Phd Thesis Jayne Glover FINAL SUBMISSION

“A COMPLEX AND DELICATE WEB”: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SELECTED SPECULATIVE NOVELS BY MARGARET ATWOOD, URSULA K. LE GUIN, DORIS LESSING AND MARGE PIERCY Thesis Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Rhodes University By Jayne Ashleigh Glover December 2007 Abstract This thesis examines selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy. It argues that a specifiable ecological ethic can be traced in their work – an ethic which is explored by them through the tensions between utopian and dystopian discourses. The first part of the thesis begins by theorising the concept of an ecological ethic of respect for the Other through current ecological philosophies, such as those developed by Val Plumwood. Thereafter, it contextualises the novels within the broader field of science fiction, and speculative fiction in particular, arguing that the shift from a critical utopian to a critical dystopian style evinces their changing treatment of this ecological ethic within their work. The remainder of the thesis is divided into two parts, each providing close readings of chosen novels in the light of this argument. Part Two provides a reading of Le Guin’s early Hainish novels, The Left Hand of Darkness , The Word for World is Forest and The Dispossessed , followed by an examination of Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time , Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five , and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale . The third, and final, part of the thesis consists of individual chapters analysing the later speculative novels of each author. Piercy’s He, She and It , Le Guin’s The Telling , and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake are all scrutinised, as are Lessing’s two recent ‘Ifrik’ novels. This thesis shows, then, that speculative fiction is able to realise through fiction many of the ideals of ecological thinkers. Furthermore, the increasing dystopianism of these novels reflects the greater urgency with which the problem of Othering needs to be addressed in the light of the present global ecological crisis. ii Contents: Abstract…………………………….……………………..……………..…………….……ii Contents………………………………………………………….…………………………iii Acknowledgements………………………………………….………….……..……………iv Introduction…………………………………………………..…………………………..…vi Part One: Theory and Context …...…………………………………………………….1 Chapter 1: Ecology, Literature and the Identification of an Ecological Ethic………………2 Chapter 2: An Ecological Ethic in the Context of Speculative Fiction………..…………..39 Part Two: The Early Novels…………………………………………………………...68 Chapter 3: Utopian Impulses: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Early Hainish Novels………...…...…69 Chapter 4: The Shift from Utopia to Dystopia: Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time , Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five , and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale ……….…………111 Part Three: The Later Novels ……………………………………………..…………157 Chapter 5: Piercy’s He, She and It : Searching for an Ecological Ethic in a Technological Dystopia…………………………………………………..….158 Chapter 6: Le Guin’s The Telling : The Intangibility of Hope in Dystopian Worlds…..…186 Chapter 7: Atwood’s Oryx and Crake : Utopia is Dystopia……………………...……….207 Chapter 8: Lessing’s Ifrik Novels: The Erasure of an Ecological Ethic.…………………229 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..…………251 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………...………255 iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation for their generosity in providing me with the scholarship which has made this work possible. The ideas expressed in this thesis, however, are my own and should not necessarily be attributed to the Foundation. I would also like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the many people who have fostered my academic career. Dr Dan Wylie has been a kind and perceptive PhD supervisor, whose care has extended well beyond the call of duty: many thanks must go to him for all he has done for me during my PhD and for numerous years before. While I am grateful to all my colleagues in the Department of English, past and present, I would like to extend individual thanks to Dr Margot Beard for her enlightening comments on my reading of Oryx and Crake , and to Professor Gareth Cornwell for being such an approachable and involved Head of Department. Libraries are the mainstay of any research in English literature and I am very grateful to the staff of the Rhodes University Interlibrary Loans Department and the National English Literary Museum for their prompt, professional and friendly assistance. I am especially indebted to all my friends, both near and far, for their affection and support. Several friends deserve individual mention for their encouragement over the last three years, including those from the Science Faculty across the quad: Carol Simon, Jackie Hill, Kim McAlpine, Nicole Richoux, Tara Booth – thanks for three years of magnificent dinners and wonderful conversations. Special thanks go to Bridget Grogan, Matthew Rumbold and Maureen Ewing for not only reading some of my chapters and giving me valuable critiques of my ideas and analyses, but also for sharing in the laughter and the tears. Finally, I would like to thank Diana Gardner for being an eagle-eyed proof-reader, and for being ever-generous with her time, and with her love. I would also like to thank the Gush family for playing host to me in their wonderful home too many times to mention, and for making me feel part of their family. I am most especially grateful to Paul Gush for believing in me, for being a kindred spirit in so many ways, and for countless acts of kindness and love. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation for my family, especially Brian, my father, and Rosalie for never missing an opportunity to phone and email, and express their love and support for me, so decreasing the distance between Australia and South Africa. I would also like to thank Graham and Margaux for the incredible Sunday dinners, care and support. Graham, in particular, deserves thanks for taking his unstinting generosity to new levels by reading this thesis from beginning to end: you are an inspiring and amazing brother, and treasured friend. This thesis is dedicated to my mother, the late Corlette Glover, who knew what it was to lose oneself in a book. Love does not end with death: your memory is inscribed on my heart. iv To live, that is to say, with thoughtfulness and with an attentiveness, an attunement to both words and the world, and so to acknowledge that, although we make sense of things by way of words, we do not live apart from the world. For culture and environment are held together in a complex and delicate web. – Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth . (23) v Introduction: Ecology and Speculations on the Other We are subjects, and whoever among us treats us as objects is acting inhumanly, wrongly, against nature. And with us, nature, the great Object, its tirelessly burning suns, its turning galaxies and planets, its rocks, seas, fish and ferns and fir trees and little furry animals, all have become, also, subjects. As we are part of them, so they are part of us. Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. We are their consciousness. If we stop looking, the world goes blind. If we cease to speak and listen, the world goes deaf and dumb. If we stop thinking, there is no thought. If we destroy ourselves, we destroy consciousness. – Ursula K. Le Guin, “Science Fiction and Mrs Brown.” (100) Floods. Hurricanes. Tsunamis. Long, parching, bitter droughts. The weather has become more than a peripheral report, it has become news in its own right. More and more frequently climate change has become a matter of public awareness and political contention, as the Kyoto Protocol bears testament. 1 Even ten years ago, would the Nobel Peace Prize have been awarded to environmental activists like Wangari Maathai (in 2004) or former US Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (in 2007)? Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth , has been followed by others: famous stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Queen Latifah have lent their names to ‘green’ issues in films like The 11 th Hour (2007) and Arctic Tale (2007). Similarly, the world-wide “Live Earth” concerts on the seventh of July 2007 brought together a wide variety of international musicians in order to highlight the enormous impact humans have on the natural world. The media tell us how to “Go Green” at the office (Forster 77), what products to use to “green spring clean” our homes (“How To” 128), give us the lay-person’s guide to climate change (Harper 36), and suggest easy “lifestyle changes” to decrease the burden humans place on earth (Seton-Smith 40-44). More bizarrely, magazine covers declaim: “The New Eco Chic” ( Elle May 2007), and “Shop to Heal the World” ( Woman and Home July 2007). Even the London Review of Books has recently devoted a full-length article to ecological damage and global warming (Lanchester 3, 5-9). Ecology, it seems, is science, news, entertainment and popular culture. Yet, the use of ‘ecology’ in such a plethora of contexts begs the question: what does ecology really mean, and what has it come to symbolise? In its original sense, ecology refers to the science of the same name, characterised by the study of ecosystems or the interaction between biotic and abiotic organisms. In the wider academic milieu and 1 See Flannery (223-231) for an overview of the complex ramifications of the Kyoto Protocol. popular culture in general, however, it refers also to philosophies derived from notions of ecology and, sometimes, to environmentalism. In shortened form, ‘eco’ often refers to anything relating to the ‘natural’ world. Within the English academy, for example, ecocriticism has come to mean anything from the study of nature writing to a variety of critical perspectives linked together by their interest in the relationships between humans and non-human organisms, and how these connections are elucidated in literary texts.

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