SOURCE: “The Polluted Quarry: Nature and Body in A Thousand Acres,” in Transforming Shakespeare: Contemporary Women's Re-Visions in Literature and Performance, edited by Marianne Novy, St. Martin's Press, 1999, pp. 127–44.

In the following essay, Mathieson discusses how Smiley presents nature and man's relationship to it in A Thousand Acres.

The recognition of nature's shaping influence on human identity is a fundamental recognition, one that is shared by many non-Western cultures. Severing or denying human dependency on our relationship with nature is necessary only to the construction of the master identity, which lies at the center of the alienation of Western culture. …

—Greta Gaard¹

“Different views on Nature,” writes John Danby, “are not differences of opinion only. They are felt as so many stubborn holds that reality has on us and we on it. They are such meanings as can become concrete people.”² Noting the more than 40 uses of “nature...