Book review: This relationship shaped Rachel Carson’s environmental philosophy

On a summer night in the mid-1950s, two women lie side by side on Dogfish Head, a sandbar where a river meets the ocean on Maine’s jagged coast. They gazed at the bright stars, the dirty threads of the Milky Way, and the occasional flash of a meteor. One woman was Rachel Carson, who later became famous for her books. silent spring and the revitalization of the modern environmental movement. Another, Dorothy Freeman, was Carson’s married neighbor. The two were drawn to each other from the moment they met on Southport Island, Maine in 1953, and remained close until Carson’s death from cancer in 1964. Freeman was the one who scattered Carson’s ashes.

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The Dogfish Head scene may sound romantic, but in Lyda Maxwell’s new book, Rachel Carson and the power of queer loveI would argue that it certainly was. Maxwell, a professor of political science and women, gender, and sexuality studies at Boston University, explores the close bond between Carson and Freeman, drawing in part from a trove of personal letters. The message of this book is that this relationship holds lessons for the modern climate crisis, especially for those of us who seek to find meaning outside of our culture’s dominant narratives.

The communication speaks for itself. Carson confessed his strong feelings in just a few letters (“Because I love you! I could tell you some of the reasons now, but it would take a long time and the simple fact I think that covers everything…”). The two call each other “darling” and “sweetheart.” During their time spent physically apart, they express what could easily be read as a strange longing, as Freeman writes: And more. ”

There is also mention of hundreds of letters that we never read, probably because the two women burned them in the same fireplace. As Dorothy’s granddaughter Martha Freeman told Maxwell, “Rachel and Dorothy were initially wary of the romantic tone and terminology of their correspondence.”

Was Carson a lesbian? The answer has long been a source of speculation. It’s impossible to know. It is not known whether she has publicly identified herself as such. But for Maxwell, this question is beside the point. “Whether or not their love was ‘homosexual,’ to use the language of the time, it was certainly strange. It set them apart from the traditional forms of marriage and family, and what society expected them to do.” It allowed us to love each other and find happiness in the non-human world of nature.”

Queer love is about what Maxwell calls the “ideology of straight love”: marriage, buying and decorating a home, bearing and raising children, and engaging in the treadmill of consumer culture to sustain “the good life.” It is a refusal to pursue. It’s all running. Carson and Freeman’s love was so strange that they had no template for exploring it, Maxwell argues. Instead, they created a new language expressed through a shared love of nature: the songs of Berry, the tide pools of Maine, the woods between their homes. According to Maxwell, this means of making connections and meaning is what gave rise to Carson’s work. silent spring It’s possible – it transformed her from a writer who captures the wonders of nature to one who advocates for saving nature.

How does this apply to the climate crisis? Maxwell says, “As perhaps obvious, the ideology of straight love and its close ties to consumption are linking our intimate well-being to unsustainable ways of living.” “This is also having a negative impact on the climate.” To achieve truly meaningful climate policy, she continues, we need to expand our “visceral imagination of what the good life could look like.” This queer version depicts a “vibrant and diverse world of species” where we seek “desire and pleasure outside the ideologies of capitalism and straight love.” These specific points made throughout the book can at times feel repetitive and didactic.

Some readers, especially straight readers, may be offended by all of this. After all, many people who don’t identify as queer are fighting climate change by quitting consumerism. Heterosexuals can reject heteronormative narratives. Queer people are not immune to it either. But the point of this book is not that we should take individual actions, but about broader structures and narratives. As a queer woman who spent a decade in a heteronormative marriage, I know how seductive that particular call of “the good life” can be. I also know the liberating feeling of building something new. Max Well’s books offer lessons to all readers about recognizing and escaping the structures that trap us.

Carson and Freeman found their way through a decidedly strange, deeply romantic, and long-lasting love. Even though they were apart, they imagined themselves together. In one of these spells, Freeman writes: Do you remember the night we lay in that lovely light? You said it resembled alabaster. That’s what you did. How happy we were then! ”