Woman and nature: The roaring inside her

In this famously provocative cornerstone of feminist literature, Susan Griffin explores the identification of women with the earthâboth as sustenance for humanity and as victim of male rage. Starting from Platoâs fateful division of the world into spirit and matter, her analysis of how patriarchal Western philosophy and religion have used language and science to bolster their power over both women and nature is brilliant and persuasive, coming alive in poetic prose.
Griffin draws on an astonishing range of sourcesâfrom timbering manuals to medical texts to Scripture and classical literatureâin showing how destructive has been the impulse to disembody the human soul, and how the long separated might once more be rejoined. Poet Adrienne Rich calls Woman and Nature âperhaps the most extraordinary nonfiction work to have merged from the matrix of contemporary female consciousnessâa fusion of patriarchal science, ecology, female history and feminism, written by a poet who has created a new form for her vision. ...The book has the impact of a great film or a fresco; yet it is intimately personal, touching to the quick of womanâs experience.â