Women and wilderness
Women's relationship with nature and wilderness has been explored in mythology, art, literature repeatedly.
Women are sometimes viewed as civilized and "effete" -- a word that simultaneously conjures the feminine and faggy, and the decadent and over-civilized -- dependent on men, safer and protected in the home and civilization, helpless in nature or the rough wild. In such depictions, men may be depicted as strong, protective, more knowledgeable, more worldly-wise, more at home in nature, and so on.
On the other hand, there is a long tradition of viewing women as more primal, more in touch with nature -- in Christianity, that might mean more in touch with "sin", and less godly or divine or spiritual; less intellectual and logical, and more intuitive; women's menstrual cycles "with the moon" might be emphasized, or a "feminine spirituality" that is in harmony with nature, etc.
Given the fractious history of gendering various attributes relating to nature and wilderness on the one hand, and civilization and humanity on the other hand, it is not surprising that feminists have also deployed such themes and explored the possible connections.
Ecofeminist works have considered civilization in light of environmental destruction, often tying civilization to patriarchy, violence, and environmental destruction, and juxtaposing pacifism, feminism, and/or sustainable lifestyles. Sheri Tepper is often considered an ecofeminist writer; Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground is a classic feminist SF exposition of this view, and Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing follows in this vein. In Gearhart and Starhawk, women's spirituality is tied to New Age spirituality and paganism.
The "Western" as a genre offers opportunity for this exploration; see Modern Daughters and the Outlaw West by Melissa Kwasny; Molly Gloss' Wild Life; Karen Joy Fowler's Sarah Canary; Pat Murphy's Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles and Wild Angel.
Feminist SF
- Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground. A rather tamed wilderness.
- Gloss, Molly. Wild Life (2000). An independent-minded woman of the historical West, during logging times, gets lost in the forest.
- Jean Hegland's Into the Forest - two teenage girls live in the woods with their family
- Kwasny, Melissa. Modern Daughters and the Outlaw West (Spinsters Book, San Francisco, 1990). A small Wyoming town is infested with quirky lesbians, ghosts, and politics. A lot of celebration of the rural wilderness & nature.
- Pat Murphy's Nadya - on the Oregon Trail in 19th century America
- Pat Murphy. Wild Angel. The second in Murphy's Max Merriwell trilogy, Wild Angel revisits Tarzan in the American West.
- Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing - protagonist makes a trip through the wilderness