic figure enacts this domesticity while living in a cave—
not a typical domestic location. Beyond that, we are given an extensive look into the homemaking activities of the masculine Pocket Hunter, which contrasts neatly with the near total lack
of home-making on by the Walking Woman, Austin’s ultimate feminine character. Austin
presents a vision of human domestic activity that is very distinct from contemporary conceptions
of what human domestic activity is, and a vision that, in her mind, is also completely natural. In
the course of this, she completely naturalizes human labor.
20
2.1 Defining Austin’s Vision
Austin’s queer domestic vision is difficult to define because it is so colossal. Through an
examination of her vision, though, we will see how Austin incorporates human labor into nature.
The most fundamental aspect of it is this: humans are not at all distinct from nature. This has
two primary ramifications. First, Austin sees human actions (somewhat unusually including
labor) as a part of nature, and makes some efforts to prove this to readers. Second, following the
first, Austin attempts to interpret human behaviors through a natural lens. We see the first part
of this most clearly laid out in Austin’s little read book The American Rhythm, and then further
elucidated by how Austin deliberately eliminates the boundary between the human and the
natural, the wild and the domestic, in her nature writing. The second we see in how Austin treats
the domestic actions of the people she writes about. People that are not typically imagined as
domestic figures are cast as ultimate domestic characters, and typically domestic scenes are not
as effectively portrayed.
2.2 Breaking Down the Dichotomy
In her The American Rhythm: Studies and Re-Expressions of Amerindian Songs, Austin
makes explicitly clear what is implied through much of the rest of her work: humans derive their
behaviors from the landscape they are in. In American Rhythm, Austin argues that art is an
outgrowth of human interaction with the landscape, particularly that poetic and dance rhythm
grow out from the land in which they are created. She writes “...I discovered I could listen to
aboriginal verses on the phonograph in unidentified Amerindian languages, and securely refer
them by their dominant rhythms to the plains, the deserts and woodlands that had produced
them...” (The American Rhythm 19).6 While Austin’s scholarly opinions were never terribly well
respected, this quotation gives a clear indication of her thinking. Human behaviors (in this case,
6
Scholar Dale Metcalfe emphasizes Austin’s distinctiveness in his “Singing Like Indians Do:
Mary Austin’s Poetry,” noting Austin’s conception of poetry put her at odds with both her
European modernist contemporaries and other poets who dabbled in Amerindian poetic forms
(Metcalfe names Amy Lowell and D. H. Lawrence, most prominently). Whereas these other
poets saw poetry as a means of depicting a fragmenting world, Austin saw poetry as something
that was a fundamental connection between humans and their landscape.
21
art, later, labor) are derived from nature, and so, human culture, for Austin, is an outgrowth of
landscape just as plant adaptations are. Humans are as much a part of the nature of an area as
any other element present in it.
This very specific statement, though, is not the norm for her work. Rather, more
frequently, Austin blurs the distinction between the wild and the domestic by presenting her
readers with examples of the two being present in each other. That is, she gives examples of
“wild” things in “domestic” situations, and “domestic” things in “wild” situations. For example,
Austin shows the domestic in the wild by consistently using naturalizing language and contexts
to describe humanity. In her Land of Little Rain Austin begins with a description of the
landscape that is the subject of her study. Plants grow in unusual ways, growing hair and
producing gum to protect themselves from the sun. Birds stand in the shadows of fence posts,
ignoring predator and prey to do so (and fence posts are not described as a dramatic intrusion on
the landscape). Tellingly, the people of the desert are present as well in this introduction to the
land. “Trust Indians not to miss any virtues of the plant world!,” she writes of the Amerindian
practice of using a secretion from the creosote plant (6). There is no shift in Austin’s rhetoric
here—the Native uses for plants are presented in exactly the same light (as adaptive behaviors to
an extreme climate) as are all the natural adaptations. There is a potential critique here—Austin
chooses to naturalize Native Americans, rather than humanity generally, in this particular
section. Naturalization of ethnic others is neither unique nor helpful in constructing a better
vision of the human nature relationship. It is essential that the viewer see herself as part of
nature—not some other person, with herself still in opposition. Fortunately, Austin provides a
more universal comment in this passage:
It is recorded in the report of the Death Valley expedition that after a year of abundant
rains, on the Colorado desert was found a specimen of Amaranthus ten feet high. A year
later the same species in the same place matured in the drought at four inches. One hopes
the land may breed like qualities in her human offspring, not tritely to ‘try,’ but to do (5).
Here again, humans are presented just as the plants are—as living things in a hostile
environment, who must adapt to survive. Humanity is as much a part of this environment as the
plants and animals. This point is one of the more significant aspects of Austin’s work, as it lays
the foundation for creating a more functional vision of the human nature relationship. And,
Austin’s depiction of this relationship is largely consistent across her work.
22
This relationship between humanity and nature that Austin suggests for all of humanity is
repeated in individual relationships throughout her writing. That is, virtually all of Austin’s
characters7 (at least the characters she seems fond of) absorb something of their landscapes:
Seyavi, the Pocket Hunter, Little Pete (who both take on something of the appearance of the
land), the Walking Woman, and several others are all reflections of their environment.
Moreover, in all of these cases, Austin not only naturalizes these people, she also naturalizes
their labor. This is important because it indicates first, that Austin realizes that labor is an
essential part of the human condition, and second, because it indicates that Austin actually does
integrate humanity into nature. As mentioned in the introduction, one of the reasons this project
focuses on human labor is the meaning historically given to human labor. If Austin can accept
one of the basest aspects of humanity (human labor), then she is doing more than talking about
accepting humanity into nature, is seriously doing so.
2.3 Seyavi
Seyavi, or The Basket Maker, as Austin sometimes calls her, is one of Austin’s most
interesting and most fully presented characters. In this character, too, we see a very clear
presentation of Austin’s naturalization of humanity and human labor. Also in Austin’s
presentation of Seyavi, though, is one of the clearest opportunities to point out Austin’s excesses
and blind spots.
Austin introduces Seyavi with a brief quote from her, regarding her own capacity for
survival, and then a half page synopsis of some of the situations she was pushed to live in, and
then moves to a story about a stray dog. Austin writes:
There used to be in the little Antelope a she dog, stray or outcast, that had a litter in some
forsaken lair, and ranged and foraged for them, slinking savage and afraid, remembering
and mistrusting humankind, wistful, lean, and sufficient for her young. I have thought
Seyavi might have had days like that….Paiutes have the art of reducing life to its lowest
ebb and yet saving it alive on grasshoppers, lizards, and strange herbs… (65).
7
Is “characters” the right term here, given that Austin’s nature writing is ostensibly non-fiction?
I argue that it is, given that she almost certainly amalgamates aspects of several people into more
comprehensible characters, and likely takes some liberties with their stories along the way.
23
This quote sets the tone for the chapter. While this story may be about a particular dog (and it
may well be a dog that Austin invented for her literary purposes here) the significance is
obviously not limited to the physical reality of this dog. This is a story about intense survival—
about a will to survive and provide for one’s young. The connection that Austin draws between
Seyavi and this stray dog is the beginning of her naturalization of Seyavi. Seyavi, as established
here, is as much a natural force as she is a person. There can be no doubt that Seyavi’s defense
of her own life, and the life of her son, is as natural as anything that occurs in nature.
Beyond this structuring of Seyavi as a natural force (or at least allying her actions with
the actions of nature), Austin’s depiction of Seyavi’s living situation during the time when she
had to fend for herself encourages the reader to see Seyavi (and through her, humanity generally)
as natural creatures. Her description of this situation is very brief: “…Seyavi and the boy lay up
in the caverns of the Black Rock and ate tule roots and fresh-water clams that they dug out of the
slough bottoms with their toes” (64). In this description, we see Seyavi and her son living
effectively as animals do. Their shelter is the kind of shelter that animals seek—not a built
environment at all. They do not cultivate, but instead eat like animals do—finding what they can
in a wholly natural environment. Austin naturalizes Seyavi and her son here by portraying their
life as a nearly bestial one. Seyavi’s motives are perfectly natural, and now we see that her way
of living is likewise perfectly natural. Seyavi belongs in this environment in the same way that
the wild dog does.
Austin positions the discussion of Seyavi’s labor in a kind of curious way. While she
names the chapter “The Basket Maker”, and uses the names “Seyavi” and “The Basket Maker”
interchangeably when discussing this character (obviously signaling to the reader that her basket
making is central to who she is), she delays this discussion for several pages, first getting through
the biographical information. When Austin does finally get into discussing Seyavi’s labor, she
does so by discussing the significance of the baskets to the maker. She writes
In our kind of society, when a woman ceases to alter the fashion of her hair, you guess
that she has passed the crisis of her experience. If she goes on crimping and uncrimping
with the changing mode, it is safe to suppose she has never come up against anything too
big for her. The Indian woman gets nearly the same personal note in the pattern of her
baskets. Not that she does not make all kinds…but her works of art are all of the same
piece….In this pattern [Seyavi] had made cooking pots in the golden spring of her
wedding year….In this fashion she made them when, after pillage, it was possible to
reinstate the housewifely crafts….and in the famine time….Seyavi made baskets for love
and sold them for money, in a generation that preferred iron pots for utility (66).
24
Obviously, Seyavi’s labor is not a purely practical affair. The baskets are not sold profitably, nor
are they particularly useful to this generation. The primary function of the labor, then, is as
something that constructs a cultural identity. She makes them because she must. Moreover, by
calling Seyavi “The Basket Maker,” Austin is repeating this point: that it is intrinsic to Seyavi’s
identity that she make baskets. And again, look at the repetition in the above quote: in every
stage of Seyavi’s life, she has made these baskets. Austin is very clear here: Seyavi’s labor is a
fundamental part of who she is, part and parcel of her essence. And because Austin has already
gone to such lengths to naturalize Seyavi, making Seyavi’s labor an intrinsic part of who she is
effectively naturalizes the labor as well. Austin solidifies this point as she continues her
discussion of Seyavi’s labor, writing: “The weaver and the warp lived next to the earth and were
saturated with the same elements” (67). The three elements presented here—The Basket Maker,
her work, and the earth—are connected in some great mystical capacity. What is clear is that the
labor and the laborer belong with the earth—they are far from the grotesque intruders that some
writers depict those laboring in nature as.
Unfortunately, Austin’s chapter on Seyavi is one of the clearest instances of what she
misses, and what ultimately keeps her work from being a very strong guide in creating a healthy
discourse on human labor in nature. Austin, here, completely romanticizes Seyavi’s condition.
While Austin can write about how Seyavi’s life was ultimately her art, and gave her some
mystical connection to the earth, she completely misses that Seyavi may not want to be living so
close to the earth. When she writes “…Paiutes have the art of reducing life to its lowest ebb and
yet saving it alive on grasshoppers, lizards, and strange herbs… (65),” there is never any clear
consideration that this is something that no human should be adept at. Seyavi lived in a cave for
a period while raising her son. While this is impressive, and says a great deal about her ability to
adjust her life to her surroundings, it also seems like an absolutely horrible experience. While
we need to be careful not to push our conceptions of what makes a decent standard of living on
other cultures, Seyavi ended up in that situation because of a massive societal failure within her
culture. Seyavi’s decision to move into the cave, and live off of tubers she dug up with her toes
was not a beautiful decision. It was a frantic one, a last ditch effort to preserve the lives of her
and her son. Austin misses the severity of the situation.
25
2.4 The Pocket Hunter
The Pocket Hunter is an indication of the broadness of Austin’s vision. In some ways,
Austin naturalizes the Pocket Hunter in the same ways as she does Seyavi—both are clearly a
part of their environments and both are named (defined?) by their labor. There are two critical
elements that Austin adds through the Pocket Hunter, though: the suggestion that non-native
people, too, are nature, and the element of choosing to be a part of the environment. There is, of
course, nothing too terribly revolutionary about Austin suggesting that natives have some sort of
clear connection to nature. This is a common trope (and one that Sherman Alexi’s work,
specifically his essay “I hated Tonto (still do),” deals with exceptionally well). By suggesting
that all people, not just Amerindians (and so, at least in this instance, refusing to project kinship
with nature onto an other), are in fact a part of nature, Austin offers a much more significant and
toothed reading of the human nature relationship.8
In contrast to the Pocket Hunter, Seyavi clearly never has a choice to be anywhere but
where she is—her economic condition prevents any sort of mobility. The Pocket Hunter, we
learn, consistently chooses to be a part of this environment. He has, on at least two occasions
that Austin recounts, made such a tremendous sum in mining that he has briefly retired to
London, only to return to the desert “a year or two later” (Little Rain 32). Curiously, though,
Austin concludes her chapter on the Pocket Hunter with this discussion of his perpetual returns,
ending with the line “No man can be stronger than his destiny” (32). Austin presents her readers
with an interesting conundrum here—we get the sense that the Pocket Hunter chooses to return
to the desert, as his considerable wealth allows him to establish a fine residence in London, but
then she suggests with her final line that the choice was never his. A more cautious reading of
the chapter suggests that the Pocket Hunter has never fully understood his own position in his
environment—Austin writes that the Pocket Hunter “never knew how much he depended for the
necessary sense of home and companionship on the beasts and trees” (29).
So what should we make of this seeming contradiction? This: that no one, not even
wealthy, probably white people are, or could ever be, separated from their environment. We
8
To be fair, Austin never specifically states The Pocket Hunter’s race. Given that Austin
specifically states that several characters are Indian, though, it seems likely that she would have
indicated if the Pocket Hunter were.
26
may not have a full understanding of how we fit into our landscape, as the Pocket Hunter did not
fully understand his own relationship with his environment, but we nonetheless exist as a part of
our environment. The Pocket Hunter, despite his wealth and accompanying apparent freedom,
cannot escape the fact that he is a part of his environment, and as such, always returns to it.
Once again, though, as with Austin’s depiction of Seyavi, she fails to see some of the
negative realities of her subject’s lives. What Austin does not discuss though, to the detriment of
her work, is the environmental reality of the Pocket Hunter’s labor. While he himself may have
relatively little impact of the land (surely one prospector working with hand tools is not a serious
threat even to the fragile environment he is working in) the history of the mining industry in the
West is an absolutely disastrous one. His industry had (and has) a truly catastrophic effect on the
land. While Austin’s intentions in incorporating humanity into the landscape are well
intentioned, missing this reality is unconscionable, and one of the reasons that we cannot rely on
Austin’s vision as a legitimate, comprehensive answer to this problem of the relationship
between humanity and nature.
2.5 The Walking Woman
The Walking Woman (from Austin’s Lost Borders) is a curious character—she seems
less like a person that might have existed than Austin’s other characters. The Walking Woman is
almost as much a spirit as she is a physical thing—people who have seen her disagree about her
appearance, and she travels through relatively perilous areas with no apparent fear for her safety.
She is a sage—Austin’s narrator seeks her out, as she seems to have some special knowledge of
life. As such, we ought to pay special attention to this character—she seems to work as a kind of
divine voice. The Walking Woman, we read, is totally outside of society. She lives in the
wilderness, and does not seek out companionship. Moreover, Austin makes this separation from
society more explicit, as she writes that the Walking Woman “had walked off all sense of
society-made values” (97). The Walking Woman, then, we are to understand, is wholly natural.
She lists for these values for the Austin narrator, calling them the “three things which if you had
known you could cut out all the rest…”: good labor, love, and childbearing (Stories 258). The
particular inclusion of labor should surprise the reader. While the bulk of the unpacking of
meanings associated with these values will be reserved for the following section, we must
27
understand here that it is bold to claim that human labor in nature is as natural a process as
childbirth, and moreover, it is something to be treasured. When Austin chooses to speak nearly
as god, this is what she chooses to say. Clearly, for Austin, humans and their labor are a part of
nature.
2.6 Flora and Fauna
Not content to deal only with humans, Austin broadens her thoughts on the boundaries
between the wild and the domestic by wondering what the definitions of wild and domestic
plants and animals are. These musings are less clearly about the role of humans in nature than
Austin’s writings about the above characters, but they do help destabilize the dichotomy between
the wild and domestic. Doing so opens up theoretical space for humans to fully be a part of
nature, and as such, for their labor to have a legitimate place in it. Austin questions this
dichotomy through two primary ways: by depicting wild animals behaving like domestic
animals, and by describing the cultivation of plants.
She includes a vignette in her Pocket Hunter chapter in which the Pocket Hunter is lost in
the snow, and continues walking in the hopes that he will find something to give him shelter. He
comes across a herd of sheep in a break of cedars, and “...he must have thought that he had
stumbled upon a storm-belated shepherd with his silly sheep; but in fact he took no note of
anything but the warmth of packed fleeces, and snuggled in between them dead with sleep” (30).
When he wakes in the morning, he realizes that the sheep, whose warmth kept him alive through
the night, are actually wild sheep.
What do we make of this? How is this significant? Most basically, we have animals that
should not, as we understand wild animals, tolerate the presence of a human. Beyond that, the
Pocket Hunter, who Austin has already established as an excellent source of natural knowledge,
should be able, even in the dark, to distinguish wild sheep from domestic, if the two are really so
distinct. But these sheep are not too distinct from their domesticated brethren. Compare this
vision of the distinction between wild and domestic sheep with John Muir’s vision in his chapter
“Wild Sheep” from The Mountains of California:
Besides these differences in size, color, hair, etc., as noted above, we may observe that
the domestic sheep, in a general way, is expressionless, like a dull bundle of something
only half alive, while the wild is as elegant and graceful as a deer, every movement
28
manifesting admirable strength and character. The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The
tame is always more or less ruffled and dirty; while the wild is as smooth and clean as the
flowers of his mountain pastures (304).
And so, as this contrast makes clear, Austin is deliberately breaking down the dichotomy
between the wild and the domestic. By depicting the wild as not entirely different from the
domestic, she is ultimately making room for humans, along with their labor, in nature.
Austin repeats this pattern in her chapter “The Last Antelope” from her collection Lost
Borders. In it, Little Pete, a recurring character in Austin’s work sometimes called Petite Pete of
whom Austin writes “…he looked a faun or some wood creature come out of pagan times…”
(Stories from the Country of Lost Borders 189) maintains an odd, caring relationship with an
antelope buck. The two work out a reciprocal relationship, in which Little Pete follows the
antelope to good grazing grounds, and the antelope sticks with the sheep herd for protection from
coyotes, shying away from the dogs, but sleeping always in the middle of the herd. This story
provides an excellent opportunity for seeing how Austin breaks down the boundary between the
natural and the human. The human element of the story, Little Pete, is described as appearing as
some kind of woodland creature, while the actual woodland (prarieland?) creature of the story,
the antelope, behaves more like a domestic creature than a wild one. And so yet again, Austin
blurs the boundary between the human and the natural.
While these tales are remarkable, they share the common element of the allegedly wild
animals (antelope and wild sheep) being somewhat charismatic. That is, antelope and wild sheep
are both beautiful creatures, and as such, it is easier to imagine that they might have some sort of
kinship with us. Accordingly, attempts to portray them as behaving like domesticated animals
are more likely to be accepted. But Austin pushes beyond these charismatic animals to far less
charismatic critters. In “The Scavengers” from Land of Little Rain Austin takes non-charismatic
species, like buzzards, vultures, and coyotes, and describes them with the same level of attention
and affection that she shows to the more conventionally beautiful creatures described above.
Moreover, she also refers to a tame carrion crow living with the Paiute. Why would she dedicate
an entire chapter to species that are wholly offensive? Obviously, the literal domestication of
these creatures is not the point of this chapter—why would someone go to the trouble of
deliberately domesticating a vulture?—but if you can imagine that these odious creatures are not
purely chaotic (wild) things, then you have to be able to imagine that we share something with
29
them, too. Even these wretched things are not wholly wild, and if even they are not, then there is
nothing that is.
Finally, Austin openly questions the legitimacy of the ideas domesticated and wild
through her discussion of plants and their relation to humanity. In her chapter “Katchinas of the
Orchard,” in Land of Journeys’ Ending Austin gives the history of the peach—a plant she
maintains came fully formed from the wild, was imported by European colonizers to the New
World, went wild in the Southwest, and finally was once again domesticated (269-283). She
discusses the processes by which a native grass grew into being domestic corn, implicitly asking
at which point the plant went from wild to domestic. The point that she makes in both of these
cases is clear: neither category (domestic or wild) is legitimate. In her chapter “Cities that Died,”
from the same volume, she recounts the native practices of altering streambeds, to slow or speed
the flow of a stream, or, she claims, to produce a pleasing sound (93). Here, Austin is asking the
same question that William Cronon came to so many years later—what precisely was so
“natural” and untouched about the New World? More compellingly, does it matter?
While these final points are not explicitly about human labor in nature, the conversation
that Austin introduces about human labor in nature depends on these points. The dichotomy
between humanity and nature must be destabilized to open up the theoretical space that Austin
needs to address the significance of human labor in nature. In offering a vision of the
human/nature relationship that presents the two sides not as halves of a dichotomy, but rather as
places on a spectrum, Austin begins the work of creating a healthy place for a discourse on
human labor in nature.
2.7 Reimagining Human Behavior Through a Lens of Nature
We have established that Austin seeks to eliminate the boundary between humanity and
nature. Because she chooses to see nature and humanity as parts of a whole, she needs a new
way to talk about human domestic behavior. That is, domestic behavior is typically understood
as behavior that separates us from nature, in some way. But for Austin, that is a theoretically
untenable idea. If we are a part of nature, then our domestic behavior is as well. And so,
30
instead, Austin seeks to reinterpret human domestic activity through a lens of nature. 9 This
reinterpreted vision of nature, then, is Austin’s queer domesticity. Moreover, Austin never
effectively depicts domesticity in a normative environment. To some extent, this must be
deliberate—she simply writes very little about normative domestic scenes. But even when she
does, her writing loses her characteristic keen eye, and she resorts to bland, stereotypical ways of
describing the scene. Austin’s apparent disinterest in writing normative domestic scenes serves
as further evidence that she does indeed advocate a queer domesticity.
2.8 Domesticity, Domestic, Domesticated
Despite the obvious shared origins of all of these words (latin domesticus, from domus, or
house), these words have varied meanings and different connotations. “Domesticity,” of course,
refers in some capacity to the home. Of course, it also generally carries the connotation of
femininity. “Domestic” may refer to something done around the home or a description of an
animal. Again, femininity is suggested when the term applies to the familial home. Certainly
domestic labor is feminine in its connotation. “Domesticated,” on the other hand, refers to some
thing, previously wild, that has been made tame. Thus, “domesticated” carries as much a
negative definition as a positive one—that which is not wild. Femininity, though, is not clearly
suggested in “domesticated.”
Of course, all of these words share the notion of something that is associated with the
home—the domesticated dog is one that belongs in the home, the wild dog is something to be
feared. Despite the shared connection of home, “domesticated” and “domesticity” are seldom
contemplated alongside one another. They refer to very different things—varieties of animals
and homemaking do not, in common usage, seem to have much in common. But, when Austin
writes about domesticity, she is writing about human activity broadly, and as such, she considers
all of these domesticus derivatives. She writes about the relationship between humanity and
nature, and in this, reflects an interest in homemaking on a species scale. That is, her conception
of domesticity involves the domestication of plants and animals as much as it does the making of
9
The idea that Austin can look from the perspective of nature is, of course, problematic.
31
jellies. In doing so, she connects ideas that are typically feminine (domesticity) with ideas that
are not typically so (the domesticization of plants and animals).
And so, the domesticity that Austin suggests when she tries to look at human behavior
through the eyes of nature is her queer domesticity. Through it, Austin makes clear that her
vision of domesticity is not contingent upon societal borders—gender, or race, or location, or
class. Austin’s queer domesticity happens wherever there is humanity. And, just as with our
earlier examination of Austin’s deconstruction of the boundary between humanity and nature, the
best way to approach Austin’s queer domesticity is through a reading of her characters.
Take, for instance, Austin’s treatment of Seyavi. As discussed above, Seyavi is almost an
elemental force of caring, taking care of her son against all odds. This is, of course, perhaps the
ultimate domestic act on an individual level. Moreover, her basket making is done for cultural
reasons, not strictly practical ones. This, too, must be read as a domestic decision—Seyavi
creates cultural meaning, a cultural home for an entire group of people through her baskets. 10
But Austin chooses to locate all of this domestic meaning in a very unlikely character and
situation. Seyavi is native, not white. She makes a home in a cave, not in a normative house.
She provides food by digging up roots with her toes and snaring quail with her own hair, not by
cultivating. Seyavi is the painful reality of human living—she never intended to make a living
by hiding in a cave and reducing life to its barest essentials. But all the while, she is a fantastic
domestic force. This is queer domesticity.
This motif is repeated ad nauseum throughout Austin’s work. She presents a situation
not typically associated with normative domesticity and then presents exceptionally domestic
behavior in that situation. When she writes about the Pocket Hunter, the first description she
gives of him is how he sets up his camp: “…coffee-pot on the coals, his supper ready in the
frying pan” (43 Lost Borders). Half a paragraph later, she gives exquisite detail on how he
typically arranges his camp, listing his cooking supplies, what types of food he likes to carry,
10
Austin’s conception of feminine creativity is itself an interesting study. See the
following quote from Shelle Armitage’s “Writing Nature:” “Austin linked the domestic or
homemaking quality—“givingness to others,” she called it—with the intellectual, prophetic, and
intuitive qualities in women that make their acts or arts contributory. Thus, the great woman
who is a storyteller realizes her intellectual and intuitive gifts, as they are centered, unlike those
of men, says Austin, “on the recipient rather than on the act” (4). See also the Austin essay
“Greatness in Women.”
32
how he prepares it, methods of finding wild food, etc. (44). The Pocket Hunter is, of course, the
antithesis of normative domesticity—he has no clear connection to his fellow humans, and never
establishes a permanent dwelling, despite having the means to. Nevertheless, Austin introduces
the character to us with an in depth discussion of his domestic qualities. Or, again, when Austin
gives us the story of Jim Calkins discovering the Bully Boy mine, she prefaces it with an
instance in which he finds a dying woman with a baby, “heartened her for the end, buried her,
and walked back to Poso, eighteen miles, the child poking in the folds of his denim shirt with
small mewing noises” (Lost Borders 68). This is, of course, a supremely domestic act, and this
from a miner living in a rough frontier town.11
Finally, consider Austin’s Walking Woman.12 As mentioned above, this character more
than any seems to be the voice of absolute authority—her values, Austin makes clear, come
strictly from nature. As such, her word is practically divine. When the narrator, presumably
Austin, seeks her out, the Walking Woman gives her some sage advice: there are three things
that truly matter in the world: “’To work together, to love together…there you have two of the
things; the other you know.’ ‘The mouth at the breast,’ said I. ‘The lips and the hands,’ said the
Walking Woman. ‘The little pushing hands and the small cry’” (Lost Borders 261). And so, for
the Wandering Woman, the three things that are essential in life are labor done well, love, and
child bearing. The labor the Walking Woman describes thus:
I worked with a man, without excusing, without any burden on me of looking or seeming.
Not fiddling or fumbling as women work, and hoping it will all turn out for the best. It
was not for Filon to ask, Can you, or Will you. He said, Do, and I did. And my work
was good. We held the flock (259).
All three of the Walking Woman’s requirements are, of course, domestic, and perhaps
arguably, are the three most fundamental domestic functions. There are two really interesting
aspects of her statement, though, for our purposes. First, of the three things that the Walking
11
Given that Austin refers to Jimville as “A Bret Harte town” in her chapter title on the town,
one must wonder if she borrowed this “miner saves baby” motif from the Harte short story “The
Luck of Roaring Camp.” Hopefully the baby Jim finds found a better end.
12
This is a powerful character for analyzing Austin’s work. Is it significant that Austin never
possessed any of the things that the Walking Woman describes (in the way that she wanted to, at
least)? Or that the Walking Woman in almost androgynous in her appearance? Or that Austin
apparently believes that she can speak from the position of nature? All of these are avenues ripe
for interpretation, and this character has not been sufficiently discussed in current scholarship.
33
Woman lists, one (child bearing) is exclusively feminine. Another (labor) is explicitly described
as masculine. This juxtaposition is too obvious to be accidental. Second, we see some irony in
that the Walking Woman seems to have perfect knowledge of life, and domestic activity along
with that, but is now completely separated from domestic activity. Filon is gone (Austin records
the death of a Filon elsewhere in Lost Borders, presumably this is the same), the Walking
Woman no longer herds sheep, the child is presumably dead, and the information that Austin
gives about the Walking Woman does not indicate any other domestic activity.
What exactly is Austin doing here with all of this seemingly contradictory information?
In the first instance, Austin is certainly bending the idea of gender in the Walking Woman. This
is a perfect instance of Austin’s queer domesticity. While childbearing may be essentially
feminine, labor is masculine only in its social significance, not in its essence. Austin
acknowledges the social significance of this kind of labor with her description, and pushes right
past that, as she then ties the character to the feminine with the childbearing. This is Austin
describing domesticity as she sees it, as she imagines it through the lens on nature.
How, then, do we interpret the strange reality that the Walking Woman is apparently an
expert on domesticity, and now entirely separated it? Is it only that Austin sees perfection in
nature, and that she wants to give this character perfect knowledge, and so cuts her off from
humanity? Certainly, attempting this life with a family and a herd of sheep would be a bit more
difficult, and would not afford the Walking Woman the kind of wandering sage quality that her
authenticity lies in. And this could be why Austin goes out of her way to effectively separate the
Walking Woman from domesticity as she simultaneously casts her as a perfect knower of it. We
also must consider this, though: this character is one of Austin’s relatively few female characters.
Moreover, she is not just any woman, she is known as the Walking Woman—this is the only
occasion in which Austin names someone by their gender. Moreover, the Walking Woman’s
knowledge of life is directed at another woman, and perhaps should be read as the criteria for a
specifically feminine life well lived. And so, while as noted above, there is a certain amount of
gender bending in this character, we can also see her as an especially feminine character.
Delightfully, though, we see this character (a character with a tremendous amount of domestic
knowledge, and a very feminine character) completely cutoff from actual domestic activity.
Here, Austin inserts a wedge between femininity and domesticity. While the Walking Woman
may know a great deal about domesticity, the masculine Pocket Hunter seems to practice a great
34
deal more of it. And so, again, we see queer domesticity. This time, it is defined through its
absence—we see a strong feminine character that does not practice domestic activities, contrary
to common social expectations.
And so, queer domesticity in these characters is domesticity that is not specifically tied to
a location, or any normative understanding of home. Moreover, it is present in both male and
female characters. Beyond that, it is inherent in no character—people make domestic actions,
but these actions are not inherent in anyone, especially not for a reason as bland as gender.
We can also see into Austin’s structuring of domesticity through her presentation of
towns. She gives an excellent contrast in her Land of Little Rain, perhaps unwittingly, by giving
her readers a vision of two villages: Jimville, and an unnamed Mexican village she calls “The
Little Town of Grape Vines” (her final chapter in that book also bears that title).
Contrasted against the previous chapters of Land of Little Rain, in which Austin
incisively and authoritatively describes the desert and its people, “The Little Town of the Grape
Vines” feels faltering and clichéd. While Austin in the first part of Land of Little Rain is able to
look at scenes totally unfamiliar to most of America—the stories of the desert—and turn them
into approachable narratives, here in “The Little Town of Grape Vines” she takes a much more
normative vision of domestic life, something that is much more familiar to her audience, and
presents it in an awkward and impersonal fashion. The chapter begins: “There are still some
places in the West where the quails cry ‘cuidado’; where all the speech is soft, all the manners
gentle; where all the dishes have chile in them, and they make more of the Sixteenth of
September than they do of the Fourth of July” (102). This sentence reads like a paragraph
written by the New Mexico Tourism Bureau, rather than by Mary Austin, whose writing
normally paints the West with a virtually unmatched clarity and vision. The chapter is rife with
stereotypes (“And always they dance; at dusk on the smooth adobe floors, afternoons under the
trellises where the earth is damp and has a fruity smell. A betrothal, a wedding, or a christening,
or the mere proximity of a guitar is sufficient occasion and if the occasion lacks, send for the
guitar and dance anyway (103),” “Sometimes the speech of simple folk hints at truth the
understanding does not reach” (108)). In the best chapters of Land of Little Rain, Austin’s real
gift as a writer is her perception and understanding. She brings the reader into moments seldom
seen, and more seldom understood. In “The Little Town of Grape Vines,” she fails to do this.
Austin delights in the village, that much is clear, but her account of it pales in comparison to her
35
insider’s view of everything in the desert. The lives of Seyavi the basket maker, the Pocket
Hunter, and the small creatures who make trails to water are all things that should, logically, be
very unfamiliar to her. Here in the Mexican village, the first normative domestic scene in
Austin’s writing, Austin seems an outsider, if an enthusiastic one.
On the other hand, when Austin writes about Jimville, she does so with her characteristic
insight. Jimville is well outside of normative conceptions of domesticity. Here, people open
restaurants in tents, fix things with wire, and drink themselves to death. She writes of the
character of the town “Along with killing and drunkenness, coveting of women, charity,
simplicity, there is a certain indifference, blankness, emptiness if you will, of all vaporings, no
bubbling of the pot,—it wants the German to coin a word for that,—no bread-envy, no brotherfervor. Western writers have not sensed it yet; they smack the savor of lawlessness too much
upon their tongues, but you have these to witness it is not mean-spiritedness” (47). As this quote
indicates, Austin knows that most will not understand the queer domesticity of Jimville. There is
lawlessness here, yes, but the overriding sense of the place is one of people who are making a
home out of the things they have immediately to hand, and ignoring the social complexities that
typically accompany civilization. For all its wildness, this is domestic activity. And here, as
with her passages on the desert and its characters, Austin is at home. In Jimville, she recovers
her ability to present fantastic details that make accessible an otherwise strange and unfamiliar
landscape.
What should we take away from these contrasting visions of domestic life? Most
obviously, it should be clear that Austin cannot relate to a normative domestic situation, but finds
herself very much at home in a queer domestic situation. And so, we see in this an affirmation
that this is indeed how Austin sees the world. Normative domesticity, in which humans are set
apart from nature, is incomprehensible to Austin. In her queer domesticity (seen through some
of her interactions with characters described above, as well as her experiences in Jimville),
though, nature and humanity are blended together. By suggesting a vision of domesticity that
seeks to reestablish the continuum between the natural and the wild, Austin pries open a
theoretical space for legitimate human labor in nature.
Austin’s work provides an excellent beginning to this conversation. Through her work,
Austin blurs the boundaries between nature and humanity, and through her queer domesticity,
draws all labor—including labor in nature—into the sphere of domestic labor. Ultimately, and
36
completely counter to contemporary discourses, this theoretical formulation opens up a space for
human labor in nature. That said, Austin’s work can only function as a way to open this
conversation because of the remarkable shortcomings in her work. While Austin is probably
right that the decisions that Muir and the National Park Service were making regarding grazing,
etc., within the national parks were ultimately anthropocentric decisions, she fails to notice the
significance of her own anthropocentric suggestions. The decision to keep sheep grazing out of
the parks was, realistically, more about the visitors to the parks than the impact on the land.
Grazing, whether of domestic animals or wild, had been present in the land that became the park
for millennia. But there is something that Austin is missing in continuing to advocate for grazing
within the parks: the matter of scale. As Barney Nelson argues in her The Wild and the
Domestic, while the grazing of domestic sheep or cattle is not markedly different in basic form
than the grazing of wild sheep or buffalo, industrial farming operations do have significant
negative impacts on the land. Sheep, a couple hundred at a time, will not dramatically change
the makeup of the park. Millions and millions of sheep, which seem the inevitable result of the
park being open to capitalist sheep herding corporations, would destroy the biodiversity of the
land. This issue of scale is the same basic problem in her acceptance of the Pocket Hunter’s
labor. His labor is inoffensive, but the system that he is part of is incredibly damaging.
To be fair, this is something that Austin never explicitly takes on, nor is it really related
to her goals as a writer. The ultimate issue, and this is something being read into Austin’s work,
seems to be one of capitalist corporations. Mining and sheep herding, on a human scale, really
are permissible forms of labor in nature. When these activities are blown up to a truly industrial
scale, they bring unprecedented levels of destruction to the land. Austin’s great fault in her
acceptance of human labor in nature is that she never makes any comments regarding the scale of
labor.
Beyond the effects of labor on the land itself, though, Austin also fails to realize the
effects of labor on those performing it. Austin perpetually sought policy to encourage what she
conceived of as sustainable rural communities. These communities, to Austin, represented
places where people could maintain their close connections to the land, while simultaneously
living within the confines of the land. She adores people like Seyavi for their ability to live in
what Austin sees as close-knit communities that adapt to their environments. But where she sees
wonderful, close-knit communities based on working and mystically understanding the land,
37
others see communities living in terrible poverty, and laborers hoodwinked into working for
massive, environmentally destructive industries. Seyavi lived in a cave for a period while raising
her son. While this is impressive, and says a great deal about her ability to adjust her life to her
surroundings, it also seems like a horrible experience.. Austin does not appear to notice the
severity of Seyavi’s situation. And these issues are repeated time and again in Austin’s work.
Critically, Austin denies people like Seyavi, Winneap, and Petite Pete subject position. She tells
her reader that their situations are beautiful, if lacking in some ways. Never, though, in Austin’s
work, do we hear from the people living in these desperate situations. Their stories are told only
through Austin, and thus, the actual experiences of the members of these “sustainable
communities” remain unexamined.
Despite these practical problems, by extending her unique, boundary-blurring queer
domesticity into the wild, Austin provides a theoretical space for human labor in nature. In
Austin’s framework, humans can actively care for the natural world, while simultaneously
drawing necessary physical and spiritual sustenance from it. Austin gives us a solid start to
addressing a very serious problem.
38
CHAPTER 3
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
As with Mary Austin’s work, Zora Neale Hurston’s work has fundamentally dangerous
flaws. Hurston exhibits no concern for the effects of human labor on nature, and shockingly
little concern for the effects of labor on the laborers. Moreover, some critics (most notably Hazel
Carby) suggest that Hurston attempts to delegitimize all black experience but that which she
wishes to valorize. In light of these flaws, Hurston, just as Austin, does not offer a complete
solution to the question of what role human labor can play in the human/nature relationship.
Despite these issues, Zora Neale Hurston’s work offers something to this project. First, Hurston
provides both geographic and racial diversity—Florida’s tropical climate surely inclines Hurston
towards a different approach to nature than southern California’s desert climate does for Austin.
Likewise, Hurston’s blackness no doubt affects her vision of nature in different ways than
Austin’s whiteness does hers. Beyond issues of diversity, though, Hurston provides a way to
think of human labor in nature as something spiritually ameliorating. By presenting human labor
as something not inherently spiritually offensive, Hurston gives us the first step to towards
seeking to mitigate the effects of necessary human labor in nature, while still embracing the
physical reality of our world.
The critical reception of Hurston’s work has varied widely. She was remarkably
successful for a brief period in her life, receiving two Guggenheim Fellowships, then for
complicated reasons largely related to her politics, fell into obscurity. She died a ward of the
state of Florida, and it seems that drafts of her final novel were burned with her effects—a
remarkable decline given her early successes. In 1975, when all of Hurston’s work was out of
print, Alice Walker published her article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” and chaired an
MLA panel focused on Hurston’s life and work. Following the panel and publication, there was
a tremendous revival of interest in Hurston’s writing, and she has since become one of the most
influential American authors of the last century.
39
Given the popularity and versatility of Hurston’s work, it has been subject to virtually
every critical paradigm ever conceived. Foremost in these interpretations have been feminist and
womanist interpretations. More closely aligned with the interests of this project though, are
works like Donald R. Marks’ “Sex, Violence and Organic Consciousness in Zora Neale
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which considers how Hurston deals with
connections between labor, social structures, and sexual relationships. Also helpful is Hazel
Carby’s “The Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk: Zora Neale Hurston” contemplates
the gap between the spiritual ideal and the physical in Hurston’s work, and does so by reading
her work with an emphasis on unique qualities of the oral form. Slightly less significant to this
project is Trudier Harris’ The Power of the Porch, which considers Hurston’s own less
frequently discussed anthropological studies and the implications of her interpretation of
folklore.
Finally, Michael Awkward’s Inspiring Influences, Cheryl Wall’s Women of the Harlem
Renaissance, Kathleen Davies’ “Zora Neale Hurston’s Poetics of Embalmment,” and Paul
Outka’s “Zora Neale Hurston’s Partial Solution” from his Race and Nature, consider the
significance of the natural elements of Hurston’s work. All of these inform this project to some
degree. But, none of the aforementioned works address the particular point of this chapter: how
it is that Hurston, through her depiction of human labor in nature, defines the human/nature
relationship, and what the effects of that definition are for both the laborers and nature.
3.1 Religious Background
To understand Hurston’s approach to nature, one must first understand her religious
background. Her father was a Pentecostal preacher, and she was much enamored of him (he is
the inspiration for the titular character in Jonah’s Gourd Vine, and the sermons in the novel are
sermons Hurston recalled her father giving). The most distinctive aspect of Pentecostalism13 is
the emphasis on being “filled with the spirit”—the idea that a person can be possessed by the
spirit of God. This can manifest itself in many ways— dramatic sermons or musical
13
Recognizing that Pentecostalism is a wide ranging group, theologically speaking, the
comments are not intended to be universal comments about Pentecostal beliefs, but rather only
reflective of common beliefs.
40
presentations, excited speech incomprehensible to someone not likewise gifted by God to
understand it (or, “speaking in tongues”), dancing, prophetic speech, miraculous healings, etc.
Moreover, being filled with the spirit is an indication of some rightness with God—this is a
something to attain to in Pentecostal traditions. The body, as a potential vessel of God’s power,
is a fundamentally good thing in Pentecostalism. As Pentecostal thinker James K. A. Smith
writes, “the Pentecostal emphasis on the healing of the body is an affirmation of the goodness of
embodiment…Pentecostals use their whole bodies in worship. Pentecostal worship can get a
little messy; indeed, sometimes there are bodies everywhere!” (45). While other Christian
traditions may reference the Holy Spirit, or the leading of the Holy Spirit, it is almost always in
more sedate, intellectual way. Adherents may believe that God can direct their thoughts, and this
is achieved through the Holy Spirit. Most other Christian groups, though, do not see the Holy
Spirit as something that causes something physically dramatic to occur.14
As Hurston matured, she developed a powerful interest in Voodoo, hoodoo, and
Santaria—all new world west African derived religions. In 1936, Hurston received a
Guggenheim fellowship to study these religions in Jamaica and Haiti, and her books Tell My
Horse and Mules and Men are accounts of her research of these religious practices (Haas, 16).
But Hurston did not have a merely academic interest in these religions. In the course of her
research, she made the transition from observer to participant in New Orleans in 1928, and was
ordained as a Voodoo priestess15 (though Hurston spells the word Veaudeau)—a process she
documents in her 1931 essay “Hoodoo in America.” She worked under a series of practitioners,
and claimed to been initiated by at least six. Given her upbringing as the daughter of a preacher,
and her later rather enthusiastic turn to Voodoo, it is clear that Hurston was thoroughly
influenced by both of these traditions.
While there are major theological differences between Voodoo and Protestant
Christianity16 (monotheism versus polytheism, at the very least), we will be best served by
14
See also Steven M. Fettke’s “The Spirit of God Hovered Over the Waters” and Margaret M.
Poloma’s “Pentecostal Prayer with the Assemblies of God.”
15
In keeping with the folk status of the religion, there are many appropriate terms for the status
that Hurston attained—Obeah Doctor, Root Doctor, Two-Headed Woman, Voodoo Priestess,
etc.
16
It may initially seem problematic to contrast these religions with mainline Protestant
Christianity (or, rather, to mark its differences by using Protestant Christianity as a baseline), and
it most circumstances it certainly would be. However, all of the other writers considered in this
41
focusing on the practical differences between the two—how do people approach the world
differently because of their religious views? The single clearest difference is the approach to the
physical world. In Voodoo, the entire physical world is ripe with spiritual meaning. Spirits
frequently appear in physical form. Spiritual authority is made evident in the ability to create
miraculous effects in the physical world—causing people to fly, or the ability to walk on water,
or less dramatically, to make someone’s hair fall out, or endless other remarkable events. More
simply, physical objects can be manipulated by someone with appropriate knowledge to produce
desired, physically unrelated, effects. For instance, one can cause an enemy’s feet to swell by
sprinkling graveyard dirt in their path—the act of walking over it will induce the swelling
(Hurston, “Hoodoo” 325). Also, there is a greater emphasis on the power of the physical ritual to
alter the spiritual in Voodoo than there is in Protestant Christianity. Hurston recounts the process
by which she was admitted to study under one of her mentors in her article “Hoodoo in
America.” The ritual involved a handful of physical objects, all of which were manipulated in
some way to convince the spirits that Hurston was an adequate candidate for initiation. The
physical object, here, has a direct effect on spiritual conditions.
In both of these religious traditions, we see a clear emphasis on the intersections between
the physical and the spiritual. In Pentecostalism, we see the merging of the spirit with the
physical in these ecstatic moments of religious fervor. The physical, in these remarkable
moments, is a wholly good thing. In Voodoo, we see that the physical can be made to
manipulate the spiritual, and vice versa. Indeed, the boundary between the physical and spiritual
is much less clear in Voodoo than it is in Protestant Christianity. Karen McCarthy Brown writes
that voodoo avoids “the mind/body splitting that has characterized Western thought and, further,
assumes that an appreciation for the embodied minds of human beings--or better, their mindful
bodies--is crucial if one is to understand what it means to be human in the world” (217). While
Brown uses “mind” where I use “spirit,” the point is the same—voodoo is a religion that does not
separate any part of the person from the physical world. And so, we need to realize when we
read Hurston, that all physical acts in her work have some kind of spiritual consequence.
Moreover, as we see in these religious traditions, human physical action can be spiritually
project do come from Protestant backgrounds. As such, it is appropriate to think of how
Hurston’s religious practices are different from the religious backgrounds of the other writers
considered.
42
beneficial. And so, human labor is not inherently profane to Hurston. Accordingly, she sees no
issue in integrating it into the natural world.
More than that, though, Hurston takes mundane labor and elevates it to a path to spiritual
edification—a shift most apparent in her Moses, Man of the Mountain and Their Eyes Were
Watching God, as will be discussed in the course of the chapter. This elevation is, of course, a
tremendous reversal of the pervasive, romantic vision of human labor as low, base, and definitive
of our own, limited, physical nature. While Hurston retains the dominant vision of nature as
spiritually potent, she also suggests that humanity, and thus human labor, is spiritually powerful
as well. Whereas dominant green discourses (in Hurston’s day and the current day) see labor as
driving a wedge between low humanity and high nature, Hurston, first, rejects the idea of
separation between humanity and nature, and accordingly, the idea that labor further separates
the two.
Arguably, Hurston does not extend this connection between humanity and nature to white
people. At the very least, the only characters in her work with a clearly close, positive
relationship with nature are either black or Amerindian. Of course, all of Hurston’s main
characters are black, thus the omission of a clear connection between white people and nature
could be incidental. But, one could just as easily argue that Hurston suggests a special
relationship between black people and the environment—something that would not be unique to
Hurston. Rather, this trope of conflating blackness (or women, in a parallel discussion) with
naturalness is a seemingly permanent fixture of discourses that are interested in maintaining
existing power structures. It was a staple of the Lost Cause pastoralists (Outka 95-102) and their
contemporaries (see Frederick L. Hoffman’s “The Race Traits and Tendencies of the American
Negro” or U.B. Phillips’s American Negro Slavery), and continued through the twentieth century
to current day (see Nancy M. Tischler’s 1967 “The Negro in Modern Southern Fiction” for a
midcentury example, and Herman Gray’s “Black Masculinity and Visual Culture” for a current
scholarly example, or Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man for a current fictional interpretation).
If (and it seems a reasonable argument that this is the case) Hurston is playing into this
tradition of conflating Blackness and naturalness, she is at the very least envisioning a different
kind of conflation. Whereas the connection that the Lost Cause pastoralists saw between
Blackness and nature was one of a sort of bestial kinship, Hurston suggests more of a
43
predisposition to understanding the spiritual fruits of nature. While Hurston’s vision represents a
substantial improvement, it still reflects a problematic racial essentialist view. Despite this
legitimate issue, Hurston’s work still presents a way of looking at human labor in nature that is
beneficial to this project.
Scholar Hazel Carby sees a similar issue in Hurston’s work, writing that Hurston
naturalizes her own rural, Southern, impoverished origins for all black people, while ignoring
other narratives. She writes
The creation of a discourse of ‘the folk’ as a rural people in Hurston’s work in the 1920s
and 1930s displaces the migration of black people to cities. Her representation of
African-American culture as primarily rural and oral is Hurston’s particular response to
the dramatic transformations within black culture… Hurston could not entirely escape the
intellectual practice she so despised, a practice that reinterpreted and redefined a folk
consciousness in its own elitist terms. Hurston may not have dressed the spirituals in
tuxedos but her attitude toward folk culture was not unmediated; she did have a clear
framework of interpretation, a construct that enabled her particular representation of a
black, rural consciousness (“Politics of Fiction” 76).
This is a serious and obvious hypocrisy in Hurston’s work, and Carby is certainly right to make
the critique. Hurston is in some way perpetrating the very violence against her culture that she
so feared. By decrying other experiences (that is, experiences outside of her impoverished,
Southern, rural existence) as inauthentic, she is effectively making the same errors as those who
sought to apply some polish to black culture.
Donald R. Marks, in his “Sex, Violence and Organic Consciousness in Zora Neale
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God” also sees Hurston’s vision of human relationships as
too tightly constrained by Hurston’s own experience. Rather than focusing on her construction of
Black folk culture, he turns to her conception of heterosexual relationships. He writes
Hurston clearly accepts the organicist ideology of romantic pastoralism over the
mechanistic one of bourgeois capitalism, for it is with Tea Cake in the community ‘on the
muck’ that Janie is most content. Yet both ideological positions are undercut by the
violence the author finds inherent in the heterosexual relationships she uses to represent
them. Even in what Hurston considers the most viable organic community, sexual
violence is accepted and justified as a sign of passion (152).
Thus, as Carby sees Hurston as trapped in her own particular constitutes an authentically black
experience, and so writing the experience of so many others out of the discourse, Marks sees
Hurston’s vision of humanity as dangerously bounded by an inability to conceive of a space
44
outside of the bounds of her social norms. Marks writes that Hurston is unable to imagine a
heterosexual relationship that is without violence, and moreover that she falls back on romantic
tropes about pastoral life, rather than explore the potentially powerful theoretical space of nature.
Marks concludes
Rather than endorse a revolutionary ideology that would produce a vision of society in
which a nonviolent, heterosexual relationship would be possible, Hurston endorses the
reactionary organicist ideology, then relegates the signifier of this ideology (Tea Cake) to
(Janie’s) consciousness (157).
For Marks, all of the potential of the life on the Muck and her relationship with Tea Cake is
quashed in the final conclusion of the novel. Rather than offer a new solution to these social ills,
Hurston kills off the lone living reminder of an alternative view of life.
How does Hurston’s inability to imagine a heterosexual relationship free of violence
relate to her construction of the relationship between humanity and nature? The connection is
this: Hurston naturalizes her own experience in both. As Carby and Marks clearly argue,
Hurston imagines only one kind of world—Carby sees Hurston as unable to imagine a legitimate
black experience that is not Southern, rurally based, and impoverished. Marks sees in Hurston
an inability to imagine nonviolent heterosexual relationships, as a greater part of her inability to
imagine new social situations generally. The significance of this shortcoming to this project is
this: her ecological vision is not comprehensive. It does not extend to someone not living in the
particularly limited circumstances (poor, black, and living in the rural South) that she defines as
real. Through her willingness to ignore other discourses and write people not like her off as
inauthentic, the non-combative relationship with nature that she does suggest is limited. That
said, this does not destroy the value of the relationship that she does suggest. Though Hurston,
according to these critics, limits this relationship to a group of people in an equally limited
circumstance, she offers something of tremendous value. Accepting a vision of human labor in
nature that does not demonize the act of labor is the first step towards a dialogue that seeks to
mitigate the effects of necessary labor on nature. Hurston’s work provides that first step.
Zora Neale Hurston’s elevation of mundane labor to a path to spiritual edification is most
obvious in her Moses, Man of the Mountain and Their Eyes Were Watching God. In Moses,
Hurston uses labor as a means of transforming Moses from a prince that has no real
45
understanding of his people to a genuine leader—he gains his hoodoo abilities while he works as
a shepherd for his father-in-law. Likewise, in Their Eyes, labor is means through which Janie
grows spiritually. It provides a much more comprehensive and lasting understanding of world
than do the massive, sublime elements that bookend much of the action of the novel.
3.2 Moses, Man of the Mountain
Moses, Man of the Mountain, is, like the rest of Hurston’s work, complicated in many
ways—in its reception, in its politics, and in its social ideas. As with most of her work, initial
reviews by her peers were not positive—both Alain Locke and Ralph Ellison dismissed the text
outright. Hurston herself found the text somewhat lacking. She wrote to Edwin Grover (to
whom the book is dedicated) “I have a feeling of disappointment about it. I don’t think that I
achieved all that I set out to do” (Kaplan 422).
The extraordinarily political nature of this text has likely played a role in its relegation to
shelves—Hurston’s politics are sticky and convoluted, (opposition to Brown v. Board, opposing
Black voting rights, and working for the segregationist George Smathers senate campaign, to
name a few notable examples) and one of the reasons her career suffered in the first place. Alice
Walker goes so far as to suggest that readers might best ignore them altogether, writing:
I think we are better off if we think of Zora Neal Hurston as an artist, period—rather than
as the artist/politician most black writers have been required to be. This frees us to
appreciate the complexity and richness of her work in the same way we can appreciate
Billie Holiday’s glorious phrasing or Bessie Smith’s perfect and raunchy lyrics, without
the necessity of ridiculing the former’s addiction to heroin or the latter’s excessive love of
gin (3).
There are, admittedly, incomprehensible actions in Hurston’s political history (most notably
including the aforementioned opposition to black voting rights). Walker’s statement, though,
does a disservice to the complexity of Hurston’s thought—writing off her politics defangs her
work. Despite the obvious difficulties of marrying Hurston’s intensely conservative politics with
her writing, we should not assume that Hurston’s political actions are consistently divorced from
the revolutionary world that she wrote. The politics of Moses deserve an interrogation.
46
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) is, as Boyd writes, “…a deeply philosophical
exploration of the very nature of freedom and self-empowerment” (Wrapped 329). It can very
easily be read as Hurston’s political manifesto for black America—an argument that freedom can
only be achieved when people are ready for it. The text is perhaps best summed up by what
Barbara Johnson writes: “The phrase [“My people, my people.”] is not a gesture of rejection but
a gesture of ambivalent solidarity” (22 “Moses”). This point can be extended, I think, beyond
the phrase, and to the entire novel. The text is as much a condemnation of black America as it is
of white. Hurston casts Moses as someone who gives the Hebrews (who are clearly
representative of black American in the novel) an opportunity for freedom, but does not impose a
status upon them.
Hurston’s use of labor in this text is an indication of the sophistication of her thought.
Labor is a beneficial process in this text—a process that creates the situations through which
Moses gains his exceptional powers. At the same time, the forced labor that the Hebrews
perform as slaves is degrading. To make this even more complicated, Moses presses the recently
freed Hebrews into working immediately, scolding them for wanting to rest (181). The
conclusion that we should draw is this: the merely physical act of labor itself is not what is
important to Hurston, just as the merely physical act of binding roots is not what makes Voodoo
rootwork significant, or the merely physical act of singing is not remarkable to the Pentecostal.
Rather, there is a decision made by the one performing the physical act that makes it
significant—a decision made to make the act spiritual as well as physical. Labor holds the
capacity to be spiritually ameliorating in Hurston’s work, but if done without the appropriate
approach, is just brute labor.17
Labor in nature plays two significant roles within the text: first, it is through labor in
nature that Moses gains his spiritual authority. Second, Hurston prescribes labor in nature to the
Hebrews—a people who do not know who they are outside of an exploitive relationship, and
who more importantly, do not know the god that Moses worships. Labor in nature, then, in
Hurston’s work, functions both as a spiritually ameliorating force on an individual level, and as a
17
One could see this distinction as a justification of Hurston’s clear distinction between slavery
and the outwardly similar conditions that Hurston wanted so badly to preserve for African
Americans.
47
way of developing the identity (including spiritual identity, as they find Yahweh through this
process) of a people.
Moses’s peculiar spiritual abilities are consistently tied to labor in nature, beginning even
in his time in the palace. Despite presumably having access to the finest education available in
Egypt, Hurston’s Moses educates himself by talking with “the gardeners and grooms who caught
his imagination” (37), asking questions about the physical world. This is a bizarre stretch—
Hurston imports people into the palace so that Moses’s education can come from laborers in
nature, despite his regal upbringing. Hurston is going out of her way to connect Moses’s
education to labor in nature. While the initial education that Moses pursues is related to the
physical realities of the world (“Why did the frogs want to come in the garden? Why was the
sky blue?” (37)), Hurston moves Moses to a more spiritual education through his relationship
with an elderly groom named Mentu. Mentu acts as a sort of sage of the natural world—teaching
Moses to hunt cautiously, explaining natural phenomenon, and, significantly, translating the
speech and life of a lizard for Moses (40-42). Hurston uses lizards as a sort of sign of the divine
throughout this text—they appear at significant moments, and are always connected to some kind
of grand moment of learning for Moses. In this first instance, Moses makes the connection
between the aging lizard and Mentu—both find the building of ostentatious structures
incomprehensible, and both are in a low social situation (social indeed—Mentu gives a long
discourse on how the other lizards treat this one, now that he is old and weak). Mentu says to
Moses “…it would be nice if you crippled some flies so that he might eat a dinner. When one is
too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners” (42). Moses makes the connection that
Mentu, too, is without good food, and begins stealing food from Pharaoh’s household for him.
This conversation is important to the text for two primary reasons: first, Moses realizes that the
fact that his family can build unnecessarily large buildings while Mentu goes hungry is morally
wrong. Second, this is the first clear instance in which Moses extracts obvious spiritual
significance from an experience in nature.
After this point, Mentu continues in this role of spiritual educator. He is persistently cast
as a sort of lay-priest (contradiction in terms though that may be), always knowing a great deal
about the natural and spiritual world, despite any impressive formal status (note also that when
Mentu dies, he reveals that he aspired to be a priest, but his station kept him from it (58)).
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Mentu’s education of Moses is unmistakably spiritual in nature. Mentu’s special spiritual
knowledge is emphasized by the inevitable contrast between Mentu’s knowledge of the
natural/spiritual world, and that of the priests. First, Mentu is free with his knowledge, sharing
as much as the young prince can absorb. The priests, by contrast, refuse to teach Moses, as they
recognize their own status requires ignorance on the part of the laity. As Moses leaves, Hurston
shows the priests inventing new ways of drawing the attentions of the populace, not through
genuine learning, as with Mentu, but with a rouse that exists solely for gathering attention. They
say “the contributions at the altars are getting thin. Let us make a new sun-god to renew the
devotions of the people. I have just invented a new incense that shall be known as his breath and
indication of his presence at the altar” (44). The priests, again, in clear contrast to the lay Mentu,
are nothing but shams, playing at something that they cannot understand, and trying to profit
from those they are intended to guide. Mentu, in several instances, makes his thoughts on the
priests clear, saying “They tell nothing that doesn’t pay. Their business is like the cemetery.
They take in but they never put out” (52) and “they bite the rulers and everyone else with the tiny
teeth of fear. Then rub ointment on the sore” (52). Perhaps most harshly, when Moses says
“The priests are men of learning, Mentu. They must be wise” Mentu replies “They don’t just
have to be. Certainly they know what is in the books. That is learning, not wisdom. Learning
without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey’s back” (53-54). This is an intensification of the
point made by Hurston’s using gardeners and grooms to educate Moses—not only do those who
labor in nature understand the spiritual world, they do so far better than those who understand the
world only through leisure.
This dichotomy of the knowledge of those who experience nature labor versus the
ignorance of those who experience it through leisure is repeated constantly throughout this
portion of the text. For instance Moses, courtesy of his education by Mentu, outperforms his
rivals in the royal family in the war games. Pharaoh’s forces rely on their chariots, while Moses
opts for the more maneuverable cavalry, easily defeating Pharaoh. This is, of course, not
Hurston’s commentary on military strategy. Rather, we should see the chariots as equivalent to
the ostentatious buildings that Moses earlier realizes are unnecessary. While they seem like a
good idea, they prevent the people in them from completely engaging with their environment.
Moses, on the other hand, relies on only riders and horses, with minimal technology mediating
their experience with the natural world. And so, just as Moses learns more by skipping his
49
formal education in the massive buildings to be outside with Mentu, here Moses’s cavalry,
operating with less technological encumbrances, is able to maneuver the seemingly better
equipped chariots (49). Moreover, even when presented with the evidence of Moses’s victory,
Pharaoh is not inclined to adapt his forces to Moses’s more natural strategies. Rather, he insults
them: “Camels! Half-naked soldiers on horseback! What kind of army is this?” (51).
Living differently from most of Pharaoh’s household wins Moses no friends in the
palace. Rivalries in the house mean that when Moses is (justly) accused of killing an Egyptian
overseer, his only option is fleeing the country. As Moses flees the palace, he moves into the
second phase of his learning. His flight is not random, though. He goes deliberately, saying to
himself “I am going to live and talk with Nature and know her secrets” (75). Following his flight
from Egypt, Moses marries again, and moves from the mentorship of the now deceased Mentu to
that of Jethro, his new father-in-law. Jethro’s mentorship is different, though. Where Mentu
walked with Moses in nature, and told him stories to explain the spiritual significances of the
workings of nature, Jethro lets Moses wander in the wilderness alone, content to discuss the
matters Moses learned when Moses wanted. While the nature of this learning is sometime
dependent on academic learning (Moses spends a fair amount of time tracking down a volume
called the Book of Thoth) this learning always requires physical labor. As with Moses’s time in
the palace, Hurston goes to lengths to suggest that Moses’s learning comes via labor in nature
during this phase of his life as well. Moses virtually never goes out to walk in the wilderness
without some task at hand—to track down some raiders, to graze some livestock on better
pastures, to find stray animals, etc. Hurston writes, in an almost Hemingway-esque brevity,
“[Moses] spent his days with Jethro’s flocks and Nature” (111).
Moses’s spiritual powers grow remarkably during this time, and Hurston links Moses’s
spiritual growth to labor in every instance but one (his experience with the Book of Thoth).
Moses cultivates his ability to call plagues while working alone in the wilderness. And, as soon
as Moses completes his quest for the Book of Thoth, “[he goes] back to herding sheep on Mount
Horeb and [goes] on asking Nature her secrets” (123). It is in his time on Mount Horeb
following his experience with the Book of Thoth that Moses hears the voice of I AM WHAT I
AM in the burning bush, directing him back to Egypt.
50
As Moses moves back into Egypt, learning in the text shifts from Moses to the Hebrews
as a whole. Moses’s primary focus from this point on in the novel becomes preparing the
Hebrews to live as an independent people. It is the limited understanding of the Hebrews in part
that drives Moses from Egypt in the first place—Hebrews refuse to work for other Hebrews,
mock Moses for his attempts to direct them, and ultimately out him for killing the Egyptian
overseer. This is a perfect example of the earlier point that not all labor is created equal, in terms
of spiritual development. Because the Hebrews have not been able to approach their labor in
such a way that it would be spiritually ameliorating to them, it has functioned only as brute labor,
and lowered them in the process. Courtesy of this, they are a confused people—Aaron and
Miriam, ostensibly leaders of their people, are fumbling, avaricious, and largely incompetent,
Aaron refusing to go along with Moses unless he got some concessions for his family, and
Miriam trading on weak hoodoo (131, 135).
When the Hebrews are freed, this sort of weak thinking continues:
“Good gracious!” somebody grumbled, “I was figuring on going fishing tomorrow
morning. I don’t want to be bothered with no packing up today. It’s too much like work
and I just got free this morning.”
“That’s the heaven’s truth, too,” plenty of others chimed in. “Looks like we done
swapped one bossman for another one. I don’t want nobody giving me orders no more”
(181).
Here, we see that the Hebrews are incapable (at least at this point) of associating physical labor
with anything other than the oppression they are accustomed to. To Hurston, spiritual growth is
the only way to freedom, and labor in nature is the only way to spiritual growth. The Hebrew
people saying these things are unknowingly opposing their only possible way to actual freedom.
Freedom continues to be a foreign idea to the Hebrews for some time. They quake in fear
as Pharaoh’s chariots pursue, and again as they need water in the desert, despite the confidence
they express in Moses as they leave Egypt and as Pharaoh’s army drowns in the Red Sea. When
the Hebrews complain about the food, Moses tells them this: “I had the idea all along that you
came out here hunting freedom. I didn’t know you were hunting a barbecue. Freedom looks like
the biggest thing that God ever made to me, and being a little hungry for the sake of it ought not
to stop you. Your wives and children are own now. I lift your eyes to the hills” (205). Hurston
writes of the Hebrews “Now they acted like they knew they were free by ear but they couldn’t
51
conceive of it. They did not believe they could take on any responsibility for themselves at all.
They kept clamoring for somebody to act for them” (202).
Curiously, Hurston gives us relatively little about the transformation of the Hebrews from
these people who have no idea what freedom is to the fighting force that enters Canaan—she
covers forty years of wilderness wandering in almost as many pages. In fact, almost the entirety
of the biblical 40 years spent wandering in the wilderness following the failure to take Canaan
after leaving Egypt is distilled in these lines: “They wandered in the wilderness and wandered
and sickened and died and gave birth and revolted again and again” (261). What Hurston does
give us, though, indicates that just as Moses grew spiritually through his physical labors, so the
Hebrews grow as a spiritual nation through their physical processes in nature. Their time in the
wilderness is spent solving basic problems—dealing with issues of water, food, threatening
nations, and class distinctions within the Hebrew nation. In every situation that Hurston
describes, though, she gives a spiritual corollary to each physical triumph. For instance, in the
process of finding sufficient food for a nation, the fractious committees that form early during
the wandering are disbanded (205). Further, when the Hebrews defeat the Amalekites, they
grow not just as a fighting force, but also in their self-worth, just as Moses predicted to Joshua
(208). More brutally, when priestly leadership declines to an absolutely abysmal level (Aaron
tells Moses he cannot come to an appointment because his “beard boy” is tending his beard
(269)), Moses solves the problem by slaying Aaron (275). Moses clearly takes no pleasure in
this: “Moses looked down on him and wept. He remembered so much from way back. ‘Is this
my brother? Is this pitiful old carcass blood of my blood? Maybe this is me myself in other
moods. Who am I to judge him?...I have made a nation, but at a price’” (275). This is a horrific
scene, and it is clear that Moses kills Aaron not for some spite or rivalry between the two of
them, but because this is the only way that Israel can continue to progress spiritually. Merely
banishing Aaron would not have been sufficient—he must be sacrificed for the good of the
nation. This scene, brutal though it is, makes unmistakably clear that the Hebrews can progress
spiritually only through physical means. And while killing someone is not labor, the greater
point about Hurston’s vision of the relationship between humanity and nature (that the two are
always connected, that one begets the other) remains. As with Moses’s experiences with labor
and spiritual development, these processes of spiritual development are inseparable from the
physical experiences that induce them. The Hebrews are made into a nation by their physical
52
and spiritual experiences in the wilderness. Some of these physical experiences are labor by the
strictest definitions—cutting wood, for example. Other experiences, like the slaying of Aaron,
serve only as confirmation that Hurston links the physical and spiritual.
The conclusion of the novel sees the Hebrews entering Canaan in formation as Moses
watches from Mt. Nebo. Moses thinks to himself “…this time Israel had her songs and her
singers. Israel had a fine army of fighters. Israel had laws on tables of stone and Israel had a
God. He had lifted their eyes to the mountain. Out of a rotting mass of creeds he had made a
religion that had height and depth” (284). The spiritual transformation from a group of recently
freed slaves to a nation is complete, and was achieved through the nation’s physical experiences
in the wilderness.
There are positive and helpful aspects to this treatment of the significance of labor.
Realizing that physical labor does not necessarily drive a wedge between the laborer and the
higher fruits of nature, whatever one takes them to be, is an essential realization for a healthy
relationship between humanity and nature. In the case of Hurston, we have a writer who
conceives of labor as something that is actually necessary to glean the spiritual benefits of nature.
Moses must be educated by laborers, and must then labor himself to become the great spiritual
figure that he is. Finally, when he leads the nation of Israel, they can become a nation only
through similar physical experiences in nature.
On the other hand, this book seems the perfect text to bolster Carby’s argument that
Hurston can conceive of no one who is not like herself as authentically black. As Boyd suggests,
Hurston creates Moses very much in her own image (330). Moses is a great, if reluctant leader
of his people. Remarkably, though, there are no other great Hebrew leaders in the novel. Aaron
and Miriam are both horrendous leaders, concerned only with their own power, and never
realizing that leadership is about something bigger than themselves. Jethro offers Moses advice,
but never steps into a leadership role himself. Joshua assumes Moses’s position at the very end
of the novel, but we never see him do anything without the express direction of Moses. This lack
of leadership outside of Moses very much affirms Carby’s point.
Moreover, Carby’s argument can also be made by considering both the Hebrews’
shortcomings and how they progress spiritually. The Hebrews’ most consistent flaw is how
poorly they conform to Moses’s vision for them. They complain about their food, when Moses
learned to do without when necessary. They complain about the water quality, when Moses
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learned to be satisfied with the water available. At no point does Moses take advantage of his
powers to improve his own life, but the Hebrews constantly complain about their conditions.
When they do improve, it is always through methods prescribed by Moses. While Moses may
insist to Miriam that he is not God (263), there is certainly an eerie similarity between them.
Moses is always correct, and there is no way to freedom outside of what he prescribes.
Hurston’s limited vision on paths to freedom further strengthens Carby’s argument that Hurston
dangerously writes other discourses out of existence in her work.
This aspect of the vision is, of course, dangerous to say the least. Arguing that a laboring
life and an appreciation of nature are not oppositional is a strong point, but by writing such a
monolithic description of the way to freedom, Hurston makes some dangerous extensions.
Ultimately, Moses, Man of the Mountain, is a showcase of the best and worst aspects of
Hurston’s work. She opens the door wide to the possibility of being a laborer and growing
spiritually through contact with nature, but simultaneously decrees that it is only through a
laborer’s contact with nature that one can grow spiritually, and be authentically black. She falls
squarely into the critique that Carby describes—any experience other than her own is
inauthentic—and by doing so, ultimately limits the theoretical potential of her work.
3.3 Their Eyes Were Watching God
Hurston’s 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God is broadly read text, thanks in no small
part to its theoretical complexity. It is precisely because of this theoretical complexity that Their
Eyes is an ideal text for understanding how Hurston deals with the issues of human labor in
nature. A number of critics have discussed how Hurston uses nature in this text, but none have
focused specifically on how she imagines how human labor works intersects with nature.
Michael Awkward, for example, in his Inspiriting Influences, considers some natural symbols of
the text—the pear tree and backyard as symbols of Edenic purity, nature as a whole as “an
organic, precultural, prelinguistic relationship between voice and action” (18), but sees this more
as a metaphor, rather than a physical reality Hurston’s characters work in. Matthew Sivils
likewise examines the pear tree as symbol, but in a very different way, writing “Hurston’s
motivation for creating this hybrid between girl and tree rests in the racial and sexual oppression
that Janie suffers as an African American woman living in 1930s Florida….Yet while Hurston’s
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hybridization of Janie and a pear tree is not a violation—or at least not a disturbing one—it does
fulfill an important function of the grotesque: it inscribes Janie’s environment upon her body”—
again, an important reading, and one makes the metaphor more physically rooted, but still does
not address the practicality of labor (“Reading Trees” 96). Outka develops this point, writing
“Rather than the landscape only reflecting Janie, in this passage she also comes to reflect it; this
is erotic nature writing as much as (or more than) it is naturalized eroticism” (Race 190). Seeing
the mutual reflection is certainly important, and its presences indicates that Hurston has a very
high view of nature, but again, this point still does not reach the central point of this chapter—
how Hurston deals with the idea of human labor in nature.
Most of the environmental criticism on Their Eyes Were Watching God deals with the
two sublime scenes that bookend the novel—the pear tree scene orgasm scene, and the massive
hurricane that propels the novel to its conclusion. These scenes can be read as moments of
ultimate contact with nature—these are the scenes that Awkward compellingly suggests
eliminate the gap between speech and action. But I contend that the bulk of the meaning of the
novel is not found in these sublime scenes, but rather in the more mundane instances of Janie’s
life that comes between them. Readers should not take these brief moments as indicative of
Hurston’s vision of the human/nature relationship, though, for two reasons. First, she
immediately complicates the meaning that she conveys through these scenes. While Janie’s pear
tree revelation has her believe that Johnny is the perfect male, reality is clearly contrary to that
belief,18 and while the hurricane comes like an apocalypse, Janie and Tea Cake get into trouble
only because of Tea Cake’s inept management of the situation.19 Second, these sublime scenes
are not in keeping with the visions of nature that Hurston conveys throughout the rest of her
work, and as such, we ought not suppose that they supersede her greater corpus. Ultimately,
while these scenes are dramatic, and serve as turning points in the text, they are not what teach
Janie how to live, or give her significant spiritual growth. Janie has a trajectory in the novel,
moving gradually from a child to a self-actualized adult. While sublime elements may mark her
journey, the actual growth occurs between them, in her periods of labor in nature. Her progress
18
Michael Awkward makes this point very convincingly in his chapter “’The Inaudible Voice of
it All’: Silence, Voice, and Action in Their Eyes Were Watching God,” from his book Inspiriting
Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women’s Novels.
19
Kathleen Davies explores this point in her article “Zora Neale Hurston’s Poetic of
Embalmment: Articulating the Rage of Black Women and Narrative Self-Defense”
55
depends not on these massive moments, but on everyday life. Hurston provides a remarkably
clear structure by which we can examine Janie’s developing spirituality, her labor, and her
relationship with nature: her marriages, and the brief time following the death of Tea Cake.
3.3.1 Logan Killicks
Janie’s marriage to Killicks is an obvious place in the novel in which Hurston invokes
labor. This marriage is in large part defined by discussions of labor—at first, Janie is expected to
do relatively little labor, but Killicks’ demands grow as the marriage goes on. This marriage,
especially when contrasted with Janie’s pear tree ideals, is a brutal affair to behold. Nanny’s
assurances that love will come are revealed to be unfounded, and after a quick decline (defined
in no small part by the labor that Killicks expects from Janie) Janie leaves Killicks for Joe Starks.
And so what is the function of this marriage in the novel? First, it provides a strong, realist
response to Janie’s pear tree vision; while Janie continues to be somewhat optimistic about the
possibility of love, she realizes that “marriage [does] not make love,” and that this “dream was
dead” (24). Second, we see some spiritual growth in Janie in the process of this marriage.
Hurston writes “She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the
trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said ‘Ah hope you fall on soft
ground’…” (24). Hurston continues this description of Janie’s new knowledge for some time.
This knowledge seems to be the product of her maturation. Where the pear tree scene gives
Janie this brief, (and as Awkward suggests) ahistorical knowledge, the broader knowledge that
Hurston suggests here seems less temporal, and more rooted. Given that we have no indication
of any other revelation style scenes, we have to assume that this knowledge comes to Janie as a
product of her maturing through her marriage.
Third, in Janie’s marriage to Killicks, Hurston makes it unambiguously clear that labor is
not a universally spiritually ameliorating force. Just as with the Hebrews in Egypt in Moses,
Man of the Mountain, labor in this marriage is a demeaning act, not one that is spiritually
uplifting. Yet again, this is in keeping with the discussion of the spiritual meaning of physical
acts presented in the section on Hurston’s religious background—all physical acts have spiritual
consequence. Labor, as illustrated in the figure of Moses in Moses, Man of the Mountain, can
elevate one spiritually. Or, as it did to the Hebrews, in the same novel, labor can also not serve
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this purpose. Not all physical acts are made equal in Hurston’s eyes, and while labor in the
proper context elevates the spirituality of Hurston’s characters, compulsory labor does not
produce these effects.
3.3.2 Joe Starks
Janie’s subsequent marriage to Joe Starks, though, while not as immediately offensive as
the marriage to Logan Killicks, is still completely unfulfilling. Janie has moved from being a
worker without owning anything to be a sort of kept woman—having some ownership in much,
and working not at all. Not working at all means that Janie is effectively kept apart from the
world. Her function is decorative—to appear in the store with her hair down, and keep
conversation to a minimum. She is liberated in the same sense that the mule that Joe Starks
purchases from Matt Bonner to free is—still very much a possession of Joe Starks’. And so what
is the meaning of Joe Starks in this novel? First, we can see that Joe is separated from nature in a
way that few Hurston characters are. When Joe does labor, he never does so in nature. Rather,
Joe owns a store, and works as the mayor of Eatonville. There is plenty of room for a Marxist
critique here. One could certainly read that Joe’s labor (not labor in the production of anything,
but labor only in the sale of the products of others’ labor), alienates Joe not only from his own
labor, but also from nature. As he does not produce from labor, Joe’s only relationship with
nature is as a seller and consumer of its products. Moreover, even in this fairly rural setting, Joe
does not participate even in the recreational experiences in nature. While the other men of the
town are perpetually hunting and fishing, at no point do we see Joe deigning to join them in these
pursuits. These are particularly social activities, and given that Joe has deliberately installed
himself as the social center of Eatonville, it should seem peculiar that he never joins with the
other men in hunting and fishing.
Beyond this, we can see several point in the novel in which Joe actually works counter to
nature. Joe goes out of his way to acquire a streetlight for the town, a seemingly generous
gesture. This installation of a streetlight seems like it should be a relatively straightforward
affair, but Hurston goes out of her way to show how Joe envisioned the streetlight not only as a
convenience, but as a means of conquering nature, and setting himself up above his fellow
citizens. When the lamp arrives, Joe displays the unlit lamp for several days, and sends some of
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the men into the swamp to procure a suitable cypress pole on which to mount the lamp.
Unsurprisingly, Joe rejects the first few poles the men bring back to him.20 To celebrate the
lighting of the lamp, Joe organizes a massive barbeque, during which he gives this speech:
‘Folkses, de sun is goin’ down. De Sun-maker brings it up in de mornin’, and de Sunmaker sends it tuh bed at night. Us poor weak humans can’t do nothin’ tuh hurry it up
nor to slow it down. All we can do, if we want any light after de settin’ or befo’ de risin’,
is tuh make some light ourselves. So dat’s how come lamps was made….Lift yo’ eyes
and gaze on it. And when Ah touch de match tuh dat lamp-wick let de light penetrate
inside of yuh, and let it shine, let it shine, let it shine’ (42-43).21
This quote gives the reader tremendous insight into the character of Joe Starks. The lamp is not,
for Joe, simply a sign of the modern times, or maybe some indication that Eatonville is now a
proper town, or some such. No, Joe reads the lamp as a means of counteracting the purposes of
God and nature. Not only does he see the lamp as a source of power previously available only to
God, in referencing the spiritual, Joe replaces the Holy Spirit with the light from this lamp. To
Hurston’s Pentecostal background, this is a bold claim indeed.
Janie is somewhat less impressed with the festivities. When Joe asks what she thinks, she
says “…Jody, it jus’ looks lak it keeps us in some way we ain’t natural wid one ‘nother” (43).
“Natural,” I suspect, is not a term used accidentally here. The celebration of the lamp, while
exciting, drives something between Janie and Joe. Joe’s behavior here is indeed “unnatural,” as
he seeks to supplant nature and God with his streetlamp.
Not only does Joe not participate in nature in any way, he works to prevent Janie from
doing so as well. Most obviously, he does so by compelling her to work in the store—something
she does not enjoy. Hurston writes that Janie “had come to hate the inside of that store” (51).
Not only must Janie work in the store, Joe forbids her from taking part in the conversations on
the porch of the store (50). Perhaps the liminal zone of the porch is too close to nature, which
Joe, try as he might, cannot quite have control over. As the relationship dissolves, Hurston
writes this of Janie’s time in the store: “…she sat and watched the shadow of herself going about
tending the store and prostrating itself before Jody, while all the time she herself sat under a
shady tree with the wind blowing through her hair and her clothes” (73). Clearly, Janie longs to
20
Again, note Joe’s separation from labor in nature—if Joe is so particular about the pole, why
does Joe not cut the pole himself?
21
N.B.: this final repeated line comes from a spiritual, “This Little Light of Mine.” The light in
the spiritual seems to refer to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
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be out in nature, rather than working within the confines of the store. Of course, Joe prevents
Janie from experiencing nature in other ways, too. He attempts to dissuade Janie from joining
the community in the mock funeral of Matt Bonner’s mule—an event that takes place just on the
edge of the woods (56). When he sees her enjoying herself on the community croquette grounds,
he scolds her, telling her she is too old to be “jumpin’ round” (73). Perhaps Joe fears nature
because it is beyond his control, or perhaps he sees an association with nature as something
below the class that he attains to. Regardless as to Joe’s motivations, it is clear that Hurston
portrays him as a character that is completely counter to nature. Not incidentally, he is also
completely spiritually bankrupt. Joe has no understanding of the community around him, human
or natural, but rather sees humanity and nature in terms of his own ability to have power over
these things.22
In the first marriage, Janie is too much in the world of labor in nature. She knows
nothing else. In the second, she is too far separated from it, and thus lacks a genuine connection
with the world around her. This second is as stifling as the first. What seemed ideal—divorcing
herself from labor—is in fact sharply limiting.
3.3.3 Tea Cake
Janie’s final marriage to Tea Cake is the site of her greatest spiritual growth in the novel.
Not coincidentally, it is only in this marriage that we see Janie working in nature of her own
volition. In her relationship with Tea Cake, Janie finds ways to reintegrate herself with the
world. Tea Cake leads Janie into the world that Joe prevented her from being a part of—this
relationship is liberating where Janie’s relationships with Logan Killicks and Joe Starks were
stifling. Janie’s reintegration with the world is a gradual process, beginning with minor social
activities, and concluding with complete enmeshment with the community. Involvement in
nature, particularly labor in nature, is an essential part of this process, and it is labor in nature
that provides the keystone of Janie’s relationship with her community.
The first instance we see of Tea Cake helping Janie into participation into the society that
Joe tried to keep her out of is in Tea Cake teaching Janie how to play checkers (91-92). They
22
Joe Starks’ relationship with the rest of his community is not within the scope of this chapter,
but see quotes on 44-46 as well as 58-59 for confirmation of this point.
59
play at their first meeting. The fact that Janie, who spent a fair portion of her adult life running a
store where playing checkers was a major part of the social activity of the store, does not know
how to play is a striking reinforcement of the limitations that Joe put on her in his life. Tea
Cake’s teaching of Janie, especially so early in their relationship, is an indication of precisely
how different he is from Joe. Given that checkers is such an essential element of the society of
the store, Janie’s learning to play the game shows a clear shift in her participation in her culture.
Following learning to play checkers, we see Tea Cake taking Janie fishing in the middle
of the night (98). This, again, is in clear contrast to Starks. As discussed above, we have
repeated instances of Starks attempting to prevent Janie from participating in nature. Here, by
taking Janie fishing, we have Tea Cake behaving in the exact opposite way. While fishing is, in
some ways, a leisure activity, it can also be understood as labor. While Janie and Tea Cake may
enjoy fishing, they fish for food, and keep the fish they catch, rather than fishing for sport. This,
then, is the first instance in the novel of Janie choosing to labor in nature. This is exciting to
Janie and makes her feel “like a child breaking the rules” (98). This is a significant quote.
While this “breaking the rules” aspect of Janie’s participation in nature is not in an of itself an
indication of spiritual growth, it is an indication that Janie is moving further from the control of
the now deceased Joe. Janie is, of course, not breaking any rules by choosing to go fishing at
night. She is only violating the limiting expectations that Joe had for her. By doing this, we can
see that Janie is moving into a position of greater freedom, and one which will eventually allow
her to grow spiritually.
This sort of liminal leisure/labor participation in nature is carried on soon after Janie and
Tea Cake arrive in the Muck. Tea Cake convinces Janie to purchase a rifle, a shotgun, and a
handgun, and teaches her how to shoot them. While there is some element of recreation to these
activities (some of the men in the Muck beg for an opportunity to shoot), Janie also uses her
newfound skills to provide dinner on several occasions, and Janie and Tea Cake earn money by
selling the hides of alligators that they shoot (124-126). During this time, we see Janie being a
more active participant in her society than she ever has before. Her and Tea Cake’s house
becomes “a magnet, the unauthorized center of the ‘job’” (126).
Following a brief dispute between Janie and Tea Cake, it is decided that Janie, who to
this point has confined her labor to the physical area right around their cabin, will join Tea Cake
and the other laborers in the bean fields. This is a remarkable moment in many ways. First, it is
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over threat of this kind of labor that Janie leaves Logan Killicks in the first place. Clearly, it is
significant that this labor is not compulsory. Second, it is through this decision to work in the
bean fields that Janie finally becomes completely a part of the community. Prior to Janie’s
deciding to work in the bean fields, “it was generally assumes that she thought herself too good
to work like the rest of the women and that Tea Cake ‘pomped her up tuh dat’” (127). Following
this decision, though, Janie is “popular right away” (127). More significantly, Hurston describes
this shift to us: “The men held big arguments here [on the Muck] like they used to do on the store
porch. Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted to. She
got so she could tell big stories herself…” (127-128). Here, we see the transition completed.
Notably, it is only after Janie begins laboring in the fields, unambiguously working in nature,
that she is able to completely participate in the community. Here, Janie sheds the childlike self
that was incapable of dealing with Logan Killicks and was completely subservient to Joe Starks.
The Janie that we see once she starts unambiguously laboring in nature is the mature, adult Janie.
In the frame story, following Tea Cake’s death, we see Janie’s return to Eatonville. And,
in this concluding frame story, we see an altogether different Janie than the woman that we see in
the rest of the narrative. Whereas in the rest of the narrative we see someone trying hard to
figure out who she is, and where she fits in the world, in the frame story we see a woman that
knows herself, and is above the criticisms of her community. There is a kind of rest and
peacefulness to her response to the perpetual gossip of the town. She has a spiritual maturity that
her peers lack. She is restful, despite her obvious causes for concern; they are anxious, despite
their limited causes for concern. She is at her most even, despite this sort of strange, petty, and
largely unkind interest in her by her community. There is a rising trajectory of maturity and
spiritual understanding in the text, and it is here that the apex is reached, as Janie settles back
into the mundane.
Delightfully, Hurston sets the only scenes we have of Janie in this post-Tea Cake portion
of the novel on Janie’s porch (4, 182). Here, she is neither indoors nor in nature, but rather in a
liminal zone between the two. Perhaps we can read it as the perfect space between her first two
husbands. The porch is a place of leisure—precisely what was denied her in her marriage to
Killicks. At the same time, though, it is a place that is not at all separated from the outside
world, and from the reality of nature—precisely what was denied her in her marriage to Joe
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Starks. This conclusion shows a woman who is exactly where she wants to be, and she got there
through the ameliorating effects of voluntary labor in nature.
Hurston is essential to the project as she offers a regional and racial perspective different
from Mary Austin’s, and thus a perspective that helps to broaden our understanding of the
human/nature relationship. This change in perspective has two distinct effects: first, while
Austin’s concern for the effects of human labor on nature is limited, Hurston’s is effectively nonexistent. Second, and a bit more controversially, one could argue that Hurston is more concerned
with human oppression than Austin is.
Hurston lacks even a basic level of concern for the effects of humanity on nature. The
draining of the Everglades produces the Muck, the scene of the most blissful community in any
of Hurston’s work. The pine swamps where the turpentine workers work in Mules and Men are
an apparently limitless resource. This seems to have several origins: first, Hurston was not at all
alone in her failure to notice the impact of labor on the Florida landscape—Stetson Kennedy,
now an environmental activist, praised the draining of the Everglades in his Guide to Florida:
The Southernmost State. That is to say, Hurston, like virtually everyone else around her, lacked
the foresight to see that unhindered expansion into the Everglades was not an effective strategy
for the long-term well being of the region. Austin, on the other hand, was confronted by the
stark reality of the very, very dry West. The limitations of the region and the effects of human
actions were screamingly obvious—something that was not as true in Hurston’s considerably
more lush Florida and Caribbean. As such, much in the way of Austin, Hurston presents an
anthropocentric vision, just one different from the dominant green discourses of her day.
Also, given the degree of spiritual import that Hurston assigns to nature, it may be that
she conceives of it more as a spiritual thing than a physical thing. Accordingly, then, the greater
concern would be for spiritual reality, not the condition of swamps. While there is obviously
room in hoodoo for tying the physical and spiritual together (i.e.; the prevalence of mojos, or
physical objects that may be eaten endowed with spiritual powers, rootwork, in which special
combinations of prayers and roots or leaves are understood to have physical and spiritual effects
on a person or situation) Hurston seems to only conceive of the possibility of humans growing
via their relationships with nature, not nature decreasing via the same relationship.
Finally, Hurston, ideally, at least, has a greater concern for the effects of labor on the
laborers than does Mary Austin. She, more than Austin, had a first hand awareness of the effects
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of labor. But at the same time, Hurston lacks an overt concern for labor conditions. Where
Hurston does describe problems, as in Janie’s situation with Logan Killicks, the problem in
centered in a particular situation, not in a system. In her two greatest descriptions of labor, both
ostensibly drawn entirely from fieldwork, Mules and Men and Tell My Horse, Hurston does not
express serious concern over the conditions that laborers live and work in. She does not, to her
own delight, polish their circumstances, but at the same time, she has no serious issue with these
circumstances. Perhaps this is because, as she wrote to Boas, she saw a terrifying possibility of
the culture that she knew and loved dissipating into nothingness when mixed with southern
White culture on a large scale (preferring the idea of reservations, ala American Indians), and
thus perhaps thought poor labor conditions a small price to pay when compared with the
potential loss (Plant 38-39). Easy to say when you are not the one working the turpentine still.
At the very least, Hurston does not romanticize the poor conditions to the degree that Austin
does.
So, while Hurston offers up a flawed vision of what the human/nature relationship ought
to be, her vision still has something to contribute to the discourse. She suggests that labor in
nature does not inherently drive a wedge between the laborer and the higher fruits of nature.
Rather, she argues that labor in fact brings one closer to these higher fruits. Conceiving of a
relationship with nature in which our use of it is a fundamentally good thing is an absolutely
essential step in progressing in a discourse on human labor in nature. At the same time, Hurston
effectively overplays her hand, as she arguably writes out all other Black experiences as
inauthentic, as Carby suggests, and thus tie Blacks to the Southern landscape in a strange kind of
spiritual/feudal relationship. This, coupled with a lack of concern for the effects of human labor
on nature, means that she obviously cannot function as a conceptual model for how human labor
works in nature. But, she amends, at least partially, some of the problems inherent in Austin’s
vision, ala Austin’s absolute romanticization of poor labor conditions, and moreover, provides
another racial and regional perspective for the project.
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CHAPTER 4
WENDELL BERRY
Wendell Berry, in his short story “The Wild Birds,” writes “But a better way is thinkable,
is imaginable, and Wheeler, against all evidence and all odds, is an advocate of the better way”
(That Distant Land 349). This is the idea that dominates Berry’s work. More than any other
American author, Wendell Berry focuses on the intersections between human labor and nature.
His corpus is diverse; he writes fiction and poetry, but is best known for his essays. Berry brings
much to this conversation: he has a positive view of human labor in nature, he comes to this view
in a relatively unique way, and expresses his arguments with a far greater concern for the effect
of human labor on nature than do either Mary Hunter Austin or Zora Neale Hurston. Despite
this, Berry’s practical suggestions for better integrating human labor into nature are limited in
their helpfulness—he seems unable to see beyond his own privileged class status. That said, the
spirit of Berry’s work is one that is much needed. Berry approaches the issue of humanity’s
relationship with nature from a holistic perspective, and we can read him, if not as an economist,
then as a prophet. As Jack Hicks writes, Berry’s “informing vision…” is “…a complex and
coherent sense of man’s need for a proper place on earth. His assumptions are unstated, at times
in conflict, but in essence his view of man is as a distinctly flawed being fallen from natural
wholeness” (“Husband to the World” 239-40). Berry’s theological understanding of humanity’s
relationship with nature is a valuable approach to correcting the human/nature dichotomy.
Despite the incompleteness of his vision, Berry’s drive to help us find a better way to deal with
our natural world is a much-needed step in this discourse.
Berry’s defense of human labor in nature is excellent. He executes this defense in two
primary ways: first, through his theology, and second, through practical arguments. Berry’s
practical arguments are explained primarily via his fiction, in which the tenants of his theology
are borne out in fictional human relationships with the natural world.
The basic principles of Berry’s theological defense of human labor in nature are
relatively commonly held—essentially that humanity is fundamentally a part of nature, and as
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such, human labor is likewise a part of nature.23 Berry is unique, though, in that he comes to this
point through his theology. As a Christian, Berry attempts to construct a Christian theology that
embraces human labor—a theology that thus makes him relatively unique among other Christian
thinkers. Berry’s theology of labor is a much-discussed aspect of his work; Jack Hicks, Jason
Peters, David E. Gamble and Laird Christensen all consider how Berry develops his theology
and applies it to agrarian living. Note, though, that while Berry defends human labor in nature
on principle, he does not universally approve of how it actually occurs. Rather, Berry recognizes
that human labor has the power to be destructive if foolishly or incompetently used. As such, he
qualifies his support by insisting on what I term his “ethos of care.” If labor is performed
without care, all of the benefits (practical and spiritual) that Berry typically sees in labor are lost.
As Kimberly Smith writes in her Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition, in the typically
dichotomous visions of human labor and nature (as in, either all work is problematic, or no work
is problematic) this nuance makes Berry’s work stand out.
Berry’s practical arguments are somewhat disparate—that working in nature gives
humanity a better human community, that it makes humans more aware of the natural
community that they live in, that labor that relies on mechanically extracted energy separates the
laborer from nature, that separation from nature produces people who have no understanding of
what is truly valuable, etc. He makes these arguments both in his essays and fiction. I contend
that the primary function of Berry’s fiction is to work as an explanation of his practical ideas
about how humanity should relate to nature and community. As such, Berry’s fiction will be
read, in this chapter, exclusively as Berry’s attempts at practical arguments for his ideas.
While Berry’s defenses are strong, and his means of coming to these points is unique, he
falters in the proposed execution of these points. There are a handful of issues with Berry’s
suggestions. Primarily, one could argue that because Berry accepts only very particular kinds of
human labor (i.e.; labor that has nostalgic value, not just labor that is environmentally careful),
he reinvents the problems this dissertation is written to address—creating a new dichotomy that
still does not effectively imagine human labor as a part of the natural process. Beyond that,
Berry’s agrarianism fails to adequately deal with the issues raised by deep ecology—how is
Berry’s vision not anthropocentric?
23
Certainly this point is not at all unique to Berry—Austin comes to similar conclusions, as does
Ray, as do Naess and the deep ecologists, as well as a handful of other contemporary critics.
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Further, Berry’s work should also be read racially. While Berry, in places, tries to deal
with issues of race and labor in nature (The Hidden Wound and “Racism and the Economy”,
most prominently), he undercuts these steps in other instances in his work, and thus never really
effectively addresses these complex issues. Berry has a stated debt to the Vanderbilt-based
group the Fugitives, and both the Fugitives and Berry see their own context as normative. As
such, both effectively discount the notion that agricultural labor in the South could have a
different meaning in black culture. This is a serious flaw—Berry’s work is built in large part on
the principle that labor in nature is an ameliorating experience for the laborer, which of course
ignores the history of other meanings for human labor in nature, particularly in the South.
Finally, Berry’s ideas are not economically functional. His suggestions suppose that the
laborer is economically independent. Richard Hofstader, despite preceding Berry by a few years,
wrote probably the best critique of the practicality of what he deems the agrarian myth
throughout his work, most notably in his Age of Reform, and his work is the basis of my criticism
of this portion of Berry’s work. There is room for a counterargument here: that Berry’s system
could work under the right conditions—after all, it did during the pre-industrial era. And this
may well be true, but Berry never comes close to referencing the level of societal change that this
would require. This would mean a wholesale societal revolution, in which 95% of Americans
once again worked in agriculture, and national exports of food were stopped. Without these
changes (which Berry never completely endorses) his ideas are almost comically out of touch
with economic reality.
The best way to make use of Berry’s work, then, is to read him not as an economist, but
as a prophet. That is, Berry’s practical suggestions seldom make much sense, but the spirit
behind them is one that everyone would be well advised to adopt. Berry can still be useful to the
goals of this project—he does provide a way a thinking about human labor in nature that takes
into account both the quality of life of the laborer and the effects of the labor on the landscape—
but these shortcomings still mean that Berry ultimately cannot be a final guide.
One of the aspects of Berry’s work that makes his distinct in this project is the lengths to
which he goes to connect himself to human labor in nature. In his essays, he very clearly
identifies as a farmer, and freely discusses his own experiences working in nature—something
neither Hurston nor Austin do. Because of this difference, and because Berry spells out his ideas
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on human labor in nature so much more clearly in his essay than Austin and Hurston do in their
fiction, he gives us the opportunity to read his ideas in greater depth.
We must also consider, though, that Berry speaks from a privileged position. While he
compares the plight of the small time farmer to that of groups commonly marginalized (and does
so fairly effectively), he is, ultimately, a white, male, Protestant. Thus, as referenced above, his
perspective bears this privilege. Alongside this, we must recognize that there is a significant
difference between choosing to maintain a farm, and doing so while you gather book royalties,
and having no choice but to work on a farm. So, while Berry’s decision to labor might give him
a different perspective from those who do not labor, he still cannot speak for those who have no
choice in the matter.
Berry’s work on human labor and nature has received more scholarly attention than the
work of Austin and Hurston. In fact, the fact that Berry is so widely read is one of the reasons
that Berry’s work must be dealt with in this project. What other critics have not done, and what
this chapter aims to do, is to seriously evaluate both theoretical viability and the practical
effectiveness of Berry’s arguments. Berry’s work is a bit of an outlier in this project—whereas
the primary function of the other chapters is to raise the profile of possibly helpful voices in this
discourse, Berry’s voice needs no amplifying. If anything, we need a more heavily critical
discussion of Berry’s ideas, which this chapter will in part provide.
4.1 Berry’s Theological Defense of Human Labor in Nature
Berry develops his theological defense of human labor in nature throughout his entire
corpus—through his essays, fiction, and poetry. Berry’s theology is the foundation upon which
all of the interactions between humanity and nature that he describes rest. To begin to
understand Berry’s theology, we need to first understand the context that Berry was addressing
when he began his theological ruminations. First, Lynn White Jr.’s 1967 article “The Historical
Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” troubled Berry. In it, White argues that our current state of
environmental degradation is due to the ecological model established in the Judeo-Christian
creation myth. The trouble for Berry was that, given the evidence of a pillaged landscape and
rampant consumption-oriented, ill-considered theology, White’s claim was, as he said in his
speech “Christianity and the Survival of Creation,” “in many respects, just” (Commonplace 305).
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Christian institutions largely failed to address this issue, he writes in “A Secular Pilgrimage,”
noting “the human or earthly problem has always been one of behavior, or morality: How should
a man live in this world? Institutional Christianity has usually tended to give a non-answer to
this question: He should live for the next world” (Continuous 7). To Berry, this answer is
insufficient. And so, as Laird Christensen writes, “Berry insists on distinguishing between the
conventions of Christianity and the truths that await one who comes to the study of scripture with
the right questions” (176). We see this most clearly in Berry’s essay “The Gift of Good Land.”
In “The Gift of Good Land,” he sets out “to attempt a Biblical argument for ecological and
agricultural responsibility” (Commonplace 293).24 Instead of focusing on the “subdue”
passages of the creation myth (the passages that White reads, and likely the passages that have
been most influential in developing Christian ecological theory), Berry turns to the Promised
Land motif. Significantly, the garden myth omits labor from the human experience—it is in the
curse placed on Adam as he and Eve are rejected from the garden in the third chapter of Genesis
that the idea of human labor is first mentioned in the myth. As such, the Promised Land, a land
that is given with the mandate to labor, is a much more fitting vision of the human/nature
relationship to Berry. He writes:
The story of the giving of the Promised Land to the Israelites is more serviceable than the
story of the giving of the Garden of Eden, because the Promised Land is a divine gift to a
fallen people….In the Bible’s long working out of the understanding of this gift, we may
find the beginning—and, by implication, the end—of the definition of an ecological
discipline (295).
From here, Berry examines how exactly this ecological discipline functions. First, in the biblical
ecology that he observes, Berry sees an ordered world. That is, everything (human, earthly,
spiritual) has a meaning, and has a function, according to a divine will (not a human will). He
writes: “The Creator’s love for the Creation is mysterious precisely because it does not conform
to human purposes” (298). This idea of a divine order has several significant components, each
of which will be more completely extrapolated below. First, and as partially evidenced in the
24
I should say here that while Berry does this admirably, his arguments are not airtight. He has a
tendency to jump around in the Bible, quoting from Genesis, the Deuteronomy, the Matthew, etc.
To suggest that all of these documents were written with the same ecological principles in mind
is perhaps a bit naïve. Alternatively, it could be that Berry applies a reader-response theory here
and takes the Bible not as a cohesively composed text, but rather as a document that it merely
understood by Christianity as such.
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above quote, Berry suggests a kinship between humanity and nature. Both are created, and to
Berry “all Creation exists as a bond” (297). This point is repeatedly evident throughout his
essays, fiction, and poetry. The significances of this point are myriad, but for the purposes of
this dissertation, we should see in this point that if humanity and nature share some fundamental
kinship, then one cannot have a philosophical opposition to human labor in nature.
Second, Berry argues that humanity has a specific duty to tend the land. “Tend” is almost
arbitrarily chosen here—Berry uses many terms to discuss humanity’s job on earth. He
reinterprets “dominance” from Genesis as “to dress it and keep it,” but also uses “purpose,”
“use,” “preserve,” “eat,” “practice charity,” “stewardship,” and many, many other words and
phrases (just in “The Gift of Good Land!”) to describe how it is that humanity is to relate to the
earth (294, 296, 296, 297, 297, 299, 299, respectively). Berry writes that there is a “divine
mandate to use the world justly and charitably” (299). The point is this: in Berry’s ordered
world, humanity has a duty to cultivate the earth. This, again, is a point that can be made in
virtually any example of his work. And, it is very clearly a theological injunction to labor in
nature. This, to Berry, is an essential element of the human relationship with the earth, and a
divinely ordained one at that. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Berry’s work is an
extension of this point, as he discusses ways that we labor, and makes distinctions between labor
that is helpful, and that which is not. Berry’s emphasis on skill, which is a major element in his
acceptance of human labor in nature, also comes through this point.
Concomitant with the above point, Berry emphasizes that in the biblical ecological
vision, there are limits placed on humanity’s development of the natural world. In “Christianity
and the Survival of Creation”, Berry lays the foundation of these limitations, writing: “In biblical
terms, the ‘landowner’ is the guest and steward25 of God: ‘The land is mine; for ye are strangers
and sojourners with me,’” (307 Art of the Commonplace) thus “We will discover that we humans
do not own the world or any part of it…” (307). In “The Gift of Good Land,” Berry explains the
restrictions that were put on the Israelites as they worked the land in the Promised Land
narrative—regular rest in the form of the Sabbath, and letting the land lie fallow every seven
years. More remarkably, he discusses the idea of the year of Jubilee, in which all land was
25
Note Berry’s use of “steward” here—a word that does not appear in the text that he quotes, but
rather from the ideas he brings to this text from the Promised Land narrative he sees as the model
for the human/nature relationship.
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redistributed to the tribes, according to the distribution when they were first given the land. This
was done, Berry writes, “as if to free it of the taint of trade and the conceit of human ownership”
(296). He continues: “But beyond their agricultural and social intent, these Sabbaths ritualize an
observance of the limits of ‘my power and the might of mine hand’—the limits of human
control. Looking at their fallowed fields, the people are to be reminded that the land is theirs
only by gift; it exists in its own right, and does not begin or end with human purpose” (296).
This is the theological backing to the “ethos of care” referred to earlier. Excessive human labor
is very problematic to Berry, as will be examined in greater detail in the stewardship discussion,
and this insistence that humans cannot own the earth is, to Berry, the ideal antidote to the
problem of excessive, destructive labor.
This order, in which humanity and the rest of nature share kinship, while humanity is
tasked with judiciously laboring in nature, is the driving force of much of Berry’s work. It forms
the ideas behind his essays, and as Jack Hicks notes, “much of the tragedy in Berry’s [fiction]
originates in the failure—either fated or willed, conscious or unaware—of men to perceive a
natural order or conduct their lives within it” (241). It is through this divinely ordained order
that Berry justifies human labor in nature, and simultaneously places limits on it.
4.2 Order and Kinship
Berry, in his essay “Conservationist and Agrarian,” writes “The world, we may say, is
wild, and all the creatures are homemakers within it, practicing domesticity…” (Bringing It To
the Table 69). And so, while the human enjoys a special place in Berry’s cosmology,
functioning, as written above, as a steward, there is nothing that sets the human apart from
nature. That is, nature, in Berry’s work, is an inescapable context, not a destination, not
something for humans to go off into. Berry’s early essay “A Native Hill” is an interesting
introduction to his thoughts. In it, Berry describes his return to Kentucky, his home region. In
describing part of this coming home process, he writes “I came to see myself as growing out of
the earth like the other native animals and plants. I saw my body and my daily motions as brief
coherences and articulations of the energy of the place, which would fall back into it like leaves
in the autumn” (Commonplace 7). Here, we see in this passage a tendency towards a bodily
identification with the earth. This is significant—it is not Berry’s spirit or soul that has some
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connection to the place, as Muir may have written, but rather a physical connection. As Berry
writes in “The Gift of Good Land,” “…Christianity, as usually presented by its organizations, is
not earthly enough…” (293). Berry’s connection of his body, rather than exclusively his spirit,
with the landscape in “A Native Hill” is in keeping with this.26
In his essay “The Body and The Earth,” we see a somewhat more developed presentation
of the same idea. The entire essay is written to address the relationship between the individual
and the earth. He writes
Our bodies are also not distinct from the bodies of other people, on which they depend in
a complexity of ways from biological to spiritual. They are not distinct from the bodies
of plants and animals, with which we are involved in the cycles of feeding and in the
intricate companionships of ecological systems and of the spirit. They are not distinct
from the earth, the sun and moon, and other heavenly bodies (Art of the Commonplace
99).
In this quote, we see the universalizing of his initial point. Berry is expanding this point both in
terms of who has access to this wonderful union with nature (everyone), and where this can be
found (everywhere). This is important, again, because it emphasizes the theological, ordered
approach that Berry brings to his work. That is, the Transcendentalists make very similar claims,
but at a much more exclusive level. For the Transcendentalists, one can attain transcendence, but
this is by no means universal. It is more of a statement about the capacity of humanity than it is
a statement about the nature of humanity. For Berry, on the other hand, this is a description of
the world. And, by opening this statement up in such a way that all people are implicated in its
reach,27 Berry is again proving his acceptance of humanity—again, the first step to accepting
human labor.
Moreover, Berry realizes the significance of his claims in the greater context of the
environmentalist movement. He writes, in his essay “The Body and the Earth:”
Somewhere near the heart of the conservation effort as we have known it is the romantic
assumption that, if we have become alienated from nature, we can become unalienated by
26
As Jason Peters notes in his “Wendell Berry’s Vindication of the Flesh,” a dualism that
separates the spirit and the body is heretical, to Berry (318-319). This is, of course, in contrast to
most conventional protestant theology, practically speaking, and this combination of emphasis
on the body, as well as the unity between the body and the spirit should reinforce Berry’s
acceptance of the human body into nature. Acceptance of the body is, of course, a necessary step
to accepting human labor into nature.
27
Something that Whitman arguably did with Transcendentalist philosophy, as well.
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making nature the subject of contemplation or art, ignoring the fact that we live
necessarily in and from nature…(237).
The ubiquity of nature is an essential part of Berry’s ordered world theology, and this quote
indicates that he realizes that. Further, by turning our attention from “contemplation or art” at to
everyday life, Berry necessary turns the mind toward more mundane affairs—of which labor is
certainly one. Berry roots humanity thoroughly in nature. Our lives and everyday activities are,
for Berry, the only real way to stay connected to this ever-present reality.
Finally, Berry writes, somewhat comically, in his essay “The Whole Horse:” “So long as
we live, we are going to be living with skylarks, nightingales, daffodils, waterfowl, streams,
forests, mountains, and all the other creatures that romantic poets and artists have yearned
toward” (Art of the Commonplace 238). This quote opens up a complicated point in Berry’s
work: this quote belies an unfortunate lack of recognition of the severity of our ecological
trajectory. Certainly, we are not still living with passenger pigeons, Carolina cockatiels, and
ivory-billed woodpeckers. By focusing some completely on humanity’s place in nature, there is
a legitimate fear that Berry and other agrarians in turn fail to pay adequate attention to the nature
that is not us. While nature may be ubiquitous, humanity certainly still has the capacity to
destroy parts of it. In sum, Berry’s point is a good one: we are in nature, wherever we are, and
we always will be. But unless this point is tempered with an appropriate understanding of our
role in nature, this theology runs the risk of ignoring the very real damage that we do execute on
the world. Fortunately, the above quote in an outlier in Berry’s work, and his ethos of care
indicates that he is aware of the damage that humanity can wreak on the natural world, whether
or not we are an inherent part of it.
4.3 Stewardship and the specific duty to tend the land
Berry’s notion of stewardship is one of his most important and frequently employed
ideas. Of course, this idea is based on the order described above, in which humanity does not
own the earth, but rather lives on it only with divine permission. As Berry notes in “The Gift of
Good Land,” “The Promised Land is not a permanent gift. It is ‘given,’ but only for a time, and
only for so long as it is properly used” (296). And for Berry, this proper use is stewardship.
Perhaps because of the magnitude of the idea, Berry never gives a neat summary of his meaning
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for this loaded term. Despite Berry’s lack of a clear definition of stewardship, he repeatedly
makes this point: good stewardship cares more about the fertility of the earth than short-term
profits. Perhaps the clearest instance of division between those who care about stewardship
versus those more focused on profits (or, good stewardship versus bad stewardship) is in his
essay “The Unsettling of America” in which he writes:
I conceive a strip miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the oldfashioned idea or ideal of a farmer…The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the
standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal
is health—his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s
(Commonplace 39).
A broader reading of Berry’s work, though, suggests that his idea of stewardship has two
primary components: how we relate to our labor (skill being Berry’s most frequently referenced
aspect of this relationship), and how we relate to our communities (natural and human) (note that
Berry and some critics sometimes use the word “husbandry” when referring to the relationship
between the laborer and the community). These two components are inextricably combined—
one requires the other. That is, one cannot properly relate to one’s communities without the
ability to labor skillfully, and likewise, one cannot develop skill without developing an
understanding of one’s communities.
Jack Hicks, in his “Wendell Berry’s Husband to the World,” discusses Berry’s intense
focus on the community aspect of stewardship. He uses the image (as does Berry, occasionally)
of a husband—not only in terms of a marriage relationship, but also using the term as it is used in
terms of husbandry—a term now somewhat out of use outside of agricultural circles. He writes:
Berry’s ideal husband is earthly man in his most noble state, doomed to separate
consciousness, but in that single mind making a pact with the world, taking the vows of
marriage, assuming the healing role of husband to wife, family, land. Farm, community,
family, these are earthly compromises, the tropes in flesh and word and wood of mortal
man, his ritual gestures to re-create whatever harmony he can (240).
While Hicks’ use of “re-create whatever harmony he can” is perhaps slightly out of keeping with
the more earthly theology that Berry suggests in his essays, this is a precise description of the
community-centered relationship that Berry considers to be an essential part of stewardship.
Berry’s stewards actively care not only for the land they actively work, but also for all of the
world that they come in contact with.
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Berry reveals different aspects of his ideas of community throughout his work, tying the
laborer to the landscape, to the past and the future, and, somewhat more complexly, to all the
world, through our use of energy. In “The Whole Horse,” Berry explains his idea of community
as it pertains to the relationship between the laborer and the landscape. In it, he writes
“agrarianism is a way of thought based on land…An agrarian economy rises up from the fields,
woods, and streams—from the complex of soils, slopes, weathers, connections, influences, and
exchanges…” (Commonplace 239). As discussed above, Berry draws a clear kinship between
humanity and nature. Thus, when Berry writes about stewardship, he is not concerned only with
how humans make the land they own as productive as possible, but rather how their working the
land affects their relationship with all of nature. Berry clarifies this point as he writes about the
idea of charity (certainly a part of his idea of stewardship) in his “The Gift of Good Land,” “It
cannot be selective because between any two humans, or any two creatures, all Creation exists as
a bond…for all creatures are parts of a whole upon which each is dependent, and it is a
contradiction to love your neighbor and despise the great inheritance on which his life depends”
(Commonplace 298-299). All local nature is tied together into community then, in Berry’s work.
This is a foundational component of his conception of stewardship. All good labor, in Berry’s
work, must be beneficial to the community, and thus to the nature, in which it occurs. This ethos
of care, which will be expanded upon below, is what keeps Berry’s work from descending into
some kind of apologetic for heedless exploitation. Moreover, Berry insists that all of humanity
should participate in this relationship: first, in “The Whole Horse,” in which he “proposes that
everybody has agrarian responsibilities,” or at least should (Commonplace 244), and then in
“The Unsettling of America,” in which he writes “… as many as possible should share in the
ownership of land and thus be bound to it by economic interest, by the investment of love and
work, by family loyalty, by memory and tradition” (Commonplace 45).28
In “The Gift of Good Land,” Berry expands his idea of community through a relatively
circuitous route. Berry describes the restrictions put on the Israelites as they took the Promised
Land. He argues that there is the requirement that “they must be neighborly” (excepting, of
course, that the Promised Land was in fact violently taken (a point that Berry acknowledges, but
never fully deals with)) (297). Berry notes that the “social virtues” that make up neighborliness
28
Note that this statement is clear evidence that Berry sees a benefit for the land in human labor.
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also “have ecological and agricultural implications. For the land is described as an ‘inheritance’;
the community is understood to exist not just in space, but also in time.” And thus, Berry writes,
“One lives in the neighborhood, not just of those who now live ‘next door,’ but of the dead who
have bequeathed the land to the living, and of the unborn….” And so, “The only neighborly
thing we can do for them is to preserve their inheritance” (297).
This is a fairly elaborate reading of this biblical passage, and given that this entire
extension builds off of a thought that Berry saw implied, though not stated, in the text, it is
perhaps not the clearest of theological thinking. That said, we should obviously still take this as
an example of how Berry understands the communities of stewardship to work. Berry’s
stewards function as husbands to all of their communities (natural and human, and all through
time), working to cultivate and improve them as best they can.
In Berry’s essay “The Use of Energy,” he again expands his idea of community, this time
focusing, as the title suggests, on our use of energy. Berry begins his essay with a note that
humans cannot create or destroy energy; only convert it from one form to another. This, to
Berry, makes energy into something superhuman and religious. He writes that we have two
means by which we can consume energy: either in a cyclical fashion, or a terminal one. That is,
given that we cannot actually destroy energy, our use of it converts it into something. In cyclical
consumption, we convert it into a product that is potentially useful—manure, for example,
whereas in terminal consumption, we convert energy into something completely useless, like
carbon dioxide. And so, to Berry, the best decision, as a steward of the earth, is to use our
energy cyclically, thus keeping this life-giving energy in the community. Terminal use of
energy, according to Berry, “turns an asset into a liability” (Commonplace 280).
From this point in the essay, Berry moves to a discussion of how it is that we access this
energy, and turns very quickly to the idea of skill—conveniently the next topic for this chapter.
Skill is an essential element of Berry’s idea of stewardship. In “The Use of Energy,” Berry
defines skill thus: “Skill, in the best sense, is the enactment or the acknowledgement or the
signature of responsibility to other lives; it is the practical understanding of value. Its opposite is
not merely unskillfulness, but ignorance of sources, dependences, relationships” (289). Here we
see at least part of Berry’s definition of skill: it is the practical realization of the good intentions
of stewardship. And then, more succinctly, Berry writes “Skill is the connection between life
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and tools, or life and machines”—again, here skill is the ability with which we implement our
labor.
It is important that we understand Berry’s idea of skill because skill is Berry’s
justification for some of his more divisive ideas about how we should work in nature. Indeed,
understanding Berry’s idea of skill is fundamental to understanding his conceptions of how we
relate to nature via labor. Berry argues that some kinds of labor increase skill (thus improving
one’s relationship with the earth), and some decrease. That is, unlike most environmentalist
critiques of human labor in nature that focus only on the deleterious effects human labor can
have on nature, Berry critiques specific types of labor for how they affect the human relationship
with nature. More specifically, Berry is critical of the way that machines affect our relationship
with nature. Again, in “The Use of Energy,” he writes:
Once, skill was defined ultimately in qualitative terms: How well did a person work; how
good, durable, and pleasing were his products? But as machines have grown larger and
more complex, and as our awe of them and our desire for labor-saving have grown, we
have tended more and more to define skill quantitatively: How speedily and cheaply can
a person work?...As machines replace skill, the disconnect themselves from life; they
come between us and life. They begin to enact our ignorance of value—of essential
sources, dependences, and relationships (289).
Later, in the same essay, Berry writes that the development of machine-extracted energy began a
rapid decline of agricultural skills. He defends this claim in two ways: first, that more skill is
required to “use a team of horses or mules or oxen than to use a tractor” (290). Second, that
inherent in the increased speed of the machines is a decrease in human care (an element of skill
for Berry, certainly), which is, of course, a dangerous situation. As Berry writes in “The Gift of
Good Land,” “In the loss of skill we lose stewardship; in losing stewardship we lose fellowship;
we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of Creation” (Commonplace 301). Loss of
skill (or labor that never had skill in the first place) means that the laborer cannot labor well,
cannot be a husband to the community, as Berry would have everyone be.29
Berry illustrates his point that machines decrease skill and care in his short story
collection/novel Watch With Me, most clearly through Ptolemy Proudfoot’s purchase of an
automobile. The automobile is a coarse thing in comparison to the buggy he was accustomed to
29
Jack Hicks makes this observation—that Berry imagines the role of humans as husbands to the
world—in his article “Wendell Berry’s Husband to the World.”
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driving, and driving the car keeps he and Miss Minnie from properly appreciating the landscape
and people they see as they drive. The benefits that it does supposedly provide, like moving
more quickly and cheaply, are not benefits at all—see the short story “Nearly to the Fair,” in the
same collection—while the purchase of the car theoretically allows the Proudfoot’s to attend the
state fair, all they get from the experience is a day filled with strife, confusion, and one car
problem after another. The car has obvious drawbacks from the buggy, and the benefits it
supposedly provides are not actually benefits at all. The Proudfoot’s experience with the car is
the perfect example of the degradation of labor—while it may allow one to travel more quickly,
it also forces one to experience less while doing so, and deprives the driver of the opportunity to
exercise exceptional skill.
Significantly, Berry does not argue that all labor decreases skill. To the contrary, in “The
Use of Energy,” Berry details how various agricultural technologies, all relying on human or
animal power, increased human skill, and thus human stewardship of the world. Indeed,
whenever Berry discusses skill, he always attaches it to labor in nature. This is significant: Berry
indicates that in his vision of the world, nature can be aided by human labor.
This idea that labor in nature is essential to creating a beneficial relationship between
humanity and nature is repeatedly present in Berry’s fiction. In Berry’s short story “It Wasn’t
Me,” a poorly written will leaves a farm to be sold at auction. Elton, a man who has worked the
farm, and Wheeler, the lawyer that works the land despite having no economic need to, are the
characters that understand how essential it is that the land be kept in excellent shape. Two other
characters that express interest in the farm, a doctor and a banker, neither of whom presumably
work with the land, view the farm exclusively as an investment opportunity. This represents, to
Berry, a complete misunderstanding of the significance of land.
Berry’s frequently recurring characters Danny Helen and Burley Coulter are likewise
representations of the effects of laboring in nature. Burley, especially, has a preternatural
comprehension of wild things, frequently sleeping out in the woods and hunting by himself
through the night. Unsurprisingly, Burley is likewise a farmer (though not an especially good
one, preferring to pick wild fruit and hunt game). Burley’s illegitimate son, Danny, labors more
in nature than perhaps any other Berry character. He continues to use mules to work his farm
into the 1970s. As per “The Use of Energy,” Berry much prefers animal based technologies,
thus Danny’s work in nature is of a fundamentally better quality than the work done by Elton or
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any of Berry’s other, less anachronistic characters. Accordingly, Danny, like his father before
him, has a potent connection to the land that he works, as well as an unerring sense of what is
“right.” When Danny lays his father to rest in “Inheritance”, he does so in such a way as to
allow his body to return to the elements, literally making Burley a part of the land that they both
worked—a philosophically beautiful, and to Berry, also a practically wonderful gesture.30
Moreover, labor is not only a means of developing a functional relationship with nature
in Berry’s work, it is a requirement for doing so. Avoiding labor, in Berry’s work, is as
dangerous. The desire to avoid labor is the root of most bad labor—ostensibly labor saving
devices divorce the laborer from the proper experience with nature, thus depriving the laborer of
an opportunity to develop and exercise skill, and thus avoiding stewardship. Berry writes, in
“The Unsettling of America”
But is work something that we have a right to escape? And can we escape it with
impunity? We are probably the first entire people ever to think so. All the ancient
wisdom that has come down to us counsels otherwise. It tells us that work is necessary to
us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our
joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom (44).
Thus, there is no benefit to these labor saving technologies, in Berry’s conception of the world.
Moreover, Berry writes that his desire to avoid labor leads to a debasing of both labor itself and
second, exploitation of others and land. The two, of course, are connected. The debasing of
labor leads to the debasement of laborers. Thus, to Berry, racism, sexism, and a general
disinterest in the welfare of the earth stem from a desire to avoid work. In “The Unsettling of
America,” he writes:
The growth of the exploiters’ revolution on this continent has been accompanied by the
growth of the idea that work is beneath human dignity, particularly any for of hand work.
We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence, have
debased work until it is fit only to escape from. We have debased the products of work
and have been, in turn, debased by them (Commonplace 43).
30
Again, note the connection to Berry’s description of cyclical energy use in his essay “The Use
of Energy.” Returning Burley’s body to the soil returns the energy that his body contained, thus
maintaining the community.
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Berry continues this idea of the debasement of work and the corresponding debasement
of those who work through his seldom-discussed idea of “niggerization”31—primarily in his
essays “Racism and the Economy” and “The Unsettling of America.” In “Unsettling,” he defines
the process as this: “Out of contempt for work arose the idea of a nigger: at first some person,
and later some thing, to be used to relieve us of the burden of work. If we began by making
niggers of people, we have ended by making a nigger of the world” (43-4). “Nigger,” then, to
Berry, is something that exists solely for the purposes of another. Not only is it something
subhuman, it is something that has no inherent value. Rather, it is valuable only insofar as it
serves the purposes of another. Thus, in our drive to divorce ourselves from labor, we create
niggers. Niggers occupy a completely different mental space—we are human, they are niggers.
We, humans, are beautiful, spiritual creatures, separated from the inferior physical world, they,
niggers, are disgusting, physical creatures that perform labor. Thus, Berry writes, in his essay
“Racism and the Economy”:
The root [of our racism] is our inordinate desire to be superior—not to some inferior or
subject people, though this desire leads to the subjection of people—but to our condition.
We wish to be above the sweat and bother of taking care of anything—of ourselves, of
each other, or of our country. We did not enslave African blacks because they were
black, but because their labor promised to free us of the obligations of stewardship, and
because they were unable to prevent us from enslaving them (Commonplace 47).
So, labor, to Berry is the essential creating factor in our racism. And, it is not simply racism that
is created by this desire to believe that we are above labor. Rather, it is any kind of hatred for
those that do continue to perform labor. Berry writes in “Racism and the Economy”:
‘Rednecks’ and ‘hillbillies’ and ‘hicks’ are scorned because they do what used to be
known as ‘nigger work’—work that is fundamental and inescapable. And it should not
be necessary to point out the connection between the oppression of women and the
general contempt for household work (48 Commonplace).
In his essay “Think Little,” Berry again extends this idea to include all who farm, and links this
hatred to the decline in the number of people engaged in farming in the United States. Perhaps
31
Berry goes to extreme measures to get his desired response (horror, presumably) from his
readers. His methods are certainly effective. But this is too much. Berry sees this term only
from his own perspective. As my later reading of The Hidden Wound indicates, Berry
recognizes that racism exists, but never comes close to understanding its significance to its direct
victims. His casual use of this language is indicative of that.
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even more interesting than the connections Berry draws between hatred for fellow humans and
labor is the connection that he draws between our distaste for labor and the way that we treat the
land. As he writes in “The Unsettling of America,” we have “made a nigger of the world” (44).
Using Berry’s definition, then, we have made the world into something that only serves our
purposes. As Berry writes, agribusiness finds more profit in depleting the soil of one farm and
moving on to the next (or, treating the soil as a nonrenewable resource) than in maintaining good
soil conditions on a single farm (or, treating the soil as a renewable resource). This,
undoubtedly, is, in Berry’s work, making a nigger of the world. People engaging in such
practices destroy the fertility of the land, meaning that it cannot be to future generations what it
was to previous ones. Humans should have a relationship with the land in which they both take
produce from the land and take steps to improve the long term productivity of the land.
Departing from this mutually beneficial relationship and turning to a relationship in which we
only seek to meet our immediate desires is, then, making “a nigger of the world” (“Unsettling”
44), and “the most horrid blasphemy” (“Christianity” 308).
To some, this seems a rather extensive series of logical leaps—suggesting that using a
tractor in lieu of mules ends in “the most horrid blasphemy” is maybe a bit extreme. For many
who actually earn their bread by laboring in nature, the idea that avoiding labor (and so
presumably maximizing production) is problematic is counter-intuitive. But labor, for Berry, is
about building a relationship with the world around us—not about economics. When Berry talks
about labor, he is talking about how we relate to the earth, and not how we earn our bread, which
is precisely why he can overlook the substantial economic holes in his own argument. Labor, for
Berry, means many, many things—it has moral meaning, relational meaning, communal
meaning, ethical meaning, and spiritual meaning. But labor, for Berry, was never about
economics.
4.4 Critiques of Berry
As mentioned above, Berry’s defense of human labor in nature is among the best in
American literature, and his ethos of care, while not compiled in its full complexity in a single
document, turns the defense of human labor in nature into something much more ecologically
sound. He provides a more functional vision of human labor in nature than any other writer
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discussed to this point, with his blend of theory and practicality. Despite these contributions,
though there are plenty of ways to critique Berry’s vision. Bizarrely, relatively few of these
critiques have been written against Berry’s work. Kimberly Smith suggests that this strange lack
of criticism is likely because Berry falls between fields—is he a literary figure writing about
agriculture, or is he a farmer who likes to write?32 Perhaps the economists and agricultural
theorists do not take his commentary seriously, while at the same time, literary scholars write his
fiction off as derivative and uninspiring. Some scholars, like William Major, in his article “The
Agrarian Vision and Ecocriticism,” have called for an increase in scholarship that combines
agrarian thought with environmentalism, but with little apparent effect. Despite the relative lack
of critical interest in Berry’s work, there are two good approaches that may be applied as
critiques. The first of these may be best encapsulated by the work of the mid-century historian
and political scientist Richard Hofstadter. Hofstadter wrote about a host of issues, but one of his
primary points of commentary was the American yeoman farmer/agrarian myth. The notion of
the independent American farmer, close to the soil, and close to God, so central to our nation’s
mythos, was never particularly practically possible, and became less so as we became an
increasingly industrial nation. Moreover, the near religious dedication to this idea means that we
have allowed and even encouraged farming practices that are completely out of sync with the
rest of our economic system. Finally, this idea, Hofstadter writes, has always been perpetuated
by people outside of the field of farming. That is, as he writes, “The more farming as a self-
32
Serious critiques are indeed scant. Following is a list of all critical comments on Berry’s
agricultural ideas published in major literary or agricultural journals since Berry began
publishing in earnest: Gould P. Colman, in his review of The Unsettling of America, notes that
Berry’s historical references are hasty and superficial, to the point of damaging his credibility (a
solid critique of much of Berry’s work, and one that is too infrequently repeated). Deborah
Fitzgerald, in her “Beyond Tractors: The History of Technology in American Agriculture”
(which is more of a historiographical essay than the title might suggest), notes, in what could be
a bit of a slight, that Berry’s influence has been primarily on college students. W. L. Forsythe, in
his review of Unsettling, notes that “agribusiness people may regard as just an emotional
reaction to the industrialization of a segment of human life,” but stops short of agreeing with that
position (632). R. Douglas Hurt, in “The Great Plains: Agriculture and the Environment in the
Late Twentieth Century,” notes that Berry’s arguments have not been embraced by commercial
agriculture. Karl Kroeber, in his “Ecology and American Literature: Thoreau and Un-Thoreau,”
notes that some of Berry’s ideas seem unfeasible, but difficult to disagree with, given his
experience as a farmer. And finally, the above mentioned Kimberly Smith, in her Wendell Berry
and the Agrarian Tradition, wonders whether Berry ought not focus a bit more on leisure.
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sufficient way of life was abandoned for farming as a business, the more merit men found in
what was being left behind” (Age of Reform 24).
So, while Berry and Hofstadter unfortunately did not overlap enough to see a dialogue
develop between the two of them, we can see that Hofstadter would first take issue with the
practicality of what Berry encourages. The theoretical construct that Berry suggests may be
largely sound (depending on one’s philosophical orientation), but the way that Berry suggests it
be implemented is almost comically misconceived. Indeed, that vision leads to the second major
problem with Berry’s work: his solutions to the problem, and indeed, even his description of the
problem indicate his leisured class status. Berry’s class is inescapable in his work. Because he
does not depend on his labor in nature for his living (rather, he makes his living from his writing,
and until relatively recently, from teaching as well), he is free to farm in ways that do not make
the most financial sense. What he never seems to realize is that decisions that he makes in his
farming, which is essentially a glorified hobby, are decisions that most farmers do not have the
luxury of making. For Berry to turn those decisions into decisions not only of farming, but into
moral decisions as well, is insulting at best to those who do not have the luxury to choose as
Berry does. This is, of course, in some way a confirmation of Hofstadter’s points that agrarian
thought is always most popular among those who do not have to directly participate in
agriculture. Berry can fancy himself a farmer, and that the farming “life [is] intrinsically more
virtuous and closer to God,” and thus, by extension, learn that he, too, is closer to God, courtesy
of his would-be profession, without the trouble of actually farming full-time (Hofstadter 30).
This critique of the basic means by which Berry imagines the problems American culture
faces certainly should give pause to Berry’s readers, but perhaps the most obvious issue with
Berry’s work is the practicality of his solutions. The ideas of working closely with the land,
working slowly enough to enjoy one’s work, and working in such a way as to develop skill, are
delightful ideas. But, no matter what Berry says, these are horribly expensive ideas. There are
two primary problems with enacting them. First, anyone who does choose to farm like this will
be impoverished at best. Second, our current agricultural system is designed to work with
agribusiness. Shifting to small farms will necessarily mean a decrease in production—for all that
agribusiness does wrong, it is remarkably efficient. How should we decide who no longer gets to
eat? Berry’s agriculture may keep the Wholefoods customers in plenty of arugula, but Wal-
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Mart’s produce aisle will go unstocked. Perhaps the most shocking thing about these realities is
that Berry does not seem to notice that they exist. He writes, in “The Whole Horse”
Do I think that there is a hope that such a revolt can survive and succeed, and that it can
have a significant influence upon our lives and our world?
Yes, I do. And to be as plain as possible, let me say what I know. I know from
friends and neighbors and from my own family that it is now possible for farmers to sell
at a premium to local customers such products as organic vegetables, organic beef and
lamb, and pasture-raised chickens (Commonplace 245).
This circumstantial evidence Berry uses to support his ideas is so bad as to almost be comical.
No doubt, some people can in fact make a living from raising organic vegetables and meats, but
as Berry notes, these products demand a premium. Our marketplace is not built to respect
premium products. Moreover, there are plenty of people around the world for whom paying
extra for produce raised in the ways that Berry prescribes is simply not an economic option.
The degree to which Hofstadter anticipates Berry is remarkable. In 1955, Hofstadter
wrote his The Progressive Era, a third of which is directed at examining the construction of the
agrarian myth and how it has affected national economic policy. He writes this, which could be
perfectly applied to the issue of practicality discussed above:
One of the clichés of Populism was the notion that, whatever the functions of other
vocations, the function of the farmer was pre-eminent in important because he fed, and
thus supported, all the others. Although it has been heard somewhat less frequently of
late, and a counter-ideology of urban resentment has even begun to appear, our national
folklore still bears the heavy imprint of that idea. In reality, something like the opposite
has become true—that the rest of us support the farmer; for industrial and urban America,
sentimentally and morally committed to the ideal of the family farm, has undertaken out
of its remarkable surpluses to support more farm-owners on the farm than it really needs
under modern agricultural technology. It is in part because of the persistence of our
agrarian traditions that this concession to the farmers arouses less universal antagonism
than do the efforts of other groups menaced by technological changes—say, the
musicians and the building-trades workers—to set up artificial safeguards for themselves
(7-8).
What Hofstadter wrote in 1955 is even more true now. The question we have to ask is this: why,
in the face of the reality of the efficiency of industrial farming, does Berry insist that small
family farms are a superior alternative to industrial scale agriculture? If there is a real argument
to be made that smaller farms are a better ecological option, ala Joel Salatin, then Berry should
make that argument considerably more forcefully than he does. As his work looks now, it seems
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that Berry has fallen completely into the agrarian myth that Hofstadter so effectively
deconstructs. Nostalgia is not a good reason to change an economic operation.
One might respond to these critiques that the problem is not Berry’s vision, but rather 1.,
our laws, which effectively discourage small farming, and 2., our materialism. That is, either the
laws should be amended to encourage farming small plots with mules instead of large plots with
several ton tractors, or we should quit caring about whether or not we can afford a TV,
healthcare, or education. That may well be. In fact, in some degree, it is indisputably true. Our
laws concerning agriculture could be improved, and our endless appetite for consumer goods is
pillaging the planet at an incredible rate. That said, there is still a fundamental question not
being asked, and this is effectively the theoretical issue behind the practical concerns of
Hofstadter: what exactly does Berry mean by labor?
But to begin to answer this question, we must first delve into the issue of how Berry’s
class affects his conception of both the problem and the answer. First in this, as mentioned
above, Berry has the luxury of choosing not to work in the most efficient means possible. He
does not depend on his physical labor for his income. Thus, he has a range of options
(economic, technological, philosophical, even) not available to the common farmer. To that
point, he conceives of the problem primarily in a philosophical way—“why do we allow
ourselves to treat the land poorly as we farm?” The answer is simple: because we make more
money that way. Moreover, this is not simply a matter of multibillion dollar corporations like
Conagra and Monstanto adopting abusive farming practices (though certainly they have), but
people for whom losing their land because they cannot afford to pay their mortgage on it is a
very real option. No one wants to abuse the land, but not one wants to go hungry, either. The
question for him is not the practical equivalent—“how might we better tend the land, so that it
might have better long term yields?” That question makes economic sense, and thus, is a
question that is relevant to people who have no choice but to labor in nature. Berry’s failure to
conceive of the economics of the problem is a serious shortcoming.
Moreover, his response (which is, effectively, abandon the idea that you need the
trappings, material and otherwise, of modern society) again does not suppose the presence of
economic need. The idea of poverty may be contextual (i.e.; the conditions that Berry suggests
would not have been considered poverty 75 years ago, but certainly are now), but what Berry is
recommending here is undoubtedly poverty. As mentioned above, the answer for Berry is
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increased human labor in nature—something that no one who works in nature out of necessity
would ever recommend—and also something, if implemented in the ways that he suggests,
would lead to poverty. His suggestion that labor is a fundamentally rewarding task smacks of
the sort of berry-picking yuppie talk—labor is fun if you are safely ensconced in your gated
community again by 8pm, perhaps less fun if you have no other option, and if said labor wears
your body out at an early age. Suggesting that the economics of the matter are a non-issue is an
incredibly elitist suggestion, and indicates that the economics of the solution are not, and have
not been a problem for him.
Now, returning to the issue of how Berry defines labor, or more accurately, appropriate
labor. Why does Berry never talk about the kind of farming that actually feeds America? Why
is there never any discussion of how to do industrial farming in a non-abusive fashion? So, is
appropriate labor for Berry only that which occurs on a small, family owned farm? While he
never says so directly, I see much in his work that indicates this, and nothing in his work that
indicates otherwise (see, for example, Andy Catlett’s discourse with the factory farmer vs. his
discussion with the seemingly Amish farmer in Remembering) (Three Short Novels 181-185).
Moreover, Berry focuses on family-owned farms that farm in nostalgic ways (i.e.; using mules or
horses in place of tractors, harvesting by hand, and using most of their crops for home use, not
sale). Small family-owned farms have been an integral part of American agriculture for as long
as there has been American agriculture, but they are now very small players in the industry.
Focusing on farms that run in the ways that Berry describes shrinks the pool even smaller. Why
is it that these farms are the only ones that Berry praises?
Is it their ecological impact? If that is the case, the true impact of such ways of farming
should be investigated. Are mules really the best environmental option? That is to say, there
have clearly been plenty of ecological problems with traditional American agriculture, and
perhaps Berry is simply conflating nostalgic farming practices with good ecological behavior—a
union that is not inherent. Such methods were fantastically effective in doing substantial damage
to America’s topsoil for centuries. So, if it is the ecological impact of these farms that makes the
work that goes on on them appropriate labor, then this needs to be more closely examined in
Berry’s work than it has been. That is, while Berry may be right on this issue, as W. L. Forsythe
notes, “very little new data is provided,” and serious environmental claims must be scientifically
based (633).
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While the issue of the practicality of Berry’s propositions is a serious concern, critiques
of Berry’s economics do not take on the fundamental presuppositions on which Berry grounds
his argument—namely, that it is possible and good to maintain a certain relationship with the
land, and that humanity has some sort of right to cultivate the ground. Both of these principles
are absolutely inherent in Berry’s work—virtually nothing that he says can stand without them.
The latter is addressed by a host of ecological theories, most clearly deep ecology. These
critiques are a bit tricky to handle because both Berry’s vision and the critiques are so totalizing.
That is, it cannot be both that humanity has a duty to maintain a good relationship with the earth
and that it is not possible to have a mutual relationship with an inanimate object. As such, it
seems tempting to shrug and say that the two visions are incompatible, and that one must choose
where one falls, philosophically. But, all of these voices are strong enough that there must be
some sort of conversation between them.
Berry and deep ecology have some common ground with which to start the discussion.
For example Berry would certainly agree with this, from Naess and Sessions’ eight basic
principles of deep ecology: “Humans have no right to reduce [the earth’s] richness and diversity
except to satisfy vital needs” (Jonge 4). Certainly this principle is present in Berry’s work.
Moreover, Berry shares deep ecological concerns of human over-population, and the resulting
effect on the land of pushing it to provide for this increased population.33 However, Berry and
the deep ecologists come to these conclusions through very different theoretical approaches.
Moreover, it is the approaches, not the conclusions, which are most essential to the deep
ecologists. A deep ecological critique of Berry’s work would begin with the idea that any
worldview that holds a central position for humanity, as Berry’s clearly does, cannot ever have a
non-destructive relationship with the earth. That is, if a worldview grants humanity the highest
amount of value to humanity, any sort of environmental ethics will be based primarily on why
ethical status should be granted to these lower objects. Given that ethical status is hypothetically
granted to all humans, which are given the highest value, and humans are still not consistently
treated ethically, how will the nonhuman, which is lower than the human, be allowed to maintain
33
For an excellent look at the tension between the wild and the human in Berry’s work, as well
as a close comparison to Gary Snyder’s, see David M. Robinson’s “Wilderness and the Agrarian
Principle: Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry.”
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ethical status? Thus, Berry’s statements explicitly concerning ethics and the land, such as “An
Ethic for Natural Beauty,” as well as the general ethical principles laid out in his work, are
doomed to failure. And so, despite the fact that Berry and the deep ecologists may come to some
similar conclusions (and certainly not all their conclusions are similar), their methodology is
fantastically different.
This seems a very legitimate critique of Berry’s work. History does not bear out what
Berry suggests will be true. That is, people laboring in nature have consistently decided that
exploitation of nature is an appropriate course of action. What is to prevent them from doing so
again? Berry’s work does not adequately answer this question, and deep ecology is an excellent
way to raise the thorny issue.
Berry’s work must also be read racially. Shockingly few scholars have probed this aspect
of Berry’s work—possibly for the reasons that Kimberly Smith suggests above. Perhaps
scholars ignore the racial issues in Berry’s work because Berry is not overtly racist in his work—
rather, he indicates clear concern over racial issues. Or, perhaps on the grounds that his The
Hidden Wound is a generally (while I argue inappropriately) respected text on race. Regardless
as to why scholars are not addressing these issues in his work, they are substantial. Berry’s
refusal to appropriately address the substantial issues of race in Southern agriculture indicates,
first, that his understanding of his own regional culture is limited, which calls into question the
degree to which he is an authority on the rest of it, and second, that Berry is not imagining that
there could be multiple meanings for labor. His inability to understand labor as something other
than ameliorating and wholly beneficial to the laborer undercuts his ability to speak as an
authority on the matter.
Let us first trace how Berry deals with the specter of race in his work. First, we should
consider his association with the Vanderbilt based group the Fugitives. Berry’s connection to the
Fugitives is very clear in his work—not only is he consciously a member of the Agrarian
movement, as were they, but he ties himself closely to their group through out his work, most
obviously in his essay “Still Standing,” in his book Citizenship Papers—the essay is an
overwhelmingly positive evaluation of the seminal Fugitives text I’ll Take My Stand. This
association with the Fugitives should be cause for concern, for a few reasons. First, it must be
noted that the Fugitives are dedicated to the agrarian/yeoman farmer ideal for social reasons.
They are looking for some kind of traction in modern society, and the agrarian ideal, and
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accompanying that, a “return” to some kind of mythical Southern social past, is apparently that
anchor for them. Berry, on the other hand, is primarily looking for two things: both something
social that makes sense, ala the Fugitives, and a better way of dealing with the earth—for Berry,
these two things are inextricably connected. By making that connection inherent, though, Berry
burdens his work unnecessarily. If the intent of his work is to show his readers how to better
relate to their natural surroundings, then requiring that they likewise accept an idealized vision of
the old South surely hampers the primary goal of his work.
At least as damaging to his argument, though, is the degree to which Berry does not
interrogate the racial significance of the social suggestions that he makes. Indeed, perhaps the
single biggest problem with their (the Fugitives’) work is how little consideration they give the
issue of race. Berry acknowledges that at the time of the composition of I’ll Take My Stand, all
of the 12 writers were segregationists (Citizenship 155). For them, the yeoman farmer, the
bedrock of their idyllic Southern civilization, is unmistakably White. That is, while their
philosophy is both economic and social, they somehow make the mistake of thinking that race is
something that they do not have to consider in their vision. They revert to their default position-Whiteness. This is, obviously, a reflection of the adage that the greatest example of White
privilege is not having to acknowledge its existence. And, regrettably, this is a trap that Berry
likewise falls prey to.
More specifically, both Berry and the Fugitives fail to realize that agricultural labor,
especially in the way described by Berry and the Fugitives (minimal reliance on agricultural
machinery, but considerable reliance on enslaved humans) has a significance beyond their
experience. As discussed in the Hurston chapter, agricultural labor carries tremendous weight in
Black, especially Southern Black, culture—redeeming agricultural labor is in part Hurston's
purpose in her writing. But while Berry attempts to redeem labor generally, he fails to notice
that it carries different weight for different groups. While his attempts at redeeming agricultural
labor may be sufficient for someone of his own, relatively leisured status, it does not suitably
address the significance of agricultural labor in Black culture.
Berry’s perpetual blindness to the issues of race is repeatedly made clear in his tribute to
the Fugitives, “Still Standing.” In it, he writes that he cannot see I’ll Take My Stand as a racist
document, presumably on the grounds that, as he also notes in the essay, that an agrarian society
is not necessarily a racist society (Citizenship 160). After all, as Berry points out, American
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agrarian societies provided many opportunities to many people, of all races. Both of these, of
course, are shallow arguments that rely on circumstantial evidence at best. Moreover, Berry
almost admits the hollowness of his own arguments a paragraph later, when he writes “I don’t
know that we have asked, let alone answered, whether it is better to be a black small farmer in
the South, or homeless, addicted, jailed, or dead in San Francisco” (Citizenship 160). Clearly,
this quote implies that there is something left to be desired in being a black small farmer in the
South—something he was previously unwilling to admit. The more bewildering part of the
quote is this: why are these our only options, Wendell? This essay indicates that, even at this
point in his career (Citizenship Papers was published in 2004), Berry will not admit that the
society that he longingly recollects had serious racial issues. Refusing to engage these
substantially weakens his arguments.
Berry’s most widely read work on race is The Hidden Wound. To many, this brief book
is evidence of Berry’s serious thought on the matter of race. And, indeed, the book has its
merits. It is indeed a serious contemplation of the effects of slavery on society, but somewhat
vexingly, it approaches the matter by asking how slavery affected white culture. Certainly, the
effects are grievous on both sides of the equation, but part of what this approach has to mean is
that Berry, even in what seems his highest moment, is still not able to conceive of the situation
from any perspective other than his own. This continues through his conception of labor in the
piece. He writes:
What we34 should have learned willingly ourselves we forced the blacks to learn,
and so prevented ourselves from learning it.
There is an enormous difference between working to get some place, for the big
payoff that will come later, as the white man does, and working with some serenity and
pleasure at the work that is necessary and present, as the black man does, or anyhow as
he did. It is the difference between practicality, so-called, and wisdom. Living and
responding in terms of present necessities and hardships and pleasures and joys, the
blacks have produced an authentic culture in this country, based upon elemental
experience; their music has been continuous, responsive to circumstance, and sustaining,
from the first work songs and spirituals to the jazz artists in the cities of our own time
(Hidden 81).
All of Berry’s comments in The Hidden Wound relating to the negative effects of slavery on
those who were enslaved are, I think, effectively washed away by the power of the above quote.
34
This phrasing alone should make clear to the reader that Berry cannot escape his own
condition—can he not even imagine a black reader?
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Clearly, Berry cannot imagine that labor has a variety of meanings. Even for enslaved people,
that is, even for people for whom the experience of labor is the most radically different from
Berry’s own experience as an experience could possibly be, Berry cannot imagine a different
meaning than the one that his own privileged position gives him. By presenting such a limited
vision of human labor in nature, Berry calls into question his ability to speak effectively about
human labor in nature at all. It is as if Berry wishes to speak authoritatively about the world
without ever having left his own hometown.
And so, in the face of these issues, why does Berry remain worth reading? If his vision is
so limited by his insistence on nonessential issues, and so confined to his own perspective, why
should we continue to read his work? Suspending this question for a moment, and conceding
that we should continue to read his work, how can we read Berry so as to glean the worthwhile
thoughts from his work, while leaving behind the less desirable elements?
Addressing the first question: we should continue to read Berry for several reasons. First,
his influence in the field cannot be denied. This alone should be reason enough to keep reading
his work. Second, Berry deliberately labors in ways that Hurston and Austin do not. There is
some irony here—his success as a writer as well as his privileged societal position makes him the
least likely of the group to have to labor, but he chooses to define himself largely by his role as a
laborer. One very much gets the sense that he thinks of himself as a farmer who writes, rather
than the other way around (debatable as this structuring may be). So, Berry defining his identity
through labor perhaps grants his work a different kind of insight into this problem that is not
present in the work of the authors we have considered thus far. Beyond that, while Berry’s
privilege is, in some sense, an obstacle in his work, it also gives him a perspective that is both
worthwhile, and one that has not yet been discussed in this project, at least not as a response to
Romantic constructions of nature. Moreover, there is, definitely, still some value in what Berry
says, despite these problems. That is, while these issues do limit how far we can take Berry’s
work, and may prevent us from using his work as a blueprint for a healthy relationship with
nature, his work can help steer us towards such a goal.
Perhaps the most useful aspect of Berry’s work is the feeling that he suggests. That is,
while Berry’s economics are terrible, and reflective of his own leisured status, the ethos behind
his economics (i.e.; dedication to long-term fertility of the earth, to community, to simplicity in
consumption, etc.) are worthwhile. Perhaps, then, Berry should be read more as a prophet than
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an economist. We should continue to read Berry, but as an inspiration to fixing our issues with
our relationship with our world, rather than as a guide. As Karl Kroeber writes, though, there is
some irony in attempting to solve the problems Berry describes with anything other than Berry’s
solutions:
If Berry’s solutions are unfeasible, we must find new technological means for reversing
the destruction of the earth accelerated by our increasingly technological society. Such
self-reversal demands a more than Copernican reassessment of the suicidal social values
fostered by separating ourselves from nature and denying the naturalness of all cultures.
Unless soon checked, the environmental degradation caused by current world population
growth can only end in self-annihilation. Such new technology, however, must be the
reverse of the Disneyesque antinaturalism of our postmodern mechanistic utopianists.
(322)
Berry’s practicality fails even in that—surely technology, and technology to which Berry has a
fundamental opposition must be involved in the solving of this problem. That said, Berry has a
valuable role to play in awakening the world to the seriousness of our ecological situation, as
well as the fractured nature of our relationship with the natural world.
Wendell Berry’s defense of human labor in nature is not without value, despite the
objections raised above. His use of labor as a theoretical idea is potent, and the application of
this idea to how our distaste for our own laboring condition has shaped our relationship with the
world is certainly worth engaging. Berry’s permeating ethos of care, though, is what makes his
work so much more worthwhile to this project than work that focuses solely on human labor in
nature. Moreover, his depiction of rural, laboring communities in his fiction and poetry is
inspirational. And this, ultimately, is the reason we should read Berry. His economics are
almost comically faulty, he disregards industrial labor (as in, that which produces the vast
majority of what we consume) almost completely, and while his conceptions of labor have great
potential, as they stand, he, like the Fugitives and so many others, fails to take into account that
his experience is not universal. While Berry understands that labor has significance, he does not
understand that the significance that he experiences is not universal. As such, while Berry is
certainly one of the best responses to the romantic dichotomy between humanity and nature, his
cannot be the final word in reshaping our relationship with nature.
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CHAPTER FIVE
JANISSE RAY
Janisse Ray is an exception in this project in terms of the place that she writes about, the
kind of labor that she focuses on, and the attention that she gives to the environmental effects of
human labor in nature. Ray sets her work in her home region—the pine forests of south Georgia
and north Florida. Ray’s pine forests do not have the immediate sublime appeal of the Rockies
or Sierra, they lack the Spartan beauty of the desert, they lack the mystique and otherworldliness
of the Everglades, and somehow seem less aristocratic and more ignorant and backwoods than
Berry’s upper South. Indeed, south Georgia is, as she writes, “about as ugly as a place gets”
(13). “Unless you look close,” Ray writes, “there is little majesty” (13). The labor that Ray
writes about is less beautiful than the labor of Berry’s yeoman farmers, of Hurston’s field hands,
and of Austin’s shepherds and miners. As Ray writes, she “come[s] from scavengers,” linking
her family’s labor in the junkyard to the work of vultures and blowflies (32). Moreover, she
knows full well the role that human labor plays in the degradation that she chronicles throughout
her work. She, more than any other writer considered in this project, notes the effects of human
labor on her surroundings, and thus, she speaks from a position of greater authority when she
gives an endorsement of human labor in nature.
These aspects of Ray’s work make her claims sharper. She writes about love of place,
when she comes from a place that is ugly—aesthetically (to those not paying close attention),
racially, and socially. She writes about the necessity of human labor in nature, when the labor
she is most acquainted with is some of the least beautiful work done in the developed world.
And she makes these claims with the full knowledge of the potential danger of what she is
suggesting. Moreover, Ray considers the notion of poverty as an environmental issue—
something too long lacking in ecological discourses—and moreover, speaks from a position of
poverty. Ray may bemoan the destruction of the pine forest and swamps at the hands of her
people, but she always, very clearly, identifies herself with them. She respects her fellows
Crackers, even when wrong. As Bart Welling writes of Ray’s laborers,
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Instead of being framed as irredeemable ecovillans, as they often have in the jeremiads
produced under the sign of an environmentalist ‘poetics of authenticity,’ Ray’s loggers—
who also happen to be positioned as her readers—are treated as fellow bioregional
stakeholders with everyday jobs, ordinary kids, and very difficult decisions to make about
how to make a living in forests that they see both as resources and as God’s creation
(128).
As Welling notes, Ray goes out of the way to create her (almost universally impoverished, in her
work) laborers as people with complex motivations, doubtlessly motivated by her childhood
living in such an economic environment. The very presence of a writer that identifies with
poverty makes this field more diverse, and ideally encourages participation from people who
might not ordinarily think they fit into the environmentalist mold. This makes Ray’s work much
more potent than it would be otherwise. If Ray can destabilize the classed status of
environmentalism, she does it a great favor. Ray, in part courtesy of her lens of poverty, shows
us a new way to think about labor in nature, and in the process broadens the cultural definitions
of environmentalism.
Ray offers something that relatively few environmental discourses on human labor do:
practical compromise. She is both an environmentalist, and the daughter of a junkman—she
understands the necessity of labor, as well as its consequences. As she writes in Drifting into
Darien,
Before I upset anybody, I will explain. Humans need trees. In the industrial age
they have become particularly useful. We are reliant on the paper that comes from the
boughs, for one thing, and on the wood ripped from the boles. I am not opposed to their
cutting.
I am opposed to industrial tree cutting that is unregulated and that is happening on
a scale so titanic that the damage is irreversible. I’m opposed to taking everything. I’m
opposed to clear-cuts because they are the products of capitalism at its worst and greed at
its best. Small minds think clear-cuts (70-71).
Or, again, about the nuclear power plant she paddles past,
I have never made one dime off the nuclear plant. Oh, it has benefited me…. I am
plugged in. And I live nearby…. This is a source of great personal conflict for me.
Being connected to the grid while opposing the grid is like being nice to a person who
has robbed you and, if he catches you alone and vulnerable, will rob you again. I want
more than anything to kick in the teeth of this monster…. I’ll tell you what else it means.
It means I cut off my water heater until I need it…. The air conditioner stays off. I
unplug everything, always….Should I go on? (179).
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Ray does go on, here and elsewhere. In her poem “Future-Seeking,” from House of Branches,
Ray gives a long list of machines that she owns, “for/keeping milk cool/hearing news/writing
letters,” and on and on, concluding with “I have taken more/than my fair share” (67). Ray
implicates herself in the environmental disaster that is south Georgia. But at the same time, she
makes it clear that she understands the ongoing need for resources. This is a level of nuance not
often seen in environmental discourses. By admitting that this is not a debate about saints and
sinners, but rather about how we solve this rather difficult problem of managing our
consumption, Ray opens up a space in which real discourse can occur. Ray offers a realistic look
at our environmental quandary: she realizes that humans, as all creatures, will continue to
consume natural resources, but pushes back against those who would consume without
moderation. Ray avoids the extremes of this debate, and in doing so, comes up with one of the
most functional visions of human labor in nature I have encountered.
Moreover, in her first and strongest work, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Ray provides
a strong theoretical backing to her practical argument that human labor in nature is something
that environmentalists must learn to deal with. While she deals with the reality of the
irreversible damage that humans have dealt her home region, at the same time she repeatedly
structures humanity and nature as parts of the same whole—offering a series of human/natural
dichotomies that she systematical deconstructs. In so doing, she creates a theoretical space in
which human labor can be a functional part of the environment—something neither the
destructive, industrial-scale labor that has decimated the region or the Muir-inspired
preservationist approach does. Because she presents a functional vision of how humans can live
and work in the world, while at the same time
Unfortunately, in her more recent work, Ray does not develop the theoretically ambitious
vision of human labor in nature that she presents in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Rather, her
work takes a more straightforwardly autobiographical turn. When she writes about nature, in
these later texts, she typically does so from the perspective of her involvement in it. That said, in
these books, Ray does provide glimpses of thoughtful her thoughtful vision of human labor in
nature. Moreover, there continues to be clear evidence of her concern for the effects of human
labor on nature. Indeed, her chapter “Center of the Known World,” from her latest book,
Drifting into Darien, is probably her strongest condemnation of reckless and wasteful human
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labor. So, while these later texts may not advance the theoretical vision present in her first and
strongest work, they still provide some support for that vision.35
Critical reviews of Ray’s work have been relatively scant. Her topic and location are
relatively obscure to most Americans, which perhaps accounts for the relative lack of attention
this very good writer has received to this point.36 The critical work that has examined her has
been largely positive, focusing on the aforementioned surprising ability to show beauty in a
coarse place, the fact that she comes from poverty (in so many ways: financial, educational,
oppressed because of her sex, cultural), and her goals of restoration, both cultural and
environmental (respectively: Hogue, “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood,” Grover, “Real Places,”
Bowles, “It Would Ever Seem to Me a Dowry,” Williams, “Home, Difficult Home,” Wholpart,
“Wild Card Quilt”). No critic has yet focused on how she integrates human labor into nature
(though Grover, Wholpart, and Williams do make mention of how Ray structurally integrates
nature and humanity, with no specific mention of labor). Interestingly, while most critics who
look at her work notice her (lower) class, none have considered how the ever-present reality of
labor in her class pushes her to connect herself to labor.
5.1 Poverty as environmental issue
One of the most exciting things about Janisse Ray’s work is the way that she engages
poverty as an environmental issue. Moreover, she does this in part by identifying with the
impoverished. This is something relatively unique—that is, 20th century American
environmental discourses were primarily dominated by white, upper class voices. And these
35
Bart Welling, in his “’This is What Matters:’ Reinhabitory Discourse and the ‘Poetics of
Responsibility’ in the Work of Janisse Ray,” makes a strong case that Ray’s Pinhook: Finding
Wholeness in a Fragmented Land can be read as the process of reinhabiting a bioregion, focusing
on the ways that Ray takes standard tropes of the region and reinterprets them in more
ecologically responsible ways. He, as Ray, unfortunately only just touches on the ways that
human labor is a part of this reinhabiting. While Pinhook, again, does not further the
theoretically complex vision of human labor in nature introduced in Ecology, Welling’s essay
does convince me that this book has a great deal of merit, and should be considered in any work
on how Ray imagines the human/nature relationship more broadly.
36
While I recognize the limits of this statement (i.e.; small sample size), I have presented papers
on Ray at three different environmentally focused conferences, and am yet to have a single
audience member be substantially familiar with her work.
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voices, as noted by the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and
their document “Principles of Environmental Justice,” were more concerned with spotted owls
than inner-city pollution. But, by both considering the environmental impacts of poverty, and
deliberately speaking from a position of poverty, Ray is stepping outside of these dominant
discourses, and providing a healthier and more comprehensive approach to environmentalism.
Poverty, she writes, makes environmentalism difficult. Some writers (and indeed,
Austin, Hurston, and Berry can all be counted among them) see purity in the impoverished lives
of the laborers—their labor, and perhaps their lack of worldly goods, somehow grants them a
closer relationship with nature37. Projecting spiritual value onto this unwanted asceticism,
though, creates yet another false dichotomy, in which attachment to the human world becomes
profane, again driving a wedge between humanity and nature, and ultimately not solving the
problem. Ray ascribes no such great spiritual value to poverty. Poverty, in her work, does not
inherently draw one closer to nature. She writes, of her home and Cracker ancestors,
Passing through my homeland it as easy to see that Crackers, though fiercely rooted in
the land and willing to defend it to death, hadn’t had the means, the education, or the ease
to care particularly about its natural communities. Our relationship with the land wasn’t
one of give and return. The land itself has been the victim of social dilemmas—racial
injustice, lack of education, and dire poverty. It was overtilled; eroded; cut; littered;
polluted; treated as a commodity, sometimes the only one, and not as a living thing.
Most people worried about getting by, and when getting by meant using the land, we
used it. When getting by meant ignoring the land, we ignored it. (Ecology 164-5)
This is an almost alarmingly simple explanation of the effects of poverty on environmental
concern. Poverty does not universally draw people into a close connection with nature, in her
world. Rather, environmental concern seems expendable when times are tough. But, the decline
of environmental concern in the face of poverty is not a universal truth, as Ray makes apparent in
her work.
Jay Watson, in his “Economics of a Cracker Landscape” uses two of Ray’s figures in
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood to show potential responses of the impoverished to nature:
37
Consider Austin’s characters Seyavi, the Pocket Hunter, Little Pete, and the Wandering
Woman. All live like mendicant saints. Or consider Hurston’s Janie, coming to great spiritual
knowledge as a migrant worker. Or Berry’s Elton, knowing the spirit of the land better than the
wealthy people trying to outbid him for the farm he worked for years in “It Wasn’t Me.” While
this list is brief, each of these characters is representative of the work of these authors as a whole.
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Charlie, Ray’s grandfather, and Franklin Delano, her father, who ran a junkyard and worked on
machines for a living. For Watson, these two figures represent opposite responses: Charlie
sought relief from the humanity he could not understand in wilderness, and Franklin feared the
wilderness that he did not understand, and dedicated his life to fixing machines; things that he
could understand (i.e.; removing the wildness from them). That is, in poverty, experience in
nature is either healing or terrifying. This reading rings true in some sense, and certainly fits
common cultural conventions—either the romantic notion of the impoverished hillbilly who
loves the hills and knows everything that could be known about them, and then the uneducated
redneck who cares more about cable television than endangered species. But Charlie and
Franklin are more complex than this: Franklin does participate in nature, just in a different way
from his father (healing animals, rather than hunting them) (129-136), and Charlie does
participate in the destruction of nature, setting the woods on fire by trying to smoke a raccoon
out of a tree. Watson’s reading is in part too reductionist: both Charlie and Franklin have more
complex relationships with the natural world than this reading allows.38 Thus, what Watson
writes is partially true, but a more accurate vision of what Ray is saying about poverty and the
environment is found in the above block quote. Poverty pushes one to take what one can from
nature (largely without concern for the effects on nature). Both Charlie and Franklin took what
they could from nature, and found something good in it. Both, likewise, were destructive of
nature—Charlie set the woods on fire trying to smoke out a raccoon, and the space for Franklin’s
junkyard was created by a clearcut. Watson, it seems, applies a conventional understanding of
how the impoverished relate to nature to Ray’s text, which is not as straightforward a text as
would be convenient for Watson’s argument.
That is, as Ray reveals through Charlie and Franklin, it is not universally true that poverty
exclusively pushes one to disregard the environment. In both of these characters, we see people
who are concerned about the environment, if not in ways typically understood to be
environmentalist. That is, Franklin’s care for the injured animals and Charlie’s love of the
woods reveal in both an environmental concern that their financial statuses would not predict.
But, ultimately, both of these characters are not as well educated and prepared to preserve the
environment as they could be. And this is largely because of their poverty. So, while poverty
38
See chapter section “Humanity and Nature in People in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood for a
fuller description of how these two relate to nature.
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does not necessarily breed abject disdain for the environment, it certainly keeps these characters
from being as competent as they could be in their efforts to preserve the environment. Charlie
and Franklin are concerned about the environment, but are not necessarily good at conveying
that concern into action. This is the environmental weight of poverty.
Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is the best expression of her conception of how
human labor fits into nature. In it, she suggests a unified vision of humanity and nature in three
particular ways. First, she does so through the structure of her text. Ecology is comprised of
intermixed chapters on the ecology of her home region and her own upbringing. The constant
interweaving of these narratives pushes the reader to envision them as parts of the same whole,
rather than dichotomous, inherently opposed narratives. Second, through the places she writes
about. Ray writes about two primary places: her father’s junkyard and the longleaf pine forest.
While both, at first glance, could function as metonyms for humanity and nature, respectively,
Ray blurs the boundaries between these places, and shows something of the natural in the
human, and something of the human in the natural. Finally, Ray suggests unity between
humanity and nature through her characters, most notably her father and grandfather. As with
the places of her life and text, these two characters could well be representative of humanity and
nature—one thrives in nature and functions very poorly in human relations, and the other fears
nature, but has a preternatural ability to build and maintain complicated machines.39 And yet
again, Ray complicates this simplistic reading of these characters. There is something of the
domestically human in her grandfather, and something of the wild in her father.
39
As we progress into a close reading of how Ray integrates human labor and nature in
her work, it seems necessary to express this point: Ray uses machines as symbols of human
labor. Most clearly, they are virtually always accessories to human labor—tractors, log trucks,
washing machines, on and on (See Ray’s “Future-Seeking” from A House of Branches for a long
list of ways machines labor for her). Even machines that are not as clearly associated with labor,
though, say a car designed for pleasurable transportation versus a wood splitter, are still, all
throughout Ray’s work, connected to labor. Ray’s father’s (Franklin’s) work, fixing and
maintaining machines, means that the machines are, for him, themselves a site of labor (71-75,
91). Not only are these machines associated with labor through their function, they are for
Franklin associated with labor in their dysfunction. Thus, machines seem to always be symbolic
of labor in Ray’s work.
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5.2 Structural incorporation of labor into nature in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.
A short-sighted editor’s critique of Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood would be that
she has essentially written two different books, and published them together as one by mixing up
the chapters. She has written one book on the ecology of the wiregrass region, and one about her
childhood. She intersperses chapter titles like “Forest Beloved,” with “Junkyard,” “Longleaf
Clan” with “Clyo,” her grandmother’s name. This interspersion is clearly deliberate: chapters
dealing with natural history are titled in an italic type, whereas those dealing with Ray’s
biography are in regular type. Moreover, these combinations are paired so as to feed into one
another: her chapter “Iron Man” immediately precedes the chapter “Forest Beloved.” At first
glance, this combination is nearly nonsensical—“Iron Man” concerns Ray’s grandfather, Charlie,
while “Forest Beloved” is about the surprising diversity of the longleaf ecosystem, and its once
incredible range. But Ray ties these two together splendidly, and in a nuanced way. Both are
about things that had a remarkable influence on her young life, but things she could not
completely comprehend. More significantly, though, both are about things that she really knows
only through what she has heard from others. The stories she tells of her grandfather transpired
long before Ray was born, stories no doubt hazy even to her father. And then she begins “Forest
Beloved” with “Maybe a vision of the original longleaf pine flatwoods has been endowed to me
through genes, because I seem to remember their endlessness. I seem to recollect when these
coastal plains were one big brown-and-tan, daybreak-to-dark longleaf forest” (65), and then goes
on refer to accounts of the forests by both William Bartram and John Muir. Ray knows the
virgin pine forests primarily through these stories, just as she knows her grandfather mostly
through family stories. Beyond that, both of these chapters are about being astonished with the
magnitude of something—she recounts incredible feats of strength in her father’s line (her
grandfather allegedly lifted a mule over a fence (39)), and then in “Forest Beloved she references
a saw’s inability to cut mature longleaf pine (65). These chapters are about stories told to Ray—
stories about her genealogical origins and about her regional origins. And, the two completely
intertwined. Ray repeats this pattern throughout the text—“Poverty,” a chapter on the
unbelievable scenes of poverty she witnessed as a child, and the disastrous ramifications it bore
for those under it, is immediately followed by “The Keystone,” a chapter on the decline of the
gopher tortoise, a species critical to the survival of many, many other species in the ecosystem.
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In both the human and the natural chapter, we see the interrelatedness of the systems, and
especially how disorder in one part leads to disorder in all parts. Or, with “Beulahland,” a
chapter about both her grandmother, and the charmed life she seemed to live to the young Janisse
Ray, as well as ideas of heaven, followed by “Indigo Snake,” a now quite rare species, beautiful,
and renowned for its gentleness. Ray, writes, though, that she has never had the opportunity to
see one in the wild. Both of these chapters are about unimaginably beautiful things, just out of
reach to Ray.
One could quite literally make these connections for every single pair of chapters in the
book—Ray has very clearly constructed the book for these chapters to play directly into each
other. This structural combination of these two topics is an essential part of what makes Ray’s
work so good. Ecological history and human history are so intertwined as to be the same thing
to Ray—neither could stand without the other. This structural intermixing of the chapters is the
first sign to the reader that Ray intends to talk about nature and humanity in the same breath.
Jan Z. Grover, in her review “Real Places,” argues that the combination is not thorough
enough, that Ray goes into more detail in her autobiographical sections than she does in her
natural history sections (10). Moreover, Grover finds fault in Ray’s keeping her
autobiographical sections and her natural history sections in different chapters. This, to Grover,
in an indication of a separation between the two, rather than a blending, which Grover hoped to
see. This is an obvious critique, and possibly a legitimate one. Perhaps, though, the separation
of the two aspects of the book into different chapters may serve to make the combination of the
elements more obvious. That said, Grover’s critique may be valid, and Ray’s work may be
stronger if the chapters were not divided. Even so, Ray’s work is a dramatic step forward. She
has taken what have, to this point, been separate genres, and combined them to make something
her own. The structural combination of the human and natural is Ray’s first and most obvious
step in combining the two. In so doing, Ray makes room for the human in the natural, which is
the first theoretical step to making room for human labor in nature.
5.3 Humanity and nature in the spaces of Ray’s text
Space is important in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. That is, this book is very much
about place—about southern pines, about southern people, dialects, indigo snakes, and gopher
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tortoises, and how all of these things have a meaning. But within that, Ray uses specific spaces
to shape that sense of place that she conveys so well. Each of these spaces adds something to the
mixture. They are, at first, somewhat dichotomous: the two spaces depicted on the cover of the
book are Ray’s father’s junkyard and a pine forest. Roderick Nash, in Wilderness in the
American Mind, writes that we should think of human and natural spaces as existing on a
spectrum, in which neither opposing end actually exists. That is, there is no space that is
completely human and completely unnatural, nor is there any space that is completely untouched
by humanity. This dissertation obviously agrees with this argument, but if there were any spaces
that actually fit these dichotomous ends, Ray’s father’s junkyard and her pine forests might be
them. They are chosen to represent extremes: one represents a space marked by the lowest of
human labor (machines that represent labor, but are dysfunctional), one the most sacred of the
natural. While Ray likely had little choice over the cover images, the two spaces (junkyard and
pine forest) depicted there are the central images the book conveys. Just as Ray uses her
alternating chapter structure to break down the dichotomy between the human and the natural,
she also breaks down the purity of these spaces, showing them to be less contrasting than one
might think.
The first space to discuss is Ray’s father’s junkyard. It is the opposite of everything that
romantic nature should be. It is cluttered, “stuffed with junked, wrecked, rusted, burned, and
outmoded automobiles and parts of automobiles….like sticking your head in a wide-angle trash
can” (21). The place is so crowded and offensive that the first boyfriend that Ray brings home
refuses to leave the bedroom, and breaks up with her as soon as they leave her parents’ house
(32). Ray’s father is a scavenger on the bottom of the human economic food chain, living off the
refuse of other’s lives, and the junkyard is as corrupted by human labor as a place could possibly
be. It is nearly permanently damaged. Ray writes
Eighty to 95 percent of the metals of vehicles of that era are recyclable, but what do you
do with the gas tanks? What about the heavy metal accumulations in the soil, lead
contamination, battery acid leaks, the veins of spilled oil and gasoline? The topsoil
would have to be scraped away: where would it go? What about the rubber, plastic, and
broken glass? Would we haul it all to the county dump? It might take a lifetime, one
spent undoing (268).
There is nothing remotely sublime here. But Ray, oddly enough, writes about it as a place of
wilderness, as well. She writes of the birds she sees there: “cardinals, brown thrashers, red-
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winged blackbirds, crows” (267). She notes that this is far from the list that would have
historically appeared in the region. Nonetheless, there are birds there, birds that eat “the ripe
elderberries and mosquitoes that arise from the environs of foundered vehicles” (267). She goes
on: wrens that make their nests in the backs of old cars, field mice that raise their young under
seat cushions, blackberries she ate as a child. The pitcher plants (a somewhat rare, native
carnivorous plant in the region) that grow at the back of the junkyard show up repeatedly
throughout the narrative. The inclusion of the elderberries and blackberries and the nesting
animals seems especially significant: these are not just animals passing through the offensive
junkyard, these are animals that call this place home. The pitcher plants provide something
else—perhaps some kind of reminder that not many of the original species of the area are still
present in the junkyard, recalling their absence through its presence, or perhaps just a point that
very interesting natural things can exist in very unexpected places, that is, places exceptionally
marked by the presence of human labor. There is an ecosystem, however dysfunctional it may
be, existing in this most human place. And so, here Ray has rejected the notion of the purely
human. Ray brings wilderness into the junkyard, this site of human labor, and neither junkyard
nor pine forest/site is untouched by the other.
Ray’s complicated depiction of the longleaf pine forests is likewise complicated. Fully
half the book is dedicated to this space, all of which praises it in the highest possible terms. Ray
has a kind of spiritual reverence for the longleaf pine ecosystem—certainly in keeping with
Muir’s reveling language describing Yosemite. She writes of the unique experience that a pine
forest provides, saying:
What thrills me most about longleaf pine forests is how the pine trees sing. The
horizontal limbs of flattened crowns hold the wind as if they are vessels, singing bowls,
and air stirs in them like a whistling kettle. I lie in thick grasses covered with sun and
listen to the music made here. This music cannot be heard anywhere else on earth.
Rustle, whisper, shiver, whinny. Aria, chorus, ballad, chant. Lullaby (68-9).
Ray’s language here reveals something of the reverence she feels for the forest—given her
evangelical background, she is no doubt well aware of the spiritual connotation “vessel” has.
The reference to singing bowls may be more obscure to her fellow Crackers, but again, implies
something sacred and mysterious. The claims of exclusiveness further this sense of sacredness,
as does her list of musical terms, all with slightly different meaning. Ray admits that the forest
seems monotonous, at least to the untrained eye. Her list of musical terms, though, seems to be a
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counter to that suggestion. Someone unfamiliar with music may think a ballad and chorus to be
essentially the same, but to the musician or educated listener, they are significantly different.
This place is varied, filled with rich, sacred beauty. Ray’s construction of the longleaf forest
echoes the romantic vision of nature common to writers like Muir and other romantics. Her
description of the place makes it the opposite of the junkyard—pristine, sacred, filled with divine
music. The entire narrative is filled with such language. But, like in her description of the
junkyard, she goes on to complicate her vision of the longleaf forest, and provide something
ultimately far more complex and interesting. And so, just as Ray adds nature to the site of labor
in her picture of the junkyard, she inserts labor into nature’s sacred space.
The most obvious example of this is in her chapter “The Kindest Cut”. The scene is a
longleaf forest, “the most elegant forest” Ray has ever seen (252). The animal species are
varied, including exceptionally rare animals, like Bachman’s sparrows, which are a kind of Holy
Grail for birders in the region. Ray goes on at length on about the beauty and health of the
forest, and she draws particular attention to the knowledge of her companion walking in the
woods with her—he speaks expertly about the food needs of quail, the red-cockaded woodpecker
habitat, the life cycle of longleaf pines. Her companion, significantly, is a logger. He is, of
course, a different kind of logger than most, but he refers to this forest as his ideal, the model he
attempts to create when he logs. He logs selectively, harvesting individual trees and not entire
forests. As Ray writes, “There is a way to have your cake and eat it too; a way to log yet
preserve a forest. Leon Neel [the logger] knows how” (251). It is incredibly significant that one
of the best forest spaces in the book has a laborer present, and that the best description of a
functional forest in found in the mouth of a logger. Ray’s ideal forest is here, and it has human
labor in it. This space, this idyllic, pristine, romantic, sublime forest is not at all separated from
human labor. Human labor is present in it in a limited, but functional and economically
sustainable fashion. This space, while seemingly initially marked by its lack of human labor,
(just as the junkyard is initially seen as a space entirely devoid of nature) is ultimately a site of it.
Ray knows that she is blurring the lines between these two (typically) dichotomous
extremes, humanity and nature/human labor and pristine nature. This combination, which is
maintained throughout the course of the narrative, is made more explicitly clear in her chapter
“Second Coming,” in which she writes
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A junkyard is a wilderness. Both are devotees of decay. The nature of both is a random
order, the odd occurrence and juxtaposition of miscellany, backed by a semblance of
method. Walk through a junkyard and you’ll see some of the schemes a wilderness
takes—Fords in one section, Dodges in another, or older models farthest from the
house—so a brief logic of ecology can be found (268-9).
Ray goes on to switch the metaphor around, to liken wilderness to a junkyard as well.
In the same way, an ecosystem makes sense: the canebrakes, the cypress domes. Pine
trees regenerate in an indeterminate fashion, randomly here and there where seeds have
fallen, but also with some predictability. Sunlight and moisture must be sufficient for
germination, as where a fallen tree has made a hole in the canopy, after a rain. This, too,
is order (269).
She repeats these connections—seeing the unexpected in both the junkyard and the wilderness,
danger in the junkyard and wilderness, driveways as creeks and rivers, and so on. Her
destabilization of these categories of human and natural by inserting nature into a site of human
labor and human labor into a site of nature does much to help create a healthy vision of human
labor in nature.
5.4 Complicating the human/nature dichotomy through people in Ecology of a Cracker
Childhood
Just as with the structure of the text and the spaces described therein, Ray complicates the
human/natural dichotomy through her presentation of people. Once again, she allows an
artificial dichotomy to be set up (that which is wholly human, i.e.; defined by human labor, and
that which is wholly natural), but at the same time undermines the extremes suggested. Her
father, Franklin, and her grandfather, Charlie, serve as these ends of the spectrum. Her father,
who fears wilderness, and makes his living by working on machines (and does so with a
preternatural ability), obviously represents the wholly human. Her grandfather, on the other
hand, is the consummate woodsman, and is never at any point associated with machinery of any
kind. He, then, represents the wholly natural.
Charlie Ray is an almost mythically huge character in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood,
and one gathers, in Janisse Ray’s childhood as well. He is a man of tremendous capacity, and
unfortunately little means of containing or directing his strength in any positive direction for any
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length of time. He is an absolutely horrible father to Franklin and his siblings, a terrible husband
to his wife. He seems almost more of a force than a person, violent, destructive, and
astonishingly powerful. Charlie beats up men twenty years younger than him—he “[is]
abnormally strong, built like a barrel, his fingers so massive he [can’t] buy a wedding ring” (47).
His knowledge of nature is incredible and legendary. Ray writes “As a grown man, Grandpa
would disappear for days into the floodplain swamps of the Altamaha River, a truly wild place
then (and even now miraculously unchanged), where he hunted and trapped, fished and
plundered. People still remember how he roamed the woods; Charlie was a folk hero” (41). And
again, after describing his ability to pull catfish from the swamps and canals with only his hands,
“He possessed a sort of magic when it came to nature. People were afraid of him” (41). He
spends more than two months in the Altamaha swamps after escaping from the state mental
hospital, walking from Milledgeville to Baxley (at least 120 miles, depending on how direct his
route was) and is none the worse for wear. Ray tells a story of Charlie showing off during a
coon hunt, spotting the raccoon in a tree when the dogs could not scent it. Rather than pointing
the raccoon out to his fellow hunters, he told them to call off their dogs, said he would scent the
raccoon himself, and crawled around on all fours, then bayed up the tree the raccoon was in. He
never let the others in on what he had done, instead letting them think he was some kind of halfwild thing of the woods, a man who could sniff out a raccoon that Walker hounds could not (4445).
So this is the construction of the totally wild person—someone more at home in the
woods than in civilization, and someone who “knew the woods by heart” (39) and “never loved a
human the way he cherished woods; [who] never gave his heart so fully as to those peaceful
wildland refuges that accepted without question any and all of their kind” (40). But Ray, of
course, goes on to complicate this construction of Charlie as wholly natural. When Charlie Joe
Ray does finally leave the family, he goes down to Florida. In Florida, though, we lose the
thread of Charlie as a great woodsman, and hear instead of his legendary feats as a laborer. This
fantastic power that defines Charlie is directed towards labor with great success—he starts
“calling himself ‘Iron Man’ and setting records picking oranges, out-picking any who dared to
challenge him” (55). Interestingly, Ray tells no tales of Charlie’s woodsman feats in Florida.
Moreover, she also makes no clear distinction between Charlie’s actions in the woods, and his
actions in the orange groves. That is, while the two sets of tales—the Georgia tales of the woods
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and the Florida tales of orange groves—seem distinct (in one he seldom provides well for his
family, in the other, he works harder than any had ever seen another person work), Ray does not
draw that distinction for the reader. The completely natural man fits into the world of labor as
well as he fits into the world of nature.
Charlie’s son, Franklin, is the other side of this initial dichotomy. As much as Charlie is
associated with the natural, Franklin is associated with machinery, and thus, human labor. As
much as Charlie was a master of the woods, Franklin is a master of machines. Of his capacity to
repair machines, Ray writes “I’ve seen him haul a vacuum cleaner or a fan from the dump and
have it working in an hour…. I have seen him sit for hours with loupes strapped to his eyes,
taking apart a railroad watch, lifting with tweezers gears and screws no bigger than atoms” (75).
He built machines as well:
When he built guns, Daddy manufactured firing pins out of old Chevrolet push rods and
flat gun springs from Ford door-handle springs. The swing set we played on he welded
of pipe. He cut glass with nothing more than a table or other flat surface, a bottle of
alcohol, and a glass cutter. He fit a Buick piston in a John Deere tractor (91).
Just as Charlie was legendary for his abilities in the woods, so Franklin was legendary for his
ability to find or make parts to fix anything. He was friends with people well beyond his social
status because of his remarkable skill with mechanical things (75-6). Interestingly, Ray at times
uses natural language to describe his mechanical prowess: “He hunts the bolts, cotter keys, wires,
shafts, and belts that hold together metal pieces, engineering usefulness. He is on the trail of a
sprung spring or a broken part” (75). Given that this line comes not long after Ray’s chapter on
her grandfather and his talents as a woodsman, the irony in it must be intentional. If there is a
trail for Franklin, it is a trail to a mechanical thing. If he hunts anything, it is parts for more
machines. Her language pushes him even further from the natural world than his interest in
machines (and corresponding lack of interest in hunting, fishing, etc.) already has. Franklin
seems totally marked by human labor, and thus ostensibly totally disconnected from the natural
world.
Further, Ray goes to lengths to show Franklin’s fear of the natural world. She recounts
two specific instances in which Franklin makes it very clear he has no interest in participating in
the natural world. In the first, Charlie, for reasons known only to him, takes his (four-year-old)
son (Franklin) hunting, and then convinces him that they are lost and will likely die in the woods.
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Franklin later tells Janisse that “…that was enough for me never to want to go again” (96). In
the second, Franklin attempts to take his family out on the Altamaha River in a homemade boat
dubbed the PM38, but catches a snag in the river while going full speed, and the boat sinks
before he can get it to shore. Everyone survives, but Franklin “considered the accident a sign.
He repaired and sold the boat and quit going to the Altamaha” (224). He told Janisse “’I’d try
not to even cross the river bridge’” (224). Thus, we see Franklin, initially, not only as someone
who is not connected to the natural world, but as someone who has a serious aversion to it. His
affinity and aptitude for machinery tie him to human labor, and his fear of the natural world seals
the matter. Franklin is wholly of the human world, and not of the natural.
Once again, though, Ray complicates this artificial dichotomy. While Franklin thinks
that he fears the natural world, and while his skills seem initially to be entirely in the realm of
human labor, neither of these are completely true. Franklin and Janisse do eventually return to
the Altamaha, and complete a trip down the river, in another homemade boat, this time without
serious mishap (232-3). And despite his fear of the natural, Franklin repeatedly plans trips to the
West with his family (though none of them pan out), and talks about wanting to see different
animals and kinds of terrain (230). More dramatically, when Franklin’s son Steve, who at the
time could not swim, slips and falls into the Altamaha, Franklin dives in to save him. Ray writes
“He sailed over the railing like a high jumper, in his best Sunday suit, white shirt, black pants,
cuff links. There wasn’t time to kick off his black polished shoes….His dive was a masterful
feat” (225). Of course, Franklin was driven by the love of his child to do this, not by some love
of nature, but Ray’s description of him here is significant. His actions are beautiful—
“masterful” and “sailed” point us towards that. Moreover, he performs this feat while wearing
some of the least appropriate clothing in which to perform such a task. That is, he is presumably
somewhat limited by his clothing, but still performs this task excellently. We see relatively few
descriptions of Franklin’s physical actions in this text, especially when contrasted with his father,
but here we have him performing beautifully in nature.
Finally, Franklin constantly heals injured creatures. Ray recounts his stitching up of a
wounded toad—poking the organs back inside the body and stitching the wound shut with dental
floss and a sewing needle (129). He kept a car-struck beagle alive, feeding it Valium and giving
it water until it crawled off, only to reappear completely healthy some weeks later (130-1). He
found a green heron with a broken leg on the side of the road, and set the leg. The heron lived in
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the Ray family living room, and the junkyard, for years following (136-8). He was horrified, and
punished his children when he learned that they stood by while a neighbor’s child killed a
snapping turtle needlessly (135-6). Ray writes this, of all of these stories:
I tell these stories so that you see my father is a curious man, intrigued by the secret lives
of animals, a curiosity that sprang from his desire to fix things, to repair things of the
world and make them fly and hop and operate again, and to mold his children into good
people. He would with equal fury rethread a stripped bolt or solder a heat-split frying
pan or patch a bicycle tire or reset a dog’s broken leg or pull a tooth (139).
These tales of healing animals, on their own weight, obviously do not ameliorate the damage to
nature created by labor in south Georgia. What they can show, though, is that while Franklin
(and others like him) may lack the understanding about how he should best care for the
landscape around him, he does not lack for a desire to do so.40 And so, while Franklin’s love for
and understanding of nature is not so immediately apparent as Charlie’s, it is certainly there.
Franklin does not fit into typical romantic environmental narratives. He is not the great,
seemingly independently wealthy, prophet that is Muir. Nor is he the raw, almost inhuman force
that his father was. Franklin is defined by human labor, working in the junkyard amidst the
detritus and refuse of other people, building something useful out of the trash. Illustrating that
Franklin does have an understanding of the systems of nature (however limited that
understanding may be) is a very strong statement on Ray’s part. On the other hand, showing
Charlie, this purely natural force, as a laborer complicates things as well. Charlie is a wild thing;
a hunter/gatherer, a fighter, a character too large for life, who is also the best orange picker the
groves had ever seen. Ray shows that two seemingly disparate worlds are not actually so
disparate, and offers Charlie and Franklin as evidence.
Interestingly, the idea that both the human and natural are a part of all people is present
from the beginning of the narrative. In “Child of Pine,” the first full chapter of the narrative, Ray
40
This quotation from Drifting into Darrien is appropriate here:
Poor people live up and down this river. We work for years to buy a johnboat. Some of
us are badly educated, even ignorant. We throw car tires and deer carcasses in the creeks.
We dump trash and other bad stuff in. We cut down trees.
But if we could understand a car engine, we could understand a river system, and
for it to run it needs all its parts, and the parts have to be clean, in good working order,
and they need fuel (128-129).
While Franklin and many like him operate in ignorance, and do near-irreparable damage in the
process, they are not, universally, “ecovillians,” (to borrow a term from Welling).
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tells the story her parents told her of her own origin. Her coming into their lives is associated
with the natural—they tell her they went out searching for a sheep that was close to giving birth,
and hear her crying. Her cry is mistaken for that of a newborn lamb, but they find her beneath
palmetto fronds, with pine needles in her hair. The stories her parents told of her siblings’
origins are similar—“My sister had been found in a big cabbage in the garden; a year after me,
my brother was discovered under the grapevine, and a year after that, my little brother appeared
beside a huckleberry bush” (6). All of these images are wholly natural—presumably the effect
intended by Ray’s parents. Ray gives these stories a delightful twist though: “From as early as I
could question, I was told this creation story. If they’d said they’d found me in the trunk of a ’52
Ford, it would have been more believable” (6-7). This line is almost just a toss-away line—Ray
immediately moves on to talk about Baxley, GA, her hometown, and abandons the origin myths
for the remainder of the text. But the suggestion that the story would have been more believable
if it had included something of the detritus of humanity says something significant about both the
physical composition of the junkyard and Ray’s conception of humanity. She knew from some
early age that she was not wholly the product of nature. She knows herself to be at least as
associated with machinery, doubtlessly symbolic of human labor, as she is the natural. She, and
all humanity, in her writing, are something between the two.
This theoretical foundation under Ray’s work is not radically different than the
theoretical underpinnings of Austin, Hurston, and Berry. She, like they, seems humanity and
nature as existing on a spectrum, rather than as polar opposites. And this, of course, is the first
step to opening a functional dialogue on how to best deal with the reality of human labor in
nature. The truly distinctive feature of Ray’s work, though, is how she progresses the
conversation. First, Ray considers the truly disastrous environmental impacts that unrestrained
human labor in nature can have, certainly more than Austin and Hurston do, and with greater
depth than Berry. Second, Ray acknowledges our ongoing need for human labor in nature, and
in contrast with the above mentioned writers, moves past nostalgic labor to the less beautiful
labor of her scavenging family. By embracing the necessity of ugly labor, Ray pushes the
conversation to a more practical level. Beyond that, and perhaps more remarkably, Ray
implicates herself in the environmental degradation brought on by unrestrained human labor in
nature. She speaks from a position of poverty, acknowledges that she has benefited from
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irresponsible labor, and identifies herself with the people who perform this labor. In doing this,
she potentially broadens the conversation to include those whose hands do this work.
The discourses on human labor in nature must be between broader groups of people if
they are to be effective. Ray’s work gives some hope of that. While Ray’s work does not offer a
complete blueprint for how we should safely and effectively incorporate human labor into nature,
she does push the conversation forward.
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CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
Conceptions of humanity’s relationship with nature are always complicated. A
completely dichotomous vision, in which humanity and nature are entirely distinct categories,
does not produce a helpful idea of how humanity should interact with nature. That is, regarding
human labor as something antithetical to nature encourages an environmentalism that cannot
offer an effective critique of how we perform labor in nature—it can only flatly reject it. At the
same time, wholly embracing human labor in nature leads to obviously disastrous results—strip
mining, clear cuts, and industrial mono-crop agriculture. Both of these extremes are
unproductive—indeed, dangerous—and must be avoided. The intention of this project is not to
provide a comprehensive answer to these complex problems, but rather to offer and evaluate
some options for shaping a more complex theoretical perspective.
The sources considered represent only 20th and 21st century American views. While this
initially seems a limitation, this limited selection actually provides a range of perspectives that
are relevant to the problems that we intend to address (that is, the problems we are discussing are
specific to a particular context, and these perspectives effectively address that context). Within
this context, though, these sources are diverse—regionally, racially, and chronologically, as well
as offering diverse gender and class perspectives. All of the perspectives considered have their
strengths and weaknesses—none offers a complete solution.
Mary Austin’s writing is simultaneously the most progressive and most regressive work
considered in this project. The vision of the human/nature relationship that she puts forward is
dramatically unified. Austin draws the wild and the domestic into each other—she repeatedly
casts humans as adapting to their natural surroundings. Human labor is shaped to conform to the
context in which it is performed—a point that Austin deliberately links to plant and animals’
adaptations. Moreover, her female characters shed era-appropriate gender roles to do things that
they need to do—perform physical labor outside the home, wear typically male clothing, and
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walk in places it might be physically dangerous for them to do so. That is, she casts these
characters as shaping their actions based on natural, rather than social, demands. Likewise,
Austin writes elements of the stereotypically wild as behaving in typically human ways. Carrion
crows are tamed, and play with children. Wild sheep are indistinguishable from domestic. By so
aggressively drawing the human and the natural into each other, Austin creates a very
theoretically advanced picture of this relationship. This aspect of her work is very valuable to
the project of creating a more functional idea of what human labor in nature can and should be.
At the same time, though, Austin offers nothing to deal with the dangerous realities of
human labor in nature. One of Austin’s most frequently referenced characters, the PocketHunter, works as a miner. She clearly adores him—she describes his camp and his habits
endlessly. Never, though, does Austin address the fact that his profession of choice represents a
very serious threat to the ecosystems that she so appreciates. The same is true of her writing on
shepherds. Thus, while her theoretical approach may be exemplary, she effectively negates the
benefits of this approach with her total inattention to the effects of labor on the environment.
That is, given this oversight, her work could be cast as nothing but an apology for abusive labor.
Moreover, Austin does definitely romanticizes the poverty that the vast majority of her
characters experience. Poverty, to Austin, seems to purify a character, and somehow give them
greater spiritual authority. Seyavi, in her remarkable poverty, takes on a mythically important
role as a maternal protector with the odds against her. Her poverty is critical to this construction.
This, just as much as her ignoring the potential and actual dangers of labor in nature, is a critical
oversight. Just as we might interpret her work as an apology for abusive labor in nature, we
might also take it as an apology for labor that leaves its laborers as impoverished as they were
before they performed the work. Given these two substantial critiques, Austin’s work, despite
the promise its theoretical approach offers, cannot be taken as a productive solution to this
complicated problem.
Zora Neale Hurston’s work offers something of a corrective Austin’s lack of concern
about the effect of labor on those performing the labor, but ultimately does not offer as robust a
vision of the human/nature relationship. That said, she does more aggressively link human labor
to the environment than Austin ever does. Human labor, to Hurston, is the primary way that
humans interact with nature. This, of course, is a significant contrast to the Emerson/Muir
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vision, in which labor in nature is an impediment to proper interaction with nature. In this way,
too, Hurston offers something that Austin cannot.
Human labor in nature is absolutely central to the growth of Hurston’s characters.
Hurston’s greatest spiritual leader, Moses, in Moses, Man of the Mountain, does all of his
tremendous spiritual growth while working as a shepherd for his father-in-law. This theme
continues throughout this text: when the Hebrews come out of Egypt, they are a weak and
broken people. They grow only through the time they spend wandering, working, and
shepherding in the desert. This idea is repeated throughout her corpus. Janie grows via her labor
in the muck, not through the sublime scenes that bookend the text. Indeed, Hurston seems to
almost mock the notion of spiritual growth through revelation—all knowledge gained through
these experiences is immediately washed away. The primary significance of this emphasis on
labor in nature leading to spiritual growth is this: it offers an understanding of labor in which
labor is central to the human experience.
Moreover, Hurston offers limited concern for the effects of labor on those who perform
it. While she does, to some degree, fall into the romanticizing trap that plagues Austin’s work,
she, likely due to her own class, is more clearly aware of the potential effects of labor on those
who perform the labor. In particular, she makes a distinction between compulsory labor and
labor that is willingly performed—certainly, not all labor is equal in her eyes. This is a partial
solution—are we to imagine that generic labor performed in nature is more like the work that
Janie performed under the harsh watch of Logan Killicks, or more like the work that she so
willingly embraced on the Muck? While this is imperfect, it is certainly an improvement over
Austin’s wholehearted embrace of the impoverished conditions accompanying this kind of labor.
Unfortunately, Hurston does echo Austin’s flaw of giving virtually no evidence of
concern for the effect of labor on the environment—perhaps even amplifies it. The work that is
so good for Janie—working on the Muck—required the draining of the Everglades. This was an
unmitigated environmental disaster. It should be noted, though, that this was generally regarded
as unambiguously good at the time of the composition of Their Eyes Were Watching God. There
is, then, the temptation to say that we do a disservice to the text by judging by the environmental
standards of our own day. But even if we look beyond this specific instance, beyond this
specific environmental action, we still see a consistent failure to consider the possibility that
human labor in nature might negatively affect the nature in which it is performed. This is a
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failing that cannot be overlooked in Hurston’s work. While Hurston offers an interesting and
helpful interpretation of human labor in nature, as with Austin’s work, her writing is limited by
her failure to adequately address the effects of this labor, both on those performing it, and on the
environments in which it occurs.
Wendell Berry must be included in this conversation. He, more than any other American
20th century writer, deliberately address the idea of human labor in nature. While he does not
offer as theoretically robust a defense of human labor in nature as does Austin, he seems to
anticipate the charges that we have focused at Austin and Hurston—a lack of concern for the
effect of labor. Berry argues that labor in nature both results in better treatment of the land by
those working it, as well as an ultimately better quality of life for those performing the labor. So,
while his work may be lacking the theoretical significance of Austin’s, and to some degree,
Hurston’s, his defense of human labor in nature is certainly the most practical.
His argument that laboring in nature leads to better treatment of the environment in which
labor is performed is intriguing, and on the surface, logically sound. He argues that the more that
people work in an environment, the more they learn about it, and subsequently, care more about
it. He also connects this argument to matters of scale: a small family farm, where the workers
are very likely to have an ownership stock in the farm (historical, if not economic) is likely to be
better treated than an industrial scale farm, in which the people working are very unlikely to have
any significant stake in preserving the long-term fertility of the land. This, again, seems sound
on the surface, and is, in some sense, true. His appeals to the idea of a community working
together in nature building community, and thus improving quality of life, likewise hold some
element of truth. Certainly, people relying on one another for their common sustenance will
build a bond not frequently seen in 21st century American society.
Nevertheless, these arguments have obvious shortcomings. While the charge that
industrial farms cause more damage than family farms at current is essentially indisputable, it
does not follow that family farms actually cause an increase in concern for the land. Indeed,
industrial farming is comparatively recent in the history of agriculture, while environmental
damage caused by agricultural practices is not. Furthermore, while Berry’s depiction of an
agriculturally centered small community holds a certain nostalgic appeal, the reality is that the
vast majority of Americans once lived in such communities, and gave these ways of life up.
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All of this is not to say that there is nothing worthwhile in these arguments. Rather,
Berry has value in these ways: first, he should be read like a prophet. While the actual pragmatic
suggestions that he makes are so faulty as to be comical, he is right in some greater sense. Yes,
labor in nature should increase our appreciation of it, and accordingly, improve the care we take
when working the land. And, yes, we should be willing to make substantial economic sacrifices
to live in a world that is more attuned to taking care of the land and its occupants, human and
otherwise. His work is inspirational in these ways, if not necessarily specifically prescriptive.
Second, Berry is white, male, upper-middle class, well educated, and Christian. While it is
problematic that Berry fails to recognize his own privilege, it does behoove readers who are
trying to structure an effective model of the human/nature relationship to deliberately read the
work of someone who is the walking embodiment of privilege, if for no other reason than to be
aware of this very dominant way of thinking. Third, it is significant that Berry deliberately
continues to labor, when all of these other writers have effectively opted out of this laboring
condition. It is certainly true that Berry’s labor is different from the labor of one who has no
choice in the matter (ala Hurston’s distinction between coerced and voluntary labor, perhaps),
but the fact that Berry still does attempt to literally practice what he preaches gives him a
perspective that the other writers considered in this project do not share. Given these attributes,
most especially the way that he can serve as an inspiration to more practical thinkers, Berry still
offers something very valuable, despite his shortcomings.
Janisse Ray offers the single most promising perspective on the idea of human labor in
nature considered in the project, primarily through her first book, Ecology of a Cracker
Childhood. She has evident concern for laborers living in impoverished conditions, she is all too
aware of the disastrous effects poorly executed labor can have on a landscape, and she imagines
a way that we can still effectively and safely work in nature. Unlike Berry, she stays away from
specific economic ideas. While this may initially seem like a shortcoming in her work, it is at
the very least a strength in the sense that it keeps her from opening herself up to the easy
criticisms that Berry does to himself. Her work walks a line well—it is neither effectively an
apology for industrial labor, as one could say of Austin’s work, nor an effectively gnostic text,
despising all human labor. Even further, it is beyond Berry’s yearning for a pastoral kind of
labor that probably never existed in the way that Berry remembers it. Ray offers the most
practical vision of the human/nature relationship considered in this project. That said, Ray’s
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theoretical base is not as robust as Austin’s, and Ray does not sustain the incisive vision so
present in Ecology throughout the rest of her work. Rather than build on the framework that she
establishes in that text, as Austin does so effectively with the framework she establishes in her
Land of Little Rain, Ray wanders into other less complex approaches in her subsequent works.
As has been said repeatedly in the course of this project, there is no single answer to this
complex problem of how we should integrate human labor into nature. However, it is essential
that environmentalist take a more serious approach to developing strategies for dealing with this
ever-present reality. Flatly rejecting labor in nature only writes environmentalists out of the
conversations where their perspective would be helpful, and opens them to rather fair critiques of
being out of touch with practical realities. This project is intended to provide a range of opinions
and options for alternatives for shaping a complex approach to a complex problem.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Jeremy Elliott
Jeremy Elliott was born in 1984 in Marietta, GA. He studied English and Humanities at
Harding University from 2002 to 2005, and completed a master’s degree, and a doctoral degree
at Florida State University between 2005 and 2013. He accepted a job ABD at Abilene Christian
University in 2010, where he teaches in the Department of Language and Literature. He married
Kelly Elliott in 2005, and in 2013, they had a son, Silas.
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