Everyday Ecologies in the Writings of Georgia Authors Tina Mcelroy Ansa, Melissa Fay Greene, Mary Hood, and Janisse Ray
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 12-15-2016 Everyday Ecologies in the Writings of Georgia Authors Tina McElroy Ansa, Melissa Fay Greene, Mary Hood, and Janisse Ray Rachel G. Wall Georgia Highlands College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Wall, Rachel G., "Everyday Ecologies in the Writings of Georgia Authors Tina McElroy Ansa, Melissa Fay Greene, Mary Hood, and Janisse Ray." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/168 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i EVERYDAY ECOLOGIES IN THE WRITINGS OF GEORGIA AUTHORS: TINA McELROY ANSA, MELISSA FAY GREENE, MARY HOOD, AND JANISSE RAY by RACHEL WALL Under the Direction of Pearl McHaney PhD. ABSTRACT “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson Four Georgia women authors focus on different but equally important components of life: the natural environment of Janisse Ray, relationships in Mary Hood, culture in Tina McElroy Ansa, and sociological history in Melissa Fay Greene. While the focus of the writings by these authors overlap, their various approaches examined together reveal the essential areas where contemporary society has lost its way. All four argue how not to live by pointing out examples of negative actions and the consequences of human carelessness. Through compelling stories, these four authors show us how to preserve and improve our environment, our relationships, our culture, and our history. Ansa, Greene, Hood, and Ray are all from Georgia and write about both Georgia and the world from the perspective of contemporary Georgia. However, these four authors do not defend or deny the atrocities of the South but rather attempt to make reparations through better ideas, improved behavior, and a portrayal of southern places and people that acknowledges the wrongs of present and past and brings healing and growth to humans and to the environment. What unites all four authors is their dual purpose and more importantly a dual positive effect. Readers are entertained, but they are also motivated to act more consciously in their own relationships and in their environments. All four authors promote the theme of nurture and care, often by revealing real people or characters who are careless or who fail to nurture. INDEX WORDS: Tina McElroy Ansa, Melissa Fay Greene, Mary Hood, Janisse Ray ii EVERYDAY ECOLOGIES IN THE WRITINGS OF GEORGIA AUTHORS TINA McELROY ANSA, MELISSA FAY GREENE, MARY HOOD, AND JANISSE RAY by RACHEL WALL A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2016 iii Copyright by Rachel G. Wall 2016 iv EVERYDAY ECOLOGIES IN THE WRITINGS OF GEORGIA AUTHORS TINA McELROY ANSA, MELISSA FAY GREENE, MARY HOOD, AND JANISSE RAY by RACHEL WALL Committee Chair: Pearl McHaney Committee: John Holman Randy Malamud Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2016 iv DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to my family: my husband Kevin, my son Parker, my daughter Elaine, my mother Marlene Goodrum, and my brother Rick Goodrum. I also thank my friends Jennifer Basye, Kathy Bridges, and Connie Watjen. I am grateful for their encouragement, support, and patience during this lengthy project. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the support and encouragement of several Georgia State University professors who helped me in the early and late stages of this project: Dr. Tom McHaney, Dr. Nancy Chase, Dr. John Holman, and Dr. Randy Malamud. I especially wish to thank Dr. Pearl McHaney for all her years of help reading and editing this project and for never giving up on me. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Historical Review ..................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 4 2 CARE VS. CARELESSNESS IN MARY HOOD ............................................................ 18 3 GEORGIA CONNECTIONS AND HUMAN ECOLOGIES IN MELISSA FAY GREENE .......................................................................................................................... 58 4 PEACHES AND OTHER SYMBOLS IN JANISSE RAY ............................................. 82 5 GHOSTS AND GARDENS IN TINA MCELROY ANSA ............................................ 103 6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 128 WORKS CITED........................................................................................................................ 143 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................... 155 Appendix A: Interview With Tina Mcelroy Ansa .......................................................... 155 Appendix B: Interview With Melissa Fay Greene .......................................................... 161 Appendix C: Interview with Mary Hood ......................................................................... 166 Appendix D: Interview With Janisse Ray ....................................................................... 183 1 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Historical Review Almost every book or article on the subject of ecology or ecocriticism alludes to The Machine in the Garden by Leo Marx. This study, published in 1964, examines the history of the “pastoral ideal” in contrast to technology in America. To explain his own study, the author says, “In fact, this is not, strictly speaking, a book about literature; it is about the region of culture where literature, general ideas, and certain products of the collective imagination—we may call them ‘cultural symbols’—meet” (Marx 4). The first chapter establishes its thesis by a specific reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne (not normally considered the Concord, Massachusetts, early ecologist that Thoreau or even Emerson are) sitting in the woods observing nature in preparation to write. The title of this introductory chapter is “Sleepy Hollow 1844,” and the crux of this reference is that “the event” that becomes Hawthorne’s focus in this reflective piece is the interruption of the train going past, which disturbs his musings on nature. It is interesting to note that Hawthorne was considering nature when disturbed by the sound of the train although his contributions to literature are not nature writing or transcendentalism but highly imaginative Romantic fiction. This idea of the connections between all forms of writing, which can all be thwarted and hindered by technology and “progress,” is central to my thesis. Indeed, by 1844 the train had become a symbol not only of technological advances but a “favorite emblem” of “the overall progress of the [human] race” (Marx 27). Hawthorne’s exact lines in question are: “But, hark! there is the whistle of the locomotive – the long shriek, harsh, above all other harshness, for the space of a mile cannot mollify it into harmony” (qtd in Marx 5). Marx asserts the gendered tone voiced by the train itself in contrast to nature: “Most important is the sense of the machine as a sudden, shocking intruder upon a fantasy of idyllic 2 satisfaction. It invariably is associated with crude, masculine aggressiveness in contrast with the tender, feminine, and submissive attitudes traditionally attached to the landscape” (Marx 29). Apparently the other sounds in Concord that day like the sounds of laborers and cow bells did not bother the writer, but the machine disturbed the harmony of nature and the daily work of the community. 1 Leo Marx traces the history of the pastoral image to reveal that Hawthorne was by no means the first to write about this nature/technology dichotomy. As early as ancient Rome, Virgil was writing about landowners politically displaced to the city and thereby viewing a patch of land where they dreamed of returning as idealistic in contrast to his current abode. For example, Virgil wrote of a landowner character who contentedly sits on the land he has had returned to him, and “the woods ‘echo back’ the notes of his pipe” (Marx 23). Marx points out that the echo is often used in the pastoral as “another metaphor of reciprocity. It evokes that sense of relatedness between man and not-man which lends a metaphysical aspect to the mode” (Marx 23). The idealized image of a green valley in contrast to exile from that land is not new then, but the American complexity with the pastoral vs. technology has become something unique, especially since America itself began as a pastoral idea of an unspoiled land, but that green space is now dwindling due to development. For decades many Americans have adopted an attitude of contempt for urban life and have fled to the suburbs. Marx calls this flight “an inchoate longing for a more ‘natural’ environment” and judges “the result that we neglect