Paper Proposal

Hey Everyone! When visiting the Coral Castle today I realized really randomly that I never posted my proposal here last week. So here it is!

Jeannina Perez
Literary Genres
Dr. Logan
3 March 2009

Nature’s Daughter: Gendered Nature to Identify Femininity in
Herman Mann’s The Female Review

Ecofeminist literary criticism seeks to expose symbolic connections “between gender, race, class, and representations of nature in literature” (Legler 228) in order to develop a discourse free of the simultaneous oppression of both women and nature. The use of nature in Herman Mann’s The Female Review operates to sustain Deborah Sampson’s femininity to justify her masquerade as a man in the military. However, Mann’s descriptions of nature are contradictory when nature is given an active role, showing the realms of freedom available through Sampson’s cross-dressing that are otherwise veiled.
Mann points confidently to Sampson’s apparent innate relationship with nature: “It is with peculiar pleasure, I here find occasion to speak of Miss Sampson’s taste for the study of Nature, or Natural Philosophy” (Mann 39). Throughout the text “idealised descriptions” (Gifford 1) of nature exist in relation to feminine roles of domesticity. While Sampson is acting the “masculine” role fighting in the army the text is primarily devoid of nature. Nature makes appearances in the text to sustain and idealize femininity, forcing nature into a passive role of “mirror” (Legler 229) for the women in the text. The mirroring descriptions of femininity function to support the overall focus on Sampson’s femaleness; femininity the narrative must focus on in order to eliminate Sampson’s actions as a threat to masculine social orders of behavior. As a result, Mann uses the amalgamation of nature and femaleness to justify Sampson’s actions.
However, despite Mann’s continual attempts to dissuade blurred gender roles, by displaying nature as an active bodied self amidst the disruption of gender, the narrative redefines femininity. While most of the text represents nature as the passive romanticized pastoral, nature becomes an active bodied self when Sampson does not. By placing nature in an active role, the narrative shows female freedom from blurring gender roles that cannot be shown when describing Sampson. In revealing the supporting and disruption of gendered constructions in nature, this exposes the process of “embodying nature” in the narrative. The contradictory descriptions in Mann’s narrative write nature out of passivity and into activity. By focusing on Sampson’s cross-dressing, scholars have overlooked the use of pastoral to simultaneously sustain and disrupt constructions of femininity.

Works Cited:

Gifford, Terry. Pastoral. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Legler, Karen, ed. Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. New York: Indiana University, Folklore Institute, 1997.