Woman - Bear Relationships in Canadian Literature and Human - Bear Relationships in Canada
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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. 2 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