WOMAN AND NATURE -- THE ROARING INSIDE HER
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2016 5:46 am
WOMAN AND NATURE -- THE ROARING INSIDE HER
by Susan Griffin
© 1978 by Susan Griffin
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Table of Contents
• Inside Cover
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PROLOGUE
• BOOK ONE: MATTER -- How man regards and makes use of woman and nature
o MATTER -- Wherein man's ideas about nature and his attitudes toward women are revealed side by side and in historical order
o LAND (Her Changing Face) -- In which he shapes this earth to his use
o TIMBER (What Was There for Them) -- In which he makes the trees his own
o WIND -- In which he harnesses the elements
o COWS (The Way We Yield) -- In which he domesticates the animals
o MULES -- And the domesticated speak
o THE SHOW HORSE -- And the domesticated learn to please
o HER BODY -- And he makes her body over to his liking
• BOOK TWO: SEPARATION -- The separations in his vision and under his rule (wherein our voice rises)
o WHERE HE BEGINS -- Separation wherein he separates himself from woman and nature, and The Image wherein he makes woman and nature the object of his art, and Marriage wherein he makes woman and nature a part of himself
o HIS POWER (He Tames What Is Wild) -- The Hunt whereby he captures her wildness, and The Zoological Garden in which she paces in her cage, and The Garden wherein he civilizes wilderness
o HIS VIGILANCE (How He Must Keep Watch) -- Space Divided and Time Divided by which he guards time and space, and Silence which is recognized as her Silence
o HIS KNOWLEDGE (He Determines What Is Real) -- What He Sees (The Art of It) wherein the method of his vision is examined, and The Anatomy Lesson wherein she has difficulty with his method, and Acoustics where the quality of his hearing is exposed, and Reason in which he calls her unreasonable, and The Argument wherein we see the separations in his argument
o HIS CONTROL (How He Becomes Invulnerable) -- Childish Fear in which we remember his fear of the dark, and Speed wherein he speeds past what women and children fear, and Burial wherein he buries himself in her
o HIS CERTAINTY (How He Rules the Universe) -- Quantity in which he calculates existence, and Probability in which he determines the future. and Gravity in which the laws of the universe determine his fate
o HIS CATACLYSM (The Universe Shudders) -- Prophets in which they warn us of the corruption of this earth, and Plutonium in which we accept their judgment, and Pollution wherein he poisons the world
o HIS SECRETS (What Is Sleeping Within) -- Dream Life where his right hand and his left hand never meet, and Nightmares where we glimpse another future
o TERROR -- In which he warns her with his vision of the universe
• BOOK THREE: PASSAGE -- Her journey through the Labyrinth to the Cave where she has Her Vision
• BOOK FOUR: HER VISION -- Now she sees through her own eyes (wherein the world is no longer his)
o THE SEPARATE REJOINED
MYSTERY (How the Divided Come Together Again) -- What had terrified him
THE OPENING -- We enter a new space. We enter a new time (The territory beyond his vigilance)
OUR DREAMS (What Lies Under Our Stillness) -- Our Flying, our Deviling, our Dancing, our Animals Familiar (What was kept secret from him)
OUR ANCIENT RAGES -- We allow Turbulence and Cataclysm cannot be denied, and we say there are always Consequences (The universe he tried to deny)
THE LION IN THE DEN OF THE PROPHETS -- The power he could not tame
POSSIBILITY -- Gravity, what we have had to do, and Numbers, what we will not do, and Naming, all that we cannot say, and The possible, what the universe reveals (Of what no one can be certain)
TRANSFORMATION -- We Visit Our Fears, we are transformed, and Erosion, we transform (What he failed to control)
CLARITY -- Vision to know the being of another; and One from Another (The Knowledge) what passes between us, and Acoustics how we listen for signs (What he would not acknowledge), and Our Labor by which we continue
o MATTER REVISITED
THE YEARS (Her Body Awakens) -- and The Anatomy Lesson her body reclaimed. and History what her hair tells us, and Memory what we know from her breasts, and Archives what is hidden in her vulva, and Letters what her clitoris says, and Records what is part of her womb
OUR NATURE (What Is Still Wild in Us)
THIS EARTH (What She Is to Me) Where we are
FOREST (The Way We Stand) Why we are here
THE WIND (How everything changes), and
MATTER (How We Know)
• Notes
• Bibliography
by Susan Griffin
© 1978 by Susan Griffin
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Table of Contents
• Inside Cover
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PROLOGUE
• BOOK ONE: MATTER -- How man regards and makes use of woman and nature
o MATTER -- Wherein man's ideas about nature and his attitudes toward women are revealed side by side and in historical order
o LAND (Her Changing Face) -- In which he shapes this earth to his use
o TIMBER (What Was There for Them) -- In which he makes the trees his own
o WIND -- In which he harnesses the elements
o COWS (The Way We Yield) -- In which he domesticates the animals
o MULES -- And the domesticated speak
o THE SHOW HORSE -- And the domesticated learn to please
o HER BODY -- And he makes her body over to his liking
• BOOK TWO: SEPARATION -- The separations in his vision and under his rule (wherein our voice rises)
o WHERE HE BEGINS -- Separation wherein he separates himself from woman and nature, and The Image wherein he makes woman and nature the object of his art, and Marriage wherein he makes woman and nature a part of himself
o HIS POWER (He Tames What Is Wild) -- The Hunt whereby he captures her wildness, and The Zoological Garden in which she paces in her cage, and The Garden wherein he civilizes wilderness
o HIS VIGILANCE (How He Must Keep Watch) -- Space Divided and Time Divided by which he guards time and space, and Silence which is recognized as her Silence
o HIS KNOWLEDGE (He Determines What Is Real) -- What He Sees (The Art of It) wherein the method of his vision is examined, and The Anatomy Lesson wherein she has difficulty with his method, and Acoustics where the quality of his hearing is exposed, and Reason in which he calls her unreasonable, and The Argument wherein we see the separations in his argument
o HIS CONTROL (How He Becomes Invulnerable) -- Childish Fear in which we remember his fear of the dark, and Speed wherein he speeds past what women and children fear, and Burial wherein he buries himself in her
o HIS CERTAINTY (How He Rules the Universe) -- Quantity in which he calculates existence, and Probability in which he determines the future. and Gravity in which the laws of the universe determine his fate
o HIS CATACLYSM (The Universe Shudders) -- Prophets in which they warn us of the corruption of this earth, and Plutonium in which we accept their judgment, and Pollution wherein he poisons the world
o HIS SECRETS (What Is Sleeping Within) -- Dream Life where his right hand and his left hand never meet, and Nightmares where we glimpse another future
o TERROR -- In which he warns her with his vision of the universe
• BOOK THREE: PASSAGE -- Her journey through the Labyrinth to the Cave where she has Her Vision
• BOOK FOUR: HER VISION -- Now she sees through her own eyes (wherein the world is no longer his)
o THE SEPARATE REJOINED
MYSTERY (How the Divided Come Together Again) -- What had terrified him
THE OPENING -- We enter a new space. We enter a new time (The territory beyond his vigilance)
OUR DREAMS (What Lies Under Our Stillness) -- Our Flying, our Deviling, our Dancing, our Animals Familiar (What was kept secret from him)
OUR ANCIENT RAGES -- We allow Turbulence and Cataclysm cannot be denied, and we say there are always Consequences (The universe he tried to deny)
THE LION IN THE DEN OF THE PROPHETS -- The power he could not tame
POSSIBILITY -- Gravity, what we have had to do, and Numbers, what we will not do, and Naming, all that we cannot say, and The possible, what the universe reveals (Of what no one can be certain)
TRANSFORMATION -- We Visit Our Fears, we are transformed, and Erosion, we transform (What he failed to control)
CLARITY -- Vision to know the being of another; and One from Another (The Knowledge) what passes between us, and Acoustics how we listen for signs (What he would not acknowledge), and Our Labor by which we continue
o MATTER REVISITED
THE YEARS (Her Body Awakens) -- and The Anatomy Lesson her body reclaimed. and History what her hair tells us, and Memory what we know from her breasts, and Archives what is hidden in her vulva, and Letters what her clitoris says, and Records what is part of her womb
OUR NATURE (What Is Still Wild in Us)
THIS EARTH (What She Is to Me) Where we are
FOREST (The Way We Stand) Why we are here
THE WIND (How everything changes), and
MATTER (How We Know)
• Notes
• Bibliography
Wisdom, Circuit Judge: David Wiley, the appellant, and Eugene Cunningham, a co-defendant, were arrested on March 17, 1971, in connection with an alleged sexual assault ... on twelve year old Maxine Lewis ... they were charged with carnal knowledge ... and taking indecent liberties with a minor child.... The jury found Wiley guilty.... The principal issue on appeal is whether there was sufficient corroborative evidence to take the case to the jury. We find there was not sufficient corroborative evidence.
-- United States v. Wiley. 492 F. 2d 547 (D.C. Cir. 1973)
It is said that what is heard is a delusion of the senses. That sound consists of waves. That the wave is a momentary shape produced by energy traveling through molecules of air, or wood, or steel. Whether this wave is heard by the human ear as sound, it is said, depends on the frequency of the vibration of the sound. It is said that there are vibrations too rapid for the human ear and vibrations too slow, that vibrations of sound increase in warmer or thicker media, that the structure of the inner ear increases or decreases the frequency of sound waves, that sound waves of one frequency mask the presence of those of another frequency so that the ear hears only one sound when there are two, that many sounds together are heard as undifferentiated noise, that there is no absolute relationship between what produces sound and what is heard, that what is heard is a delusion of the senses and cannot be said to be real.
(It is established in the law that the testimony of an alleged victim of rape must be corroborated. It is said that corroboration is required because the complainants in such cases too frequently have an urge to fantasize or a motive to fabricate. Therefore the credibility of the alleged defiled, it is said, must be approached with skepticism, especially when the complainant is a young girl.)
It is therefore said that sounds do not exist without ears and a mind to hear them, that all sound exists only in the mind. (And the evidence that shortly after the alleged event a witness said that he saw the alleged victim on the street, crying, in a disheveled condition, upset and without a coat though the day was cold, and that she told him she had been attacked and pointed to her alleged attackers a short distance away, is held not to be corroborative, nor is the evidence of another witness that she appeared to him crying and saying that she had been raped held as corroborative since this is evidence that some event took place but not necessarily evidence that sexual intercourse took place.) And since sound is a product of the mind, it is further argued, it is absurd to believe that sound can exist in an unthinking substance, in the violin, or the wood of the violin.
And since all evidence for the existence of matter is sensual evidence of a like deceptive kind, existing only in the mind, it is concluded that matter exists only in the mind. (It is therefore the judgment of this hearing that the defendant was innocent of rape and that no such crime took place.)
***
Since the existence of matter is unverifiable Each of us can say we have heard footsteps behind us and since sensual data are deceptive each of us tried not to show fear it is questioned if there is any reason since in acting the part of the victim to examine what is called reality we may become the victim or if there is any way each of us has hidden what we are that anything can be known each of us has denied desire since no existence can be verified since it has been said to us that it is our own lust to be known and therefore which is lived out in the body of the rapist how can the act of knowing be known and our terror which inspires attack and therefore neither mind nor body and our own guilt can be said to exist which attacks us through his hands and therefore all existence even to the point of our own death is denied.
***
Startracks. Spiral nebulae. Craters of the moon. She lets herself fall. She falls into the room of her wants. The room where the demands of women are endless. Where her voice has endlessly demanded her to go. This room which reveals her. Where she is clumsy again. Where she is awkward in her grown-up clothing. Where she aches. This room of the revelation of all she thought horrible, and of her endlessly demanding body. Of all she shrank from in herself. This room filled with herself. She fell into this room. This room of outcasts. Where we uncover our bodies. Where we meet our outcast selves. The room in which she does not mock herself. This room filled with darkness. Where we go into darkness. Where we embrace darkness. Where we lie close to darkness, breathe when darkness breathes and find darkness inside ourselves. The room of the darkness of women. Where we are not afraid. Where joy is just under the surface. Where we laugh. Where laughter fills us utterly when we see what we thought was horrible. Where our demands are endlessly received. Where revelation fills us with glee. The room which she said she needed. The room without which she was sure she would perish. The first room in which she experienced space. This place where she could finally breathe. The place where she breathed out the stories she had not believed. The room where we confess we never believed those stories were about us. The room where she cast those stories from her forever. Where we began to feel the atmosphere wants us. Where she began to believe the horizon. This room of her wants. Of her desiring. This room of her desiring to live. This place which allows her to exist. Where the women stare into each other's eyes. Where the daughter feels the life of the mother. Where our words are undressed. And we touch. This room of our touching where the mother teaches her daughter to face her secret feelings. The labyrinth of her knowledge. Where she has her own reasons. The coral skeleton. The crystals of frost. Of her knowing. This place of her wandering. The circles of the tree's growth. The beehive. The room of her first wandering and of her finding. This place where she finds her way.
***
The shape of the labyrinth. The shape of the cave. Space divided and not divided. Space mutable, we say, separation becoming union. Space changing. The new shape. Melting and transformation, the crystal and the seed, the endless possibility of form, as in the metal measuring rod, which changes its shape at the speed of light, we say.
The Hexenhaus destroyed (the witches reborn) the zoological garden opened (the reappearance of species) the prison razed (crime renamed) acoustics transformed (madness released) the buried (plants to flesh to earth) uncovered.
The rectangular shape of his book of knowledge, bending. The shape of our silence, the shape of the roofs of our mouths. Darkness.
***
Space where, in her circling motion, she found an opening.
We say we are brilliant with light from the stars that began millennia ago and now burn in our minds.
We heard of this woman who was out of control. We heard that she was led by her feelings. That her emotions were violent. That she was impetuous. That she violated tradition and overrode convention. That certainly her life should not be an example to us. We were told that she moved too hastily. Placed her life in the stream of ideas just born and we should have little regard for her, even despite the brilliance of her words. That she moved from passion. From unconscious feeling, allowing deep and troubled emotions to control her soul. But we say that to her passion, she brought lucidity and to her vision, she gave the substance of her life. For the way her words illuminated her life we say we have great regard. We say we have listened to her voice asking, "of what materials can that heart be composed which can melt when insulted and instead of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod?"
By her words we are brought to our own lives, and are overwhelmed by our feelings which we had held beneath the surface for so long. And from what is dark and deep within us, we say, tyranny revolts us; we will not kiss the rod.
-- "Woman and Nature -- The Roaring Inside Her," by Susan Grififn