On The Ecofeminist Consciousness Of Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge:An Unnatural History Of Family And Place

Terry Tempest Williams is an outstanding contemporary American writer, naturalist and environmental activist. Being born and raised near the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah, Williams shares an inborn intimacy with nature, which makes her devote herself to protecting the environment all through her life. Meanwhile, Williams witnessed and went through women’s physical and mental suffering caused by the tests of atomic bombs at the Nevada Test Site, which makes her become a feminist. Therefore, Williams has been trying hard to evoke readers’ environmental and feminist consciousness via her words throughout her life.In1991, Williams published her book Refuge:An Unnatual History of Family and Place, which came out to be one of the classic pieces in American nature writing. The book describes a story that combines her mother’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer with the flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. At the same time, Refuge is considered to be a book that represents Williams’s ecofeminist consciousness, so ecofeminists see it as one of the representative works of their school.The thesis consists of five parts:the introduction, the three chapters and the conclusion.The introduction first presents a brief review of Terry Tempest Williams and her works. And then, it summarizes the previous studies on the book Refuge:An Unnatural History of Family and Place both at home and abroad.Chapter One is the theoretical foundation of the whole thesis that includes the introduction to ecofeminism and ecofeminist literary theory. Chapter Two examines Williams’s viewpoints on nature and women. Williams loves nature, especially birds. Therefore, she interlaces her mother’s disease with the flooding of the lake, and she names each chapter after birds. Meanwhile, she treats nature as female, and believes that both of them bear an inborn intimacy with each other. Chapter three interprets Williams’s ecofeminist consciousness in Refuge from another angle:her defence of the rights of women and nature. It reveals men’s destructive activities that placed upon women and nature and expresses Williams’s condemning over this domination. And then, it presents Williams’s calling for women to fight for themselves and her advocacy of caring about birds and nature.The conclusion first sums up Williams’s ecofeminist consciousness that are revealed in Refuge:on the one hand, she worships nature, and stresses the interconnection between women and nature; on the other hand, she defends women and nature’s rights by criticizing men’s domination over women and nature and delivering her appealing for women and nature. Then, it illustrates the great influence that Williams has brought to ecofeminism through the book Refuge. Lastly, it states the aim and practical contribution of this thesis.