Woman - Bear Relationships in Canadian Literature and Human - Bear Relationships in Canada

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Zuzana Janoušková

Transformations: Woman - Bear Relationships in Canadian Literature and Human - Bear Relationships in Canada

Master‘s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Kateřina Prajznerová, Ph. D.

2010

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Zuzana Janoušková

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank

Mgr. Kateřina Prajznerová, Ph.D., my supervisor, for her kind and invaluable advice that helped me in the process of writing this thesis and for her kind spirit that guided me throughout my studies.

PhDr. Hana Reichová, Ph.D. for her personal approach and kind heart that helped me finish the thesis.

David for his endless patience.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction ...... 1

1.1 The Western World View ...... 5 1.2 The Organic World View ...... 10

2 Bears in Literature: The Woman – Bear Relationships ...... 16

2.1 The Challenges Elle, Lou and the Girl Have to Face ...... 17 2.2 The Bear: A Friend, a Husband, a Lover, and a Guide ...... 29 2.3 The Women - Transformed ...... 39

3 Bears in Canada: The Human – Bear Relationships ...... 51

3.1 Misconceptions about Bears ...... 51 3.2 Human Treatment of Bears ...... 58 3.3 The Nature of Bears – Future of Bears ...... 71

Conclusion ...... 79

Works Cited ...... 87

Summary ...... 92

Anotace ...... 93

I slept beside a grizzly, each of us unaware of the other, and when I awakened, heard his breath next to mine. Time began for me in that instant when I arose and saw him sleeping there with a salmonberry leaf on his head. No longer alone, all things since are altered by that switch. What else is there to know, each of us asleep and happy? But he awakened just then and barreled off into the brush, toward everything necessary. At that moment everything I knew left me and now a new world has taken place. It comes to the same thing—astonishment that this should happen at all. But I heard him breathe, and saw him make tracks before I could think. To see this thing was not horrendous, and to see it go was not delightful. Nothing meaningful occurred, but time started with a big bear. This is not about anything, but I’m waiting for some thing to come up behind me in the night. I’m like something else now, and every breath I take anticipates that moment I want again and again.

Ken Belford, Lan(d)guage

1 Introduction1

Bears are fascinating animals. Their presence compels one to strain one‘s senses and thus pay more attention to the surroundings. A small sign of their proximity, a footprint or excrement, evokes feelings of terror, or genuine pleasure, or both. To abandon the fear of bears and learn to love and respect them can take a lifetime: ―It was a long journey from being terrified of bears to missing their company. In fact it took me about fourteen years of study,‖ Linda Jo Hunter reveals in the Preface to her book Lonesome for

Bears (vii). A change, be it one that concerns a person, or one that involves a whole society, always takes time. In this thesis I trace a form of transformation in Western society, from the oppression of women and animals to their liberation. Two paths will lead the reader from approximately the sixteenth century to the present time. One path explores the oppression of female characters and/or their relationships to bears as depicted in Douglas

Glover‘s novel Elle, in Marian Engel‘s novel Bear and in several versions of an aboriginal story called ―The Girl Who Married the Bear.‖ The other path will follow the development of the human-bear relationship in the Western society of North America, and particularly in Canada. The goal of this thesis is to demonstrate how the domination of Western men over women and animals (bears) is reflected both in the literature and in the human approach to bears. Specifically, I will set out to prove that cultural constructs such as patriarchy, gender division, etc. have been used with the same result as a penetration, leaving the human mind saturated with certain cultural models in accordance with which the majority of humans behave. At the same time, as the cultural constructs change, human

1 I would like to acknowledge that in my B.A. Thesis I dealt with the theme of conservation of bears in Canadian literature where I analyzed five literary works of which three are also the primary works in this thesis, i.e. Douglas Glover‟s novel Elle, Marian Engel‟s novel Bear and several versions of an aboriginal story called “The Girl Who Married the Bear.” Therefore some citations used in this thesis will correspond to those in the B.A. Thesis. However, since then I have narrowed the topic to a woman-bear relationship in the literary works and carried out further research in this area. At the same time, I also concentrate on the situation of human-bear relationships in Canada which was not the center of my research in the B.A. Thesis. Although my treatment of Canadian bear literature has not changed much, this M.A. thesis contains new work in its understanding bears and perceiving human-bear relationships.

1 behaviour changes. To achieve these aims I will adopt the following approach. On the three literary works, to which the second chapter is devoted, I will demonstrate the domination of Western men over women and how women cope with this. I will also touch on how bears are mistreated in these literary works, a theme that will be discussed in more depth in the third chapter, as I examine the domination of Western men over bears in

Canada and North America. By looking at the human-bear relationship, I also intend to clarify misconceptions about bears that are widespread among the general public, by showing what zoologists and people who have an everyday association with these animals believe to be the nature of bears.

In Canadian bear literature, Douglas Glover‘s novel Elle, Marian Engel‘s novel Bear and versions of the aboriginal story, ―The Girl Who Married the Bear,‖ have a special place. The former two works, inspired by aboriginal stories, counteract Western views that are prevalent in Canadian society and in other Canadian literature that deals with bears. In

The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra compares and contrasts Western science with the philosophies of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, to which he refers as ―Eastern mysticism‖2 (23). He explains the problems with the Western views and beliefs as follows:

Our culture has consistently favoured yang, or masculine, values and

attitudes, and has neglected their complementary yin, or feminine,

counterparts. We have favoured self-assertion over integration, analysis over

synthesis, rational knowledge over intuitive wisdom, science over religion,

competition over cooperation, expansion over conservation, and so on.

2 I use Fritjof Capra‟s references to “Eastern mysticism” as a term that can be interchanged with the term “organic culture.” The term means cultures that see the world as an organic whole of which humans are a part. Fritjof Capra explains that the views he refers to as “Eastern Mysticism” can be found in other philosophies, not just in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism (23). Despite some differences, the experiences of the organic cultures or people who share the same view, such as the aboriginal people of North America, and the experiences of mystics in terms of reaching the stage of a union with the whole or God, if you like, are, from my perspective, the same.

This one-sided development has now reached a highly alarming stage; a

crisis of social, ecological, moral and spiritual dimensions. (15)

The masculine values are so imbedded in Western culture that we are sometimes not even aware of them when reading Canadian bear literature. However, since the dominance of masculine values cannot stretch into infinity, ―we are witnessing…the beginning of a tremendous evolutionary movement that seems to illustrate the ancient Chinese saying that

‗the yang, having reached its climax, retreats in favour of the yin‘‖ (Capra ―Tao‖ 15). In other words, movements of the 1960s and 1970s, such as feminism, environmentalism, or ecofeminism, as well as the aboriginal peoples‘ voice ―all counteract the overemphasis of rational, masculine attitudes and values, and attempt to regain balance between the masculine and feminine sides of human nature‖ (Capra ―Tao‖ 15). I will argue that the same trend can be observed in the three literary works as well as in the gradual transformation of human-bear relationships.

Both the second and the third chapters draw on the introductory subchapters which delineate the main concepts of the Western and organic world views and their differences. The way bears are portrayed in literature in Canada has been influenced by the both world views. Representatives of the Western world view, which is based on Western science and its development over the course of centuries, as well as on ―[t]he philosophy of

Descartes [that] had a tremendous influence on the general Western way of thinking up to the present day‖ (―Tao‖ 27), as Capra claims, treat humans as superior to animals. With regard to human-bear relationships, this has resulted in the actual rapid decline of bear numbers, a mythologizing of bears and many heroic accounts of bear-killing in literature.

Those sharing the organic3 world view which, as will be explained in more detail below, reveres all living organisms and sees the Earth as one of such an organism, aim to protect living species, do not see bears as a threat but rather as welcome inhabitants and important

3 For an explanation of what I mean by “organic” view or “organic culture” please see footnote no.1.

3 markers of a healthy habitat. Similarly to the yin and yang, which are not opposites with a clear boundary drawn between them as they are oftentimes portrayed, but parts of one whole, the two worldviews will not be presented as a dualism. They are two possible ways of looking at the world and denote a shift in which the Western world view is currently retreating in favour of the organic world view.

The literary works discussed in the second chapter share a common feature - central female characters who oppose established conventions and rules in the societies in which they live. In Elle and Bear, the Western world view is represented by both female and male characters, but once the female characters meet bears and spend some time away from the source of Western thinking, from the society they grew up in, they become aware of the weaknesses of that view. Then, I develop the female relationships with bears, who, to a certain degree, substitute men. Since both women and bears are seen from a Western perspective as inferior to men, they become equal partners in relation to males. Moreover, since in the organic view everything has the same value, the woman-bear relationship becomes more important for the female characters than the one they had with the dominating men. In other words, the bear becomes a friend, a lover, a husband, and a guide in the process of showing the female characters an alternative approach to the

Western one. The situation of the Girl is slightly different to Elle and Lou. Rather than contrasting an organic world view with a Western one, the story depicts the problematic social relationships, and relationships that humans have with animals. Even though the story originates from people who are organic in their perception of the world, its theme explores the importance of respect towards all living beings. In the last part of the second chapter, I will show how the relationships these female characters form with bears, and the sojourn away from their native societies, transform them. In case of Elle and the Girl, upon their return, they become outcasts in the societies. In Lou‘s case the reader learns that she is ready to start a new life when she returns to Toronto. Both characters, however, no

4 longer participate or intend to participate in spreading the Western world view, but to seek to balance the Western view with the organic one.

The third chapter is devoted to human – bear relationships and how they have developed in connection to the Western and the organic world views. In the first part of the chapter I present misconceptions about bears, how these have been generated and how they influence public attitudes towards bears. I discuss the portrayal of bears both as cuddly animals and as vicious beasts. In connection to the image of ferocious beasts, I will examine three practices of treating bears employed in Europe and North America – training of so-called dancing bears, bear-baiting, and hunting. In the second part of the third chapter I present these three practices as forms of male domination over bears.

Subsequently, the difference between the Western approach and the organic approach to hunting, research and acquiring knowledge about bears in general is presented. In the concluding part of the third chapter I attempt to refute some misconceptions about bears by providing examples of bear behaviour, and by comparing and contrasting humans and bears in terms of physiology and social behaviour, in hope of creating an alternative understanding of the nature of bears.

1.1 The Western World View

At the heart of the Western world view lie several concepts and creeds which I am going to present briefly in this subchapter. Values such as ―[h]umans are separate from nature,‖ ―[h]uman societies naturally organise themselves hierarchically, and must do,‖

―[s]ceince and technology can solve environmental problems, so we must go on perfecting them,‖ and ―Economic growth of any kind is good and it can go on forever. It need not harm the environment‖ are exemplary of conventional values in Western society (Pepper

11-12). These values have permeated into the society to such a degree that not only nature,

5 science and technology, but also economics and politics are influenced by Newtonian mechanics, a Baconian belief in human power over nature, and Cartesian dualism, among others. In the following paragraphs, I introduce Cartesian dualism, the development of

Western science and touch upon the topic of progress, patriarchy and industrial capitalism.

In his book The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra ascribes the beginnings of dualistic thinking typical of Western society to ―the Elatic school, which assumed a Divine Principle standing above all gods and men‖ (―Tao‖ 25). The notion was developed by the Greek atomists who ―drew a clear line between spirit and matter, picturing matter as being made of several ‗basic building blocks‘ […] this image became an essential element of Western thought, of the dualism between mind and matter, between body and soul‖ (Capra ―Tao‖

26). It was not until the Renaissance that men became interested in the connection between nature and modern science. The dualism of spirit and matter in Western philosophy was further anchored by René Descartes.4 Descartes not only believed that animals and human bodies were only mere machines (Pepper 140), but by pronouncing his famous sentence

‗Cogito ergo sum‘ he ―allowed scientists to treat matter as dead and completely separate from themselves, and to see the material world as a multitude of different objects assembled into a huge machine‖ (Capra ―Tao‖ 27). The perceived dualism between mind and matter led to a conscious split between the human ego and the body. This is, of course, projected on the way one looks at the outer world. ―This inner fragmentation mirrors our view of the world outside which is seen as a multitude of separate objects and events‖

(Capra ―Tao‖ 28). Therefore, it necessarily must have an impact on the way one behaves towards the environment. There are several examples of the fact that ―[t]he natural environment is treated as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups‖ (Capra ―Tao‖ 28). An example of the limits of such a reductionist

4 To read more on Cartesian dualism please see David Pepper‟s Modern Environmentalism 140-42 and Fritjof Capra‟s The Tao of Physics 27-28.

6 approach will be discussed in the third chapter. The creation of dualism, mind-matter, and human-nature have led to further justification of the exploitation of nature.

Francis Bacon, a contemporary of René Descartes, ―asserted the creed that scientific knowledge equals power over nature‖ (Pepper 143). He saw nature as a means for enhancing one‘s standard of living, but he also believed that various problems could be solved by progress in science. In an entry called ―Nature – Nature during the Scientific

Revolution‖ in the Science Encyclopedia one can read of Bacon‘s opinion on science:

Science, he realized, was power—power over the natural world. And that

power could lead human beings to a second world fashioned according to

their wants and desires. Much of the utopian character of our own time, the

belief that through the advance of theoretical knowledge and its

technological application all problems might be solved, was first articulated

by Bacon.

Bacon‘s influence on the contemporary belief that nature could be utilised for human or societal benefit can be seen, for instance, in the Grizzly Bear Research project at the

College for Veterinary Study at Washington State University. A bear centre has been established on the premises of the University, where twelve bears in total are kept. Some are bred from cubs and trained to work with the researchers, Lynne Nelson and Charlie

Robbins. One can learn on the College of Veterinary Medicine website that ―Dr. Nelson‘s work focuses on cardiac changes in bears during hibernation. ‗The anatomy of a grizzly bear is close to that of a human,‘ said Nelson. ‗If we can learn how the heart recovers from hibernation, then we may unlock secrets that will help human patients suffering from heart disease‘‖ (Grizzly). The bear centre is not run just for the sake of the bears (some were placed there because they have become nuisance bears thanks to humans), or in order to learn from them how to protect them, but because they are ―perfect research subjects‖ to

―shed light on human heart disease, and perhaps lead to new treatments‖ as Sandi

Doughton writes in her article for The Seattle Times. Even in a ―Status Report and

Conservation Action Plan: Bears‖ published by the International Union for Conservation Nature and edited by Christopher Servheen, Stephen Herrero, and Bernard Peyton Herrero, a renowned specialist and conservationist cites as one of the reasons why we should conserve bears ―[t]he scientific and medical values of bears‖ (5). Apart from providing insights into heart disease it has been suggested that bears will be useful in research on osteoporosis and kidney disease, and may also help design programs for astronauts preparing for travels to space (5). Bacon, as well as Descartes, also influenced the way the

Western society looked at the aboriginal people of North America.

Capra explains that ―[t]he fragmented view,‖ that all matter can be divided into smaller parts, ―is further expanded to society, which is split into different nations, races, religious and political groups‖ (―Tao‖ 28). This led to the repudiation of nations and cultures that were based on the organic, i.e. holistic, world view, such as the aboriginal people of North America. Gregory says in The History of Science and Religion in the Western

Tradition: An Encyclopedia that according to Büchner, who wrote Force and Matter in 1855,

―supernatural knowledge was impossible because it was inaccessible to the senses. There was no force without matter and no matter without force. Immaterial entities like the human soul simply did not exist‖ (180). This view has contributed to the marginalisation of the knowledge of aboriginal peoples ignored due to its perceived irrationality. In an entry entitled ―Colonialism and Science‖ in the Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and

Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, Michal Adas explains:

The predominance of … the Baconian or mechanistic strain of scientific

thinking in European colonial enterprises was of special importance. It

meant that other options, such as the organic approach to nature and the

cosmos, which might have been more compatible with and accommodating

toward non-Western epistemologies, were excluded or relegated to marginal

roles in this critical area of interaction between European and non-Western

peoples and cultures. (216)

Refusing to accept any other than the technocratic world views, Eurocentric behaviour towards the aboriginal peoples has led to degrading them to ―savages,‖ and to the stereotyping of them within this role. In connection to aboriginal oral stories, that are a source of valuable knowledge, Michael Adas says that ―[e]thnologists studied ‗aboriginal‘ beliefs and traditions for their folkloric or antiquarian value, not because they have anything to teach the colonizers about the ecology or topography of the lands they occupied, much less because they might stimulate major modifications in European understandings of the natural world‖ (217). The opinion that ―[l]ogical rational thought is more valid and reliable than what our emotions and intuitions tell us. You can only trust facts and scientific evidence‖ (Pepper 11) is still prevalent among the conventional values of society today. Yet another concept that has been created over the centuries and is at the heart of contemporary social values is capitalism. The movement from subsistence needs to the system of production goes hand in hand with the loss of the land owned by many people to the formation of an elite that owns the majority of the land (Pepper 159-60).

Thus, ―in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries large amounts of heath and forest were destroyed, and a dispossessed urban proletariat was created, ready to serve the emerging factory system necessary to industrial capitalism‖ (Pepper 160). This elitist system represented a fulfillment of Bacon‘s desire to enhance human status over nature, but in practice included only a select number of humans. C.S. Lewis says: ―‗What we call Man‘s power over nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with nature as its instrument‘‖ (qtd. in Pepper 160). In other words, not only that capitalism can be perceived as a cause of human alienation from nature, but it can also be linked with the patriarchal system under which predominantly white men have dominated women and people of colour and used nature as a justification for such domination. As a result, we live

9 in a society that is run by a group of privileged men, a society that values material wealth over character qualities, and in which individual happiness is derived from material possessions.

Since the term patriarchy has been mentioned, I need to explain how it is used in this thesis. ―Patriarchy is a historic creation formed by men and women in a process which took nearly 2500 years to its completion,‖ (210) says Gerda Lerner in The Creation of

Patriarchy. This statement by Lerner highlights that patriarchy is not a solely male construct as it is oftentimes presented and understood. My understanding of patriarchy is close to that of Cathleen and Colleen McGiure, presented in their essay ―Ecofeminist Visions,‖ published on a website called Eve Online: Ecofeminist Visions Emerging. They describe patriarchy as ―a particular way of thinking whose practitioners can be of any gender.‖ It is a way of thinking that agrees with male domination over women, and with male control of society, which supports inequality.

The Western world view and the influences that shaped it, discussed in the introduction, are followed by an introduction of an alternative world view, i.e. the organic one.

1.2 The Organic World View

The poetry of Ken Belford is full of images of animals and critiques of human behaviour towards them. He sees animals and ―the familiar / faces in the forest- / in the lichens and / moss, on the fallen / logs and snags‖ (73), simply everywhere. In my view, he represents one of those Westerners who see the world through ―organic‖ eyes. Those who share the organic world view see the Earth as a living organism, believe in the intrinsic value of nature, reject dualisms such as nature-culture, women-men, spirit-matter, and last but not least, see the world from a holistic perspective.

The faces of the forest in Ken Belford‘s poem are, like human faces, an inseparable part of one reality like in the Haida tradition in which ―every protruding cape, rock, and cliff, island or otherwise prominent landmark invited beliefs in its being inhabited by supernatural beings and spirits who could also appear in animal and human shape‖

(Boelscher 19). The aboriginal people of North America are labelled animistic by the

Western world, i.e. they attribute living souls to plants, inanimate objects and natural phenomena (Animism). However, if one abandons the Eurocentric perspective influenced by the Western world view, and attempts to see the world through ―organic‖ eyes, then animism or the supernatural becomes a common and everyday reality of life. Bringhurst reminds us that some poets, and the Haida, look at sprits and: ―the earth, the sea, the forest and the sky, and nearly everything that lives in all these realms,‖ and that this look is reciprocated (Bringhurst, ―A Story‖ 56). Thus, the spirits, the soil, the rocks, etc. return the look and watch and observe humans. In other words, the human and the ―other worlds‖

(natural and supernatural5), as Marianne Boelscher calls them, are ―conceived of as merged, as different aspects of the same entity‖ (Boelscher 167).6 Interactions among nature, spirits and humans, such as looking at one another, is crucial. In the entry in the Encyclopaedia of the

History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures entitled ―Environment and

Nature: Aboriginal North America,‖ Annie L. Booth speaks of a vital dialogue among nature, spirits and humans, of the fact that this system of mutual relationships, that are based on partnership rather than domination over others, results in respecting one another.

It also leads to considering the potential threatening influences of one‘s deeds over the others, as Booth explains: ―One does not act in isolation, but must act with respect towards

5 The “supernatural” is a Western construct. Throughout the thesis I avoid the word “supernatural” because its conventional sense is something that is not natural. For organic world view societies, nothing “unnatural” or “supernatural” exists. Nature, humans and spirits are all part of one world. 6 What I mention in the thesis is only a snippet of the whole system which is elaborate and concerns every aspect of one‟s life. To learn more see Bringhurst‟s trilogy or Marianne Boelscher.

11 the others with whom one shares the universe‖ (302). This holistic approach and the reductionist approach occupy opposite ends of an untied string.

An inherent concept within holism is the primacy of interconnectedness. In the organic world view, the dualistic world of Descartes is criticized for creating the category of

‗the other‘ that is exploited: ―It […] creates imbalanced power relationships by artificially dividing entities in half, according one side of the equation greater worth over the other.

These dichotomies give rise to an ‗other‘ which is then demonized and discriminated against,‖ explain ecofeminists Cathleen and Colleen McGuire in their essay ―Ecofeminist

Visions‖ published on the Eve Online website. By contrast, rather than defining the world in opposites, an organic world view defines all things in terms of how they are interconnected.

Even though they convey the same message as Capra, the McGuires implement a different rhetoric to clarify how male-female dualism is understood by the organic world view, in this case, particularly by ecofeminists: ―[t]he concept of ‗female‘ and ‗male,‘ […] are social constructions and not innate qualities. Both men and women share in the pool of human character traits, some of which came to be categorized as ‗female‘ and ‗male‘‖. The same is true of the construct of nature-culture and spirit-matter dichotomies; they are only social constructions. In other words, each person, each plant and each rock has both yin and yang

/ female and male characteristics, that exist in a dynamic relationship.

Besides creating the category of ―the other‖ that serves as a justification for exploitation, language is another tool for discrimination by those who hold a Western world view. Therefore, it is important to consider the differences described in the literature7 of cultures with the Western world view and those that share the organic world view. At the time of the first European arrivals to the Americas and at the time when the novel Elle is set, the printing press had just been introduced in Europe. In contrast, the aboriginal people of North America kept their knowledge mostly in oral stories. As Helaine

7 I use the word “literature” for the aboriginal story as well.

Selin says: ―Most other cultures created science and technology in response to their needs, so had no use of constant improvements.‖ She adds: ―It is only in our time that this has worked the other way: that we create needs to meet the advancing technology‖ (Selin xvii).

At the time anthropologists were collecting data on aboriginal people in North America by listening to their stories, two discrepancies occurred. Firstly, despite the extensive knowledge of the aboriginal people, they were perceived as naïve. Toelken, quoted in

Walter J. Ong‘s Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, explains why:

Persons who have interiorized writing not only write but also speak

literately, which is to say they organize, to varying degrees, even their oral

expression in thought patterns and verbal patterns that they would not

know of unless they could write. Because it does not follow these patterns,

literates have considered oral organization of thought naïve. Oral thinking,

however, can be quite sophisticated and in its own way reflective. Navaho

narrators of Navaho folkloric animal stories can provide elaborate

explanations of the various implications of the stories for an understanding

of complex matters in human life from the physiological to the

psychological and moral, and are perfectly aware of such things as physical

inconsistencies (for example, coyotes with amber balls for eyes) and the

need to interpret elements in the stories symbolically. (156)

Mentioning the difference between oral and written literature and culture and the kinds of information each provides is an important introduction to the third chapter of the thesis which deals with the bear-human relationship and the portrayal of bears.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that the organic world view has not disappeared with the scientific revolution only to be rediscovered in the twentieth century. To some, it has consistently remained a primary view of the world, even though – due to socio- cultural-scientific changes – being pushed to the margins. Simultaneously with the

13 development in science and the resulting destruction of nature and exploitation of the earth, the organic world view has continued to develop. It reflects humanity‘s irresponsible behaviour towards the earth. As early as the mid-seventeenth century ―‗awareness of the ecological price of capitalism started to grow into a fluffy fledged theory about the natural resources of the earth and the need for conservation,‘‖ according to Grove (qtd. in Pepper

168). Darwin‘s contribution to science, through the publication of his The Origin of Species in

1859, was also an important contribution to the organic world view, because it showed that

―humans constituted just one of many species on Earth – no more, no less,‖ and that ―all species were linked intimately by a ‗web of life‘‖ (Pepper 180). Yet another nineteenth century scholar, Ernst Haeckel, is worth mentioning. He coined the term ‗ecology‘ and his opinions of concepts such as dualism and human-animal relationships are central to the modern ecocentrism: ―Heckel very much opposed the dualism of the mind-body split in classical science, and by implication the human-nature, emotional-rational dualism. […]

Haeckel also argued for equality between animals and humans‖ (Pepper 185, italics in the original). Not only men, but also women have contributed to the continued evolution and shaping of the organic world view. In the sixth chapter of Earthcare: Women and the

Environment, Merchant provides an overview of conservation movements and the efforts by women in the United States. In the early twentieth century several women, such as Lovell

White, Lydia Adams-Williams, and Mabel Osgood Wright, responded to the damages to the natural environment being done by industry. In so doing, they became pioneers of the conservation of forests, watersheds, endangered species, and, most importantly, sought legal changes to ensure the protection of some areas. As one can see, the organic world view has been fed a steady diet of efforts and research through the three-to-four-hundred- year period of the domination of the Western world view. In the following chapter, I will concentrate on three female characters, two of whom are of European origin, and their struggle with the organic and the Western world views that affect them.

2 Bears in Literature: The Woman – Bear Relationships

What I like to think of as the ethics of the organic world view is the partnership ethic defined by Carolyn Merchant: ―Just as human partners, regardless of sex, race, or class must give each other space, time and care, allowing each other to grow and develop individually within supportive nondominating relationships, so humans must give nonhuman nature space, time, and care, allowing it to reproduce, evolve, and respond to human actions‖ (Merchant 8). For those with the organic world view, Merchant‘s partnership society is an ideal model of a society towards which humanity should be heading. To some, such concept is natural, but it does not always work and has not always worked in the Western society because of the prevalence of the Western world view.

In Elle and Bear patriarchy is explored by the authors through the experiences of some of the characters. Elle and Lou, two female characters, are caught in the patriarchal systems which do not suit them. Why and what they need to face will be the central theme in the following subchapter. The Girl, a character in the story of the aboriginal people of

North America, is not challenged by the patriarchal system, but the story illustrates how difficult human-human and animal-human relationships can be. Then I move to an analysis of how Elle and Lou come to grips with patriarchal society, and how the Girl is punished for her behaviour and learns her lesson. Interestingly, in the three literary pieces in question, the female characters are joined by bears that seem to be guiding them and helping them with their quest. The role of the bear in each of the stories will also be developed in the second subchapter. The third and final subchapters will explore the fates of the female characters and their bear companions.

2.1 The Challenges Elle, Lou and the Girl Have to Face

―What Do You Do with a Headstrong Girl? Always a difficult question,‖ (Glover

29) admits Elle, the narrator, and mentions the practices of sixteenth-century Europe: ―Kill her, maim her, amputate limbs, pour acid over her face, put out her eyes, shave her head, put her in a brothel or a nunnery, or simply get her pregnant and marry her. Better yet, maroon her on a deserted island lest she spread the contagion of discontent to other girls or even men, though men are generally impervious […] Forget her‖ (Glover 29). The sixteenth century French society that Elle grows up in does not tolerate eccentricity or deviation from convention, especially if it concerns a girl or a woman. Even at the time the character of Lou was created (the 1970s), women who did not want to conform to social expectations were considered eccentric and experienced difficulties in their lives. This situation continues to the present day in some societies. Elle‘s father, who brings her up, does not pay attention to her (12), therefore she does whatever a young girl can do to catch a parent‘s attention – she is naughty, she tries his patience. This is interpreted by her father as ―disobedient temperament […] libidinous and bookish nature,‖ and, of course, Elle‘s child, the disgrace of the family who has ―a tendency to pull up his little skirts and show his impudent cock to the ladies of the house,‖ and who is brought up by the servants in secret is the last straw (30). This is, in brief, how the nineteen-year-old Elle ends up on the voyage to the New World under the command of the General, her father‘s cousin.

Given the attitude of men to women, it is not surprising that Elle‘s fate is to be abandoned by the General on a deserted island. Elle tells the reader what she learns from the General:

[O]n account of my grievous sin, my chronic recidivism and impenitence,…

which our journey has done nothing to mitigate […] love bids him now

devise some chastisement […] worthy of my rank and the severity of my

sin, which is all the more sinful because of that rank […] to endow me with

[…] a duchy […] wherein I may purify my soul of its noxious vagrancy. (26-

27)

The duchy the General has in mind is the deserted Isle des Démons. The so-called

―grievous sin‖ is having sex with her lover Richard, a tennis player.

Accompanied by her lover and her ―nurse and co-conspirator Bastienne‖ (25), Elle lands on an island that will bring her liberation. She does not know it yet, though. ―I cannot foresee the bear. The bear is far in the future‖ (37), explains Elle. The role of the bear will be delineated in the following subchapters; for now suffice it to say that its role is an inseparable part of Elle‘s liberation process. Full of emotions and with plenty of time to think, having no experience with other cultures, Elle gradually realizes that there is something wrong with the society and culture she comes from: ―I am horribly mixed up, as

I think most humans are‖ (59). She becomes aware of male domination: ―Like many women, I know what I don‘t know – a duplicity of mental operation caused by living in a world run by men‖ (61). She also depicts her fits of anger that she relieves on seabirds‘ heads: ―Sometimes I go out there and whack a few even when we have no need. It is cruel,

I shall be punished for it, but, on the whole, things have not been going well, and someone needs to suffer‖ (49). This behaviour has been acquired from her father who ―whipped me till I thought I would die‖ (12), says Elle. In other words, in this case, Elle simply copies her father‘s behaviour. However, although Elle even enjoyed watching public executions in

France (83), she changes her behaviour once she becomes acquainted with the inhabitants of the New World and with bears. Before she meets anyone on the Island and after both her companions die, Elle devotes some of her time to reading the Bible and to questioning the presence of God.

When she realizes she is pregnant, Elle thinks of the situation she has come to: ―I have a pain in my belly, possibly incipient starvation but perhaps something else entirely. If

Richard is the new Adam then I am the new Eve – expelled from the garden (the General‘s

18 ship, miniature of my civilization) into the world beyond (read wilderness) for my sin (we all have much to be guilty for)‖ (40). Elle‘s comparison of her situation to that of Eve and the dichotomies she draws – of the Garden versus the world beyond, civilization versus the wilderness – are expressions of the Judeo-Christian influenced Western interpretation8 of the Fall from the Garden. Ecofeminists offer a new reading of ―the story of the Garden of

Eden‖ (Eisler 27). They say that the story of the Garden of Eden is based on an agricultural story,9 though Eisler and Merchant refer to a different source (Eisler speaks of

Neolithic cultures, Merchant of a Penobscot Indian story). Merchant points out that the roles of woman and nature in the Judeo-Christian as opposed to the agricultural story are diametrically diverse. In the Judeo-Christian reading, woman causes the fall and nature becomes impoverished as a result, while men are depicted as ―saviours, who through their own agricultural labor have the capacity to re-create the lost garden on earth‖ (Merchant

28). In contrast, in the agricultural story woman shows men and women how to grow vegetables and harvest them (to pick apples in the case of Eve), and so with the help of a woman, a deserted place, the Earth, becomes a garden. Therefore while the Judeo-Christian interpretation ends pessimistically, the agricultural story‘s end is optimistic, offering hope and life (Merchant 27-28). On the one hand, Elle influenced by the Judeo-Christian version, wonders ―how different a god,‖ the one ―the savages call […] Cudragny, […] is from ours‖ (45, italics in the original). She is not familiar with aboriginal practices and views, apart from what she has read about them from Mr Cartier, another character in the novel, who represents the real Jacques Cartier. The place she ended up at - the wilderness – is according to her a ―place without God or correction, with no knowledge of philosophy, science, cookery of the arts, including the art of love‖ (38). On the other hand, from the

8 This interpretation suggests that “our fall from paradise is an allegory of God‟s punishment of man – and particularly woman – for the sin of disobeying the command not to eat from the tree of knowledge” (Eisler 27). It also suggests that paradise is forever lost but that it is our nature to keep trying to return to the state of paradise in our lives. 9 My explanation of the story of the Garden of Eden from an ecofeminist perspective is very brief. For a detailed analysis consult Carolyn Merchant‟s Earthcare: Women and the Environment 27-56.

19 male perspective (her father‘s and the General‘s), Elle is also seen as wild since she does not conform to male dominance. Because the males have failed to tame her, they decide to get rid of her.

Elle‘s one-sided picture that the readers get of the General and other male characters does not give a good account of them. ―I swear it to myself, […] I will hunt the

General down (or walk over to his house, whichever is easier), and slaughter him, preferably in some diabolically uncomfortable manner,‖ she reveals (83). The General is portrayed as follows: ―A strip of black beard sprouts beneath his lower lip. He looks cruel, austere and pleased with himself, like a man who encounters in the world all the evil he expected to find and is sure of his throne in Heaven‖ (27). His personality is not depicted kindly: ―He has a dark, greedy, conspiratorial, disputatious, hair-splitting Protestant soul.

Everyone is his enemy. He is always right – like all Protestants, he has transferred God‘s will from the Church to his own heart‖ (72). Not only when he abandons Elle on the Isle of Demons, but also another incident shows the General‘s indifference to women or even superiority over them: ―A young woman […] sick with consumption, also pregnant, steals a loaf of bread. The General orders her shot. An arquebus at close range leaves a hole the size of a cannon ball‖ (76). Similarly, Elle‘s father does not have a high opinion of women.

Elle says: ―my father hardly bears mentioning, having taken to heart Aquinas‘s teaching on marriage: that on the whole it is a good thing for a man to stay married because he is more rational than the mother and thus more capable of educating the children (also stronger and more capable of inflicting punishment)‖ (39).

Carolyn Merchant explores at length how the Judeo-Christian interpretation of the

Garden of Eden story has influenced the construction of the category of ―women‖ as inferior within Western culture. In order to explain the dichotomies nature versus culture,

20 women versus men, passive versus active, she distinguishes three forms of Eve10 and

Adam. ―As original Eve, nature is virgin, pure, and light – land […] having the potential for development,‖ while ―[o]riginal Adam is the image of God as creator, initial agent, activity‖

(32). Then, there is the fallen Eve and Adam. As a fallen Eve, ―nature is disorderly and chaotic; a wilderness, wasteland, or desert requiring improvement‖ and ―[f]allen Adam appears as the agent of earthly transformation, the hero who redeems the fallen land‖ (32).

And finally, ―[a]s mother Eve, nature is an improved garden; a nurturing earth bearing fruit; a ripened ovary; maturity‖ and ―[f]ather Adam is the image of God as patriarch, law, and rule – the model for the kingdom and state‖ (32). This model, according to Merchant, served as an ―ideology and legitimation for settlement of the New World‖ (33). Elle represents the fallen Eve; in her lust and disobedience she is disorderly. Similarly, bears in the view of the male characters of European origin represent wilderness. Both women and bears need to be (and were) tamed or subjugated by men; women, by having the role of a mother whose job is to bear children, bring them up and look after the household - as will be discussed further on when analyzing the character Lou - and bears, the wild and dangerous creatures, by shooting and hunting them down.

Aside from what Merchant calls the ―Christian recovery project‖ delineated above, she refers to ―mechanistic science and laissez faire capitalism‖ in relation to the story of the

Garden of Eden and the recovery from the fall (31, italics in the original). She relates the

―Baconian-Cartesian-Newtonian project‖ to mechanistic science and asserts that it ―is premised on the power of technology to subdue and dominate nature, on the certainty of mathematical law, and on the unification of natural laws into a single framework of explanation‖ (Merchant 31). Similarly, in her essay called ―Dismantling Oppression: An

Analysis of the Connection between Women and Animals‖ published in Greta Gaard‘s

Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, Lori Gruen explains that ―[o]bjective scientists rely on

10 Here, Eve is equalled with nature.

21 an epistemology that requires detachment and distance. This detachment serves as justification for the division between active pursuer of knowledge and passive object of investigation, and establishes the power of the former over the latter‖ (64). This is demonstrated in the scene when Mr Cartier examines Elle after her return from the New

World: ―there are strange symptoms I cannot account for, grunts you make in your sleep, the extra nipples, the abundant body hair, the over-development of toe- and fingernails‖

(174), and Elle, the object of the research, adds: ―He said someone had seen me walking the deck at night with fire coming out of my mouth and black fur covering my body, but no doubt this was a fancy suggested by the oddness of my behaviour and my affection for the real bear‖ (175). Since she is perceived as an object that does not have an inner value, her rejection of such a gossip is not considered valid and raises even further questions.

―Alas, my legend already grows at the expense of my true story. Even a celebrated writer like F., with his insatiable curiosity, cannot resist the impulse to embellish, expand and invent‖ (Glover 181), and ―wishes to know if I slept with a bear‖ (178), says Elle.

Four hundred years later Western scientific research strategies and methods that were just emerging in the sixteenth century have changed in some respects, and not in others. In terms of distancing oneself from the research object, even if it is a living creature, in order to carry out experiments methods have changed little. If one wondered what ―HLA-A1 - Model #966‖ is, it is a serial number of a special breed of mouse that is sold by a company called Taconic (Taconic). These mice are bred purely for scientific purposes and are referred to on the company website as ―models,‖ as if one were dealing with the latest car or cell phone. And in this instance, one really is dealing with the latest

―model‖ of a mouse because it is subject to property and patent rights and cannot ―be bred except to obtain embryos or fetuses required for research purposes‖ (Taconic). Lori Gruen compares the market for laboratory animals to the slave trade in the United States and to the historic markets for women to experiments carried out by the Nazis (66). In such cases

22 animals and humans are reduced to simple objects of research. On the other hand, breathtaking steps forward have been taken in other parts of research. For instance in physics, Newtonian mechanics and the Baconian legacy, although still popular among many scientists, have been surpassed by the theories of relativity, quantum theory and chaos theory. These theories have proven some of the claims of the proponents of the organic world view, such as the interconnectedness of all things within a system. Nevertheless, in the second half of the twentieth century, acceptance of these theories along with any demonstrable shift in people‘s thinking towards more organic world view is happening only slowly.

That is also why, similarly to Elle, Lou, the main character in Marian Engel‘s Bear, suffers from feelings of displacement in the twentieth century society. The female characters of Marian Engel, including Lou who defies conventions, are projections of the issues Marian Engel dealt with in her own life. The post-WWII period in Canada pressured women to be neat housekeepers on the one hand, and, on the other hand, witnessed substantial steps towards women‘s liberation. According to Verduyn, Engel was dissatisfied with the fact that ―[c]hurch, school, family, and society collaborated in processing packaging women who would assume conventional postwar roles as wives, mothers, and housekeepers‖ and depicts such a woman as a ―woman who ‗fits well into a society where everyone is quiet and polite and burning with rage underneath‘‖ (30). Engel detested housework and was never good at it. ―Indeed, housework becomes a metaphor for excessive tidiness and obsessive cleanliness in more than the household. It evokes being

‗prim and proper‘ and repressed and suppressed in all areas of life‖ (Verduyn 31). This is what Engel rebelled against. Verduyn confirms: ―she resisted the social forces by which girls and women of her milieu became consumed with being slim and pretty, neat and tidy

– Cinderellas in the kitchen waiting for their prince to come and then live happily ever after‖ (33). Curling her hair and dressing up was nothing to satisfy Engel: ―her hair was

23 defiantly straight, she tended towards embonpoint, and, in any event, she wanted to be a writer‖ (Verduyn 33, italics in the original). This is clearly seen in the Lou character. In terms of making herself pretty and waiting for her prince, Lou seems to fail. Her description does not evoke a conventionally appealing image for males: ―In the winter, she lived like a mole […] her arms were slug-pale […] her fingerprints grained with old, old ink…her eyes would no longer focus in the light‖ (11-12). When the Director comes to tell

Lou she will go up north to Cary Island to carry out research, he drops a comment: ―[t]he change will do you good‖ (13), as if she needed to pull herself together and work on her appearance.

Similarly to the male characters in Douglas Glover‘s Elle, the male characters in Bear are portrayed as dominating women. Homer (a man who supplies Lou with groceries on the island and serves as a contact person in the area for her) is depicted as a common man of that time with traditional expectations of, and prejudices towards, women. When he comes to help carry some boxes from the basement of the Pennarth, he observes that Lou is not used to housekeeping much: ―‗You‘re not that kind of woman, are you?‘…

‗Housekeeping first,‘‖ he asks and gets an immediate answer from Lou: ―‗Hell, no,

Homer‘‖ (105). This is partly what leads him to think that Lou, as a woman from a city, is up for no-commitment sex. The other reasons for this assumption appear to be that Lou works alone in her research on the island and has a drink with Homer. He explains: ―‗You like to drink, I thought, well, she probably likes to screw and what‘s all that wrong with it?

You‘re a modern woman after all‘‖ (109). This, but also Homer‘s standpoints towards his wife and marriage, take Lou aback. Homer believes that he has a right to sleep with other women. ―‗Babs and I … twenty-four years. If a guy can‘t …‘‖ says Homer, but when Lou argues that with such an approach, his wife has the same right, Homer responds, offended:

―‗I‘d kill her‘‖ (107). Homer‘s opinion of superiority over his wife is obvious. Even more, he discredits his wife‘s feelings by saying: ―‗She don‘t care if I‘m pulling trunks upstairs or

24 screwing you‘‖ (109), even though Lou clearly overhears his wife‘s complaints about him visiting Lou. Lou is not sure of herself, of her identity as a woman and as a human being.

Part of her feels indignant over Homer‘s views of her as a whore, but part of her feels like inviting Homer to stay overnight and imagines how skilful a sexual partner he would be.

This is, perhaps, caused by the fact that ―[t]he sixties generation also challenged how people organized and lived their personal lives; it challenged traditional notions of sex, family life, and marriage, and advocated new types of relationships and new ways of thinking about personal lives‖ (Adamson 40). I will discuss briefly the liberation in sexual relationships in the next chapter in connection to Lou and her relationship with the bear, but now I wish to comment on the liberation in education.

The 1960s are said to have brought liberation in terms of offering education for women on the University level and new career openings for women. This, however, has not arrived without accompanying problems due to continued elements of gender inequality. Nancy Adamson, Linda Briskin and Margaret McPhail state in their work,

Feminist Organizing for Change: The Contemporary Women’s Movement in Canada: ―Far from pursuing ‗exciting‘ careers and being on a financial par with men, most women are segregated in female job ghettoes doing monotonous work (in 1984, 60 per cent of all employed women were in clerical, sales, or services jobs) and earning about two-thirds of what men earn‖11 (6). In addition, ―[m]ost women were unable to reap the alleged benefits of education. Women were going to colleges and universities in increasing numbers, but they still could not find the kinds of jobs they had been led to believe were available to them‖ (38). The main character in Bear is neither segregated in a female job ghetto, nor is she unable to find a job according to her wishes, but she does have a repetitive administrative job in an archive. On the one hand, she claims she loves the job (29), but on the other hand, ―after five years she now felt that in some way it had aged her

11 The authors draw on “Women in the Labour force” 1986-87 Edition (Ottawa: Labour Canada, 1987), 35

25 disproportionately, that she was as old as the yellow papers she spent her days unfolding

[…] she was […] not satisfied that this was how the only life she had been offered should be lived‖ (18-19). Lou seems to be walking along the border dividing a steady, orderly job, and a tedious monotonous life, and a life with a deeper meaning that moves beyond conventions, is energetic and sociable. When she arrives at the island, the house she lives in, the Pennarth, helps her to follow the border on the side of the orderly and reasonable, but only for a certain period of time.

By building the Pennarth on a secluded island and setting up a library that includes

English Romantic writers, Engel makes a statement for the reader to resolve. In her article called ―A Note on ‗Bear,‘‖ Michelle Gadpaille provides a brief introduction to the origin of the house and the architect who built it:

Orson Squire Fowler (1809 – 1887) was an American natural philosopher,

whose specialty was phrenology – the determining of the human character

from the configuration of the skull. […] In Fowler‘s octagon the occupant

lives out the rational, ordered existence of the mid-nineteenth-century

scientific mind, with each function allotted its own space, and each space

contributing to the well-being and happiness of occupant. (151-52)

To a certain degree the Pennarth suits Lou. The job of a bibliographer per se assumes order and precision: ―She did not believe in non-rational processes, she was a bibliographer, she told herself. She simply wanted the record to be accurate‖ (Engel 71).

She is reliable: ―She worked. Always, they had said of her, she was nothing if not conscientious‖ (Engel 101). Lou‘s life in the city, that is a sign of a progress, industrialization, and accumulation of capital, was also orderly. This life continues in the

Pennearth as she collects data on the books in the library, by ―the imperious business of imposing numerical order on a structure devised internally and personally by a mind her

26 numbers would teach her to discover‖ (42). Nevertheless, the longer she spends on the island, the less time she devotes to rational work.

After some time on the island, Lou comes to describe the Pennarth as: ―too elaborate, too hard to heat, no matter how much its phrenological designer thought it good for the brain‖ (36). Thinking of the house as a brain, one can find areas in the house that suit Lou well, such as the library and the bedroom, from where she has a good view of the island and the bear, places that connect the house to nature. But she does not like rooms such as the kitchen and the parlour because: ―[i]t was full of wrong-angled, unlivable corners, the weakness of the octagon. The furniture was squared and sat ill and off-centred.

Every time she went into the room, it imprinted on her the conventional rectangle and nagged‖ (107). It is as if she could not find a common speech with the linearity of the house, with the sharp angles that reflect a Western, masculine, mechanistic style of thinking, void of interconnections and interrelationships. What is more, the house with its sharp corners, its geometrical shape, a symbol of the scientific mind, fits poorly into the surrounding environment. It becomes even more out of place after Lou reads the Romanic authors stored in the library. Romantics helped to develop the organic world view to the present state. Although they are criticized for romanticizing nature, they ―maintained that science was inadequate to explain all the phenomena with which humans are confronted.

[…] Subjective knowledge of, and oneness with, nature, as expressed particularly through art: this was a superior form of knowledge to that of objective, empirical and coldly calculating classical science and its Cartesian dualism‖ (Pepper 191). In addition, ―the

Romantics ascribed a significance and integrity to nature which did not depend on humans.

The intrinsic value concept is a key facet of modern ecocentrism‘s bioethic‖ (Pepper 192).

The books that call for Lou‘s attention, the little Coroner‘s notes on bears that fall out of them, seem to contribute to Lou‘s realization that the rational and ordered life, life that is

27 ruled by men, is what causes loneliness in her heart. The longer she spends on the island, the more time she spends with the bear and outside of the Pennarth.

So far, I have discussed how the Western world view interferes in the life of Elle and Lou. The third young woman, The Girl does not explicitly need to cope with similar issues. Even though aboriginal American women have had to deal with the Western world view and patriarchy, and have been the subjects to a double oppression (oppressed as women and oppressed as people of non-European decent), the story ―The Girl Who

Married the Bear‖ that I analyze in this thesis does not touch upon the topic of these oppressions. It instead explores the issue of respect between people and animals; how the human and animal worlds are interconnected. From Theresa Kishkan‘s essay on the story

―The Girl Who Married the Bear‖ and from her writing, one can feel her reverence for bears, for natural surroundings and for people, which is what I hear as well when I listen to the narrators speaking out of the various versions. The story teaches healthy interspecies relationships. Kishkan puts it nicely: ―‗The Girl Who Married the Bear‘ reveals the extent to which aboriginal stories articulate the complexity and importance of rules that govern relationships between species, a profoundly symbiotic world where one respected not just the territory of another species but its dung, its bones, its very spirit as well‖ (Kishkan).

The story articulates the difficulties one experiences in relationships, in dealing with others

(humans, animals, spiritual beings).

The central theme of the story deals with the breaking of a taboo in relationships, both among humans and between humans and animals. As opposed to Lou and Elle who are pushed aside by men and marginalized in their society, the Girl in the story is the one who provokes a conflict since she is ―rather bad tempered, flighty, headstrong‖ (63) in Bill

Reid‘s words. In some of the versions she slips on bear excrement, in other versions she kicks it or steps over it, an act prohibited for women in many North American aboriginal cultures, and worst of all, she insults the bear. ―[T]he angry screams of the girl, describing

28 the bear […] and all his near relations, and […] his entire ancestry, in the most derogatory, unflattering terms she could summon from her rich and colorful language, formed a major break in the longstanding tradition‖ (Reid 64). Bears are part of the social system among the southern Yukon Indians. In her monograph on the story, Catherine McClellan explains the complicated relationships among the southern Yukon Indians and how animals are part of these relationships:

In their broadest extensions, the social systems of the southern Yukon

Indians incorporate both humans and animals. […] the major philosophical

concern […] is how they may best live in harmony with the animals who

basically have so much more power than do humans, especially since the

Indians continually have to confront them and kill the animals if they are to

stay alive themselves. (6)

One of the rules to stay in harmony with the bears is to respect them and never to step over bear excrement. On the way back to the village, the Girl drops her basket several times and spills the berries. The other women help her several times, but in the end they become impatient with her and leave her in the forest even though it is getting dark. An unknown young man comes to help her and leads her away to his village. The young man is a bear who comes for her because she has insulted the bears. Similarly to Elle and Lou who establish close relationships with bears, the Girl becomes a bear‘s wife.

2.2 The Bear: A Friend, a Husband, a Lover, and a Guide

The relationship of the Girl and the bear becomes in some versions more, and in some versions less, but always, affectionate. Jake Jackson says in his version: ―[F]irst she feels her husband all around his body like she is loving him. She hugged her husband and stroked his hair all over‖ (McClellan 18). In Bill Reid‘s version ―[m]ost of the time she was

29 happy enough, growing fond of her husband as the days went on‖ (70). The Girl establishes a strong bond with the bear and the bear people, a bond that is further strengthened when she becomes pregnant and gives birth to ―perfect bear cubs, untainted by any human characteristics. […] this didn‘t distress their mother at all, and from the moment they were born she lavished on them as much love and affection as if they had been her own kind‖ (Reid 70). This bond between bears and humans leads to greater respect for each other. A bear respects a human being by avoiding contact as will be shown in the third chapter and similarly humans should not seek encounters with bears, unless dependent on hunting them. This story is based on a partnership ethics in which partners, no matter whether human or animal, provide each other with enough space. In contrast, in

Western society influenced by the development of science as delineated in chapter 1.1, the human-animal partnership is broken.

Both Elle and Lou rediscover the bond, but only after they escape Western society and end their interactions with it. In the novel Elle, there appear two species of bears, the

Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) and the American black bear (Ursus americanus). Although polar bears are understood to be the most dangerous of the three bear subspecies found in

Canada, in Elle the polar bear saves Elle from starvation. The bear arrives after Richard and

Bastienne are long dead; Elle is freezing and listless with hunger. ―Then, suddenly she falls upon me,‖ says Elle of the polar bear sow, and adds: ―I realize she is dead‖ (70). Elle describes what happens next:

I gather sword, heart and liver, lift the flap of her belly wound and slip

inside. I am suddenly warm, warmer than I have been since my first (and

otherwise useless) mother gave birth to me. I suck the liver and pull the

bear‘s belly close round me.

Oh, bear, I think. Oh, my saviour bear. (71).

First, the bear provides her with warmth, then with food. ―We eat the bear. Have I mentioned this? My diet goes from water, water, water and air to bear, bear, bear and bear.

We have so much bear we use frozen bear meat for pillows, chairs and footstools‖ (86), says Elle. Thirdly, the bear leads an aboriginal man called Itslk to Elle. Itlsk tells her how he was on a hunt and the bear wanted him to follow:

He travelled far beyond his usual hunting grounds, trailing the white bear,

which indeed acted like no other bear in his experience, which, like himself

seemed less interested in food than in getting somewhere, as if it had a

purpose. Starving, it again loped down from the mountains toward the sea

and then west again along the boreal beaches. Day and night it ran pausing

only now and than to look back and see that the hunter was still following.

Keep up now, the bear seemed to say. Don‘t fail. (92)

Interestingly, besides creating the idea that the bear has come to save Elle, the author suggests more. Elle expresses her affiliation with the bear and there seems to be even further meaning behind the behaviour of the bear towards Elle, which I understand as a close-kin relationship.

When Elle sees the bear, first of all she thinks of how the bear reminds her of herself. ―The bear is skin and bones, mostly bones, much as I am myself,‖ says Elle, and continues: ―By the look of things, she is female, an old mother bear, a fact that increases my sense of kinship and identification […] She is a sad bear, a dying bear, who like me, is out of place and soon to be extinguished from this land of sudden sunlight and clarity […]

The bear resembles me in so many particulars (skin, bones, loss of hope)‖ (68-69). The expected behaviour of polar bears, as a predator, which will be mentioned in chapter three in more depth, is unlike what the bear does in this text. Instead of attacking Elle, it digs at

Richard‘s grave. It does not attack even after Elle‘s persuasion: ―You can eat me. I don‘t mind. Don‘t hurt your mouth on the bones‖ (69). The bear turns only after she talks to it

31 more and touches it: ―Bear, I say […] Pay attention, bear. I grab a tuft of fur, give it a jerk.

It comes away in my hand. Oh, bear -, I say. But the bear, apparently taking my point, whirls around to face me‖ (69). Kurtis Kline says to Brian Payton that ―a bear attack […] has more to do with environmental situation and an individual bear‘s history than its species‖ (Payton 170). This means that not all polar bears attack humans. On the other hand, asking for a polar bear‘s attention is an effective way of receiving trouble.

Nonetheless, the old sow in Elle manages nothing more than to stand up on her hind legs and roar before she dies. The encounter with the polar bear is portrayed as if the two were not meant to fight, but to help each other. Similarly, an American black bear Elle meets later also saves her life.

Elle falls through a melting ice on the sea and is saved by a woman who reminds her of a bear: ―I glimpse three pairs of withered teats descending her torso […] Shells and bear claws rattle on a leather string at her throat, which in this regard is a twin of my own‖

(117), of one that Itslk made for her from the polar bear teeth. ―Her hair is coiled in wheels on either side of her head, making her face bearlike in the shadows. My hand goes to my bear-claw necklace […] She sniffs at me like an animal […] I am a strange creature, as strange to her as she is to me‖ (Glover 119), says Elle, but still she finds a strong bond with the woman who turns into a bear: ―The old woman is and isn‘t a bear, and sometimes she is very close to being another me – I can see her as a young woman, headstrong, shallow and frivolous, eons ago‖ (Glover 135). Phyllis Passariello speaks in her essay called ―Me and My Totem: Cross-cultural Attitudes towards Animals,‖ published in the collection of essays Attitudes to Animals: Views in Animal Welfare, of the cross-cultural phenomenon of relating an animal to oneself. She calls such animals ―totemic stand-ins‖ (12). Passariello says that ―[t]he quest for the self is always the quest for the other‖ (22). In this respect,

Elle, who is looking for answers to questions concerning God, concerning her destiny and even her identity, attempts to comprehend who the old woman is.

Throughout the period Elle spends with the old woman, it is difficult to discern reality from dreams and hallucinations, in which the old woman becomes, in Elle‘s narration, a bear:

The old woman disappears, and the bear walks at the edge of the firelight.

Sometimes I sense the presence of other mysterious shapes, thin, winter-

starved bears come down to the shore to commune with the old one. Often

in the morning fresh piles of bear dung dot the campsite. My dreams are

incontinent. She seems to sing to them as she sings to me, and always there

is an undertone of anxiety and embarrassment. (127)

Elle becomes the old woman‘s apprentice. As the old woman sings to Elle, she is aware of approaching death and is therefore anxious to teach Elle all she needs in order to master the transformation from human to bear. At first, Elle believes she is dreaming: ―In my dreams I grow snout, huge curved claws and extra teats, coarse hair covers my body, and I shamble alone through trackless forests, along ancient rivers, ravenous, immensely strong, dim-eyed‖ (127). When the old woman dies, when Elle finds a bear corpse in a forest, she feels compassion for the bear:

Something in me wants to be tender with her. I cradle her enormous old

head in my lap, fanning the flies away, cleaning her rheumy eyes with a bit

of rag saved from a dress, stroking the fur down the back of her neck,

fondling her scarred ears. It is a relief to see her at rest. Despite the flies and

maggots, her ancient, ursine face is stern and noble in death, almost human

in its attitude of repose. (141)

The bear woman is one of the few people in the story who treat Elle with kindness.

Both of the bears save her life, both of the bears play, to a certain degree, a mother‘s role. Elle says to the polar bear: ―And you shall be another mother to me‖ (71).

The polar bear gives birth to Elle. She comes out of the bears‘ stomach: ―Out of its belly

33 slid a naked woman, slick with blood‖ (93), like a new-born baby or a cub. In my view, it is a metaphor for the new Elle who is reborn in the New World. The black bear provides Elle with an education; in a way it brings her up and pays attention to her, which Elle‘s mother and father never did. When she dies, Elle suddenly realizes that she has learnt a lot from the old woman and feels uncomfortable when the local people come to cut the bear‘s carcass:

It is my turn to pace nervously upon the old bear‘s path. […] I am not

myself, I can tell. […] They pretend to ignore me but cast wary glances in

my direction from time to time. I ramble up and down the old woman‘s

well-worn path, whirling abruptly at the forest‘s edge and turning back on

my tracks. After a while, I notice that I have dropped to all fours, as I have

often done in my dreams. My agitation increases. I rage against the men

working over the she-bear‘s corpse. I am shocked at how human her body

seems once they have stripped away the hide. [...]

The bearskin is suddenly too tight […] I catch sight of my hands,

which now have huge curved nails and a coating of black fur. My head sinks

comfortably into my chest. But horror and revulsion flood my heart. God‘s

wounds, I can see the end of my nose, black as charcoal, and I am not

dreaming, not even asleep. And my hands, which once were delicate

(though lately scuffed and hardened with ill-use), have turned into paws.

Without even thinking, and to my mortification, I squat and release a stream

of urine. I feel the extra teats pop out along my belly. […] My cape falls off,

leaving me naked. (142-43).

Thanks to the old woman, Elle becomes a bear(-)woman herself and thus finds answers to the questions she was looking for: ―I think, this is what it is like to be a god – and I realize suddenly the naïveté of my own prior conceptions, Jesus, the Trinity‖ (144). At the point of

34 liberating herself, Elle realizes that she no longer fits into the Western society. She is aware of her ―otherness.‖ She is frightened of being exhibited: ―My heart races at the spectacle I will make – shown at country fairs, exhibited on market days or, worse, set alight some

Sunday afternoon in the town square‖ (156), a fate she believes could be hers whether as a

―savage‖ girl or as a bear. Phyllis Passariello comments on these exhibitions in her essay.

She argues: ―Zoos and human zoos illustrate the tendency in our culture to make so-called exotic animals and so-called primitive people operate analogously for us as tools to […] appropriate the ‗other‘‖ (16). Elle does not end up at human zoos, but is appropriated by the scientific approach of Mr Cartier mentioned above, put into the position of an object, upon her return to Europe.

For Elle, the bear substitutes someone tender whom she missed in her childhood.

Later on, there appears yet another bear in Elle‘s life that will accompany her to Europe and to whom she becomes a caring mother on the voyage, and who will later spend the rest of its days with her as a friend. This bear will be discussed further in the next subchapter.

While Elle experiences a parent-child, or mother-child relationship with bears, the Girl in the aboriginal story marries the bear and bears cubs. Her relationship is on the husband- wife level. In terms of love and affection, the bear respects her as a wife, and even though in some versions he forbids her to move freely outside the den, he does so in order to protect the family. The third female character, Lou, from Engel‘s Bear, experiences with the bear a relationship that lies somewhere in between, neither marriage, nor parent-child relationship; the bear becomes Lou‘s lover.

When Lou arrives at the island, she is surprised to discover that there is a bear that she is expected to look after. ―It‘s there and it belongs to the place. I don‘t know where they got it, there aren‘t any bears around here. [...] You treat it like a dog,‖ says Homer and adds: ―[M]aybe I can ask you to feed it and water it while you‘re here and after that we‘ll decide what to do‖ (27). Lou had lost her bond with animals due to her city life. ―She was

35 not fond of animals‖ (32) the reader learns. Even her first thoughts lead her to the

Pennarth, the rational house of the known: ―[M]aybe I‘ll start on the books first, work from the known to the unknown‖ (32). In the end she plucks up the courage to walk to the shed, but still does not know what to do or say: ―What do you say to a bear?‖ she wonders

(33). This time the bear stays hidden in the shed. The first time she sees the bear, she realizes: ―That is a bear. Not a toy bear, not a Pooh bear, not an airlines Koala bear. A real bear‖ (34). Her mind associates the bear with pictures of bears presented to the public in the mythologized forms so common in the Western world. Even her reaction clearly shows that a bear for her means danger: ―She sucked in her breath and stood quite, quite, still, forbidding her knees to knock‖ (34). After a thorough observation it dawns on her that the sad-looking bear and the women of her time have a lot in common: ―An unprepossessing creature, this bear, she decided. Not at all menacing. Not a creature of the wild, but a middle-aged woman defeated to the point of being daft, who had sat night after night waiting for her husband for so long that time had ceased to exist and there was only waiting‖ (36). The more time Lou spends away from the city and the influence of Western society, the easier it is for her to recreate the bond between her and the natural world, specifically with the bear.

At one of Lou‘s early meetings with the bear, Lucy Leroy, a hundred-year-old

Indian woman, who took care of the bear after the Colonel, the previous owner of the house, died, advises Lou how to treat the bear: ―‗Shit with the bear,‘ she said. ‗He like you, then. Morning, you shit, he shit. Bear lives by smell. He like you‘‖ (49). Similarly to the elderly woman in Elle, Lucy teaches Lou how to befriend the bear. The character of Lucy also appears in some versions of the story ―The Girl Who Married the Bear‖ under the name ―Mouse Woman.‖ When the Girl is taken away by the bear, the Mouse Woman explains to the Girl what has happened: ―You‘re in a very tough situation, thanks mainly to your own arrogance‖ (Reid 65). But she advises her: ―tell them you have to empty your

36 bowels […] dig a small hole for your waste, and cover it over as soon as you‘re finished‖

(Reid 66-67). The Girl is supposed to leave a part of her copper bracelet there which, in the end, saves her from potential danger. In the Bill Reid version, the discovery of the copper bracelet by bears leads to the Girl‘s marriage with the bear. Urinating or emptying one‘s bowels helps the bear to learn who the person is. It helps to create a bond between the women and the bears. Even in Elle, the old woman turned into a bear: ―[I]t stops at a spot were [Lou] peed before coming to bed. It dips its snout, snorts and shakes its head till its jowls slap together‖ (Glover 122).

In the introduction, I mentioned that the organic world view did not disappear altogether as the Western world gained dominance. Rather, as exemplified in the novels

Elle and Bear, it has survived despite marginalisation; the elderly woman represents the organic world view during the period when it was pushed to the margin, but was still active.

The elderly woman is the one who knows how to treat bears, something the girls have never learned in Western society. Therefore before her death, the elderly woman shows the young women how to find a way back to the bears and to the organic world view. In the aboriginal story, the role of the Mouse Woman is the same. Even though there is no connection to the Western world view, the Mouse Woman gives some of her knowledge about bears to the Girl and helps her create a friendly bond with the bear people. Then it is up to the young women what and how they learn from the bears.

In Lou‘s case Lucy seems to be successful in her teaching. The bear gets to know

Lou enough to trust her and, gradually, a relationship based on sexual affair evolves between them. Once, after swimming, ―she felt the tremendous shower of his shaking beside her. A moment later, he began to run his long, ridged tongue up and down her wet back. It was a curious sensation‖ (64), Lou admits. But it also ―reminded her of a time, when [...] she had picked up a man in the street […] he turned out not to be a good man‖

(64). From what the reader learns about Lou, she does not have steady relationships and

37 has never deeply loved anyone before. The men she has met have not treated her with respect. ―Once briefly, she had had as a lover a man of elegance,‖ Lou recalls, but ―she discovered that he loved her as long as the socks were folded and she was at his disposal on demand‖ (118). What is more, ―he had made Lou have an abortion‖ (118). How Homer sees women was already outlined in the previous subchapter. Lou also had a sexual relationship with the Director: ―[T]hey had much in common when they fucked on

Molesworth‘s maps and handwritten genealogies‖ (118), but there was no emotion involved in it. For the first time, Lou falls head over heals in love – with the bear, who, as opposed to the men in her life, ―was good to her‖ (120).

The progress in their relationship reminds one of courtship between a female and a male bear. Courting is time when the opposite sexes stay together temporarily. During courtship bears are as affectionate and as attentive as human lovers can be. It can also be compared to a love relationship about which two people are serious and start it by getting to know each other. The relationship between the bear and Lou gets to the point when they become lovers:

He put out his moley tongue. It was fat, and […] vertically ridged. He began

to lick her. […] He licked her nipples stiff and scoured navel. […] She

swung her hips and made it easy for him. […] The tongue that was

muscular but also capable of lengthening itself like an eel found all her

secret places. And like no human being she had ever known it preserved in

her pleasure. When she came, she whimpered, and the bear licked away her

tears. (92)

Overcome with joy, Lou behaves as if she and the bear lived together like human lovers:

―When she cooked for herself she cooked also for the bear, and he sat beside her on the stoop, and sometimes he picked up his plate and licked it‖ (120). They get in the habit that in the evenings the bear comes up the stairs to the library in the house and lies in front of

38 the fireplace where Lou joins him after she finishes her work in the library. Sometimes they make love, other times she explores all the secrets of his body: ―She lay on his belly, he batted her gently with his claws; she touched his tongue with hers and felt its fatness. She explored his gums, his teeth that were almost fangs. She turned back his black lips with her fingers and ran her tongue along the ridge of his gums (119). Lou even smells12 of the bear and finds his smell pleasant.

Lou has an appointed time that she can spend on the island, therefore the relationship with her bear lover ends with her departure. The bear is taken away by Lucy, which leaves Lou in calmness for she knows the bear will be well looked after. She is also altered by her sojourn on the island and by her relationship with the bear. The alteration is common to all the three female characters. The following subchapter will argue that all the female characters are, due to their relationship with bears, motivated to fight the oppression of men over women and animals, or to refuse to participate in the system ruled by the Western world view, which is mainly the case of Elle and Lou. The Girl, in the versions of the story where she no longer belongs among her human family or is teased by her brothers, finds it preferable to live as a bear rather than with disrespectful humans.

2.3 The Women - Transformed

In the introduction I mentioned that Westerners considered oral stories naïve.

Once the reader becomes familiar with the beliefs, social structure and relationships in a particular nation of the aboriginal peoples in North America; and once the reader attempts to discard a Western world view when looking at the stories that belong to aboriginal peoples, the stories become a lot more elaborate. In connection to the story ―The Girl

12 The smell is significant, because a bear has a particular smell that is not very pleasant to humans. It is also how other bears recognize each other. They leave a sign of their smell on trees in order to leave a message to other bears that they are in the area (For further information see the North American Bear Centre website and Sid Marty‟s The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek.)

Who Married the Bear‖ Catherine McClellan confesses: ―Today I believe that this particular story attracts the Southern Yukon aboriginals with the same power as does a first-rate psychological drama or novel in our own culture‖ (1).

Although the Girl is not dissatisfied with her bear husband, she betrays him by leaving a sign for her brothers or a lover to find her. They kill their brother-in-law and take their sister back to their village. This is one of the crucial moments in the story for, as

Catherine McClellan explains, one of the most important relationships for the Southern

Yukon Indians is the brother-in-law tie: ―The most enduring economic and social unit of the past was often a man and his brother-in-law and their families. […] A man who is addressed as ‗brother-in-law‘ is immediately obligated to aid and defend his reciprocal in all possible ways. Only good fellowship should prevail between the two‖ (6). However, in some of the versions of the story this rule is broken. In addition, and that is also important, the ways by which the bear is killed again vary. In the Henry W. Tate‘s version the brother does not want to kill his brother-in-law: ―I will not kill him‖ (Tate 38), but the girl urges him to do otherwise: ―if you kill him not then you shall die‖ (38). In this version she instructs her brother how to do it: ―now my dear don‘t kill thy brother-in-law with knife or spear arrow, just make smoke in his Den‖ (38). In contrast, in Bill Reid‘s version,

[t]he bear father knew then that his destiny was almost fulfilled. He

instructed his wife to go to her brothers and tell them that […] they must

promise not to smoke him out of his den, as humans might with an

ordinary bear ― but that they must wait until the following day, when he

would emerge and, in a ceremonial combat with the brothers, would allow

himself be killed. (72)

Yet another version of the bear‘s destiny appears in Jack Jackson‘s narration, in which the bear instructs his wife how they should treat his carcass and what is meant to be done with his skull, bones and each part of his body after he is killed (McClelland 19). As the Girl has

40 been taught how the bear should be killed and what should be done with his carcass, the story is oftentimes interpreted as a teaching story for how to hunt bears (Kishkan,

McClelland, Rockwell). The death of the bear is not the end of the story, however.

The destiny of the Girl and her children, the cubs, also varies depending on the storyteller, the group of the Aboriginal People s/he belongs to and on the circumstances and mood at the time the stories were collected. In her essay ―Wild Berries Picking‖

Theresa Kishkan mentions some of the endings of the story and the Girl‘s relationship with the bear:

In one Tlingit version, she becomes a bear and kills her brothers. In Tate‘s

version, the woman‘s children go off to their father‘s people after an

incident with their human grandmother when she doesn‘t recognize them as

her grandchildren. Their mother lets them go: ‗sorrowful mother was very

sorrow.‘ In this version she is the outsider to both cultures, a taboo-breaker

in her own and a betrayal of her grizzly husband among bears.

In Bill Reid‘s version the Girl returns to her village but the cubs decide to stay with their bear family. In a version narrated by a Haida, Yak Quahu, in 1873, published in Richard

Erdoes‘s and Alfonso Ortiz‘s American Indian Myths and Legends, the bear is not even killed, the Girl returns to her village and one of the two cubs stays with their mother while the other one returns to his father‘s people.

Even though the story is full of complicated relationships so common in everyday life, I do not perceive it as tragic. The Girl, who breaks several laws in her society, turns in the end into a bear and returns to the forest, or she returns to her lover. Her children in most of the versions return to the bear people as cubs. It tells us a lot about human nature and how even human-human relationships are sometimes difficult. Theresa Kishkan says of the story: ―I love the story for what it tells us about girls and authority, about ardour and the capricious nature of the human heart, the mysteries of sexuality, and finally for its

41 insight into interspecies relationships‖ (Kishkan). I would add to this that I love the story for how it makes the reader think about one‘s behaviour and attitude to the world that surrounds us, no matter whether human or animal. What is even more important, though, is that the story conveys the organic world view. Once the reader accepts its dimension of reality, which is different from the Western world view, s/he can understand the message and the depth of the story. Similarly, the ending of Elle and of Lou‘s sexual relationship with the bear can be viewed from various perspectives depending on which world view one chooses. However, before I get to the ending of Elle, it needs to be shown how her perception of the Western society has been altered by her stay in Canada and by her relationships with bears.

Elle‘s journey does not end with replacing the role of the elderly woman who teaches her how to turn into a bear in the New World, but continues back in Europe, where she is conveyed by European sailors. On the ship, Elle comes across a cub: ―[T]here is a pathetic whimpering, between a puppy‘s cry and a cat‘s meow. A black shape drags itself across the floor, claws clicking against the planks. A bear cub, it looks like‖ (166). The bear is scared, his ―eyes are dull and terrified. It whimpers plaintively, baas‖ (166). Elle recalls that ―It is a cub like the ones I have seen in my dreams and occasionally in real life, though in real life they were often dead and about to be eaten‖ (166). The bears that were imported to Europe were meant to be either pet bears, which meant being chained for the rest of their lives and living in subjugated boredom, as is the case with some bears in zoos, or they were intended to be eaten. Bear paws could be found on the German menu until the 1960s and still can be found in some Asian countries despite it being illegal. Elle feels alliance with the cub so she looks after it as if it were her child: ―The bear yawns, licks my nipple and falls asleep. […] I imagine the little bear is Emmanuel, my son, come back to me‖ (167). Is Elle in this particular moment a bear or a human being? Is she a sow being taken to Europe with her cub, or is she a woman and the cub is her human child? Does it

42 matter? No, it does not, for both the bear cub and Elle are imprisoned in the European patriarchal society of their time.

The bears Elle encounters on the Canadian shore change her. When she returns to

Europe, she realizes that she is ―infected with otherness‖ (157). Similarly to the Girl, who by living with the bear people becomes an outcast in her society, Elle is an outcast in hers:

―I am a citizen of neither the New World nor the Old‖ (165). Thanks to the old bear woman who saved her life, Elle was reminded of the qualities of the organic world view.

She reveres the life of all beings. She can no longer stand former favoured pastimes of bull and bear baiting circuses, as she can no longer stand to see animals suffer:

For many years there had been a bear chained to a post in the stable yard,

mad, unhappy, bored and violent. But I could not kill him. When the wind

was in the north on a fall day and the smell of snow was in the air, he would

mew insistently (a strange, unbearish sound), his sad old nose raised to sniff

the breeze. I would put my arms around his scarred neck and whisper to

him about the forests of Canada and how I used to cuddle him in my bed

when he was just a cub whimpering for its mother. (144)

After her experience in Canada Elle breeds domestic animals which ―are dear to [her] for their intelligence and affectionate nature,‖ as she explains (113).

Elle even foretells the future of Western society: ―In the future, and this I must have dreamed, the stage will shrink to a prison, we will see ourselves as inmates separated from everyone else by bars, and heroism and love will be impossible‖ (55). She is referring to the shift from community life to human competitiveness and measuring the wealth of our lives by our possessions. Families no longer share a flat or a house, because everyone can live on debts and mortgages in, assumingly, their own place. From my point of view, she speaks of the shift from the importance of love for others and humility to the importance of the self. Besides, Elle also comments on the evolution of the yearning for

43 knowledge: ―This is the point in history where we are transformed. Before, we had a word and an explanation for everything; henceforth, we shall only discover the necessity of larger and larger explanations, which will always fall short. What we know will become just another anxious symbol, a code for what we do not know‖ (98). Having spent such an intensive time with the bear woman and the aboriginal peoples, Elle cannot accept the fact that the Western world is going to be influenced for so long by the teachings of Descartes and Bacon. In France, she no longer feels at home: ―This is strange – in the Land of the

Dead [Canada], I felt alive, but here in France everything that was once familiar is like a coffin lid‖ (115). There is not much for Elle to do with the situation and the time in which she lives. The only comfort is the bear that she had looked after on the voyage.

The bear was taken to Mr Cartier when Elle comes to him as a research object. She finds the bear chained and in poor condition: ―Lean and starved looking, he is still larger than I remember […] He bawls anxiously, rushes to meet me till the chain yanks him back.

I have brought him apples tied in cloth and a honey-comb which he licks from my fingers‖

(177). Elle takes care of the bear, who becomes her companion for the rest of the story.

The bear is ―gentle and affectionate, doglike in fact‖ (183). Interestingly, Elle does not turn into a bear once she returns to France. Perhaps it is too dangerous for her, since the

Westerners might accuse her of witchcraft; perhaps she feels no need and motivation to do so. But then, she meets her uncle, the General, who does not seem to recognize her. Elle wonders: ―What does he see?‖ and then ―The old woman‘s song sends me into the dream,‖ says Elle: ―So I know that I will rise upon my hind legs, trying to appear human, French and girlish. I will stumble toward the General, trying to cover my numerous teats with a leafy branch. What does he see? An attacking bear? An embarrassed woman? An embarrassed bear? A bear with a woman‘s face? Does he remember the face?‖ (137). While all those question rush through Elle‘s head, the bear companion starts to dance in front of the General, but ―[t]he General‘s sword whispers out of its sheath [...] and […] slides in and

44 out of the bear‘s thigh, and the bear goes down, bawling and biting at the place‖ (200).

Similarly to lacking compassion for the pregnant woman he killed, he feels no compassion for the animal. Elle describes her next reaction and her feelings at the moment in the following words:

Beside myself (or not myself) with rage, dim-eyed, scenting blood, I slash

the General‘s moaning form. […] I lift my nose and grunt, shake my head

till my lips slap together. […] Struggling to rise, the old bear overturns a

barrow of bones. I try to grasp his rope but can‘t articulate my fingers. I

butt and nip at him till he rolls up on all fours. We back away from the

crowd, then turn and limp out of the cemetery. (201)

In the end, Elle turns again into a bear and leaves the cemetery with her friend. Gruen says that ―it is immediately important that we change our own perspectives and those of society from death-oriented to life-oriented‖ (62), which is exactly what Elle did with her life and what the General fails to do. The ending of the novel is written with an attempt to distort the real event, so that it is not clear whether the General is killed by a woman or a bear, or by someone else. As it has been previously pointed out, Gruen explains how both women and animals are put into ―the other‖ category in the patriarchal society. Therefore whether

Elle is a woman or a bear at the point of protecting her bear friend is not crucial. Quite the contrary, I find this lack of clarity important because then both Elle and her bear form are as one being. In that particular moment they are equal and equally fighting against the domination of the General and his patriarchal views, and the categories of ―woman‖ and

―animal‖ are erased. The ending in Bear is also unclear in terms of what happens to the main character. As opposed to Elle, Lou leaves her bear companion when she is expected to return from her stay on the island. She only hints at what she is going to do when she gets back to Toronto. Perhaps the open ending means one never knows where the future takes her/him. Still, I understand the ending as a beginning of Lou‘s active engagement in

45 opposing the domination of men. Even in the course of her stay on the island, Lou resists male domination and the Western world view although it is not made too explicit.

As soon as Lou leaves Toronto ―she began to feel free‖ (18). The heaviness of the progressive city, of the linear straight roads leading from east to west, from south to north, the heaviness of what is expected from her as a woman ― all these issues are left behind.

As she drives north, she sees that: ―The land was hectic with new green‖ (18). The area she arrives at reminds her of her childhood: ―She had sharp memories of being here before,‖ and so when she writes to the Director, she confesses: ―I have an odd sense […] of being reborn‖ (19). It has taken her only one trip, a journey of several hours, to realize that something is about to change. Lou is taken by Homer on a boat to the island. As they meander among the islands and shoals, she observes the landscape around her and it dawns on her that ―we have winter lives and summer lives of completely different quality‖ (21).

Which life one chooses is entirely up to her/him. By the time the summer is over and it is time to return to Toronto, she is aware of that choice.

Lou‘s bear lover has a great impact on her transformation. As Lou becomes aware of the possibilities in one‘s life, she grows to understand that her life in Toronto was not satisfactory, that it was not life at all. She wonders: ―Is a life that can now be considered an absence a life?‖ (19). Consequently, Lou throws away all restraints when she falls in love with the bear. Partly because the bear is unlike any men she has met in her life, partly because she can. The bear is also unlike many people for ―[h]e has no middle-class pretensions, no front to keep up, even to himself‖ (62). This is what appeals to Lou and what helps her change her way of looking at herself and the world around her. Lou experiences love that is not selfish. She says: ―What I want is for you to continue to be […]

No more. Bear‖ (113). Her love is based on a non-dominating relationship with the bear in which they respect each other and give each other space. Since prior to coming to the island, Lou‘s ―spiritual, emotional, artistic, loving and cooperative sides are neglected,‖ a

46 situation Pepper argues is common for Westerners who give preference to rationalism (13), once she opens herself to these qualities she had suppressed for so long, she seems to be overreacting and taking things too far with the bear, both, in terms of sexual love and in connection with unconventional behaviour. Lou ―loved him with such an extravagance that the rest of the world has turned into a tight meaningless knot, except for the landscape, which remained outside them, neutral, having its own orgasms of summer weather‖ (117).

What is more ―[s]he felt sometimes that he was God,‖ (117) Lou says about the bear. This connection with or enhanced understanding with God is another element all the three female characters have in common. Elle realizes what it is like to be God when she is capable of turning into a bear. The Girl and the humans in the story revere bears. God is not to be understood here in the Judeo-Christian sense, but rather as a spirit or a deeper meaning that lies beyond what the human mind can grasp. This God cannot be understood but can only be felt and experienced. That is why I see these women as feeling the world and perceiving it trough the organic lens after they meet the bears.

Carolyn Merchant defines her partnership ethics as a space that needs to be given to animals in order for them to react to human actions, reproduce, and develop (8). On the one hand, Lou takes the bear swimming, lets it walk off the leash, and provides him with as much space as the situation of the habituated bear allows her. On the other hand, Lou crosses a certain border of that space and also in her relationship with the bear that she is not aware of. When they are, finally, about to have intercourse, they both realize that there is a line a human and a bear should not step over:

He sat up across from her, rubbing his nose with a paw and looking

confused. Then he looked down at himself. She looked as well. Slowly,

majestically his great cock was rising. It was not like man‘s, tulip-shaped. It

was red, pointed, and impressive. She looked at him. He did not move. She

took her sweater off and went down on all fours in front of him, in an

animal posture.

He reached out one great paw and ripped the skin on her back.

(131)

The bear is ready to show his love of Lou, but since she is not a bear sow, his act of love turns into inflicting a bodily harm on Lou. The painful fact dawns on her, as she lies in bed in pain. She accepts this message without anger or fear. Usually, an anthropocentric view prevails when there is a conflict between a bear and a human which sometimes leads to killing the bear, even though, most of the times, the conflict is caused by the human. But

Lou does not complain about the bear‘s behaviour either to Lucy or Homer, because she knows that it was an act of love, not an attack. She also knows that it was a sign for her that there is a space the bears need which no human being can enter. When she contemplates what has happened between the two of them she is not sure: ―What had passed to her from him she did not know. Certainly it was not the seed of heroes, or magic, or any astounding virtue, for she continued to be herself‖ (136). What is clear is that much has irrevocably changed and that the meaning of her place on the earth have been revealed to her thanks to the bear: ―[F]or one strange, sharp moment she could feel in her pores and the taste of her own mouth that she knew what the world was for. She felt not that she was at last human, but that she was at last clean. Clean and simple and proud‖ (136-37). Thanks to the bear and her stay on the island, she learns to be proud of herself in the Western world saturated with male superiority, she learns to appreciate simplicity in a society ruled by consumerism, and, most of all, she becomes ―clean‖ in terms of her organic view through which she as a human achieves equality with living and non-living beings. When

Lou is leaving the island, she confesses to her intentions of leaving her rational job which I see as a hint of a new way of life she is approaching that is no longer dominated by the

Western world view.

One might argue that the reason why these female characters feel a close attachment to bears, why they create relationships with bears and either abandon or reject the Western world view is that women are closer to nature, but I oppose this claim. It is true that Gaia is oftentimes seen as a nurturing mother and thus, women are seen as closer to nature. But seeing the woman as closer to nature is only one interpretation, one inspired by the dichotomies of nature – culture and woman – man, in which man is seen as closer to culture. As will be demonstrated in the following chapter, I believe that the way one behaves towards animals and other living beings is not a matter of gender but a matter of which world view one chooses.

***

3 Bears in Canada: The Human – Bear Relationships

Many experts on bears in Western culture (e.g. Rogers, Hunter, Wakeman) confess to fearing or hunting bears before actually getting to know them and starting to protect them. This is influenced by how bears are presented to us in childhood and in the media, as

Brian Payton points out in his non-fiction book Shadow of the Bear: Travels in Vanishing

Wilderness: ―As we grow we are fed a steady diet of children‘s stories and cartoons about loveable, huggable bears. Eventually, we are exposed to society‘s enduring and macabre fascination with bear attacks‖ (6). As a result, ―many of us tend to either anthropomorphize or demonize bears out of ignorance or expediency‖ (6). Payton, a

Canadian author, spent several years studying the condition and conservation of all eight bear species in the world in order to write his book. In the introduction he says: ―It seemed to me that one could probably tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its bears‖ (7) which, in my view, is certainly applicable to the people who have occupied the area of what is now known as Canada.

In the following subchapters, I take the reader on a guided tour presenting all the three bear species that currently live in Canada. During the tour I will talk about the misconceptions about bears that are shown to us, first as children, than as adults. I will attempt to explain how these misconceptions have their roots largely in a Western world view, and, by interpreting bear behaviour, will offer an alternative portrait of bears.

3.1 Misconceptions about Bears

Oftentimes, the wider public has only superficial knowledge of the variety of bear species and the differences among them, and thus tends to generalize. Lynn Rogers comments on this phenomenon in an article titled ―Watchable Wildlife: The Black Bear,‖ published on the website of the North American Bear Centre:

Bear folklore is confusing because it is based on caricatures, with Teddy

Bears and the kindly Smoky on one hand and ferocious magazine cover

drawings on the other. Dominant themes of our folklore are fear of the

unknown and man against nature, and bears have traditionally been

portrayed as the villains to support those themes, unfairly demonizing them

to the public.

Furthermore, ―[a] problem for black bears is that literature about bears often does not separate black bears from grizzly bears,‖ Rogers adds (―Watchable‖). It is important to distinguish among the three bear species that occupy Canadian territory since, to a certain degree, one may predict a bear‘s behaviour based on the species one encounters. The species are: the American black bear (Ursus americanus), the Brown bear13 (Ursus arctos) and the Polar bear (Ursus maritimus). The polar bear is, according to the IUCN Red List, currently classified as vulnerable (Schilebe). As opposed to the black and brown bears

(Ursus arctos) found in Canada, ―the polar bear does not hibernate (excepting pregnant sows),‖ and, most importantly, ―It considers anything that moves as food‖ (Brown 52).

Such predatory behaviour is in high contrast with the Brown and American black bear, as I explain below. The Polar bear is also believed to be ―the largest and most carnivorous of modern bears‖ (Brown 51). In Shadow of the Bear in a chapter titled ―Waiting for Winter,‖

Payton speaks of his visit to Churchill in Manitoba in order to learn more about polar bears. ―Natural Resource Officer Kurtis Kline‖ served as his guide part of the stay. Kline compares the polar bears with the black bears as follows:

Polar bears can be twice as large […] and their temperament is markedly

different. Where black bears usually run away when confronted with a loud

noise, polar bears often remain unfazed […] polar bears can be far more

13 Throughout the thesis I will follow the Latin classification according to which the Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) is a subspecies of the Brown bear (Ursus arctos). In some Canadian literature and even in official documents, the Brown bear is interchanged with the Grizzly bear. Should this be the case in citations, I will add the Latin title to clarify which species/subspecies the author is referring to.

aggressive. North American black bears […] rarely attack humans. […]

Polar bears have been known to stalk and prey on humans. (qtd. in Payton

169-70)

Given that the area the Polar bear occupies is mostly void of human presence, with the exception of a few settlements, the Polar bear is not central to the bear-human relationship discussion concentrating on bear-human encounters. The bear species that most of the

First Nations shared their habitat with, that the early European explorers encountered and that are still a cause of human complaints are the Brown bear and the American black bear.

Therefore throughout the thesis, I mainly refer to the two latter species.

In the story ―The Girl Who Married the Bear‖ one can find both the species of the

American black and the Brown bears. Which of the two appears in the various versions of the story depends, of course, on the storyteller and his/her experience with bears.

Catherine McClelland explicitly says to the differences in the versions of the story: ―I can trace some variations quite directly to the special life circumstances of the individual narrator‖ (2). According to Brown the American black bear is the smallest and the most widespread of the three bear species mentioned in this thesis (32-60). The distribution of the American black bear ranges from the east to the west coast of Canada. Unlike the

American black bear that lives only in North America, the Brown bear walks three continents, the American, the European and the Asian, and is one of the least threatened bear species with populations of over two hundred thousands the worldwide (McLellan).

The size of a brown bear living on the American continent varies according to the geographical location, the age of the bear (since the bear grows until the age of 10) and the food availability each year. In general the height is 3-5 ft (1-1,5m), length 7-10 ft (2-3m), the weight of an adult male brown bear ranges between 500 – 900 pounds (230 – 400kg), and an adult female usually weights less than a male (a 100 pounds, i.e. 45,5 kg) (Brown 60-

64). The Brown bear as well as its subspecies, the Grizzly bear, are less predictable in

53 behaviour, and are known for attacking humans in self-protection (―Behaviour‖). In contrast, the American black bear generally runs away from and avoids stronger competitors as well as humans (Rogers ―Why‖). Nonetheless, this is not what the wider public believes about bear behaviour.

The knowledge acquired by aboriginal people, zoologists, conservationists and people who study bears in their natural habitat and their behaviour about bears, is usually ignored by the media and in literature. Marian Engel explains the popular view through

Lou, the main character in Bear, who says: ―[Y]ou have these ideas about bears: they are toys, or something fierce and ogreish in the woods, following you at a distance, snuffling you out to snuff you out‖ (34). By saying that, she expresses the two most stereotypical pictures one associates with the word ―bear‖, i.e. either a toy or a vicious animal. Many children in the twentieth and twenty-first century Western society encounter the popular

Winnie-the-Pooh story at some point in their childhood. Only a few of these children know where the name ―Winnie‖ comes from or what the life story of the real bear was.

Looking at it from the bright side, one may say that the real bear was saved from a certain death by Harry Colebourn, ―a veterinarian and a military officer‖ (Shushkewich viii), who bought the female cub from a trapper for $20 and named her after the city of Winnipeg

(Shushkewich 8). The cub was taken to England when Colebourn was sent to Europe for training. She could not follow him to war in France; therefore Colebourn left Winnie in the

London Zoo, hoping to bring her back to Canada after the war (Shushkewich 16). In the end he changed his mind, donated Winnie to the Zoo and left without her (Shushkewich

26). One should take into consideration also the darker side, which tells us that the cub was orphaned early in its life by a trapper when he shot her mother (Shushkewich 8). So Winnie was lucky enough to escape the sad destiny of many other cubs that become orphaned when they are too young to look after themselves (Shushkewich viii). Trappers, who were seen as nature lovers, could have avoided these unnecessary deaths by shooting only the

54 male bears, which was not always the case. Thus, Winnie could have enjoyed her life in the wilderness rather than be locked in the Zoo. Likewise, teddy bears that are oftentimes a child‘s first toy do not have as romantic and innocent history as one might think.

A note on the history of teddy bears on The Teddy Bear Museum website speaks of two origins of this popular toy dating back to 1902 in the United States and to 1903 in

Germany. The popular stuffed toy was named Teddy Bear after ―Theodore ‗Teddy‘

Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States.‖ On a hunt in November 1902, ―[t]he

President failed to make a kill so his hosts caught and tethered a bear, presenting it to the

President as a sitting target. […] the President refused, uttering the immortal words, ‗Spare the bear! I will not shoot a tethered animal.‘‖ Inspired by this occasion, ―Clifford Berryman drew a cartoon of the scene, which was published in the Washington Post.‖ Subsequently

―Brooklyn shopkeepers Morris and Rose Michtom made a soft bear toy, which they named

‗Teddy‘s Bear‘ and displayed it in their window with a copy of the cartoon.‖ Then

―America went bear mad almost overnight, the Michtoms went on to make their fortune with the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company and President Roosevelt had found a highly effective political mascot,‖ says the article14. The preconception people therefore established about bears, based on these bear toys and associated fairytales, was to regard bears as cute and cuddly. As a result, they attempt to photograph or even try to touch bears when they encounter them on the road, which can lead to the harming of both, the humans and consequently the bears. In a situation when people get out of a car and try to approach a bear contentedly feeding on the side of a road, unaware of crossing an imaginary line, they may come too close to the bear, who can bluff charge because it feels threatened by the human presence (―Behaviour‖). If it is a black bear, it may bluff charge and leave, but a

14 As protective as Theodore Roosevelt might seem, in a story called “A Colorado Bear Hunt,” the narrator, the president himself, gives a different picture of himself. The reader is provided with an endless list of accounts of the bears the president has killed and how. No matter whether he kills a sow and her cub, or raises a bear from sleep and kills it while it is still sleepy, his attitude to killing bears is very pragmatic. Even though he admits that “[t]he grizzlies which were once fairly plentiful here are now very rare” (qtd. in Russell “Great” 89), he has no compunction about killing them.

55 brown bear may suggest it is entitled to the last word by a friendly spank. ―Most serious injuries and attacks on people are a result of grizzlies feeling threatened and acting in a manner that eliminates the threat‖ (―Communication‖). Oftentimes, however, hurting a human being subsequently leads to tranquilization of the bear. In a conflict situation the bear usually ends up being the loser (because they are shot by officials as a human safety risk (―Communication‖).

This brings me to the second stereotype of bears – bears as killing beasts. Sources for this type of mythologizing can be traced to the concept of Earth as wild and uncontrollable in need of taming. Judith Plant, in her essay ―Searching for Common

Ground: Ecofeminism and Bioregionalism,‖ says: ―The Earth was seen as female, with two faces: one, the passive, nurturing mother; the other, wild and uncontrollable‖ (157). She then goes on to explain that by moving from the organic subsistence economy that involves a close interaction with the earth to the market economy that is accompanied by urban migration and growing apart from the land, the image of the mother Earth was pushed aside in favour of the image of the Earth as wild. In order to establish settlements, to build cities, it was necessary to subjugate wild nature (157). Not only Plant, but also

Merchant sees in the creation of this metaphor of the Earth as a wild female an excuse for domination over the earth: ―Just as the earth is female to the farmer who subdues it with the plow, so wilderness is female to the male explorer, frontiersman, and pioneer who tame it with the brute strength of the axe, the trap, and the gun‖ (44). As I mentioned in subchapter 2.1 Merchant illustrates the domination of men over women through the

Garden of Eden story, which she also links with the domination by humans of the earth.

The fallen Eve associated with wilderness is tamed in hope of recreating the lost Garden.

Once tamed, the Earth becomes the mother Eve providing food and bearing new life.

Similarly, claims that bears are dangerous and untamable serve hunters as a justification for hunting bears. In this respect a parallel can be found between the disobedient untamable

Elle and her father‘s and the General‘s effort to get rid of her. The misconception of vicious bears is further expanded by ―[o]utdoor magazine artists,‖ who ―typically depict bears as startled, angry, charging, or attacking. All typically are shown with their lips drawn back in some unnatural expression of supposed anger. The same is true for bears depicted as entering tents and houses‖ (Rogers, ―Images‖). In other words, the bears are portrayed in an unnatural posture: ―Unlike cats and dogs, black bears do not bare their teeth when they feel defensive‖ (Rogers, ―Images‖). Moreover, bears can rarely be seen bluff charging or displaying angry behaviour, if one does not provoke them, as researchers and outdoors(wo)men who have observed bears for decades in their natural habitat can confirm.

Yet another means of mythologizing bears that is well established can be found. In the media, bear attacks are oftentimes portrayed without providing the readers or spectators with enough background information, which gives only a one-sided picture of a ferocious beast. Besides, bear attacks are often presented as necessary and frequent outcomes of human-bear interactions, but statistics show that ―[e]ach year 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs, 6,000 of them need hospitalization, and about 18 of them die‖

(Hunter 6). If one contrasts this with human death statistics in relation to bears, Linda Jo

Hunter writes of ―[a]n extensive study [that] was done in the greater Yellowstone area between 1992 and 2000,‖ saying that ―in thirty-five bear/human encounters thirty-eight people were injured, but no one was killed (approximately three million people visit the park each year)‖ (6). What is even more astounding, ―seventy-four grizzly bears were killed by human causes during this period‖ (6). Clearly not enough valid and trustworthy information on bears reaches the public.

The human relationship towards bears has always been influenced by the aforementioned stereotypical images. It has also developed in line with the two world views. The following subchapter traces the similarities and differences between the

Western and organic world view in connection to the human-bear relationship. It also seeks to demonstrate a gradual shift from the dominating Western world view towards the organic world view in recent years.

3.2 Human Treatment of Bears

What do you do with a bear? Hunt it? Kill it? Bait it? Not ―[a]lways a difficult question,‖ (Glover 29) for people in 16th century Europe. At that time bears were hunted for their fur, but also baited for public entertainment. In The Great Bear Almanac Gary

Brown clarifies what bearbaiting involves by citing Lavah Hoh and William Rough:

The primary activity […] involved chaining a large bear,…to a stake in the

center of a ring […] where large mastiff dogs were encouraged to attack it.

The dogs were particularly courageous, and they would continue to attack

over and over again until they were too weak from the loss of blood to

stand. Bets were taken on how many dogs would be killed before the bear

[… ] died. (qtd. in Brown 215)

This vicious public sport goes back to ―the time of Norman Conquest, AD 1099‖ and lasted ―into the eighteenth century‖ (Brown 213), and was appreciated by both men and women in Europe. Elle confirms: ―My experience with bears is limited to watching dancing bears and bear-baiting exhibitions at harvest fairs‖ (68). In connection to ―dancing‖ bears and street bears Brown provides the following background:

Bears have entertained in the streets for centuries. They were trained and

led around on chains for public amusement during the Middle Ages, AD

476 to AD 1453. In Egypt during the thirteenth century, marketplace

entertainment displayed trained animals, including bears that ―danced‖. […]

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, itinerant musicians

wandered throughout the countries of Eurasia, playing a musical instrument

while exhibiting bears dressed in costumes. Brown bears from the Pyrenees

Mountains were famous dancing performers […] The brown and Asiatic

black bears are trained for a variety of ‗performances,‘ while the sloth bear

is often used as a dancing bear. […] The bears are usually muzzled while

performing and are often declawed. (214)

Declawing a bear is extremely painful for the bear (―The Life‖). Imagine what it might be like if one‘s nails were pulled out. Torturing bears by baiting and training them for dancing still continues, the former primarily in Pakistan, the latter in India15. ―In Western Europe, dancing bears were popular for centuries until the practice came to an end (in the case of

Greece) only a few years ago. Dancing bears can still be found in Central and Eastern

Europe, Turkey, and Russia – although in steadily falling numbers‖ (Payton 41).

In order to explain the training, I will borrow the description published on the

International Animal Rescue website in an article ―The Life of a Dancing Bear‖ which speaks of Sun bears in India:

A bear cub's 'training' meant being beaten and starved into submission by

his handler and learning to obey him out of fear and pain. At only six

months old a red-hot iron needle was forced up through the young bear's

nose and driven out through the roof of his muzzle. Then a coarse rope was

pulled through the open wound. The agony of the torn and swollen tissue

when the rope was jerked soon taught the bear to submit to the Kalandar

handler. The bear's claws were cut down to the quick and his canine teeth

smashed with a metal rod or a hammer, rendering him completely

15 One may learn more about them on the website of the World Society for the Protection of Animals or in the novel by Brian Payton called Shadow of the Bear, frequently cited in this thesis.

defenceless. Some bears were given alcohol to subdue them, while young

male bears were often crudely castrated.

The training is not the end of the bears‘ suffering.

Abscesses would often form in the gaps in the bear's gums and the weeping

wound in his muzzle was likely to become infested with maggots. Wracked

with pain and riddled with diseases such as tuberculosis, leptospirosis or

rabies, most dancing bears only survived for a few short years on the streets.

A number of them also went blind as a result of malnutrition or after

beatings to the head.

The dancing bear lived his life at the end of a short rope, trailing

along the hot dusty streets or tethered miserably at the roadside. He was

unable to express any of the natural behaviour of a wild bear, causing

boredom and frustration and often leading to severe stereotypical

behaviour.

I write about these two practices in order to provide a detailed picture of how bears were treated and perceived in Europe until recently. It also proves that the Western world view is strongly supported in Europe. Descartes‘ notion of bears as machines that serve humans to improve their living standards so permeates these practices that it cannot be overlooked.

The same attitude has been transported to North America where it has had almost as a deadly result as in Europe. In Europe bears who originally occupied the whole continent are currently found in rather small islands of suitable habitats in the sea of infrastructure that is spreading fast.

After the arrival of the first Europeans on the North American continent, the numbers of bears fell rapidly. It is estimated that the Brown bear species ―has lost more than fifty percent of its […] population since the mid-1800s‖ (Brown 37) and the case of the American black bear is no different. One can blame Westerners for this rapid decline

60 since their established perception of animals as things they can be entertained by, or as a commodity for fur, or as a nuisance to be hunted and killed like vermin. Andy Russell collected several stories about bears and published them in a collection Great Bear

Adventures: True Tales from the Wild. One of the stories includes an account of the Theodore

Roosevelt hunt that has been already mentioned. The story was published in 1905 and I use it as a model example of accounts of bear hunting. Roosevelt speaks of how killing was carried out, and from my point of view it was disrespectful and painful treatment of an equal living thing: ―The bullet broke both his hips […] there was no need to kill him at once [….] he stopped and raised himself on his fore quarters; and with another bullet I broke his back between the shoulders. Immediately all dogs began to worry his carcass […]

It was wild scene to look upon‖ (qtd. in Russell ―Great‖ 96). There are more similar accounts of bear killing in the narration of Theodore Roosevelt, which I will spare the reader. The claim that the bear is a dangerous animal, however simplified this claim may be, has been sufficient excuse for hunters to kill it.

The hunting question is an inseparable part of the discussion of human-animal relationships and the rights of animals. Adrian Franklin devotes a whole chapter to hunting and angling in his Animals and Modern Cultures: A Sociology of Human-Animal Relations in

Modernity in which he explores the reasons for the popularity of these sports in an era when conservation and environmental approach began to dominate discussions of nature. By comparing the American and British cultures, he identifies several emergent differences between the two. While in the USA, hunting ―is central to the American (male) national identity, particularly because it puts into practice so many values of American individualism: freedom of movement and access to natural resources; […] self-provisioning and self-reliance; […] male bonding and male companionship; the aestheticization of

American nature‖ (107), in Britain it is associated with social organization in the already

―tamed, tightly controlled‖ (107) nature and land. It has previously been pointed out that

Eisler holds that the early Europeans attempted to tame America‘s natural wilderness, but given the geographical layout of the American continent and northern Canada, they were not as successful as they might have wanted. The Americans as well as the Canadians created nations one associates with the early explorers, with ―their historical roots as an open frontier, country culture involved in a struggle with natural forces‖ (Franklin 107).

Wildness and struggle against natural forces, against a species that is potentially dangerous to humans, has remained imprinted in the former European cultures living in North

America. In his article ―Bears as Imaginary Dragons‖ published on the North American Bear

Centre website, Lynn Rogers comments:

There may be something within us that wants to imagine dangerous animals

to prove our courage against. […] Today, outdoor writers, artists, and

others profit by demonizing bears. They exaggerate danger, creating

fantasies of courage that sell magazines, art, bear hunting trips, and more.

[…] Many people accept these exaggerations and develop a deep fear of

bears.

These exaggerations are also used as justifications for bear hunting. Payton describes a bear hunt with hounds, similar to that of Theodore Roosevelt‘s, which took place a hundred years later in the late 20th century. One of the hunters comments on hunting with hounds:

―You have to have something for the dogs to do […] Anyone with enough brains to come out here would see that the bear is harassing you more than you‘re harassing that guy‖

(264). This claim can easily be refuted by park wardens, researchers and conservationists, who spend most of their time in bear habitats observing bears and their behaviour. Form their experience ―[b]ears are normally shy, retiring animals that have very little desire to interact with humans. Unless they are forced to be around humans to be near a food source, they usually choose to avoid [humans]‖ (―Behaviour‖). Payton talks about yet another hunter who ―likes to hunt bear for the ‗adrenaline,‘ but has no idea how many he

62 has killed in his lifetime‖ (264). The hunter states: ―‗I‘d like to watch them [his dogs] tear a bear up,‘‖ (qtd. in Payton 264). It is maintained that hunters are nature lovers. Steve

Williams, the Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, introduces the ―2001 National

Survey of Fishing, hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation‖ with the following words:

―Wildlife recreationists are among the Nation‘s most ardent conservationists. They not only contribute financially to conservation efforts, but also spend time and effort to introduce children and other newcomers to the enjoyment of the outdoors and wildlife‖

(―2001‖ vi). Reading the above-mentioned statements from hunters, it sounds ironic, at the least. Merchant comments on a hunter‘s love of nature eloquently: ―As wilderness vanishes before advancing civilization, its remnants must be preserved as test zones for men

(epitomized by Theodore Roosevelt) to hone male strength and skills‖ (Merchant 44). She argues that the primary concern for hunters and their supposed desire to protect the environment is to ensure enough prey to continue hunt.

One may counter that there is nothing wrong with bear hunting. One may even consider the hunter‘s reasons for conservation mentioned above to be satisfactory. The problem is that many hunters do not kill the bear for meat; nor do they necessarily eat the meat when the bear is killed, and, most importantly, hunting a bear with hounds is, to a certain degree, torture. Payton witnesses such a hunt and describes it in the following words:

On a branch thirty feet above is a single, terrified bear. It desperately hugs

the tree, its chest rising and falling in rapid succession. It still cannot catch

its breath. After five months in hibernation – and a sudden, incredible run –

it is now gasping so fast I wonder if it might just collapse and save them the

trouble. Now and then, it allows itself a glance at its tormentors below. I

meet its eyes and instantly I recognize both the expression and body

language of a fellow creature cornered, frightened for its life. After half an

hour of letting the dogs have their day, the men…pull them from the tree.

A woman in her thirties steps out of an idling truck, holding a child in one

arm and a gun in the other. (285)

Although this event took place in the early 2000s in Utah, a state that allows bear hunting and hunting with hounds (Payton 259) and also bear baiting16 (Payton 266). It is included here as a clear demonstration of how the Western world view, with its anthropocentric view of nature, remains deeply incorporated into our way of thinking up to the present day.

It should also be pointed out that, in contrast to some of the states in the USA, according to the Status Report and Conservation Action Plan, bear baiting is illegal and all the females with cubs and yearlings are protected in Canada (Servheen 48). From the organic world view perspective, this represents significant progress. Nevertheless, the issue of hunting versus bear protection has not reached its final stage.

In America hunting is a predominantly male affair (―2001‖ 29) and almost exclusively white: ―Of the 13 million hunters, 96 percent were White, 2 percent were Black, and 1 percent were of other races‖ (―2001‖ 31), according to statistics taken in 2001. In chapter two I mention how the female characters struggle with the patriarchy that has been central in the Western society. A parallel can be traced between the male domination over the female characters discussed in chapter two and the domination over bears by hunters.

In Western society, women have until recently been assigned the supportive / subjugated roles of lovers, mothers and housekeepers, providing a pleasant home and sexual pleasure for husbands. Bears provide pleasure for men as a living target which men enthusiastically hunt. Men prove their manhood by killing the bear, thus confirming their power over the

16 Bear baiting “involves attracting bears to food stations where hunters wait in blinds for a shot at point- blank range. Critics (and some wildlife managers) claim that […] baiting might even encourage bears to develop taste for human foods and thus become „nuisance‟ bears” (Payton 266). Once the bear becomes as nuisance there is a high probability that it will be shot down due to becoming problematic with humans.

64 animals. This thesis will not argue that all forms of hunting should be abolished. What is important is how hunts are carried out and how the hunter approaches the whole concept of hunting as I will clarify in the following paragraph.

I would add that by discussing some of the ways humans have treated bears, I have attempted to show how the Western world view permeates in the Western society.

However, as I stated in the introductory chapter, the organic world view has not been completely replaced by the Western one as I will now demonstrate.

Hunting for aboriginal communities has traditionally been essential. However, the organic world view predominant in these communities meant they did not typically hunt bears unless it was necessary. As opposed to the Western hunters whom Payton interviewed, the Cree ―believed it was dishonourable to boast about killing an animal. The animal made gift of its life. For a hunter to openly take credit denied that gift and violated his union with the animal‘s spirit‖ (Rockwell 36). The bear was like a member of a family for whom they had high respect and sympathy. Moreover, those aboriginal people who killed bears usually used every piece of the bear so that nothing was wasted (Rockwell 39-

40). There are also non-aboriginal people who respect the bear and see no need to hunt it.

In her book Grizzlies in Their Backyard, Beth Day portrays a life of a couple, Jim and

Laurette Stanton, who decided to move to Canada to live in the wilderness at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although Laurette hated killing animals, throughout winter Jim set traps in order for them to earn money for food for the next winter. He also did not trap or hunt more animals than they needed. Once Jim finds a different income, he abandons trapping. Day writes that ―in the six years that they lived at the Head, with thirty to forty grizzlies [Ursus arctos] within a few miles of their house, Jim was forced by necessity to kill only three‖ (102). The Stantons can be perceived as exemplary leaders in sharing land with animals and living in a harmonious relationship with them.

In subchapter 1.1 I explained the Western approach to science, and also asserted that aboriginal people and their stories are a source of scientific information, albeit articulated in a different manner than that common in the West. The story ―The Girl Who

Married the Bear‖ speaks of bear behaviour that the aboriginal peoples are aware of while the Western researchers discovered these slowly and sometimes painfully over the decades that followed their colonization of North America. The story also reveals useful advice on how to behave in a bear country. Bill Reid in his version of the story says: ―The last thing the bears wanted was enmity between themselves and human beings‖ (Reid 71). This is a sign of the fact that bears avoid people. Linda Jo Hunter speaks of her communication with a bear. She moved silently in a forest and heard a bear break a stick nearby. ―I answered in kind. Within a minute I heard him answer. I was comfortable with this ‗stick game‘ and assumed the bear was too, until he pushed down a dead tree. His point of superior strength had been made and I backed off‖ (Hunter 10).17 However, since one may easily come across a bear if not behaving loud enough, the theme of bear and human avoidance is mentioned again when the women go berries picking.

Another important piece of knowledge provided in the story concerns bear movements throughout the year. Theresa Kishkan specifies Henry W. Tate‘s information on when the story is set: ―It takes place in the time between August and September, the month, Tate tells us, of wild berries picking‖ (Kishkan, italics in the original). This means that people and bears compete for food resources, and may easily encounter each other if one does not pay enough attention. Bill Reid narrates: ―the pair of bears […] feeding contentedly nearby on the same salmonberries the young woman had been gathering‖

(Reid 64). That is why the women go berry-picking together, since they can talk to each other and make noise in order to avoid the encounter. In the late fall/early winter bears

17 Hunter is an experienced guide and tracker, therefore she knows what she is doing when following a bear. Pushing down a tree is sometimes interpreted as an anger on the bear side, but it is rather a common behaviour and a way of communication with another bear that says “You‟d better not tease me. Leave me alone”.

66 look for a place suitable for a den - a place where they feel safe. Should they be disturbed by a passer-by when preparing their den, they might abandon it and look for another place.

In his version Jack Jackson tells where they make the den: ―You see where the mud comes down from the mountain, that‘s the place the bear found on the mountain, where all the rocks wash down and spread out in the valley below. That‘s where the bear dug a hole‖

(qtd. in McClelland 17). In rockier areas bears can make dens in caves and rocks, otherwise they tend to dig a den under a tree and cover it with boughs. Jack Jackson‘s bear sends his wife to collect some: ―As soon as he finished digging the hole, he told his wife to get boughs‖ (qtd. in McClelland 17). In Yak Quahu‘s version there is ―a lake. They reach it and stop at a large cedar tree. She lives in the tree with the bear‖ (qtd. in Erdoes 421). When I ask children and sometimes their parents during educative activities when cubs are born, most often the answer I receive is spring. That is a wrong answer and as one can learn from the story, the girl gives birth to her babies – the cubs in winter time when they live in the den. In her version Maria John explicitly says: ―She had two little babies – one was a girl, one was a boy. She had them in February in the den. This is when bears have their cubs. She had hers then‖ (qtd. in McClelland 30). When the brothers come for their sister and kill their brother-in-law, it is the end of winter/beginning of spring, the time when bears start to come out of their dens. David Rockwell says that the reason for hunting that early in the spring is ―because that was often when food stores were the lowest‖ (Rockwell

32). The period of spring is not included in the story because enough food is available in spring for the people and the bears usually stay in higher elevations feeding on grass, roots, insects and carcasses of dead animals before they come to feed on berries in the summer.

Finally, it may seem odd that a bear scat appears in the story, that the girl slides on it and thereby insults the bears. Bear scat carries an important message for a conscientious passer-by. Firstly, depending on how fresh the scat is, one can guess how much time has passed since the bear appeared on the spot and consequently, walk away from the area to

67 avoid the bear or continue on one‘s way. Secondly, ―[y]ou can study the droppings to know what the bears have been eating (and thus avoid dangerous areas)‖ as Theresa Kishkan points out. Information on bears provided in the various versions of the story have been rediscovered by people of European origin like the Stantons, who lived a life similar to that of aboriginal people that was close to nature and thus could learn about bears by observing them in their natural habitat rather than reading about them in books. This brings me to highlighting the difference that can be traced in some cases between the knowledge and observations by people living close to bears and those of researchers.

While the former observe bears in their natural habitat and can relate to the interconnectedness of the ecosystem, the latter, proponents of the Western world view and science, observe captive bears or concentrate on a single aspect of bear life or biology in the wilderness, and thus provide results that are specific only for the particular setting and are very limited. Nick Garbutt reports in his article ―The Bear Necessities‖ on apparently recent research showing the interconnectedness of salmon not just with bears, but with the forest itself. He mentions the worrying situation of alarmingly decreasing numbers of bears in British Columbia in 2009, caused by poor runs of salmon in 2008. Bears are highly dependent on salmon, which is a ―pre-hibernation food source. Without the necessary body reserves, sows fail to produce cubs (they may die in utero), or if they do manage to give birth, cub survival is less likely‖ (42). However, the rain forest is also dependent on salmon runs and on the bears: ―[S]cientists have found the isotopic signature of salmon in just about every component of the Great Bear Rainforest ecosystem, from the soil through to tree trunks, foliage and fruit, and on to insects and other invertebrates‖ (43). In this web of interactions the bears serve as logistic operators who distribute the highly nutrient salmon through their excrements into the soil or leaves leftovers for the forest to indulge in. It is obvious that ―‗[a]s we lose either bears or salmon – or both –along the coast of

British Columbia, then we‘re also adversely affecting the health of the forests‘‖ (qtd. in

Garbutt 44). Interconnections such as those between the salmon and the forests are clear for the deep ecologists and the organic world view proponents, even without the need to prove their conjectures and hypotheses, which is necessary for the Western scientists/researchers in order to believe or accept the interconnectedness of all things.

Despite its strong influence, the Western world view has been losing some of its influence in the Western world since the second half of the twentieth century.

Developments in Western science, e.g. the introduction of chaos theory, and the stronger voices of the formerly marginalized groups, e.g. aboriginal people, women, homosexuals and other minority groups, all go hand in hand with the change in human attitudes towards the environment, animals, and bears. Environmental issues are currently a topic of daily debates at the national and global level. Innumerable organizations have been established to protect the welfare of animals. For instance, the David Suzuki Foundation in British

Columbia set up a project called Grizzly Bears, aiming at changing the legal status of grizzly bears in British Columbia so that they become legally protected. Initiatives such as this one are a positive sign of the changing view of many people. What remains problematic, however, is that environmental protection policies are still informed, to some extent, by the anthropocentrism that is embedded in the Western world view. In The Black Grizzly of

Whiskey Creek, Sid Marty, a former Banff National Park warden, portrays how problems with nuisance bears and human-bear conflicts were solved in the park in the 1970s and

1980s. Bears that become habituated to an easy and nutritious food source – garbage – lost their fear of humans and could become aggressive when demanding food.18 The problem with some of the bears was solved by either trapping the bear and relocating it or shooting it. Marty found this personally upsetting and inconceivable: ―[S]hooting this magnificent beast made me feel sick. Such a brutal action represented a failure of everything I valued

18 Again, one needs to be careful about making such statements. I use the work “can” because there is a probability that the bear may show aggressive behaviour, but it does not necessarily need to apply on all nuisance bears. See article called “Myth: When bears lose their fear of people, they become more likely to attack” on the North American Bear Center website.

69 about the national park ideal‖ (15). Nonetheless, like many other people, Marty believed that national parks were created in order to protect the animals rather than keep them in

―wilderness zoos‖ for people to be able to see them. Pepper speaks of the National Park movement that resulted from ―growing concern over the loss of wilderness‖ (197) in the nineteenth century. However, the official slogan ―Parks are for people‖, adopted around

1980, that introduces the twelfth chapter or Marty‘s book (167), speaks volumes about the world view informing the national park ethos. . Bears are seen as a danger that needs to be eliminated so that visitors to the park may safely walk and admire the wildlife. Today, however, strong anthropocentrism is waning in national parks. The common practice these days, as I have personally witnessed in the Banff National Park in 2005, is closing an area in which a bear that has had a conflict with human being is, so that it can safely move in the area without being disturbed for several weeks.

In the course of four or five centuries, then, human treatment of bears and the human-bear relationships have both undergone substantial change. Although hunting remains popular in Canada, there are now restrictions on hunting techniques and the numbers of bears that can be hunted. In ―Species Profile: Grizzly Bear Northwestern

Population‖ on the Species at Risk Public Registry website run by the Government of Canada one learns that

[a]ll provinnces and territories within the current range of the Grizzly Bear

Northwestern population have restrictions on hunting that include closed

seasons, limited-entry permits, harvest quotas, and protection for females,

cubs, and bears within their dens. The use of bait is prohibited when

hunting Grizzly Bears, and trade in bear parts is illegal.

But ―[i]t is legal to kill a Grizzly Bear in defense of life or property‖ (―Species‖). Even though anthropocentrism remains deeply embedded in Western culture, the intrinsic value of living and non-living beings is also gaining greater emphasis, as Steve Herrero mentions

70 in connection to bears in the official IUCN Report: ―[W]e should not forget their basic existence value. Bears are unique creatures with whom we share the earth. For some people this is enough justification for bear conservation‖ (qtd. in Servheen 5). This author would argue that including such a perspective from an organic world view in a document designed to communicate with the public suggests greater opportunities for this perspective to filter through to the public and ensure a better future for the community and for bears.

3.3 The Nature of Bears – Future of Bears

Each person has different life experience, depending on where, when and under what social and financial conditions one is born, as well as on what kind of people one meets, and, of course, on the DNA code. Yet, the more one knows about a particular person, the better picture one can build up about that person, and whether to trust her/him or not. The same thing applies to bears because bears and humans have more in common than many people tend to think.

The aboriginal people in North America revered the bear for two reasons, fear and a feeling of kinship, claims David Rockwell in his work Giving Voice to Bear: North American

Indian Rituals, Myths, and Images of the Bear (2). The feeling of kinship is ascribed, among other things, to the fact that humans and bears share many physical characteristics.

Rockwell names the following:

Bears are built somewhat like people. Unlike other large animals familiar to

the Indians, bears often stand on their hind legs and, from time to time,

walk upright. Their tracks – imprints of heel, arch and toes – suggest the

passing of some large, wild, forest person. When a bear rises up on its hind

legs, or when it sits, its front legs hang like arms. A bear often stands and

reaches, as a person would, for berries it cannot grasp with its mouth. And

bears display considerable dexterity with their paws – in captivity they have

been known to peel peaches. […] A skinned bear carcass looks human. (2)

When in Douglas Glover‘s Elle the main character Elle saw the dead bear woman, she was shocked how human the carcass of the bear (-woman) looked, as was mentioned in the previous chapter. Gary Brown supplements the enumeration of behaviour that can be seen as human in his Great Bear Almanac. His list includes points such as ―[c]ourt with demonstrable affection,‖ ―[s]pank their young‖ when they are disobedient, ―[p]produce excrement similar to human,‖ ―[h]ighly evolved,‖ ―[i]ntelligent,‖ ―[s]trongly curious,‖

―[s]elf-sufficient,‖ ―[i]ndependent,‖ and ―[e]asy-going‖ (47). If one watches documentaries on bears, it can be surprising how human bear behaviour is, how the mother spanks her cubs and calls them by huffing, or how much they can enjoy snow and playing with it.

Linda Jo Hunter, a professional and experienced guide and tracker comments in her book,

Lonesome for Bears, on the reaction of her guests whom she took bear watching: ―Bears can use their paws for delicate tasks. […] In fact, when our guests watched a bear engaging in any activity they perceived as humanlike it surprised them. Many were amazed that we could even tell individual bears apart‖ (69). These guests, having in mind the bears they learn about from the media cannot react otherwise. Like people, each bear has its unique character.

In subchapter 3.1 I mentioned two of the most common misconceptions about bears – the public perceptions of them as harmless toys and dangerous animals. While these are generally not reflected in real life, there do appear to be occasional exceptions.

Robert Franklin Leslie has met a bear that seemed to be as harmless as a toy bear. In a story ―The Bear That Came for Supper,‖ published in Andy Russell‘s collection of stories

Great Bear Adventures: True Tales from the Wild, Leslie portrays how he established a friendship with a wild bear in the Canadian Rockies. Leslie is sitting on a sleeping bag and the bear, called for the short time of their friendship Bosco, joins him: ―When smoke blew our way,

72 he snorted and sneezed, and I imitated most of his body movements, even the sneezing and snorting, swaying my head in every direction, sniffing the air as he did‖ (qtd. in Russell

―Great‖ 213). Instead of training the bear, Leslie learnt from the bear ―to become a brother bear‖ to Bosco (qtd. in Russell ―Great‖ 216). During the day, they would play, in the evenings the man and the bear would sit together and ―talk‖: ―Bosco nudged, pawed, talked at great length, and looked me long in the eye before allowing me to retire‖ (qtd. in

Russell ―Great‖ 217). On other occasions he would show other signs of companionship:

―Once in a while he‘d reach some sort of conclusion and hang a heavy paw on my shoulder. And I‘d do the same‖ (qtd. in Russell ―Great‖ 216). At one point, the bear said goodbye to Leslie and headed back for the forest, perhaps at the border of his vast home range.19 This bear was friendly, which is not uncommon among bears (as one may learn from reading Hunter, about the Stantons, and on the Amercian Black Bear Centre and the

Get Bear Smart Society websites). Some people such as Linda Jo Hunter and the Stantons never touched a bear out of respect and love, because they did not want the bears to learn to approach humans. Others, such as Timothy Treadwell and Charlie Russell, who are known for living among bears and/or teaching orphaned bear cubs to live in the wilderness, have played with bears and petted them. One should keep in mind though, that these people earned the bears‘ trust which takes several months of interaction with a bear and that ―[b]ears, like humans and other animals, have a ―critical space‖ – an area around them that they may defend. Once you have entered a bear's critical space, you have forced the bear to act – either to run away or be aggressive. The size of the critical space is different for every bear and every situation‖ (―Behaviour‖).

19 Bears live in a home range is a certain area. They do not move every year but tend to stay in one place (see the Get Bear Smart Society website for further references). It is also why researchers can put radio- collars on bears and thus observe them in a certain area. Park wardens give numbers to bears in order to identify them when they see them, because the bears show up in their specific area on regular basis.

On the other hand one may come across a bear who was somehow mistreated by humans and thus reacts in an aggressive way without any provocation.20 However, such an instance is less likely than being run down by a car, or bitten by a dog. Moreover, this primarily happens in areas where bears share their environment with humans. In places where bears do not encounter humans such as at Kamchatka or Alaska, there have been basically no problems with bears when, for instance, Russell or Treadwell21 lived there. Dan

Wakeman, one of two licensed guides at the Khutzeymateen bear sanctuary, who has observed and lived among bears for over fifteen years, says in his book Fortress of the

Grizzlies about bears: ―Most bears I know will slip away to avoid anything that drains their energy. I have looked closely into the eyes of many grizzly bears and seen what I perceive as contentment, peacefulness, and intelligence, which contradicts all the myths I was raised to believe. These animals have allowed me into their world and shown that, if respected, they will return the honour‖ (72). This observation is more likely to be applied to bears in general by those who are familiar with them on a personal basis. Seeing bears as intelligent and peaceful beings is a view shared by all the conservationists, trackers, and bear lovers who have lived among bears whose experiences I have researched. Charlie Russell, yet another famous Canadian writer and bear rights activist known for his movie The Bear Man of Kamchatka who raised two orphaned cubs in the wilderness for a couple of years points out that if bears were unpredictable and ferocious, he would not have survived among them (Russell ―Natural‖). The lesson one learns from reading as much as it is possible

20 Bears who have been mistreated by humans tend to display aggressive behavior. On the Wildlife SOS Website in an article “Baby Bears Rescued from Poachers Reach Agra Bear Sanctuary” one can read about a bear cub who was tortured: “He is still very distressed over his short but agonizing past and it is reflected in his occasional bouts of aggressiveness and his fear of humans, including his keeper.” 21 Timothy Treadwell‟s case was made into a documentary movie called The Grizzly Man. Treadwell lived for several seasons among bears, but in the end, was killed by an old hungry bear. The reason why I am mentioning it is that from my perspective, he proved what he wanted – bears are not naturally dangerous. If bears were seeking to kill humans, he would not survive a single day there. Unfortunately, he met an old bear that did not make enough fat for winter to survive during hibernation. Knowing he might die, the bear grab the opportunity to feed on an available food resource he might under other circumstances have avoided. This event was exceptional and should not be used as exemplary of bear danger to humans.

74 about bears is that it is not in their nature to harm people, that it is best to avoid encounters unless one knows the bear very well, which is unlikely for an average park visitor or hiker. It is also important to let the bears know that one is in the area and play either the game Hunter did with the bear or simply speak loudly. This may save one from bumping into a sow with her cubs or surprising a bear, which may lead to a bluff charge or a painful spank which may result in hospitalization.

Edwin Way Teale says: ―Those who wish to pet wildlife love them, but those who respect their natures and whish them to live natural lives love them more‖ (qtd. in Payton

59). In his citation Teale touches upon crucial factors that may influence the future lives of bears, and along with them of other species, i.e. the spreading of infrastructure, the timber industry, restricting bears to enclosed areas without enabling them to travel safely, and, last but not least, destroying their habitat. If one wishes to protect bears, establishing a

National park is therefore a step that does not necessarily help if taken in isolation. Even though it may offer bears protection from hunting, they are not spared accidents on highways and railways that lead through the national park. Even though fences, bridges or tunnels for wildlife are built along the highways, the railroad issue has not been resolved so far, therefore each year several bears die on the rail when they are tempted to feed on grain that has fallen off the carriages. Based on his work experience, Marty confirms: ―Over the years up to the present, black and grizzly bears [Ursus arctos] in Banff and other mountain areas of North-America, attracted to the rail bed to feed on spilled grain or on train-killed animals, have been run down and mangled by the big steel wheels‖ (15). The problems with destroying natural habitat in the British Columbia rainforest and the consequences that has on salmon, bears, and the forest itself, was mentioned in chapter 3.2. If one puts all these problems together, s/he arrives at the conclusion Teale is, in my view, suggesting.

In order for bears to live safely, it is crucial to leave vast areas untouched by humans, such as in Alaska where about 90% is uninhabited land. To borrow Merchant‘s words: ―This

75 disorderly, orderly world of nonhuman nature must be acknowledged as a free autonomous actor‖ (221). The vision of some of the inhabitants of British Columbia is not far from

Teale‘s and Merchant‘s views: ―Our vision is one of local communities, monstrous old growth spruce and cedar, millions of relentless salmon, and massive grizzly bears existing harmoniously in perpetuity,‖ say Horejsi and Gilbert. In order to live so, Horejsi and

Gilbert suggest in their report, called Wayward Course: British Columbia Fails to Meet Protected

Areas Standards for the Conservation of Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos) Populations and Habitat in the

Northern Great Bear Forest, it is necessary to enlarge protected areas inhabited by Brown bears. ―[A] total of about 3,260 km2‖ should be established, which ―amounts to 54% of existing suitable habitat (total of about 6050 km2) in occupied grizzly bear [Ursus arctos] range,‖ and add that ―[o]f the 2025 km2 of additional protection necessary, at least 72%

(1458 km2) will have to consist of productive forest in order to maintain historical ecological function in these landscapes.‖ The above mentioned examples imply that the reductionist approach of the Western view cannot be used when protecting the environment. In this respect an organic world view has proven to be more suitable, therefore, is indeed gaining greater recognition when governmental reports on animal/bear protection and conservation are written and when common inhabitants think of the land they live in. Still, there is lot of work ahead for humans to realize that in order to protect the natural environment, and in order for us to improve relationships among ourselves and with other species, the most efficient tool is humility and respect for other living and non- living beings and enabling nonhuman nature to be independent of human management.

At the beginning of the third chapter I remarked that one can tell a great deal about

Canadians by the way they treat bears. When comparing the hunting restrictions in Canada

(mentioned in subchapter 2.2) with some states in the USA (also mentioned in subchapter

2.2), and when looking back at the way Europeans used to treat the aboriginal people in

North America and contrasting it with the establishment of the Nunavut self-governed

76 territory in Canada, it seems that the Canadians are a step ahead of other humans with the

Western world view in distancing themselves from the Western view and coming closer to the organic one. It may be given by the geographical disposition, but perhaps also by the fact that the highest number of Brown bears in the world occupy Canada, and more humans have created a bond with these animals and call for their conservation. Despite the fact that capitalism and anthropocentrism are present in Canada, there is a strong sense of belief, that ―[w]e cannot be saved [...] unless we are willing to be changed‖ among the

Canadians (Glover 55).

***

Conclusion

Humans can eat and sleep with gods, and bear their children. Still, they can be just a breath away from being rocks and trees and wolves and deer and bears and stars and darkness. Just a breath away from deathlessness, and just a breath away from all that darkness in between the stars.

Robert Bringhurst, Ursa Major

The discussion in the thesis has weaved around the Western and the organic world views and male domination over women and animals, namely bears. A historical approach has been applied to show the development in the Western thought and to suggest in which direction it is heading, because I believe that ―[w]ithout appreciation of the past, we don‘t know where we come from. Without knowledge of the present, we can‘t know where we are. And most critically, without a vision of the future, we can‘t move forward,‖ to borrow

Linda Vance‘s words (126). Having in mind the Chinese yin and yang concept, I have compared the Western world view with the organic world view so as to show how the

Western world view that has been dominating in modern history is now retreating in favour of the organic one. At the same time, as I contrasted the two world views, and despite the critical standpoint towards the Western world view, male domination, and

Western science that spring from the development of that view, I did not intend to prefer one over the other or condemn either of them, but rather show how destructive it can be when one dominates over the other and emphasize how important it is to struggle for a balance of the two world views. Capra speaks of a transformation in contemporary society that is currently taking place.22 As it has been suggested, the transformation can be observed on how humans have treated bears, but also on the female characters in Douglas

Glover‘s novel Elle, Marian Engel‘s novel Bear and in several versions of the aboriginal story called ―The Girl Who Married the Bear.‖

22 See the introduction, p 3.

In Douglas Glover‘s Elle and Marian Engel‘s Bear, the main female characters, Elle and Lou, are caught up in an unbalanced society that favours the Western world view. If one wishes for a change in the society, one needs to start with changing oneself. Both Elle and Lou go though a transformation of their values, in the sense that after they encounter bears, they are no longer willing to participate in the patriarchal society. Elle learns about the deeper connection between humans and animals when she becomes a bear woman.

Turning into a bear-woman is something the Western mind usually does not consider rational and thus believable. But as I will show further, Stanislav Grof‘s research in the twentieth-century psychology proves that ―[i]n the transpersonal realm it becomes possible to have experiential insight into the sensation of a mountain lion tracking its prey through a rocky canyon […] or the powerful flight of an eagle‖ (98). Therefore, since hardly anyone in sixteenth-century France would understand Elle, she keeps her knowledge about the common human-animal consciousness to herself and lives with her bear companion in poverty. Lou also does not reveal her secretive relationship with the bear, and when she returns to Toronto: ―She [feels] strong and pure‖ (Engel 140), as if she had purified herself from her experiences with men and was ready to make a new start. The aboriginal story

―the Girl Who Married the Bear‖ which is based on the organic perception of the world is used in this thesis to demonstrate that the theme of behaving in a superior manner over others is common in other literatures and cultures as well. The story is different from the other non-aboriginal works in that it is animistic, therefore the human and non-human worlds are seen as equal, and reciprocally interconnected. This time it is the female character, the Girl, who is conceited and behaves in a disrespectful way towards others, including bears, and thus is punished for it. She learns her lesson and changes her behaviour or transforms herself into a bear, depending on the particular version of the story.

All the three literary works address two crucial themes – interspecies and female- male relationships. The latter one, discussed in association with the patriarchal system, is handled in this thesis in such a way that it, to a certain degree, victimizes the female and criticizes the male characters. One should bear in mind, though, that ―men and women are biologically different, but […] the values and implications based on that difference are the result of culture‖ (Lerner 6). In other words, both women and men are equally responsible for how they interpret the biological differences, and, more importantly, the values of a culture can be changed. In her biography of the Stantons, Day writes: ―When a man and a woman are alone in the wilderness, there is a close feeling of oneness that cannot be experienced elsewhere. She cannot live without him; and he is utterly lost without her‖ (7).

Western society has reached a state in which some women and men believe they are independent of each other to such a degree that they oftentimes become strangers. This is an example of where it leads when one extreme is substituted with another one. Therefore, it is crucial to keep the female-male relationships in a dynamic balance in which both sexes equally cooperate. To borrow Gerda Lerner‘s words: ―[W]hen we see with one eye, our vision is limited in range and devoid of depth. When we add to it the single vision of the other eye, our range of vision becomes wider, but we still lack depth. It is only when both eyes see together that we accomplish full range of vision and accurate depth perception‖

(12). Therefore, if women and men understand that they create one whole, the social construct of the gender division in not necessary.

Likewise, the interspecies relationships have undergone a substantial transformation and are now seen on more equal terms than several centuries ago. The

Cartesian split between the body and soul along with the belief that animals do not have souls, enabling humans treat animals cruelly without any feelings of shame or pity, have been gradually substituted with a more human and respectable treatment of animals.

Undoubtedly, bears have been exterminated from the majority of the North American

81 continent and are at risk of mistreatment due to the omnipresent misleading information about them. However, there are now laws in Canada and Europe that ban bear baiting, trade with bear parts, torturing bears during training, and also put various rules and limits on hunting (―2001‖, Horejsi). The debate about hunting has not ended and various organizations and official bodies are working on an agreement with hunters that would satisfy the demands and needs of all the sides involved, most importantly, the bears. In addition, a whole web of organizations works to dispel the misconceptions about bears, which has started bearing fruit. Perhaps it is not just for the bears themselves that the wider public and especially the local people who share the environment with them raise their voices, but also for more complex and personal reasons. Bears are still being threatened by losing their habitat due to spreading infrastructure, pollution of the environment and insensitive human management, which, to a great degree, influences the lives of the local people as well. The media speak of environmental crises; scientists warn about irretrievable changes in the biosphere, sometimes it feels as if there were no way to change it. Vance says that one needs a vision in order to move forward, which I believe lies at present in accepting the partnership ethics that ―calls for a new balance in which both humans and nonhuman nature are equal partners, neither having the upper hand, yet cooperating with each other‖ (Merchant 218). The vision Vance is talking about perhaps also lies in changing one‘s lifestyle and values towards more sustainable and humble behaviour, which should be implemented into economics, media, education, and other spheres of everyday life.

Some see it as a step back to return to our roots, to concentrate more on the local, on investing more time into activities rather than into material consumerism. In his book

The Turning Point, Fritjof Capra explains that ―[t]o return to a more human scale will not mean a return to the past but, on the contrary, will require the development of ingenious new forms of technology and social organization‖ (―Turning‖ 399). In order for the

Western society to accept a transformation for a more humble life, a paradigm shift on a

82 great scale needs to reach the public. The type of thinking associated with seeing development as a linear line stretching to infinity needs to be changed into understanding development as something immaterial that exists only due to constant dynamic interactions. These dynamic changes and interactions are the development. As a physicist, when Capra speaks of ―the development of ingenious new forms of technology‖

(―Turning‖ 399) he refers to science, but the science he has in mind is different than the one presented in the introduction of the thesis.

Western science, as portrayed in the introduction, is associated with dualistic thinking, mechanistic physics and anthropocentric views. The birth of science might be dated to ―Copernicus‘ heliocentric solar system‖ discovery, which, as Pepper says, ―opened up […] an enormous can of worms, leaving science to explain difficult problems that had previously been easy to account for‖ (136). Over the centuries western science has made important discoveries and has lead to the improvement of the living standards of many people. The era of mechanistic science was time in history thanks to which modern science arrived at conclusions about theory of relativity and quantum theory (Capra ―Turning‖ 75).

However, with the introduction of the two theories a new can of worms opened up, leaving the mechanistic science, the Western science, insufficient, and in many aspects inapt for describing the world around us. In the thesis, the western science was portrayed in such light so as to highlight the issues that arise from a world view that is the predominant actor on the scene. A world view that is unable to adjust to new challenging theories and alternative views, and despite all this, it is artificially fed by the culture that has created and supported it. One of the key outcomes that have arisen from the dominating role of this world view is the environmental crisis and the creation of elite groups that govern the economic world and thus everyone who is dependent on it.

In comparison, the organic world view was presented throughout the thesis as an alternative to the Western world view. Despite its growing acceptance by the wider

83 public, it is still perceived by many as eccentricity or reactionism, therefore its positives and strengths were emphasized in order to show how this perspective can alter human treatment of other humans and the non-human world. Still, in case of both of the world views, one cannot substitute another. The organic world view was represented in the thesis widely by the aboriginal values and knowledge, but I have also drawn on the knowledge of zoologists, conservationists and researchers. The latter have been educated in the Western scientific model. Nevertheless, they realized that science defined by the Western world view was insufficient for what they wished to achieve. In his book The Holotropic Mind, Stansilav Grof, a renowned psychologist, reveals how he reached a point at which he could no longer rely solely on the Western knowledge: “I could not understand why this brilliant conceptual system did not offer equally impressive clinical results […] I was being asked to believe that, even though we had a complete intellectual grasp of psychopathology we were working with, we could do relatively little about it” (15). Thus he looked for other explanations. Capra, for instance, concentrated on the study of Eastern mysticism and how it is connected to physics. A zoologist and a bear specialist, Lynn Rogers, confutes misconceptions about bear behaviour by following bears in their natural habitat, observing their social behaviour among other bears and in encounters with humans, which has proved to be the best way to learn about this particular aspect of the bear‟s life. In short, Western science was a part of their education, but not the only source and perspective of their education. In the literary works discussed an archetypical figure of an elderly woman appears. She is a metaphorical image of the interconnectedness of things which is one of the messages of the thesis.

In chapter 2.2 I mention the role that the elderly woman plays for the female characters in the three literary works. However, her role in the wider context is a lot more

84 complex. She is the embodiment of wisdom and knowledge, the bridge that connects all perspectives and scientific fields, trying to keep them in balance and dynamic relationship.

During his research and workshops on Holotropic Breathwork, Grof and his colleagues came across eye-opening experiences. Some of the participants, and also Grof himself, have ―transpersonal experiences of entering the consciousness of animals,‖ which can, allegedly, ―be extremely convincing‖ (98). For instance a Belgian woman revealed what she felt: ―I became aware of the presence of several large bodies and realized that it was a pod of whales […] A new, gigantic body image started to form out of the primordial connection to the other large bodies around me and I realized I had become one of them‖

(qtd. in Grof 98-99). During her experience, she gave birth to a whale baby and depicted all the details of how she felt and what happed despite never seeing or learning about one.

A marine biologist ―confirmed that the insights of the young Belgian woman had been accurate‖ (Grof 99). It is as if the elderly woman knew about all the possible realms of consciousness, of human actions, and intervened only when the chasm among the various perspectives, among humans, among humans and animals, etc. became too wide, she intervened so as they not disconnect but stay in a constant dynamic relationship. That is perhaps also why the elderly woman appears in the literary works only when the female characters are stuck in a difficult situation, the Girl in the aboriginal story is imprisoned by bears, Lou in Bear does not know what to do with the bear she is expected to look after, and Elle in Elle almost dies after the bad winter. The elderly woman provides them with advice and disappears, dies or leaves on a boat as Lou observes from the bank: ―[S]he was left standing, watching the bear recede down the channel, a fat dignified old woman with his nose to the wind in the bow of the boat‖ (Engel 138). Perhaps, the elderly woman has intervened again, since there are now new strong voices that call for changes in the society and for bridging of various fields and perspectives.

Capra believes that ―the awareness of the profound harmony between the world view of modern physics and the views of Eastern mysticism now appears as an integral part of a much larger cultural transformation, leading to the emergence of a new vision of reality that will require a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions and values‖

(―Tao‖ 15-16). Simultaneously, Graf sees ―the radical changes in our understanding of consciousness, the human psyche, and the nature of reality itself that become necessary when we pay attention to the testimony of non-ordinary states, as all other cultures before us‖ (13). Last, but not least, Merchant sees the future in reestablishing ties in and outside of society based on partnership rather than domination relationships: ―Constructing nature as a partner allows for the possibility of a personal or intimate […] relationship with nature and for feelings of compassion for nonhumans as well as for people who are sexually, racially, or culturally different‖ (8). As these voices are starting to reach wider public, and cultural constructs, such as patriarchy, are slowly being demolished with the new coming generations, human behaviour is changing towards a more respectful treatment of nature and other people.

The world one experiences is full of transformations and constant struggles to find a balance, not only between the two world views that have been discussed in this thesis, but also in personal lives. As it has been suggested, interactions and even small particles which create matter have a dynamic nature. Perhaps, the best way how to reach balance is by being open to new suggestions, interpretations and understandings of the world around us, and hope, that if one gets stranded, the elderly woman appears and offers her helping hand.

***

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Summary

In this thesis I trace a form of transformation in Western society, from the oppression of women and animals to their liberation. I wish to prove that cultural constructs such as patriarchy, gender division, etc. are so embedded in Western thinking, that majority of humans behave in accordance with them. At the same time, as the cultural constructs change, human behaviour changes. In order to show what happens when one world view dominates other I use two main concepts of the Western and organic world views, which I apply on women-bear relationships in three literary works, Glover‘s novel Elle, in Marian Engel‘s novel Bear and several versions of an aboriginal story called ―The Girl Who Married the Bear,‖ and on human-bear relationships in Canada. The Western world view, which is based on Western science and its development over the course of centuries, as well as on the philosophy of Descartes, has treated women and animals as inferior to men. It has also created dualism such as women-men, nature-culture, rational knowledge-intuitive wisdom. The organic world view reveres all living organisms and sees the Earth as one of such an organism. Its supporters aim to protect living species; do not see bears as a threat but rather as welcome inhabitants and important markers of a healthy habitat. In this thesis the two world views are not perceived as two competing views, but views that should be cooperating and in balance. In the second chapter I demonstrate on the three literary works the domination of Western men over women and how women cope with this. I also explore the relationships of the female characters, Elle, Lou and the Girl, to bears. The bears are seen as equal partners to women, as friends, companions, and/or lovers, who help them overcome male domination. I also touch on how bears are mistreated in these literary works, a theme that is discussed in more depth in the third chapter, as I examine the domination of humans over bears in Canada and North America. By looking at the human-bear relationship, I also intend to clarify misconceptions about bears that are widespread among the general public, by showing what zoologists and people who have an everyday association with these animals believe to be the nature of bears.

Anotace

V této práci se autorka zabývá transformací v západní společnosti od utlačování žen a zvířat k jejich osvobození. Autorka se snaží dokázat, že kulturní konstrukty, např. patriarchát, gendrové rozdělení atp., jsou v západním myšlení natolik zakořeněny, že ovlivňují chování většiny lidí, aniž by si toho byli vědomi. Protože však dochází ke změnám těchto kulturních konstruktů, mění se i lidské chování. Autorka užívá dva základní koncepty, jmenovitě západní světonázor a organický světonázor, pomocí kterých ukazuje co se děje, když jeden světonázor dominuje druhému. Tyto světonázory jsou aplikovány na vztah žen a medvědů ve třech literárních dílech. Jedná se o román Ona (Elle) od Douglase Glovera, Medvěd (Bear) od Marian Engelové a několik verzí příběhu původních obyvatel nazvaného Dívka, která si vzala medvěda (The Girl Who Married the Bear). Dále jsou oba světonázory použity při pohledu na vztahy člověka a medvěda v Kanadě. Západní světonázor, který se zakládá na poznatcích západní vědy a jejím vývoji, a také na filosofii Reného Descarta, považuje ženy a zvířata za podřízené mužům. Ten také vytvořil dualismy žena-muž, příroda-kultura, racionální znalost-intuitivní moudrost. Organický světonázor ctí všechny živé organismy a divá se na Zemi jako na jeden z takovýchto organismů. Lidé sdílející tento světonázor se snaží chránit žijící druhy; nevnímají medvědy jako hrozbu, ale jako vítaného obyvatele a důležitou známku zdravého ekosystému. V této práci nejsou tyto dva světonázory vnímány v opozici, ale jako přístupy, které by měly spolupracovat a být ve vzájemné rovnováze. Ve druhé kapitole se autorka zabývá literárními díly, na kterých ukazuje dominanci mužů nad ženami, a způsoby, jak se ženy s tímto postavením vypořádávají. Autorka se blíže dívá i na vztahy hlavních hrdinek, Elle, Lou a Dívky s medvědy. Ti jsou chápáni jako rovnocenní partneři žen, jejich přátelé, společníci, a v jednom případě také milenci, kteří jim pomáhají překonat nadvládu mužů. Autorka se také věnuje zobrazení zneužívání medvědů v těchto dílech. Toto téma je dále rozvinuto ve třetí kapitole, kde autorka zkoumá dominanci člověka nad medvědy v Kanadě a Severní Americe. Při analýze vztahu člověka a medvěda se autorka snaží objasnit mylné názory o medvědech, které jsou rozšířeny mezi veřejností. Autorka popisuje povahu medvědů tak, jak ji vnímají zoologové a lidé žijící v každodenním kontaktu s medvědy.