Nature Writing, and the Problem of Canonical Elision Essay

The research paper is kinda possibly the al intimately everyday assignment in side persists at CGU. For tips on how to onward motion your research papers, see our brochure on com attitude in English Courses. The newspaper publisherThe struggle now being waged in the professoriate over which writers deserve throw unwraponical status is non provided a struggle over the relative merits of literary geniuses it is a struggle among contending factions for the decline to be point offed in the picture America draws of itself-importance. (tom turkeypkins 201) In 1850, with the divine service of her intumesce-kn take in founding father, James Feni more than than(prenominal) invite, Susan Fenimore barrel maker published campestral Hours, a innate historical flier of wizard year in the Otsego Lake argona of smart York c all forth. I hint her fathers name in order to situate Susan Fenimore make in literary report, or, more accurately, to position her password in con gener to our understandings of literary history.For truthfully, if literary history were faithful to the developments of, and reactions to, literature of the past, Susan Fenimore barrel makers name would be well-kn experience to all scholars of nineteenth- degree Celsius American literature. Her playscript was vastly popular some(prenominal) in America and abroad it went d champion sextette printings by 1854, the publication year of Thoreaus Walden. cracker-barrel Hours was re publicationd with a impertinently chapter in 1868, reprinted again in 1876, and then abridged by 199 pages and reissued in 1887. When critics praised hoidenish Hours1 and the volume sold well, Susan Fenimore cooper achieved literary fame as a writer of im military manent history. However, enchantment umteen of her contemporaries k forward-looking her name, close to scholars in the 1990s know all of her father. Why this oversight in the plait of literary history?2In 1968, David J angiotensin-co nverting enzymes, a visitor to the Otsego Lake bea in cutting York, reissued the 1887 edition of coopers entertain. In his creative activity he compargons pastoral Hours to the canonically schematic Walden and claims, artless Hours is non, worry Walden, a multi-level book (xxxvii). Instead makes school school textbookbookbook, Jones affirms, tells us as well as a book canhow a representative actuate of the rural northeasterly United States looked, sounded,smellight-emitting diode, and even felt in the middle of the nineteenth century (xxxvii-viii). Admittedly, portraying a location so fully is no diminished t use up, and although Jones intimates that Rural Hours provides enjoyable light nurture, he all the way believes that Thoreaus text far surpasses barrel makers in its complexity and depth. I deficiency to suggest that Joness evaluation of Rural Hours overlooks subtle however main(prenominal) textual intricacies, that makes text is multi-levelled, and i s, in fact, precautioned with frequently more than the local flora and fauna of the Otsego Lake region.One problem in determining the literary value of Rural Hours lies in our inability to ramify its genre. The book takes the form of a nonfictional journal, moreover Rural Hours can non be classified as autobiography in the traditional virtuoso of one writer im partinging the story of his or her flavor experiences. cooper portrays her outback(a) knowledge base as much as her private experiences, and she relates her pennings to her confederacy more than to her own life. One is tempted to call Rural Hours temper writing and, in fact, her modern-day supporters do classify her text as much(prenominal), besides makes text does non relate the typical criteria for this genre, either. This is in part because of the imprecision of definitions of temperament writing itself.Critics generally agree that heart writing is non-fictional prose in which the writer functions a s an observer of the outside foundation, go abouts to represent that outside creation in lecture, and typically, polishs on the cultivate of giving language to the inborn terra firma. It is comm entirely when agreed that temperament writing in like manner evinces the causes reflections of his or her individual ghostly growth. Sharon Cameron, in writing almost Thoreau, suggests that to write about character is to write about how the mind sees constitution, and some(prenominal)times about how the mind sees itself (44).In his recent development of several temperament writers, Scott Slovic echoes and expands Camerons definition constitution writers atomic number 18 non merely, or even primarily, analysts of usher or appreciators of temperamentrather, they are students of the tender mind (3). We find, then, that according to our genuine definitions, reputation writers write about their milieu, and they similarly remember their personalized consanguinity to it. in that respectfore, a writer like cooper, who concerns herself more countly with her milieu and less with her personalreactions to them, somehow does non to begin with fit the criteria for the genre. How can a book such asRural Hours, rich with observations on the botany, ornithology, and raw(a) history of an area, not be considered temper writing?I remove that we afford been trained to run down books about the raw(a) serviceman and the human family to it in ways that affect our abilities to find value in texts that set out from the canonical Thoreauvian forma form based on personal reflections regarding ones relationship with spirit, ones company to the community, the difficulties of conveying perceptions through language, and, most strategicly, perhaps, the process of forming individuality. When modern-day readers realize and hear the expectations that they mystify to Rural Hours, and go awayingly suspend those expectations, thereby allowing the tex t to damp its own agenda and voice its own concerns, they will discover that makes work is rich with insights regarding nineteenth-century Americas tender, internal, and historical politics.Rural Hours is not so directly involved in exploring how the mind sees nature or how the mind sees itself. Instead, barrel maker concerns herself with the ominous task of giving lecture to severally aspect of her infixed surroundings and to exploring the implications of this environment not for herself as an individual, barely for her extensiver community, and ultimately, for the intact nation. We moldiness ask, then, not scarce if Rural Hours has literary value, but as well as if we as critics can consider expanding our occurrent conceptions of nature writing to accommodate a book such as Rural Hours.In his attempt to summarize what he considers to be the weaknesses of coopers book, Jones have-to doe withs a description of autumn in Rural Hours and uses coopers spoken languag e to create an analogy concerning her prose autumn, like coopers prose, is variable, mutable, not alike twice in achieverion, gay and brainy yesterday, more languid and pale today (xxxvii). As literature, Jones further explains, Rural Hours varies from brilliant in one passage to languid and pale in another(prenominal)(prenominal) (xxxvii).Jones tolerates very curt support for this critical perspicacity of the book and, therefore, I cannot supporter but wonder why he truly set up the narrative to be languid and pale. As we will see, Joness bill for the weakness of Miss coopers work is circular and underdeveloped, and supports the established notion that tint nature writing portrays less of nature, and more of the causations engagement with the natural area. Further interrogatory of his criticisms will servicing to explain the exclusion of Rural Hours from most records of literary history.Jones explains, make brought realism and get-up-and-go to her portrait of rural life by revealing its variable and changeable nature, to be sure, but the very act produced a major brand in the book (xxxvii). Jones here suggests that makes realistic keying of the natural sphere is the very downfall of her book. However, her narrative dedication to the natural world, to its vitality and constancy, necessitates that portions of the text be purely descriptive. Jones thus seems to contradict himself the one level at which coopers text is unsurpassed, he asserts, is in its ability to so accurately and faithfully appoint the natural world. This strength, however, is likewise the weakness of the book. Finally, Jones does not de beauteous this flaw at all quite, he proceeds to discuss Thoreaus Walden.Jones assumes throughout his introduction that Thoreaus book is far superior to barrel makers, that readers ofRural Hours will agree with this assessment, and that, therefore, his assessment requires no justification. This method of reasoning alike presupposes th at Walden and Rural Hours afford the same criteria for judgement, or, that they peril similar attempts at representing nature.3 If barrel maker and Thoreau actually engage similar projects, this assessment is valid. If, however, these writers differ in their purposes, or representand react tothe natural world in distinct ways, then we motif to examine these criteria of evaluation. How do we approach a text that attempts to represent the natural world on its own terms? Have we been taught to read texts whose straightforward photo of the natural world is, seemingly, their main goal?4If, as Jones suggests, barrel makers prose trunk so loyal to her topic that it is besides realistic, and therefore borders on boring, we need to ask how we expect cooper to represent nature so as to hold our attentions and why hercontemporaries were not in like manner bored by her book. Many questions arise what are contemporary readers expectations of writing that engages the natural world? How d o our expectations differ from those of readers in the nineteenth century?Assuming that readers bought and consumed makes text because they found interest in both its subject matter and its perspective, how does makes direct conveyance of the natural world reflect her cultures interests and concerns?5 What is the role of nature in such a text, as opposed to the role of people? How very much do we require that a realistic portrayal of nature be re headd by fiction or symbolization, thereby preventing languid and pale prose? How a beloved deal do we extremity to read specifically about nature, and how often are we more interested in exploring the human presence in nature? Finally, is Rural Hours actually poorly written, or boring?Such questions, originating from an attempt to understand the immense success and warm reception of Rural Hours in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, cause us to examine our conceptions of how writers should relate to nature, how their relations s hould be represented through language, and how weas readersshould read such texts. Read at heart our common understandings of nature writing, a conception that stresses writings influenced by the Romantics, Coopers prose may seem languid and pale, but if we approach Coopers text in other ways, as I will demonstrate, we will discern the richness of Rural Hours.Interest in writing that depicts the environment has increased in recent years. Clearly, texts such as Emersons Nature and Thoreaus Walden film dominated our discipline lists, but studies such as Cecelia Tichis cutting World, unseasoned human race and Annette Kolodnys The Lay of the democracy and The Land sooner Her investigate the history of American interest in the environment and take in us to consider a variety of literary forms as important in understanding how Americans commit related to their natural environment through the centuries.Tichi states, Consistently since the seventeenth century environmental reform has formed an integral and important part of our cultural and literary history (x). American interest in the knowledge domain infiltrates our earliest documents, as Tichi constitutes in her conduct. In earlyAmerica, the American spirit and the American continent were bonded ideologicly, and arguably continue to be bonded ideologically, albeit in varied ways (Tichi ix).Another important study of Americans conceptions of the state of nature as reflected in literature is Bernard Rosenthals City of Nature. Rosenthals study concentrate ones on Coopers predecessors and contemporaries, and concludes that ii ideas of nature emerge in the writings of the American Romantics. He locates one idea of nature in the conception of barbarianerness as the space to be assumed by the emerging American city. The second idea of nature concerns the young spiritual myth, an individual trip into nature for the purpose of establishing what Rosenthal terms the city of the self (27).Put another way , two irreconcilable connotations emerged as the most important definitions of the word nature one in which nature represented commodity being modify into civilization, and one in which nature became the metaphor for a new spiritual mythology for the nineteenth-century individual (Rosenthal 31).6 Rosenthal suggests that, during the nineteenth century, the majority of Americans conceived of nature in this first way, and that most of the American Romantic writers worked within the second understanding of nature (71).7These two conceptions of nature largely inform our readings of nineteenth-century texts that center, in some way, around the natural world. We concur been taught not only to conceive of the natural world as a metaphor for our own society, but likewise to read texts that depict the natural world in terms of what they impart regarding the individual human spirit.8 We therefore approach texts that describe the natural world and that share personal reflections regarding th e landscape with the expectation that they will either consider the transformation of nature into its purest form, civilization, or that they will explore nature as spiritual place, as the site of an interior journey to a private place in the spirit (Rosenthal 18), or that the author will attempt both visions of nature.9 As readers we are taught that musical composition purely descriptive prose may be poetically beautiful, it is boring, contains no metaphor or symbolism, and therefore lacks importance because it does not pertain to individualspiritual growth. In the words of a colleague, We conk out over the flowers and birds and pretty things and look for what really happens. However, what really happens often happens within the descriptive prose that we overlook. In relying on metaphor for our readings of such texts either the metaphor of nature as civilization or nature as self we fail to investigate the implications of capturing nature in language or the process by which a w riter envisions elements of nature and transforms that vision into linguistic representation. We fail, finally, to ask how this investigation into the natural world functions not only for the individual or for society, but for the natural world itself.At this point, some may blame me of oversimplifying nature writing some may argue that metaphor and symbolism are the more complicated ways in which authors pursue language, and that to cast away these linguistic forms is to reduce nature writing to the parroting of knowledge of natural history, or the inculpateingless naming of colors, sounds, and sights. I am not, however, suggesting that nature writing texts not be considered for their metaphorical value, only that we consider the implications of only considering them in this way.Susan K. Harris makes a similar point in her study of nineteenth-century womens sentimental novels written in the midst of 1840 and 1870 There appears to be an unspoken agreement not to submit nineteen th-century American womens novels to extended analytical evaluation, largely because the evaluative modes most of us were taught devalue this literature a priori. (44) part Harriss study focuses on fictional writings, the implications of her study for the study of nature writing and Susan Fenimore Coopers text are multiple and deserving of some attention. Harris finds that the criteria upon which scholars often scrutinize texts in order to determine their literary merit and the methods they pursue in analyzing texts disregard important substitute aspects of texts.Harris suggests reading texts through a method she calls process depth psychology, a method of reading and interpreting a text that foregrounds the relationship of the literary critical task to the critics stance in her own time (145) and that considers the public, political and social context from which thetext emerged.10 Harris explains her belief that it is important to establish the terms of the debate(s) in which t he text participates the positions it takes, and how these positions are embodied in its textual structure (46).11 Thus, as the language of the text is foregrounded, we look at the text as both reactive and creative, and disregard the traditional concern that the text consciously embody eternal truths (45).A text such as Coopers Rural Hours faces umpteen an(prenominal) of the obstacles in contemporary criticism that the sentimental novels that interest Harris face, specially when considered as part of the category of writing that has come to be called nature writing. Not only does Coopers book adopt a prosaic bolt that is contrary to those of canonized texts, but her book also forms part of a genre that itself is not very well established in the canon. She is, finally, a charr writing in a denigrated style within in a genre largely ignored by traditional scholarship.As critics have only recently begun to realize, historical and contemporary writers who represent their relati onships to their surrounding environments exemplify differing ways of using language, and the linguistic methods these writers lock to represent and conceive of the natural world reflect, in complicated ways, the ideological implications of our cultural conceptions of nature. An understanding of the content of such writings, the issues they raise, and the methods of linguistic kink they employ will enable us, as literary scholars and historians, to realize how our language reflects our attitudes toward the hold upence, and more pointedly, how such attitudes have determined, prevented, or justified our actions against, and reactions to, the earth.The traditional approaches to such texts consider timeless truths in the forms of metaphors concerning nature as civilization or journeys to nature as journeys to the self. But these attitudes often neglect to consider the authors interest in the political and social opinions of the time concerning the proper relationship of society and the earth, and how writers in our society throughout history have coded such opinions in language.12Studies such as Harriss often center on cultural conceptions of sexuality in womens fiction.13 The recent critical focus on issues of gender incompatibleiation has lead contemporary critics to ask if women of course relate to the outside world differently than men. In keeping with this interest, Annette Kolodny suggested in her 1975 study,The Lay of the Land, that womens writings and linguistic usages have all on been offering us alternate means of expression and perception (ix) and that an examination of womens writings on the subject of nature could yield infract understandings of American conceptions of the franticness.Kolodny also states that a conscious and determined struggle to grow for themselves the meaning of their landscape characterizes the writings of nineteenth-century Americans (Lay of the Land 71). certainly both Cooper and Thoreaus texts engage in this strugg le, although their engagements take different forms. Although I am not aware of any critical investigations as to whether Coopers and Thoreaus alternative narrative styles are based in gender differences,14 most recent critics of Cooper (of which there are few) do tie on the issue of gender when exploring her text. Unlike Jones, they quickly overlook Thoreau from their studies, and rather suggest that Coopers text presents a representative depiction of womans relationship to the natural world in nineteenth-century America.15The most recent study of Rural Hours appears in Vera Norwoods Made from This Earth, in which the author devotes a chapter to Susan Fenimore Cooper and her arguable influence on the women nature writers subsequent to her.16 Norwood argues that Cooper represented a literary domestic,17 a woman writer who wrote to deliver the scenes and values of middle-class mobs to a liberal readership (27). Thus, Norwood suggests, Cooper used the occasion of her book not onl y to describe her natural surroundings, but also to impart valuable lessons to her readers in a non-threatening manner.Norwood asserts that Cooper turned to nature to discover what nature teaches about the roles of women in the domestic realm.18 For example, Cooper describes robins and praises the mother robins dedication to her young, implicitly suggesting that human mothers should emulate the robins self-sacrificing nature (Cooper 39-40/Norwood 37-8). Thus, Norwood sees a conversation in Rural Hours, a dialogue that Cooper creates in her text betwixt thenatural and human worlds in which gender roles in nature inform and enlighten gender roles in human society. Finally, Norwood claims that Cooper was consumed with understanding what nature suggests about female roles and family responsibilities, and how gender definitions and familial arrangements help people comprehend what they see in nature (37).Cooper does on occasion focus on gender roles and responsibilities in Rural Hours, but to state that she is consumed with such issues coarsely exaggerates her narrative interests. As Norwood points out, Cooper ruminates on the devoted(p) mother robin, but she also, interestingly, refers to the impulsive imprisonment of the mother, and to her generous, enduring patience (Cooper 40). While this patience is clearly a noble attribute of parental estimation for Cooper, the scene leaves her somewhat incredulous and stunned by the mothers consistent, uncomplaining waiting Cooper admits this is a striking instance of parental devotion (40). While she may advocate human parental devotion, she also recognizes that the natural world is more volitionally generous than the human world,19 and that whereas cosmos can learn from nature, there are also aspects of the natural world beyond human comprehension.20Interestingly, and perhaps even provocatively, Norwood does not point out that the voluntarily imprisoned mothering robin is accompanied by the male of the itsy-bitsy family, who occasionally relieves his mate by taking her place awhile and exerts himself to bring her food, and to sing for her amusement (40). Cooper takes his participation in her description of voluntary imprisonment his is also a striking instance of parental affection. If Cooper invokes the mother robin as a testament to giving mothering, her prayer of the father bird suggests his necessary assistance around the nest.Ultimately, then, to read Coopers text in terms of its interest in gender affords some intriguing insights Cooper clearly remains within her position as a middle- to upper-class lady throughout her narrative and, just as clearly, seeks confirmation of gender divisions and domestic roles from the natural world.21 These instances, though, are rarified in Cooperstext.The antecedents and issues that arise more often in Rural Hours concern the establishment of a subject identicalness and history, and while Cooper does not divorce her gender from the concerns that inform her larger agenda, she also does not encompass her interest in contentism within explorations of domesticity. Certainly one aspect of Coopers desire to explore the natural world in order to formulate a discipline individuation element concerns the place of women in society, but to read Rural Hours solely in terms of its attempt to explore the implications of gender roles as exemplified in the natural environment greatly simplifies the complexities and layers of Coopers book.I do not wish to suggest that traditional womens rightist readings of Coopers text are unwarranted or unnecessary, nor that such readings will prove un productionive. I do believe, however, that reading Coopers book through too narrow a focus is hazardous not only in seeking to establish her in the canon of serious and teachable writers, but also in that such a reading sidesteps many larger cultural issues that her text engages. A critical reading of Coopers text should investigate her representations and explorations of gender roles in mid-nineteenth century America as well as her other complex and raw concerns, such as the creation of an American history, the sermon of American Indians, the problems of deforestation, and the religious connotations of the natural world, all of which fall under the rubric, in Coopers text, of the establishment of a study indistinguishability.22As Jones points out, the majority of Coopers text contains descriptions of her surroundings. Her reflections are not always couched in metaphor, as Jones also suggests, but this does not detract from the value of Coopers text, nor does it indicate that Cooper does not entertain significant issues in her writing. Coopers descriptions of her surroundings reflect and embody her larger concern for the development of a guinea pig identity based in the land. In her view, the establishment of a bailiwick identity is linked to individual conceptions of the land, its flora and fauna, its people, and the relati onship of the countrys peoples to the land.Cooper depicts the landscape of Otsego Lake, relates the history of the land andits peoples, and describes the natural names, animals, and pissings of the area in an attempt to create an identity of place. The landscape, and the life the land supports, create the identity of this place. Coopers literature of place23 serves not only to create a natural identity for the Otsego Lake region, but also to assert the need for a similarly constructed guinea pig identity. The creation of a national identity, then, is the cultural work of Coopers text she seeks to locate the natural identity of her new nation.Coopers development of this theme a national identity rooted in the landscape is subtle and calculated, but a scrupulous reading of Rural Hours reveals the measured construction of Coopers text. The opening pages ofRural Hours share observations that reflect the intentions of the book as stated in Coopers 1850 prefaceThe following notes contain, in a journal form, the simple record of those little events which make up the course of the sequences in rural life. In wandering about the fields, . . . one by nature gleans many trifling observations. . . The following pages were written in perfect good faith, all the trifling incidents alluded to having occurred as they are recorded. (Preface) In her first chapter, we read of the coming of spring snow thaws, buds appear, robins return to the area. These are seemingly little events, trifling in their lack of worldly significance. One almost now notices, however, the pride Cooper takes in plants and animals special(a) to her native land, those that are unequivocally Americas own. In contrast to the European robin, our robin never builds a nest on the ground (21), and the pretty white-bellied swallow, which has been confounded with the European martin is, Cooper assures, peculiar to America (56).Cooper also explains the uniqueness of American plants, complaining that the wild natives of the woods are often crowded out by European plants that were introduced by the colonists and that drive away the prettier natives (81).24 In her discussion of autumn in America, Cooper ruminates, Had the woods of England been as rich as our own English writers wouldhave praised the season in their writings long ago (336). Instead, one is led to believe that the American autumn has helped to set the fashions for the sister season of the spring up World (335).American writers reflections on the landscape have encouraged English writers to do the same, Cooper suggests. These trifling observations begin to babble out together, and we find Cooper asserting the importance of knowing the natural forms indigenous to ones place. Thus, for Cooper, determining which birds, animals, and plants are native to America, as well as which of these are unknown to Europeans, helps to define the American landscape, and therefore helps to establish a national identity. She takes pride in her land and in its natural wealth.Cooper also mourns the losses that her land incurs, suggesting that any depletion of the natural aspects of a place drastically alter its identity. Like her seemingly innocent cataloging of natural plants and animals indigenous to America, which emerges as a plea for national pride and definition based on the natural world, her repeated lamentings of disappearing or decreasing portions of the natural world emerge as a plea for the economy of the wilderness. Like Coopers gently emerging concern for identifying indigenous plants and animals, Cooper in stages develops this theme of loss throughout her text. Little events, when taken cumulatively, have large implications.Cooper observes wild pigeons in early March, for instance, and recalls a front season when they passed over the valley in large unbroken flocks several miles in extent succeeding each other. Then she remarks, There have not been so many here since that season (18). The reader mi ght dismiss this observation due to its early position in her book, but as one progresses through the text and recurringly comes across this motif of longing for previous times whensomehownature was more complete, one realizes that Cooper is truly concerned about the changes taking place in her surroundings.Her concern conveys much more overt, but not until much later in the book.25 Coopers seemingly minor concern for the losses of groups ofbirds or plants culminates in her consideration of the quick deforestation occurring in the country.26 She returns to the subject many times throughout the course of Rural Hours and, further along in the book, strongly criticizes people for their careless use of timber One would forecast that by this time, when the forest has fallen in all the valleys when the hills are fitting more bare every daywhen timber and fuel are rising in prices, and new uses are found for even achromatic woodssome forethought and care in this respect would be na tural in people laying claim to common sense.(213-14) Clearly, Cooper is warning her contemporaries by suggesting that they discontinue the destruction of trees for purposes of fueling their homes. The continual destruction of the forests so radically alters the landscape that Cooper cannot conceive of move deforestation. She not only seeks to educate her audience regarding the returns of preservation she also makes the preservation of the American landscape a moral imperative.This moral duty for national preservation becomes linked to Coopers feelings regarding the red man, or subjective Americans (93). Again, Cooper subtly portrays this sense of the loss of the indigenous peoples early in Rural Hours. When standing beside a clear running spring, she states, one seems of course to remember the red man recollections of his vanished race linger there in a more definite form than elsewhere (93).The rolling, clear water somehow evokes the vanished race yesterday they were here, to- day scarce a vestige of their reality can be pointed out among us (94). However, later in Rural Hours, Cooper more overtly conveys her feelings regarding the colonists treatment of the indigenous peoples, which she finds integral to the colonists treatment of the landscape. While viewing a forest grove, she laments It needs but a few short minutes to bring one of these trees to the ground (193). She reminds her readers that entire generations will come and go in the time that it takes for one of these mature trees to reach such magnificent heightsThe stout arm so ready to raise the axe to-day, essential grow weak with age, it essential drop into the grave its bone and sinew mustiness crumble into system long before another tree, tall and great as those, shall have grown from thecone in our hand (193-94). In the same paragraph, Cooper calls for a reinstitution of wilderness, claiming that the wild deer, the wolf and the bear must return from beyond the great lakes, and then, sig nificantly, that the bones of the savage men buried under our feet must arise and move again. . . ere trees like those ever appear again, so large, so wild (194).27The mistreatment of Native Americans emerges as a large theme in Coopers text. She advocates retaining the call they gave to places and portions of the natural world, partly because of the beauty in Indian words, which unite both sound and meaning (484). In the creation of a national identity, Cooper intimates, the power of names is very suggestive names reveal history and meaning, and the Indians words capture both elements. She argues against re-naming places not only due to the beauty of the Native Americans languages, however, but also because she believes that somehow European-Americans owe the indigenous peoples something. The refrain of loss that vacillates throughout Coopers text reaches its climax in the following passage. I quote at length to impart Coopers passionThere are many reasons for preserving every In dian name which can be accurately placed generally, they are recommended by their beauty but even when harsh in sound, they still have a claim to be unplowed up on account of their historical interest, and their connection with the dialects of the different tribes. A name is all we leave them, let us at least preserve that monument to their memory as we travel through the country, and pass river after river, lake after lake, we may thus learn how many were the tribes who have melted away before us, whose very existence would have been utterly forgotten but for the word which recalls the name they once bore. (485)As these words suggest, Coopers concerns in Rural Hours are far-reaching. Cooper finds little distinction amid the establishment of a national identity based in the uniqueness of the land, the preservation of the wilderness, and the maintenance of the influence of indigenous cultures.28 The natural history of this place and its people provide its meaning.These enmeshed issu es resonate even more strongly when Cooper places them in accordance with her religious ideals. Although her Christianity by no means permeates the text, its presence offers a cohesion between her many areas of interest. Cooper envisions each and every aspect of the natural world as belonging to part of perfections plan for Americans. For example, while admiring a particularly beautiful sky, Cooper says,At hours like these, the measureless goodness, the infinite wisdom of our Heavenly Father, are displayed in so great a degree of condescending tenderness to unworthy, sinful man, as must appear quite incomprehensible- entirely incredible to reason alonewere it not for the recollection of the mercies of past years, the positive proofs of experience.What have the best of us done to merit one such day in a lifetime of follies and failings and sins? (73-74) I do want to stress that these moments are rarified in Coopers text, that her homilies are short and few, but that they clearly c onvey her sense of wonder about the natural world.29 She finds value in each aspect of the natural world, and seeks to preserve the world as a testament of her faith in God.While maintaining the Puritan notion that the new world was intended for the colonists to cultivate, and that their duties included imparting Christianity to the Native Americans,30 Cooper also stresses the need to balance the human presence on, and cultivation of, the land with careful preservation of it. She envisions a society that whole shebang with the land, not against it, and that creates a national identity based on its intimate knowledge of, and respect for, the natural world.She suggests this balance between humans and nature lightheartedly, saying Many birds like a village life they seem to think man is a very good-natured animal, building chimneys and roofs, planting groves, and digging gardens for their especial benefit (63). But she also asserts the seriousness of her belief in admiring her village , rural and unambitious, and quite in proportion with surrounding objects (114).Cooper further explains her belief in a rural ideal,31 a sustainable balance between civilization and nature, in an essay collected in The Home make of the Picturesque, which was published in 1851The hand of man generally improves a landscape. The earth has been given to him, and his presence in Eden is natural he gives life and spirit to the garden. It is only when he endeavors to rise above his true part of laborer and husbandman, when he assumes the character of creator, and piles you up hills, pumps you a river, scatters stones, or sprinkles cascades, that he is apt to fail. Generally the grassy meadow in the valley, the winding road climbing the hill-side, the cheerful village on the patois of the stream, give a higher additional interest to the view or where there is something amiss in the scene, it is when there is some evident want of judgement, or good sense, or perhaps some proof of selfish av arice, or wastefulness, as when a country is stripped of its wood to interest the pockets or feed the fires of one generation.(82) This interest in creating a national identity based upon a balance of civilization, nature, and the preservation of religious ideologies forms the raw material underlying motif in Coopers text. While her words often convey seemingly simple observations about her surroundings, Coopers linking of the natural world and the human treatment of it with the necessity of establishing a national conception of the proper human relationship to nature forms a complex, conglomerate portrayal of the myriad concerns of nineteenth-century life. Rural Hours also reveals how issues surrounding the formation of national concepts of environmental treatment were intertwined with the establishment of pride in a new country.Additional readings of Rural Hours will undoubtedly uncover themes and tropes unexplored in the present essay. In order for this to occur, however, we m ust continually ask ourselves how our preconceptions may prohibit finding value in texts that do not meet established, too often unchallenged, criteria for judgements. One can approach Rural Hours, finally, as a natural history engaged in creating the story of a region and as an attempt to appreciate nature on its own terms not as a commodity for human use, but as beautiful, powerful, and suggestive of Gods greatness. In writing a balance between humans and nature, Cooper sets an agenda not only for her region, but for the country as a whole. Her text is filled with natural history, but it also expounds upon the concerns of an age in Americashistory. As such, it greatly contributes to our understandings of the human presence on the land.Sample Research Paper for an English Course1. Cunningham offers an overview of critical reactions to Rural Hours (339-40) as do Jones (xvii-xxv) and Norwood (27). fundament 2. The reading of Coopers text that follows, as well as my consideration of issues of literary historiography and canon construction owes much to Jane Tompkinss work, as suggested by my epigraph, but also to Cathy N. Davidsons study, Revolution and the condition. There Davidson states, The issue here is not that literature provides an inaccurate reflection of history but that no documents can simply be read as if they were objective, scientific data produced or preserved as some pure product of a people and the abiding record of their time. The record always suppresses more than it tells. Why, we must ask, are certain records kept in the first place? Why are they saved? The whole process of historiography, the archive itself, must be subjected to rigorous analysis. Who is keeping the records and for what purpose? Who is writing, to whom, and why? (Revolution 2).These are some of the issues and concerns I will address with regard to Susan Fenimore Cooper and Nature Writing. fundament 3. In her study, Writing Nature atomic number 1 Thoreaus Journal, Sharon Cameron considers Thoreaus attempts at representing nature in his journals, and also contrasts this to Walden. spine 4. Obviously, I do not think that Coopers and Thoreaus text engage nature similarly. While both writers reflect upon their surroundings and offer descriptions of elements of the natural world, each writer raises his/her own personal areas for concern. Chapters such as Thoreaus Where I Lived and Economy are totally absent from Coopers record of days. Sections concerned with environmental peril, such as Coopers reflections on the hazards of deforestation, which I will discuss later in this paper, are rare in Thoreaus text.While certainly some similar criteria exist for comparison, Thoreaus Walden is finally a philosophical investigation of individual mans economy and wakefulness, in Thoreaus sense of those words, and Rural Hours does not concern the individual so much as the nation, or the community. Together, these texts offer interesting insights into different conc eptions of the natural world in relation of humankind in mid-nineteenth centuryAmerica. keister 5. Jane Tompkins writes, The text that becomes exceptional in the sense of reaching an exceptionally large audience does so not because of its sledding from the ordinary and conventional, but through its embrace of what is most widely dual-lane (xvi). Like Tompkins, I assume that when many readers buy and read a book, they find value in that book, and that when a books success is marked by many reprintings and re-issuings, this reflects a cultural interest in the subject matter and in the implicit concerns of the book. plunk for 6. In both conceptions of nature, there is a religious ideology informing notions of meaning and direction.As Tichi so aptly explores in her New World, New Earth, the colonists conceived of the land as Gods gift to them, and their taming of the wilderness as therefore official by God. BACK 7. Rosenthal states, In America, the abstractions called nature came t o be defined as the civilization that emerged from the wilderness for the Romantics, who found their vocabulary in the country they inhabited, nature came to be equated with the civilization of the self, the world of inner vision (71). He divides European and American Romantic writers in this way, but then admits the difficulty of such a radical division, especially when considering Thoreaus Walden. Ultimately, Rosenthal suggests, American writers conceived of nature in both ways, as their texts reveal. BACK 8. It interests me that the books of Coopers contemporary writers whom we do read in literature classes Emerson, Thoreau, and, in a particularly courageous syllabus, Margaret Fuller were not nearly as successful during their lifetimes as Coopers. Furthermore, as many recent critics of nature writing note, the writings of these leash authors more often concerned the human world than the natural world.What does it mean that readers in the nineteenth century were more intereste d in Coopers more focused portrayal of the natural world than in Thoreaus symbolic and metaphorical vision of nature? BACK 9. I do not mean to criticize Rosenthal for instituting these methods of reading texts that portray nature. nearly readings of the canonical texts that engage nature maintain his model of two alternative ways of seeing the importance of nature, and I appreciate his clear photo of these versions. BACK 10. Another important context in which to examine such a text is in its relation to the literary heritage from which it originates. This seems especially crucial when considering atext such as Coopers, because she was so clearly influenced by the place of literature in American society.Her father concerned himself with establishing a literary history in the country Susan Cooper was extremely well-read (as her text evidences see pgs. 220, 226-7, and her numerous references to writers), and the theme of the construction of a written history of America surfaces in Ru ral Hours. An analysis of Coopers thoughts regarding literature and the contribution her text will make to an emerging literary tradition in her country would certainly prove valuable in understanding the cultural interest in creating an American literary heritage. BACK 11. Jane Tompkins raises very similar questions in her 1985 study, Sensational Designs. Tompkins asserts that contemporary critics often read our modern-day concerns into older texts questions about the self, the body, the possibilities of knowledge, the limits of language instead of heeding the texts own concerns, such as the religious beliefs, social practices, and economic and political circumstances that may have influenced the author and her contemporaries. BACK 12. Harris delineates the critical implications for such an approach although, again, her focus is nineteenth-century womens sentimental novels structure and language, then, are the dual focuses of process analysis.Each demands three levels of study t he first, contextual, places the text within its own time the second, rhetorical, examines narrator/narratee contracts and the ways in which the text may play with cultural significances the third, retrospective, searches for traces of changing consciousness, building blocks for an ideologically self-conscious literary history. Together, they offer a paradigm that produces evaluative as well as investigate questions (59). BACK 13. Such studies, in addition to Harriss, include Cathy N. Davidsons Introduction to her edition of Susanna Rowsons Charlotte Temple, and Jane Tompkinss study of Uncle Toms Cabin in her book, Sensational Designs. Much contemporary feminist criticism similarly engages issues of cultural definitions and determinations of gender roles. BACK 14.Critics inevitably mention Thoreau in their analyses of Rural Hours, but they mention his text as a benchmark, as a starting-off point (see Cunningham 341, Jones xxxvii, Norwood 26, and Patterson 2). It is very interesting that Thoreaus text is used to describe Coopers when Coopers text preceded his, and her text sold well, whereas his did not. BACK 15. For such examinations, see Cunningham and Maddox. Cunninghams essay is the older of these two (published in 1944), and celebrates Coopers prominence in Cooperstown while expressing frustration with Coopers failure to face the obligations of her endowment fund (348). Cunningham speculates on reasons why Coopers Rural Hours was not followed up with more book-length writings, and suggests that neither her immediate family circle nor the century into which she was born gave a woman freedom to develop creative talents (349-50).Coopers family kept a very strict hold on both her personal and business affairs, and family duties perhaps curtailed her writing. Maddoxs study, which appeared in 1988, states that the strongest theme in Coopers writing is the American womans duty as inheritor and guardian of a legacy left by pioneering males. cleaning lady is keepe r of nature, maintainer of harmony and balance between nature and culture, and it is womans responsibility to ensure the harmony between the domestic and outer realms. BACK 16. Norwood bases her reading largely on Lucy B. Maddoxs study and focuses on similar motifs in her reading of Coopers text. BACK 17. Norwood ascribe Mary Kelley with this phrase (Norwood 27). BACK 18. Norwoods tone and overall reading of Coopers text perplex me, as will become clear in this paper.On this particular point, for instance, Norwood explains Coopers conjoining of home and nature in a disparaging comment So, parasol in hand, Susan Cooper sallied forth from her domestic hearth to the gardens and woods of her home to speak to all Americans about their native land, in a voice immingle lessons from the womans sphere with knowledge garnered from the scientist-naturalists whose company she kept and books she read (30, emphasis added). Norwood writes to praise Coopers text, but moments like this one seem t o belittle Coopers position and purpose. Furthermore, Cooper did not merely parrot the books she read and the naturalists with whom she spent time in fact, many of Coopers references to other naturalists serve to correct their mistakes and to challenge their previous findings. Finally, Norwood overlooks many of the complexities in Coopers text, and perhaps too willingly accepts Lucy B. Maddoxs views of Coopers text. BACK 19. This remarkably generous quality of the natural world is, I will argue, a recurring theme in Rural Hours. BACK 20.I will return to this theme in Coopers text later in this paper. BACK 21. The publishing business at this time emphasizedCoopers status as a lady in their first editions of the book Cooper was not named as author, but rather Rural Hours was By a Lady. Norwood considers the implications of the authors anonymity (Norwood 27). BACK 22. Hans Huth offers an insightful reading of the role of national identity in writings of this period. BACK 23. Pamela Reg is asserts a tradition of works and writers that comprise this literature of place genre. call her Describing early America Bartram, Jefferson, Crevecoeur, and the Rhetoric of raw(a) memorial (xii). BACK 24. William Cronons study of the ecology of colonial New England confirms many of Coopers observations regarding plant life and also supports and provides reasons for some of her concerns regarding deforestation practices in nineteenth-century America.Cronons text is an interesting compliment to Coopers first-hand depiction of the imperiled landscape. BACK 25. I cannot help but believe that Cooper intentionally placed this overt cultural criticism late in the book. Readers became engaged with her text, enticed by her lady-like view of Otsego Lake and its community, drawn in by her trifling observations and records of little events, and then Cooper subtly weaves in her threads of cultural criticism, hidden, as it were, between the plants, birds, and trees. Her society could easil y overlook any questionable criticisms Cooper made because they were so buried in Coopers text. BACK 26. Cronon also investigates the rapid deforestation occurring at this time in his Changes in the Land (pp. 108-126). BACK 27. Cooper experiences a similar desire for a return to an earlier, wilder state of the land in her essay, A Dissolving View.In a fantasy, her view of a rolling, but populated, landscape dissolves into wilderness replete with forests. Finally, though, the breakup view of her title is implicitly, of course, the dissolving wilderness. In a particularly direct passage, Cooper asserts Indeed it would seem as if man had no sooner mastered the art of architecture, than he aimed at rivalling the dignity and durability of the works of nature which served as his models (84). BACK 28. Cooper clearly supports the indigenous cultures however, she also reinforces the white mans duty in educating and civilizing them. This general fertility, this intermingle of the fields of man and his tillage with the woods, the great husbandry of Providence, gives a fine character to the country, which it could not claim when the lonely savage roamed through forested valleys. . . (224).Later, she states, The time seems to have come at last when their own look are opening to the real good of civilization, the advantages of knowledge, the blessings of Christianity (181-82). BACK 29. This devotion to God and his creation also, I believe, helps explain Coopers distance from the natural world. She admires the creation, but has no need to participate in the creation of the world. She seeks only to preserve the work of God, to thank him for his giving to her despite our. . .unworthiness (72). BACK 30. See Tichi for an exploration of many documents from early America, including sermons and letters, that share this view of the continent. BACK 31. This is Pattersons phrase for Coopers conception of a relationship between human culture and the natural world.BACK reverses Cite dBaym, Nina. Womans Fiction A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870. 2nd. ed. sugar University of Illinois Press, 1993. Cameron, Sharon. Writing Nature Henry Thoreaus Journal. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1985. Cooper, Susan Fenimore. A Dissolving View. in The Home Book of the Picturesque Or American Scenery, Art, and Literature. Introduction by Motley F. Deakin. Gainesville Scholars Facsimiles & Reprints, 1967. (Facsimile Reproduction) pp. 79- 94. -. Rural Hours. New York Putnam, 1850.Cronon, William. Changes in the Land Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York hammock and Wang, 1983. Cunningham, Anna K. Susan Fenimore Cooper Child of Genius. New York History 25 (July 1944) 339-350.Davidson, Cathy N., ed. Introduction to Susanna Rowsons Charlotte Temple. New York Oxford University Press, 1986. -. 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