Murphy, P: Reconceiving Nature

Surprisingly, glimmerings of ecofeminist theory that would emerge a century later can be detected in women's poetry of the late Victorian period. In Reconceiving Nature, Patricia Murphy examines the work of six ecofeminist poets--Augusta Webster, Mathilde Blind, Michael Field, Alice Meynell, Constance Naden, and L. S. Bevington--who contested the exploitation of the natural world. Challenging prevalent assumptions that nature is inferior, rightly subordinated, and deservedly manipulated, these poets instead "reconstructed" nature.