Gender Roomours I

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Notes

• 1) An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch meeting in Vancouver, on 10 August 2001. I am grateful to Heather Streets and Bill Robbins for their comments on that version of the paper. Sue Armitage, Tina Loo, and Val Plumwood also offered valuable suggestions at various stages. I also wish to acknowledge Karen Routledge, who hunted down a number of British Columbia newspaper articles that were central to the writing of this paper.
• 2) An abridged version of this essay also exists. See Plumwood, "Prey II". Recognition of these cultural constructions in recent histories is emblematic of a greater social awareness among scholars, but significantly detrimental to inherited notions of the master narrative, that grand scheme or model that represents or symbolizes the relentless development of free institutions and the expansion of political liberty. Too often, the master narrative - born out of narrow-minded, homogeneous consensus many generations earlier - is based on ideal rather than historical reality; it is, moreover, often oppressive and suppressive, imposing a hegemonic mastery over the non-white, the non-male, and the non-middle or upper classes. That the master narrative should claim to consider - yet largely ignore - these minorities strikes at the very root of the historiographical problem it represents. It is not until very recently that historians have started to question or debate the value of the (or any) master narrative. For an interesting critique of the master narrative, see Huggins.
• 3) "Civilized" forms of violence were either still accepted or had become institutionalized during this period. The Progressive era was a period during which soldiers were still heroic and wars glorious. Furthermore, boxing during this period became a "manly art." The distinction between acceptable, civilized, and ordered forms of violence and primitive, wild, and disordered forms finds its roots in the environment in which it takes place. For the association between war and heroism, see Dawson. For boxing as manly art, see Gorn.
• 4) See as exception Draper.
• 5) One of the major criticisms of environmental history is that it has proven itself unable to incorporate women and the study of gender into its narratives. The reason for this stems from the initial purpose of history and responses to the ultimate question in history: what is the relationship between culture and society? Environmental historians respond "nature," whereas gender historians answer "gender." Such divergent responses, however, should not preclude greater confluence of the two deviating positions. For criticisms of environmental history from a women's history perspective, see Scharff.
• 6) This is a longstanding tradition that Carolyn Merchant associates with the Scientific Revolution.
• 7) It is important to note that Turner's thesis was not immediately embraced, but within ten years the "frontier thesis" had become a mainstay in historical interpretations of the American West.
• 8) For a detailed discussion of Turner's frontier thesis, see Etulain.
• 9) See, for example, Bederman; Dubbert; Higham; and Kimmel. Bederman would question, however, whether this obsession with masculinity really constituted a crisis. See Bederman 10-15.
• 10) This perception of wilderness is, of course, fallacious in that it fails to appreciate that indigenous people inhabited these "wilderness" areas prior to their wilderness designation. Indeed, the concept of wilderness being where civilization is not present is purely a twentieth century construction. See Catton; Spence; Plumwood, "Wilderness." Social criticisms of wilderness preservation follow similar arguments. See Pulido; Guha.
• 11) Plumwood notes that "transcending death this way exacts a great price; it treats the earth as a lower, fallen realm, true human identity as outside nature, and it provides narrative continuity for the individual only in isolation from the cultural and ecological continuity and in opposition to a person's perishable body" (Plumwood, "Prey II," 60).
• 12) For an example of male identity being realized through the risking of life, see Dawson.
• 13) As examples, consider Jacob wrestling the angel; Christ being tempted in the wilderness; Heracles' capture of Cerberus at the gates of Hades; Beowulf fighting Grendel's mother in her watery lair; and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in which man's encounter with the monster takes place on Mont Blanc. More recent examples might even include the introductory parable in Robert Bly's Iron John and the confrontation between Luke Skywalker and an imaginary Darth Vader in the murky wilderness of Yoda's Dagoba System in The Empire Strikes Back.
• 14) As subtext - though decidedly not a part of the traditional myth - in shamelessly provoking the bear Dubois demonstrates qualities that might be considered savage, thereby limiting the differences between himself and the bear.
• 15) It is worth relating Akeley's comments to hunting accounts from previous generations, where the virility of the hunter was keenly associated with the number of animals killed. See Mackenzie 85-119.
• 16) Testi notes that female suffrage and social reform were both central to Roosevelt's unsuccessful Progressive party platform of 1912 (1513). Ironically, the perpetuation of the monster myth narrative also implies an ongoing recession of the wilderness frontier and the continued colonization of the wild nature to which men sought escape.