Short paper on Reinventing Eden by Carpolyn Merchant - Essay Example

Reinventing Eden: Wilderness Carolyn Merchant gendered the Earth as a woman. This signatory theme she has been philosophizing can be found in her collection of works. In her 2003 published book Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture (2003) she strongly discussed this certain regard. As environmental history professor and a socialist, she approached her environmental principle into social ground and poetic writing. Perhaps it is her way to easily convey the two-dimensional message into more compliant perception.

One of the remarkable arguments she cited in her work is the concept of “wilderness” in Western Culture and its affective nature. This study is to discern specifically the shifting attitudes to the concept of “wilderness” in western culture, and some issues concerning the labeling of “wild”, as well as its advantages and disadvantages that have been produced by it. In the first chapter, Merchant stated:“Internalized by Europeans and Americans alike since seventeenth century, this story has propelled countless efforts by human to recover Eden by turning wilderness into garden, female nature into civilized society, and indigenous folkways into modern culture.

” We can observe that Merchant paralleled wilderness into a female nature, and indigenous folkways. It can be interpreted that for her, wilderness means untamed or uncivilized society. Wilderness according to her can be compared to the nature of a female. A female’s emotional nature is unpredictable. It could be serene for a time but can also be overly sensitive and sometimes even raging. Thus the kind of characteristic is not ideal to apply in physical environment if habitant is seeking the likeness of “Eden”.

Merchant used this message to educate the readers with the importance of the civilization and organization even in a natural environment. Perhaps, she has been implying that the uniqueness of the Garden of Eden among other gardens was its cultured and organized system, as Biblically speaking the Garden of Eden was tended first hand by our Creator. In further discussion her argument within the context revealed to be that the wilderness she’s implying doesn’t mean to be in natural aspect.

The results of wilderness were actually pertaining to the man made attempt for civilization but is environmentally and socially destructive, if not compatible with its habitants. The effect of this wilderness brought by man’s frequent attempt to recreate Eden in technical state has delivered the once fertile earth into a phallocentric state. This is a great decline from once pristine Eden state of the earth. The effect extent up to the lifestyle of men, from their habitation state up to the very food they are eating, which is far from the natural essence of their supposed need, men were deprived of their natural needs.

Just as John Muir once stated within the same regard:“The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.” On the lighter note, some have regarded that the combined effects of industrialization, scientific exploration of nature, and the superiority of the metaphorical Mother Earth, which is over nurturing and over bearing, has strongly influence in the political and social thought.

These are evident to the effective and often thought-provoking sense in the application of the art and philosophy during the sixteenth century.