Reconceiving Nature: Ecofeminism in Late Victorian Women’s Poetry

Glimmerings of ecofeminist theory that would emerge a century later can be detected in women’s poetry of the later Victorian period. Patricia Murphy examines the work of six proto-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.