Woman and Nature
Women tend to personify natural forces in art, literature, religion, and even science. It is as if these stories, traditionally told by men, are trying to solve or control certain things through the metaphor of a woman. From a Western perspective, this goes back to biblical stories.
Carolyn Merchant illustrates the view of the natural world as female. From the Garden of Eden to the Nobel Prize for Physics, she outlines two sides of the Western vantage point of “Mother Nature”. In the case of Eve, wildness and natural systems are the punishment for betraying Adam, her creator. She is blamed for the world becoming uninhabitable without constant management of the land and security from the other animals that walk this earth.
“Instead of giving fruit readily, the earth now extracts human labor. The blame for the Fall is placed on the woman.” (Merchant, 2013) In this case, nature is seen as a force to control to get back to the romantic Garden. Nature is something men inherently resent because of Eve’s curiosity.
Adam (the hero) worked the land after The Garden's fall. (Cano, 1650)
On the secular side, nature is still imagined as a woman. In this case, nature represents something to figure out, dissect, and unfold. The scientist’s role is to put nature under the microscope, discover everything there is to know, and then manipulate it to perform. Merchant points out that the back of the Nobel Prize for Physics shows: “...science attempts to strip away nature’s veil revealing her innermost secrets. A potent depiction of Scientia removing the veil from a bare-breasted Natura...” (Merchant, 2013)
In a way, these cultural undertones entice masculine energies to control what they do not understand - nature. Rather than listen and learn, they dig and build to impose their agenda. If nature as female is untamable and unpredictable, then in some cases, it is something to be afraid of.
Merchant weaves these stories together in a feminine approach to Eve’s story by saying, “Was she the weaker, more vulnerable sex and hence susceptible to the serpent’s temptation? Or, was she actually the First Scientist - the more independent and curious of the two…In this reading, Eve was the one who questioned the established order of things and initiated change. As original biologist, Eve talks to the snake and nature rather than to God as Adam. As prototypic scientist, Eve could hold the key to recovering Eden through a new science.” (Merchant, 2013)
This approach balances observing the garden rather than taking cues from our ambitions. Eve uses feminine empathy and masculine inquiry combined to build an understanding. It goes back to the planetary gardener, who understands the cycles and processes already happening. All the gardener has to do is listen and decide whether to act.
Back of The Nobel Prize for Physics, designed by Erik Lindberg in 1902. The inscription reads, “Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes”, adapted from Vergil’s Aeneid and translated by William Morris to mean, “and they who bettered life on earth by new-found mastery.” (The Nobel Foundation, 2006)
Stories not based in the Western world invert these gender roles. Ancient Egyptians imagined a goddess of the sky, and the earth was represented by a male figure. The key character in these stories, though, was the one in between - Shu. Shu’s purpose was to maintain a balance between the sky and the earth. If they collided, the world would fall into chaos. (Hill, 1992) In this story, Shu is the gardener, the energy between the opposites.
The air God, Shu, between the sky Goddess, Nut, and the earth God, Geb. Sir Oliver Lodge describes this as “the principle of equilibrium and support…” (Lodge, 1893)
HUMAN NATURE
When asked about gardening, Daniel Grose, Director of Horticulture at the Memphis Botanic Garden, says, “I am nature. No matter how you slice it, I am either a part of creation as a created being or I evolved from nothing along with everything else. On both fronts, I am not a different thing from nature, I am a part of it, a participant in the larger ecology of the planet for better or worse. When I design a garden that gives rather than takes, it is an act of love, there is intimacy, there is passion, excitement, the possibility of life, the unknown and serendipity.” (Grose, 2023)
Not only is this echoed in the thoughts and writings of Clement, but it also outlines the two plots seen in Carolyn Merchant’s work - one where God created us (in a Western context) or evolved from other living things (the scientific approach). In either case, we were created or evolved with nature. As part of that narrative, regardless of a person's beliefs, it is impossible to remove ourselves from the picture or place humans at the top of a pyramid. The inherent question of “why” tend to the garden stems from responsibility to non-human nature and ourselves as part of that nature. We are nature.
