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INFLUENCE OF NATURE ON WOMEN AS SEEN IN SURFACING BY MARGARET ATWOOD. Nature is woman's best friend. If you're having troubles, you just swim in the water, stretch out in a field, or look up at the stars. That's how a woman cures her fears. Fatema Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood Nature has always been what German-American physicist Albert Einstein calls in his Out of my Later Years (1950)- A Well Formulated Puzzle. Nature surrounds us everywhere. Nature has traditionally been imaged as feminine providing a clue to the connection between the oppression of nature and oppression of women that begun in earnest with rise of patriarchal religion and culture some six to seven thousand years ago. Culture is both a curse and hope. Humans are shaped by the behavioral patterns, myths, language, symbols, and rituals of cultural traditions. On one hand man enjoys the comforts of nature while on the other hand his greediness compels him to exploit nature. According to Karen J. Warren, women have been naturalized and nature has been feminized, it is difficult to know where the oppression of one ends and the other begins. Warren emphasizes that women are naturalized when they are described in animal terms such as cows, foxes, chicks, serpents, bitches, beavers, old bats, pussycats, cats, birdbrains, Hare-brains.[Warren 2] Similarly, nature is feminized when she is raped, mastered, conquered, controlled, penetrated, subdued, and mined

by men, or when she is venerated or even worshipped as the grandest mother of all. If man is the lord of nature, if he has been given dominion over it, then he has control not only over nature but also over natures human analog, woman. Whatever man may do to nature, he may also do to woman. Ecofeminism is relatively a new variant of ecological ethics. In fact, the term Ecofeminism first appeared in 1974 in Franoise dEaubonnes Le Fminisme ou la mort. In this work, she expressed the view that there exists a direct link between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature. She claims that the liberation of one cannot be affected without ensuring liberation to the other. A decade or so after Eaubonne coined the term Ecofeminism; Karen J. Warren further specified four core assumptions of ecofeminism: (1) There are important connections between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature; (2) Understanding the nature of these connections is necessary to any adequate understanding of the oppression of women and the oppression of nature; (3) Feminist theory and practice must include an ecological perspective; and (4) Solutions to ecological problems must include a feminist perspective. Like multicultural, postcolonial, and global feminists, ecofeminists highlight the multiple ways in which human beings oppress each other, but these theorists also focus on the hegemony of human beings over the nonhuman world, or nature. Because women are culturally tied to nature, ecofeminists argue that there are conceptual, symbolic, and linguistic connections between feminist and ecological issues.

In an age where nature is exploited, Atwood takes it as a mission to do some good through her writing by bringing out the jarring effects of progress and development on earth and its resources. Images of nature, the daring disasters inflicted upon women and natural environment have been Atwoods topics. The writing and publication of Surfacing (1972) coincided with the emergence of feminist and ecological movements and obviously reflected the concerns of its time. In this novel, the unnamed female protagonist who acts as the first-person narrator comes back to her home in Northern Quebec in search of her missing father after nine years. She is accompanied by her lover Joe and the couple Anna-David. At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist feels alienated in her home ground which becomes a foreign territory after having lived in the urban cityscape for several years. She discovers, Nothing is the same. I dont know the way anymore. [Atwood 3] The environmental destruction becomes apparent. As soon as she enters, the northern landscape is described as diseasespreading up from the south referring to the Unites States. She could see how nature has been mistreated and feels the strong presence of American machinations. The journey revives her memory of the unhappy past from which she feels estranged and brings to her mind recent traumatic events-a painful relationship with her art teacher, a married man and the forced abortion. She experiences the oppression and domination of male world lacking the strength to fight for her survival and passively consents to abort her child. The unnatural act of her abortion shows the empowering and dominating nature of her ex-lover: [The unborn child] was my husbands, he imposed it on me, all the time it was growing in me I felt

like an incubator. He measured everything he would let me eat, he was feeding it to me, he wanted a replica of himself[Atwood 39]. Atwood emphasizes the fact that Patriarchy exploits the bodies of women for its needs. The relationship between nature and men is relationship of exploitation. Like nature, the female body is also seen as a resource to be colonized and commercialized. They even control the process of childbirth which nature has assigned only to women. The protagonist also questions the excessive use of reproductive technologies. The modern techniques, in the guise of assisting woman, rob her of the ability to sense her bodily rhythms. The novel reminds the readers of the differences between natural predation and the hunting done by the man which is done for the excitement of killing. Once in the middle of nature, the fleeing character is disturbed by an incident that she witnesses together with her friendssome people whom she believed to be American, kill a heron for pure pleasure. She cannot disguise her rejection of such behavioral paradigms and is distressed to discover that her friends enjoy having fun in the same manner, thus condoning their act. This represents a decisive moment in the process of her recovery as she realizes that she too has to change. In complete isolation, away from the noise of the city, after a while, having succeeded in leaving her friends behind, surrounded only by nature and wilderness, she manages to recover her balance and to discover the truth about the death of her father. Her search for her father expands not only into the discovery of the split in her own personality but also the tragic falling apart of nature and civilization in general. She becomes a symbol for all those who are exploited and abused because of their

powerlessness.

She expresses a deep concern for nature and enables the readers

understand the women-nature connection. She undergoes the rebirth of herself as she discovers her piece of mind through this shamanistic experience. She deliberately goes in search of shamanistic powers and she deliberately invokes the guardian spirits of the earth. She says, I lean against a tree; I am a tree-leaning. I break out again into the bright sun and crumple, head against the ground I am not an animal or a tree, I am the thing in which the trees and animals move and grow, I am a place [Atwood 175]. After her abortion, the protagonist comes to develop deep sympathy for the flora and fauna and realizes that regeneration through nature is the only solution for her disintegration. Like a true ecologist, she makes the earth her literal home for she knows that all life is interrelated, teeming with diversity and complexity in the natural world. There is no one to boss over her and violate her physique. She becomes one with her sacred Mother Earth. She throws away all her civilization as it is destroying the biosphere. This relapsing process involves exploring her wild nature which helps the protagonist to reconnect to her home ground and to discover her biological identity. The protagonists association with nature raises her consciousness of victimization of women. When her feminine consciousness reaches its zenith, the protagonist prepares the ground for revolt against exploitation. She uses Joe to get her pregnant but refuses to get married to him, possibly as revenge upon her ex-lover who used her. The power struggle seems to have come to an end. She feels very confident about her own power and refuses to be a victim and says, This above, all, to refuse to be a victim. [Atwood 249] She decides to stay back in Quebec and to give birth to the

gold fish nurturing in her womb. The power for destruction can be reconciled only with the power for creation. She gradually comes to feel that she herself has been antinature. With the protagonists determination to give birth to the child, the novelist has hinted that germination will take place implying that both women and nature will be protected provided they defend themselves against the onslaught of men over them. Atwood does not want to overturn patriarchy and replace it with womens dominance. She wants to transform nonviolently the structures of male dominance and restore the lost balance and harmony between women and men. Nature is filled with wonders that can take humans out of their anthropocentric egoism. Nature is like a mother whose tender words have marvelous healing power. Nature is like a sister whose arms reach out during hard times. Therefore we must be willing to make an emotional commitment to ecofeminist cause. For the answer is not that women represent nature but rather that humankind is part of nature .This logic must be used to preserve all forms of life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Atwood, Margaret. Surfacing. USA: Anchor Books Edition, 1998. 2. Bloom, Harold. Margaret Atwood. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2000. 3. Erkal, Nisvan, Warren. J.Karen. Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. USA:

Indiana University Press, 1997.

4. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and Mystery of Nature. New York, 1993. 5. Tolan, Fiona. Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. New York: Costerus

New Series-170, 2007.

6. Gaard, Claire Greta, Murphy, D.Patrick. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism:

Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. USA: University of Illinois, 1998.