REMOVING THE BINARIES BETWEEN HUMANITY AND NATURE: THE FEMALE PERCEPTION THROUGH SCIENCE FICTION UTOPIAS by SARAH FARRELL Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON May 2015 Copyright © by Sarah Farrell 2015 All Rights Reserved ii Acknowledgements No number of words can adequately express how thankful I am for those who encouraged me through this entire process. However, I will do my best to adequately express the sincerity I feel towards those who uplifted me these past two years. First, I want to thank my parents and grandfather who have been a constant influence in my life. Never ones to sit and wait for things to happen for them, they always worked hard for everything that they have. Perseverance with a mixture of pure love is the recipe for success. Thank you for teaching me those important life lessons. Second, I want to thank “all” my friends and family who helped me through this process. I especially want to thank my dissertation comrades: Dana Brewer and Mylynka Cardona. Whether it was having to listen to my endless rants, or having to read my dissertation, you were a great source of therapy. Third, I want to thank my dissertation committee, especially my chair, Amy Tigner. You helped me navigate through such a difficult task, and I appreciate the amount of effort and advice you have given me on each stage of the dissertation. You have been a very influential instructor in my life. I feel more confident in my writing and myself because you challenged me to reach beyond what I thought I was capable of doing. I would also like to thank Ken Roemer and Kevin Gustafson. Thank you both for sharing your time and expertise in the iii field, and for helping me to make sure that my arguments were as sharp and as focused as they could be. Last, I want to thank my husband, Erik. There is a reason why I waited to thank you at the end: saving the best for last. I will always remember the countless hours you spent looking over this dissertation. You are not only my penguin, but my best friend. I will end this acknowledgment with a disclaimer: If I left you out, I am sorry. I will blame it on dissertation exhaustion. April 15, 2015 iv Abstract REMOVING THE BINARIES BETWEEN HUMANITY AND NATURE: THE FEMALE PERCEPTION THROUGH SCIENCE FICTION UTOPIAS Sarah Farrell, PhD The University of Texas at Arlington, 2015 Supervising Professor: Amy Tigner This dissertation examines utopian science fictions by women from the early modern era and the latter half of the 20th century. While the utopian genre shifts in time, the project focuses on comparing two time periods in order to discuss the topic of humanity’s place in nature. By examining these two distinct eras, I am able to argue that ecofeminist debates about ecological concerns often center around the human/nature binary. These ecofeminist views, I argue, rely on analyzing certain texts in order to glean the truth about the human/nature dichotomy and to offer solutions to these problems. Using Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Pamela Sargent’s The Shore of Women, and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, five key thematic structures appear that attempt to remove the human/nature dualism: gender v relations, linguistic paradigms, the animal/human ideology, spherical constructs, and overall interaction with the environment. The choice of each utopian work highlights some important arguments: First, sub-genres of the utopia establish a network of interacting genres, specifically through The Blazing World (traditional utopia), The Dispossessed (critical utopia), The Shore of Women (separatist utopia), and Oryx and Crake (critical dystopia), adding a complexity to the human/nature debate. Second, Cavendish’s utopia and the other modern science fiction works serve as bookends to the argument about humanity’s place in the environment. The recovery of Cavendish by current ecofeminist scholars demonstrates her relevance to current environmental debates and establishes her as a proto-ecofeminist. Like the utopia genre itself, this dissertation takes an activist role in discovering the scientific schemas that keep the human/nature dichotomy in place. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ iii Abstract ................................................................................................................... v List of Illustrations ................................................................................................. ix PART ONE Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 The Early Modern Utopia in the Scientific Revolution ....................... 31 Chapter 2 Non-Gendered Nature and the Absolution of the Nature/Culture Divide in The Blazing World ....................................................... 51 PART TWO Chapter 3 Introduction to the Feminist Ecofeminist Debate in the 20th Century ................................................................................................................ 101 Chapter 4 The Exploration of the Scientific Agenda in the Modern Age: Duality, Ecofeminism, and Environmental Agendas in Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed ................................................................................ 136 Chapter 5 Separatist Utopian Literature: Holism and Duality in Pamela Sargent’s The Shore of Women .............................................................. 177 Chapter 6 Environmental Concerns Through the Context of Scientific Inquiry, Language, and Genetics in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake ................................................................................................................... 212 Epilogue .............................................................................................................. 248 vii Appendix A An Overview of the Five Themes in the Primary Texts ................ 255 References ........................................................................................................... 257 Biographical Information .................................................................................... 276 viii List of Illustrations Figure 1.1 The Portrayal of Woman as Nature ..................................................... 43 Figure 1.2 The Destruction Caused By Eve .......................................................... 44 Figure 1.3 The Artist: Straet, J. Nova Reperta 1600 ............................................ 44 Figure 2.1 Differences in an Ecofeminist Utopia ................................................. 71 Figure 2.2 The Differing Constructions of the Spheres ........................................ 84 Figure 2.3 Cavendish’s Female-as-Nature Debate ............................................... 93 Figure 2.4 Animate and Inanimate Matter ............................................................ 98 Figure 3.1 An Enclosed Garden .......................................................................... 116 Figure 3.2 The Portrayal of the Male Scientist and Female Alien in Fanzines .. 121 Figure 4.1 Binarism Between the Two Worlds .................................................. 158 Figure 4.2 Complexity of Planet Formation ....................................................... 161 Figure 4.3 The Breaking of Boundaries in The Dispossessed ............................ 173 Figure 5.1 Binary Realms of Gender .................................................................. 192 Figure 5.2 Land-Gender Construct ..................................................................... 209 Figure 6.1 Science Versus Nature ....................................................................... 228 ix Introduction Science will come up with some reason to put in the books, but in the end it'll be just a theory. I mean, we will fail to acknowledge that there are forces at work beyond our understanding. To be a scientist, you must have a respectful awe for the laws of nature. --M. Knight Shyamalan, The Happening Including a quote from a movie that received moderate reviews may seem like a curious way to start a dissertation; nevertheless, these are the lines that inspired me to write on this topic. Writers often cast the scientist as the madman in a lab coat—a purveyor of experiments driven by hubris. The genre of science fiction informs this characterization, with certain pivotal figures standing out among the rest, notably the Victor Frankensteins of the pop culture world. Simply examining the way one perceives science in a modern setting, however, would not do this topic justice. My investigation of science fiction, and ultimately, the utopian genre lead me to ask: Where does this version of the mad scientist come from and why does this character permeate the 21st century? Upon looking at the issue further, the argument extends back to the early modern era and its connection to the mechanical sciences. In this way, I discover the representation of the modern-day scientist: the cold, calculating human being who destroys the universe for personal gain. The scientist, therefore, has a very significant story rooted within history—a history in which scientific endeavors support colonization and the subjugation of the female gender. 1 In order to create these early modern scientific agendas, the Royal