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A review by christytidwell
The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution by Carolyn Merchant
2.0
This book was quite simply not what I expected.
If you're looking for a history of conceptions of nature explored from a feminist and environmentalist perspective, this book is great; if, however, you are looking for a more theoretical approach to the interconnections between women and nature (as the subtitle seems to promise), this book isn't quite what you're looking for.
It does definitely deal with those interconnections and gives lots of specific examples of how women and nature have been brought together in rhetoric and imagery of texts from the Greeks to the Scientific Revolution, which makes this a great resource, but it doesn't add much to my depth of understanding of this connection.
Furthermore, much less time was spent elaborating these connections than was spent providing very detailed histories of various practices and schools of thought regarding nature (including ecological practices, community structures, scientific debates). It is an extremely well-researched book--there's no escaping that. It's unfortunate, however, that I am not currently interested in the history of this time period.
Given my lack of interest, I didn't give this book a very high rating, but I do recognize its value in making apparent what might not otherwise be apparent (or would not have been apparent in 1980, when this book was first published): our current views of nature and of scientific practice are not ahistorical or purely rational, as we are taught to think they are. They have been formed through a series of very specific historical instances, instances which are inextricably caught up in gender politics, commerce, and forms of government.
If you're looking for a history of conceptions of nature explored from a feminist and environmentalist perspective, this book is great; if, however, you are looking for a more theoretical approach to the interconnections between women and nature (as the subtitle seems to promise), this book isn't quite what you're looking for.
It does definitely deal with those interconnections and gives lots of specific examples of how women and nature have been brought together in rhetoric and imagery of texts from the Greeks to the Scientific Revolution, which makes this a great resource, but it doesn't add much to my depth of understanding of this connection.
Furthermore, much less time was spent elaborating these connections than was spent providing very detailed histories of various practices and schools of thought regarding nature (including ecological practices, community structures, scientific debates). It is an extremely well-researched book--there's no escaping that. It's unfortunate, however, that I am not currently interested in the history of this time period.
Given my lack of interest, I didn't give this book a very high rating, but I do recognize its value in making apparent what might not otherwise be apparent (or would not have been apparent in 1980, when this book was first published): our current views of nature and of scientific practice are not ahistorical or purely rational, as we are taught to think they are. They have been formed through a series of very specific historical instances, instances which are inextricably caught up in gender politics, commerce, and forms of government.