Woman and Nature

Women and Nature brings together a number of issues in current feminist literary criticism and discusses them in the critical languages of ecofeminism and gynocriticism, two discourses of immense importance to feminism and women's studies. Each discourse raises issues of language and gender relating to woman and nature and implies a critique of the dualistic elements of man/woman, culture/nature. This critique then initiates a process of deconstructing these dualisms. The analysis covers seven prominent North American feminist novels. Surfacing (Margaret Atwood), The Diviners (Margaret Laurence), The Color Purple (Alice Walker), The Women of Brewster Place (Gloria Naylor), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), The Wanderground (Sally Gearhart), and Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson).

Maureen Langer-Devine (Ph.D., University of Klagenfurt, Austria), Lecturer in American Studies and American Literature at the University of Klagenfurt, has published articles on feminist literature and criticism and on feminist documentary film (in Frauen und Film); has co-edited a book, Women in Search of Literary Space (TDubingen: Gunter Narr, 1991), and is active in feminist academic organizations and in American studies organizations.