Elizabeth House Trist: A Woman Participating in the Reduction of Nature?

What is most puzzling about Trist’s diary is that she seems complacent in the objectification of the animals and the land that she encounters during her journey.  This seems to say that women are equally guilty of promulgating the view that nature is below humanity.  I actually expected (hoped) to find a more heterarchical view of the environment because Trist was a woman and women are historically linked with the environment and therefore they share a reduced status.  The Man/woman binary is linked with the Man/nature and the result is the false construction that Man is greater than Woman and Nature: Man/woman and nature.  This is why it is a mistake to gender the earth as feminine, because then people will link it with the reduced social status of women in our society—but I digress. . .   

This past week I compiled my preliminary bibliography for my project. My primary mission was to familiarize myself with the scholarly conversation surrounding Elizabeth House Trist’s diary. I discovered that her diary was recovered by Annette Kolodny and first published in 1990.

I was surprised that more scholars haven’t discussed Trist’s diary since Kolodny published it in Journeys in New Worlds. I even searched the _Web of Science_ to see if Kolodny’s introduction had been cited in other articles and only found one secondary text.

From my search I can conclude that scholars really aren’t working with Trist’s diary.  This is not a bad sign, it just means that I will need to approach this project in a different way than my previous ones. 

My past subjects had been discussed in depth by other scholars; so, I framed my argument as either elaborating on what they had said to better understand the text, or I focused on a gap in the previous scholarship.

My concept for this project is only a seed of an idea.  Now, I plan to water it by reading scholarship about travel literature, women's diaries, and the American landscape.  I hope this will hatch an idea that I will be able to grow in the light of ecofeminist or animal studies paradigm.

Sorry if the plant metaphor is too cheesy ;-)

See below for my bibliography and my subject search terms.

Preliminary Bibliography:

Deciphering Early American Human-Animal Relations

Primary Sources:

Trimmer, Sarah.  Fabulous Histories, Designed for the Amusement & Instruction of Young

            Persons. Philadelphia: Gibbons, 1794. Evans Digital Database. Web. 3 Sept. 2011.

Trist, Elizabeth House. “The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist: Philadelphia to Natchez,

            1783-84.” Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives. Ed. Annette

Kolodny. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990. 201-32. Print.

Secondary Sources:

Culley, Margo. “‘I Look at Me’: Self as Subject in the Diaries of American Women.”

Women's Studies Quarterly 17.3/4 (1989): 15-22.  JSTOR. Web. 4 Oct. 2011.

Grenby, M. O. “‘A Conservative Woman Doing Radical Things’: Sarah Trimmer and The

 Guardian of Education.” Culturing the Child, 1690-1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi

Myers. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005. 137-161. Print.

Imbarrato, Susan C. “Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth House Trist.” Declarations of

            Independency in Eighteenth-Century American Autobiography. Knoxville: U of

            Tennessee P, 1998. 40-85. Print.

Kolodny, Annette. Introduction. “The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist: Philadelphia to

            Natchez, 1783-84.” By Elizabeth House Trist. Journeys in New Worlds: Early American

            Women’s Narratives. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990. 181-200. Print.

----. The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860.

            Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984. Print.

Burstein, Andrew, and Catherine Mowbray “Jefferson and Sterne.” Early American Literature

 29.1 (1994): 19-34. JSTOR. Web. 7 Oct. 2011.

Other Contextual Sources Indirectly Related to Topic:

Imbarrato, Susan C. Traveling Women: Narrative Visions of Early America. Athens: Ohio UP,

2006. Print.

Kagle, Steven E., and Lorenza Gramegna. “Rewriting Her Life: Fictionalization and the

Use of Fictional Models in Early American Women’s Diaries.” Inscribing the Daily:

Critical Essays on Women's Diaries. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1996. 38-55. Print.

Martin, Wendy. Colonial American Travel Narratives. New York: Penguin, 1994. Print.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Scratches on the Face of the Country; or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the

            Land of the Bushmen.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 119-43. JSTOR. Web. 4 Oct. 2011.

Theoretical Text:

Alaimo, Stacy. Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space. Ithaca: Cornell

            UP, 2000. Print.

Search Terms: Used in MLA International Bibliography and America: History & Life

Elizabeth House Trist, Trist, Elizabeth Trist

Sarah Trimmer

Early American Diaries

Diaries -- United States

American literature--1700-1799

American diaries--Women authors--History and criticism

Women and literature--United States--History

1700-1799 -- environment

Travel writing--United States--eighteenth century

United States -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800

United States --Social life and customs -- To 1800

Travel--History -- United States

Frontier and pioneer life -- United States

Frontier and pioneer life in literature -- United States

Women in literature -- United States

Women Pioneers – United States

Landscapes in Literature

Nature in literature

Feminist Theory

Ecofeminism

Women authors, American