In Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture, Carolyn Merchant describes the dominant narrative of Western Culture with particular attention to the ways in which it has been historically problematic for the environment, women, Native Americans, and African Americans. In critiquing these narrations of different aspects of the Western world, though she is not operating in a strictly theological framework, Merchant frames her discussion in terms of the Genesis creation/fall narrative in attempt to show how traditional renderings of that story of decline perpetuate the unequal power structures of oppressors and oppressed. Merchant focuses specifically on environmental issues, making important connections between man’s1 dominion over both nature and women, in addition to considering the ways in which science and capitalism have overpowered creation, deteriorating nature rather than improving it by human mastery. Our actions - and, in Merchant’s narration, the actions of white men in particular - have had and will continue to have disastrous consequences. In re-telling the story of Western culture with attention to ways in which it has been unjust, Merchant intends to set her readers on a trajectory in which they can begin to live a new story, namely one of partnership and mutuality, rather than oppressor and oppressed.

In one of Merchant’s more disturbing passages she considers novelist Frank Norris’s metaphorical description of female nature under the domination of the male plow. She writes:

Norris describes the female earth being seduced on a massive scale by thousands of men operating their plows in unison. “Everywhere throughout the great San Joaquin, unseen and unheard, a thousand ploughs upstirred the land, tens of thousands of shears clutched deep into the warm, moist soil.” And he leaves no doubt that the seduction becomes a violent rape, as he writes, ” It was the long stroking caress, vigorous, male, powerful, for which the Earth seemed panting. The heroic embrace of a multitude of iron hands, gripping deep into the brown, warm flesh of the land that quivered responsive and passionate under this rude advance, so robust as to be almost an assault, so violent as to be veritably brutal. (Merchant 125)

Merchant draws our attention to Norris’s description of what resembles the gang-rape of nature, showing how such violence against the natural world is supported and even affirmed in the history of Western culture. Throughout Merchant’s chapter on “Adam as Hero,” she describes how Protestantism in America led to both the capitalist transformation of nature into a commodity to be consumed and the preservationist desires to be good stewards of God’s creation (96-97). In both cases, though, the power of man is glorified as not only capable but destined to subdue the earth.

Thus, to push Merchant’s point about the connection between environmental degradation and patriarchy, one must ask: if such violence against nature is affirmed, if actions “so robust as to be almost an assault” are affirmed towards earth, does it not follow that such overpowering of women is equally imbedded in our culture? This example makes it quite clear, despite arguments to the contrary, that the “care” that some would argue is part of a well-functioning patriarchal construct - i.e. that the powerful men are to take care of the less powerful women - is a myth, for within such a power structure, to care for women inevitably becomes oppressive. This operates on varying levels - not all oppression is overt physical or sexual abuse, for example - but less visible oppression is no less important to the lives of the women subject to it. This is especially relevant to consider within the Christian church, where unequal power relationships are often justified using scripture and tradition, creating environments that are oppressive and potentially dangerous for women, under the guise of Christian piety.

In contrast to the disturbing image discussed above, a helpful, even hopeful image cited by Merchant with respect to nature and the feminine comes from Henry David Thoreau, writing about his bean field:

The earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus…What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work. (137)

Thoreau speaks of being “attached” to the earth; he describes a relationship of mutuality. Merchant expands on this concept in her chapter on partnership, writing, “A partnership ethic holds that the greatest good for the human and nonhuman communities is in their mutual living interdependence” (223). Merchant considers partnership both in terms of the environment and in terms of our human relationships. To draw out specifically the importance of a partnership ethic in terms of gendered human relationships, one must consider what mutuality might look like, particularly in heterosexual relationships where patriarchal oppression is most evident.

One of the difficulties faced by feminism is whether or not the tendency towards womens equality sometimes becomes distorted into a move towards matriarchy. In other words, do the oppressed simply try to turn the tables to become the oppressors? In her rendering of the various narratives of Western culture, Merchant discusses feminist narratives that view our current situation as one of decline from a previous matriarchal society, what one might characterize as a feminist Eden. This raises the question, first, as to whether this actually was the case, and second, as to whether this is a desirable and achievable state. Would matriarchy’s subversion of patriarchy create a world of equality? Merchant would likely question such possibilities, expressing concern about the power dichotomies such a way of thinking operates within. She warns against the ways in which binary opposites leave us frozen in non-mutuality. She writes:

Privileging automatically creates a marginalized other. Privileging the central, progressive narrative of Western culture marginalizes other narratives. Privileging modernity’s written tradition marginalizes its binary opposite - indigenous or oral cultures. Yet reversing the hierarchy by privileging the other (indigenous cultures), in its turn marginalizes the first (Western culture). Binary thinking itself sets up the dilemma: nature/culture, white/black, written/oral, male/female, speech/writing. One is central, the other excluded; one is higher, the other lower; one is true, the other false. The pairs can be reversed by raising the opposite. But in either case they are frozen in their new positions. There is no movement, process, or free play across differences. (200)

In this sense, “otherness” can be a very unhelpful way of thinking about things. While it clarifies for us the ways in which one thing - the “other” - is always defined over and against another - the “norm” - it nonetheless is limiting if we stop there, because we continue to think of two competing opposites. Rather, for partnership to be possible, these binaries must be broken down into relationships of mutuality.

Towards the end of the book, Merchant makes explicit some connections between her proposed partnership ethic and narrative. Having attempted to re-narrate the story of Western culture, she considers what sort of new narrative or set of narratives might need to be created. “We internalize narrative as ideology,” she writes, “a story told by people in power. Once we identify ideology as story - powerful and compelling, but still only a story - we realize that by rewriting the story, we can begin to challenge the structures of power. We recognize that all stories can and should be challenged” (241). What Merchant’s book does is challenge the powerful by re-telling their stories, challenging  power structures by naming them for the oppressed who do not have the power to do so themselves. What Reinventing Eden does not do - perhaps intentionally - is put forth details of what continued challenging of the dominant storytellers might look like. “Can we actually step outside the story into which we have been cast as characters,” she asks, “and enter into a story with a different plot?” (241). She notes the reality that one might internalize the same narrative one has sought to identify and break through. Nonetheless, Merchant seems to remain hopeful that, through the process of our lives together, humanity can write a new story. Her own version of the recovery narrative is one in which partnership between supposed binary opposites can be achieved, in which peace and harmony reign and all of creation dwells together in balance and cooperation. For those reading Merchant from a theological point of view, it remains to be discerned whether and how the church might be central to the unfolding story of the movement beyond oppressive structures such as sexism and racism, to lives of peace and wholeness in Christ.