Mock Conference Presentation

[Jay Jay]

[From my note cards.]


Thesis:
Sarah Kemble Knight participates in enforcing the dominant patriarchal ideology of her culture by describing the land she encounters as an object rather than subject, and women, Native Americans, and African American slaves as othered objects in her journal.  Ecofeminism reveals the connection between the degradation of nature and the domination of women in Knight’s journal, which is expressed in terms of subject and object.

Intervention in scholarship:
There is work being conducted by scholars on ecocritical and ecofeminist theory in the early American time period.  The essays by Timothy Sweet and Daniel Philippon are critical because they illustrate that scholars are still proving to each other that it is a sustainable project of value – still defending their position of ecocritical theory in early American studies, so to speak.  My paper serves as an exploration, meaning that I myself am still unsure of the ecocritical and ecofeminist field; my intention is not so much an intervention as an introduction to the field for myself as a student.

Examples from paper:
Rivers are the most frequently mentioned obstacle and source of terror for Knight during her journey, perhaps because they are the least tamed and urbanized aspect of the wilderness.  Roads, even if in poor condition, provide Knight and her guides access to the land, but not all of the rivers have proper ferries, bridges, or canoes that will not flood.  The rivers are “bad,” “dang’ros,” “difficult,” “hazzardos,” or “navigable,” illustrating the polemical landscape theory proposed by Peter Kratze, representing extremes: good or bad, never in between.

The problem with examples of Knight’s interaction with “othered” humans is they are presented so briefly – little snapshots.  They exist as caricatures, as objects rather than subjects.

Mr. Devill’s daughters “look’t as old as the Divel himself, and quite as ugly” and live in a “habitation of cruelty.”  The old woman at Knight’s next stop is a “pretty full mouth’d old creature” who violates proper manners by loudly telling the French doctor her maladies in front of company.  Knight’s “tattertailed guide” is described as “an Indian-like Animal,” implying that Native Americans are animal-like rather than human, objects rather than subjects.  To be “animal-like” is to be uncivilized, and towns and civilization are highly privileged in Knight’s journal.  The “negro slave” in her theft story is never given a name, and the story is included in her journal as a means of mocking the bumpkins of the countryside.


Further explorations:
A comparison of Knight’s journal with the brief account “Memoir of a Journey from New London to Boston” by John Winthrop (the governor’s son) would prove interesting because the parties took the same route within three months of each other.  Locating other travel narratives by both women and men during the early 1700s would expand the boundaries of this brief investigation, allowing for a stronger claim that the ecofeminist lens provides valuable insight into the society and cultural hierarchies and their relationship to the nonhuman environment of this time period.    

Dr. Murphy suggested that I turn to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet, a predecessor to Knight, to examine her treatment of nature.

Blake suggest that I look at post-colonial theory to flesh out the relationship between the Native Americans and African American slaves as objects and their connection to the degradation of nature.