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

The Absent Animals

In my daily life I interact with Gary the cat, who graciously chose to come home with me from the animal shelter; however, I realize that I can’t forget all of the other brings that are a part of my life.  Every day I try to notice the spider in my potted plants, the sandhill cranes that roam the UCF campus, and even the lizards that dart across the sidewalk like tiny dinosaurs. 

Lizard in a tree in my front yard.

He is most likely calling to a mate by showing off his bright red neck skin.

This project begins with an issue that is near to my heart and my being: the welfare of the animals all around us.  When I say animals, I include even the love bugs that meet their doom on the hood of my car twice a year, the bull frogs that sound from the pond during the summer nights, and even the roaches that visit my house when the rain pours down.

I noticed from an early age that I feel differently about animals, plants and nature in general than most people.  I often wondered why my girl friends were terrified of lizards and snakes, while I found them beautiful and curious.  I grew up with four large sled dogs as my best friends and I often “spoke” with them.  I was surprised when my mother said did not understand the various meanings of our dogs’ body language.  How could she not see that front paws down, tail up meant, “let’s play”?  Now I see that my childhood imagining of the human-animal relationship were a product of the hours I spent in the Florida woods, around ponds, and in trees.  Not a “normal” upbringing but not a bad one either. 

  I have three hermit crabs to thank for teaching me about how even the smallest creatures on our earth live individual lives and have their own experiences.  One day, many years ago, an acquaintance offered his “novelty” pets to anyone who wanted them because he was board with them.  I offered to give them a good home and with a little research I soon discovered that they needed salt and fresh water, a constantly humid environment, and even six inches of sand to dig and molt in.  In return for developing a large habitat, these crabs showed me each of their curious personalities: one liked to clean each of his ear stalks together and another insisted on wiping them one at a time after a meal of fruit.  When I gave them peanut butter the smallest one would wave his antenna in excitement and rush over to eat the snack before the others could.  The largest crab was also the most daring climber who enjoyed hanging upside-down.  Each day I observed more equally thrilling nuances of their different personalities. 

Cliff loved to hang from the top of their wire mesh of the habitat.
Here he is right-side-up for a picture. He was four years old here and
bigger than a golf ball. In the wild hermit crabs can live more than 20 years
and reach the size of a coconut.

What do hermit crabs have to do with early American literature? Well, I began to wonder: Why do we treat some animals as disposable novelties, as curiosities, and only acknowledge their worth in terms of their value to humans.

Where does this paradigm come from? How did we get here? How can we change this?

After college, I moved to California and then Japan.  I could not take my crabs with me so I gave them up for adoption to a fellow hermit crab enthusiast with an even larger habitat. 

One day I asked one of my Japanese coworkers why almost every house had a tiny space before the door with a gate.  She referred to the older houses with gardens in the front and explained that part of the idea is to encounter nature in your daily life. (Gomenasi Suzuki-san if I have sorely misquoted you.) When I traveled to Kyoto (the previous capital of Japan), I learned that the Japanese garden as Americans image, with a large koi pond and flowing waterfalls, was invented because Kyoto is a land-locked area surrounded by mountains and the imperial family missed living near the water.  They wanted nature and water intertwined with the design of the imperial palace—images of pine trees and birds are even carefully painted on the inside panels and ceiling of the palace.

Upon reflection I wondered, why do Americans have a pastoral obsession with going out into nature?  Why can’t they see that nature is here, all around us in our apartments, houses, on our porches, and yes entering our “nature free, civilized” houses?

How did we reach this place of disconnect?  How do we live so separate from beings so important to our being?  

 Unfortunately, Japan is not immune to the human tendency to separate ourselves from animals and nature.  My good friend Myumi-Chan told me about the perception that only pure-bred cats are suitable pets.  Many domestic short hair cats are euthanized simply because they are seen as pests.  I adopted Gary in Japan from one of the few Honshu shelters.  Myumi-Chan, arigato gozaimasu, for sharing your story, your cats’ stories, and your work with The Kankaga Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals with me.    

Gary shortly after we adopted him. Yawning.

 This brings me back to early America though because all of the paths of my life have lead up to the questions:

Why are some animals absent from our lives except as a commodity, a curiosity, a pest, or a companion?  Why can’t Americans see the inherent value in Animals as living beings?  When did we consciously decided to define “America,” why did we conceive our relationship with animals in the manner that we did? Is it too late to leave our colonial mindset behind and finally seek a relationship with animals that is closer to a Native American paradigm?  Can we stop occupying our land and dominating the biota and finally live with it?  

I want to find the beginnings of these beliefs in our national past because if we expose the constructions of these beliefs we can more easily deconstruct them and find a resolution.

                                                                                                   Gary enjoying his morning porch time 

 ~Blake and Gary the Cat who helped me write by napping on my arm.