Rachel Carson’s primary occupation was as a marine biologist, but her second and most profound pursuit was as a writer. Carson wove intricate science into her writing and made it digestible for the general public. There’s no better example of this notion than Silent Spring, Carson’s 1962 exposition of the toxic insecticides that were, and continue, killing not just pests but animals and humans. Her explicit way of laying out this information started an environmental movement as people became furious that insecticides like DDT and dieldrin were sickening ecosystems and humans alike.
Since Carson was a woman in the male-dominated science world, her work was criticized over and over again. Male scientists in her field took to academic journals to lay into why they thought Carson’s work was faux, but she was in fact one hundred percent accurate. She was persistent and confident in her findings, coming out victorious over her chauvinistic colleagues, and became an inspiration to environmentalists and feminists for decades to come.
Photo Courtesy of PermaCulture
What Carson’s work emphasizes is the power that science has when it’s simple to comprehend. With the looming climate crisis that humans are beginning and bound to feel the effects of within the next decade, prominent authors are using science in their fictional works in a similar manner as Carson.
Authors Richard Powers, Aminatta Forna and Amitav Ghosh establish intelligent women who are environmentally focused scientists as major characters in their groundbreaking novels. Richard Powers’ The Overstory (2018) captivates readers with field biologist Patricia Westerford, who studies trees specifically, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Similarly, Aminatta Forna uses Jean Turane as the main character in Happiness (2018), where Jean is also a field biologist but studies urban foxes in London. Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005) sees biologist Piyali Roy studying river dolphins in India’s Sundarbans.
These fictional women keep Carson’s spirit alive and well, manifesting how women can still succeed despite all odds being against them. These characters not only keep readers glued to the story, but are the vehicles through which the authors incorporate evidence of the multiplicity of environmental crises that the world is facing. In turn, this leaves those who finish the novels with an awareness of how humans continue to ravage the planet and that women relentlessly come face to face with inequality.
Richard Powers novel The Overstory follows multiple characters until the trees eventually bring them together in strange and unprecedented ways. Patricia Westerford is a character who is easy to connect with those who feel ostracized for exercising the notion that nature is more powerful than humans. In the novel, from an early age, Patricia was alone with the plants of her backyard as her speech impediment set her apart from other children. She found friends in the flowers, trees, and grasses and created her own world. This eventually led her to become a biologist leading studies on trees that were unheard of in the field prior to her research. Yet much like Rachel Carson, Patricia’s work on how trees communicate with each other was debunked by other scientists, predominantly males.
Aminatta Forna’s novel Happiness grazes upon multiple aspects of the human experience: psychology, life, and death, memories and love. The keenest aspect of the book is humans’ interactions with animals in the developed world. Taking place in modern-day London, Forna shows this relationship using field biologist Jean Turane who is studying urban foxes. From the start, we’re introduced to Jean as a woman who is independent, having moved away from her ex-husband and son in New England to live alone in London and conduct her study on the foxes. This aspect of Jean’s character represents her strength and defies the conventions of women having to take care of a family their entire lives.
While Jean watches the foxes from her apartment, we see she has utter compassion towards the foxes that roam in her backyard as she is invested in their actions and whereabouts. As the story unfolds, the dialogue Forna gives Jean makes the reader aware of her intelligence as she consistently has well thought out answers to difficult questions, especially when those questions come from men ridiculing her determination to protect the foxes of London.
The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh predominantly uses its setting as the main character. India’s Sundarbans is where the novel takes place, in all its allusiveness, history, tidal rivers, and lush mangroves. Another main character, Piyali, who goes by Piya throughout the story, is a young Indian-American woman drawn into the Sundarbans for a study on river dolphins. Like the characters from the novels aforementioned, Piya is a field biologist and perfectly comfortable in her autonomy, recognizing that her travel-intensive job will most likely always keep her from settling down.
The wonders Piya sees on the tidal rivers in the Sundarbans are enough to justify the lifestyle she leads, but the work she is accomplishing ultimately leads to conservation efforts, making her job even more vital. From the dense vegetation that the jungle surrounding the rivers houses to the biodiversity that would take Darwin’s breath away, Piya’s occupation as a field biologist is a fulfilling one. Piya embodies this notion throughout the novel, leading the male characters to salvation with her wit when the beauty of the Sundarbans turns threatening.
The three novels introduced throughout are fictional books by established authors, ones you might typically see at a Hudson News in the airport. Powers, Forna and Ghosh are revolutionary writing novels that are focused on the environment with powerful female main characters. While that’s simply put, their doing so is leading to more minds being centered on or even thinking about the environment and women’s equality, two movements tirelessly fighting for society’s respect.
Carson and a Specimen, photo courtesy of NRDC
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did more than just start a movement. As a result of her work, the United States Environmental Protection Agency came into being, which aims to conserve air, water, and land from pollutants such as the ones Carson describes. With just one piece of literature, she started the American environmental movement. Literature like Carson’s, Powers’, Forna’s and Ghosh’s has immense power to alter the views of those who are unaware of humankind’s grim future as climate change expedites as the years go on. The only way to change this impending doom is by educating the general public. Literature and tenacious women will be some of the driving forces to accomplish that feat.
Sources met from a course titled Nature, Literature, and Ecological Change taught by Elaine Savory at Eugene Lang in the Spring of 2019:
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin. 1962.
Forna, Aminatta. Happiness. New York: Grove Atlantic. 2018.
Ghosh, Amitav. The Hungry Tide. New York: Houghton Mifflin. 2005.
Powers, Richard. The Overstory. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2018.