Literary Legacy: Rachel Carson's Influence on Contemporary Women Nature Writers

Abstract

While Rachel Carson is perhaps best known for her book Silent Spring and her work as a scientist and environmentalist, she is often overlooked as an important writer of literature, as evidenced through Silent Spring but also through her three books about the sea. This thesis poses the question: if Carson made such a lasting impact on the way Americans think about the environment through her writing, how has she affected the discipline of nature writing in the US? Through an examination of Carson’s sea texts, Under the Sea-Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1955) this analysis identifies certain techniques which set Carson apart from the nature writers who came before her, particularly those that write in the style of the dominant Thoreauvian tradition. Specifically, Carson’s combination of scientific jargon and poetic techniques, her ecocentric texts which decentralize the first person narration, her commitment to avoid anthropomorphizing organisms, and her thematic reverence for all life, including creatures who are ignored or feared by humans, set her apart from her predecessors. We can see these same techniques adopted and adapted by other female nature writers who were writing in the decades after Carson’s death. In Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), Sue Hubbell’s A Country Year (1986), and Ann Zwinger’s Run, River, Run (1975) we can see Carson’s techniques mingled with some traditional Thoreauvian nature writing elements like the reflective first person narrator or the turn of the seasons as an organizing principal for the plot. Carson’s literary legacy visible in the works of later nature writers demonstrates the importance of the respectful, ecocentric relationship with nature that Carson invited all Americans to share. It wasn’t simply science that spoke to people from Carson’s books, but rather the combination of science and great literature that helped the American public to learn about the natural world. In a time when Americans are again asking themselves about the right relationship they should have with nature, Carson’s techniques, seen in her works and those of later nature writers, are worth understanding and emulating.