Transcendentalism and Ecology: The Similarities, Differences and Implications for Gendered Stereotypes by

Central Idea

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 03:13:55 UTC

Ecology is a modern understanding of the permeable relationship between our environment and our culture, an ideology that emphasizes an interconnectedness of all living things, and how our societies can sustainably fit within our environments. A keystone figure in the shifting of public understanding of this interconnectedness was Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring. Carson provided detailed and blunt examples of how connected we are with our surrounding environment, and the harm that can befall our societies when our environments are mistreated.

Transcendentalism, a sub-movement of romanticism, places emphasis on the importance of nature as a vital source of spiritual insight and enlightenment for humans. Transcendentalism admitted that through connection with nature, an individual could grow and benefit. This revelation is characterized through writing like Walking, by Henry David Thoreau. Although transcendentalism doesn’t fully admit to the interconnected relationship between society and its environment like modern ecology does, and it's ties to romanticism cause negative implications of gendered stereotypes; it still signals a step in the right direction. Away from pure idealization of untouched, primitive land, and towards the concept of a mutually beneficial relationship. A step towards Ecology.

Transcendentalism (Context)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 03:16:05 UTC

The idea of Transcendentalism, achieving a spiritual understanding of one's self while in the presence of nature, was born from the larger movement of Romanticism. An ideology that influenced a reversal in the values of wilderness and civilization. Romanticists placed the value within the natural, associating wilderness with being closer to god, with being closer to living a sublime existence. While removing the value from developed civilizations. Implying that environment and human influence were opposing forces, and that environment that remained untouched was inherently valuable. This ideology placed emphasis on proper preservation and protections of purely natural lands, due to the benefits they implicated came from experiencing said untouched nature. Through works of writing like Walking, by Henry David Thoreau, this idea of becoming connected with pure wilderness was spread throughout our societies. Which later helped fuel the preservation of parklands for the sake of our national identity and roots of America.

Ecology (Context)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 04:10:31 UTC

Ecology, a modern addition to the conversation of the qualities of the relationship between our cultures and the nature they are cultivated in. It is officially a scientific study of living organisms and the interactions between them and their surrounding environment. It includes all potential factors in order to understand an ecosystem in its entirety. When this is applied to human interaction within nature, it underlines the importance in understanding the level of interconnectedness we have with our environments. Everything we do to our environment, how we treat them, is reflected back on us. When treating nature with respect, the relationship can be mutually beneficial. For example, indigenous irrigation practices allowed for cultivation of crops in arid regions, protecting and preserving local ecosystems and biodiversity. Conversely, when humans abuse and disrespect their surrounding environments, like the use of DDT explained in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the negative impacts are shared by both land and inhabitants. Rather than humanity solely impacting nature, nature determines our health, our way of living, and even our very being or selves. In understanding this connection, it does not place value in any specific kind of environment. Nor does it insist upon the retraction of all human influence on its environments. Rather, it calls for appropriate reform and protections.

Thoreau's Walking: Implication of Benefits of and Call for Preservation (Analysis)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 04:28:21 UTC

Thoreau's Walking discusses the importance of leaving land untouched, as well as the distinction between nature and culture. But while doing so, Thoreau also writes of having a deep appreciation for experiencing nature in it's purest form. He describes the benefits of regularly being within nature and actively seeking it out. He writes, "that the natural remedy (to susceptibility) is to be found in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience..." (Thoreau 2). In a roundabout way, Thoreau is saying that by succumbing to the modern, indoor, way of life, we are becoming soft. In accepting that softness, we are giving up a more fulfilling, natural life.

These ideas, of the importance of connecting with untouched nature, paved the way for the preservation of natural environments. For the sake of allowing humans to be able to foster this connection.

Transcendentalism + The Nature/Culture Divide (Context)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 04:35:41 UTC

Due to transcendentalism being a sub-movement of romanticism, it also places a distinct divide between the concepts of nature and culture. It clearly dictates that nature exists in one sphere, with culture existing in the other, without any influence existing between the two. In creating this divide, it implies the only environments worth protecting are those that are pure, untouched, and virgin lands. Ones that have remained 'wild' in the face of western progression, rather than those that bear markers of human interaction and use. This idea is inherently flawed in many ways, one specific contradiction describes how this strict nature/culture divide perpetuates negative gendered stereotypes.

Value in Virgin Land (Context/Extra)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 04:49:52 UTC

Overtime, nature has been framed as feminine. This is done by describing nature as both a passive entity, and as a constant provider. These are reflective through the Mother Earth trope, as well as the concept of "Virgin Wilderness". The idea of Mother Earth implies that our Earth is a member of our family, something that protects and watches over us. Simultaneously, she provides nourishment, and is obligated to provide that nourishment, regardless of how much we demand. The concept of "Virgin Wilderness" implies that both land and women are passive and there for a man to take and use. During westward expansion, this idea was used by early settlers to stress women's proper place alongside the fact that the American continents were up for grabs.

When creating a nature/culture divide, you are also stating that environments only have value when they are unaffected by the cultures inhabiting them. Those that have remained untouched, holding on to it's virtue, or virgin land. This reaffirms the idea of "Virgin Wilderness" and the feminine passivity of nature. Additionally, you imply that as nature and culture remain separate, what we do within our societies will leave nature largely unaffected. That we only impact our environments when we intend to do so.

Quote Thoreau's Walking: Implication of Romanticist Ideals (Analysis)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 04:50:29 UTC

The idea of pure untouched land having value, as opposed to developed land, is a romanticist ideal that is shared with the transcendentalism ideology. This is depicted many times throughout Thoreau's writing, as he stresses the importance in connecting with pure, wild, nature. He writes, "Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap." (Thoreau 2). He criticizes the idea of development, even at the level of building a house, because to him, and to transcendentalism, it is irreparably changing and therefore devaluing what was purely natural landscape.

Throughout Walking, Thoreau also constantly references the strict distinction between nature and culture. He writes, "Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into wilderness." (Thoreau 3). These instances are a direct indication of Thoreau's alignment with romanticist ideals. As romanticism places great emphasis on a nature/culture divide, as well as value being in pure landscape.

Quote Carson's Silent Spring (Analysis)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 04:52:21 UTC

Written in 1962, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring had a profound impact on the launch and spread of our modern environmental movement. The book contained powerful anecdotes and real world examples about irreversible environmental damage, and the impact it would have and already has had on our communities and lives. One such, Carson opens her book with, writing, "There once was a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings...Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community...Everywhere was the shadow of death." (Carson 10). She writes of animals disappearing, inexplainable deaths among the adults and children, and once green vegetation turning brown (Carson 10). The creation and immediate destruction and desecration of a happy, comfortable, normal town, creates a sense of mourning and uneasiness in the reader. You want to know what is happening, and why. Carson finishes the anecdote by writing, "This town does not actually exist...Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know." (Carson 11). A non-descript story like this one, allows for every reader to both relate and to feel the fear Carson instills, by implying that everything she has written about could eventually happen to all of us.

Alongside this anecdote, the following descriptions of gruesome interactions between the chemicals being used on our environments and our resulting health lit a fire under readers across the nation. Despite receiving outrage and threats of legal action from leaders of the chemical industry, Silent Spring had awoke and cultivated a new sense of environmental consciousness. Paving the way for future implementation of environmental protections.

The Interconnected Relationship (Context)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 05:13:45 UTC

Within the ecology movement, the nature/culture divide is replaced by the understanding of a deeply interconnected relationship between the two. Ecology understands that everything the land is subjected to, is reflected back on those who live there. That the pain the land feels is synonymous with our own. This is reflected both through Carson's descriptions of various chemicals being seemingly implemented solely on an environment, it simultaneously harshly effects it's inhabitants. As well as Williams's descriptions of the effect of nuclear testing and radiation experimentation on the land having devastating consequences on generations of Utah-born women. When the idea of a clearcut divide is replaced by this permeable relationship, valuable land becomes every instance of it, rather than environments that have remained "pure". Implying that all land must be equally protected and preserved for the sake of humanity's health and safety.

Quote Williams Clan of One Breasted Women (Analysis)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 05:14:32 UTC

In the case of Tempest Williams The Clan of One Breasted Women, the interconnected nature of the relationship between environment and inhabitants caused both groups to receive and suffer from the same treatment. As the land was exposed to nuclear testing and the resulting levels of radiation, so were the women living there. From what was done to these women in Utah; the generational loss that was created from the abuse of their environment, a level of kinship was created. Williams writes, "The women couldn't bear it any longer. They were mothers. They had suffered labor pains but always under the promise of birth. The red hot pains beneath the desert promised death only, as each bomb became a stillborn. A contract had been made and broken between human beings and the land. A new contract was being drawn by the women, who understood the fate of the earth as their own."(Williams 288). Rather than the likeness being representative of how a woman exists to give something to a man, like how it is with the nature-culture divide. The likeness becomes an understanding, an interconnection appears between being a woman and being nature. While one is being taken advantage of and abused, the other is right alongside it.

Idea of Land as a Woman (Extra)

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 05:38:56 UTC

Nature has been treated like a woman throughout the history of our nation, even the history of our world. Both by creating a likeness in the passivity of nature, and by creating value in the ideality of nature being pure. Over and over again, the femininity of nature has been perpetuated, which in a sense has normalized the resulting treatment. Environmental protections have to be fought for, just like issues concerning women. These protections and rights are not set in stone, rather they are allowed to be questioned and even eliminated at the behest of the goals and beliefs of those in power.

Works Cited

mcf21006 — 2025-03-07 22:22:18 UTC

Barca, Stefania. Forces of Reproduction: Socialist Ecofeminism and the Global Ecological Crisis. Dec. 2021. Polen Ekoloji, https://www.polenekoloji.org/forces-of-reproduction-socialist-ecofeminism-and-the-global-ecological-crisis/.

The Canadian Press. First National Park. 1 Mar. 2024. Calgary Herald, https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/the-world-got-its-first-national-park-150-years-ago-today-yellowstone.

Carson, Rachel, et al. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962.

Mitchell, Joni. Big Yellow Taxi. 1970. https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/519Z422AR4L._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg.

Thoreau, Henry David, and Adam-Max Tuchinsky. Walking. Tilbury House Publishers, 2017.

Williams, Terry Tempest. Clan of One Breasted Women. Penguin Books, 2021.

Development of a Societal Understanding

mcf21006 — 2025-03-08 00:45:17 UTC

In 1970, eight years after the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell released the song Big Yellow Taxi. This song was an environmental anthem, critiquing the destruction of environments and excessive urban development. It references the paving of "paradise" and putting up a parking lot, as well as farmers' use of DDT. The creation of this song, and others like it, is indicative of a widespread understanding of the harm befalling societies environments. The song has since been recorded by numerous other artists since 1970.

Preservation of National Parks

mcf21006 — 2025-03-08 02:31:47 UTC

Through the priming of transcendentalists calling for preservation of wilderness, many national parks were instated. The first of which, Yellowstone National Park in 1872.