The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters by Annette Kolodny (review)

In the final analysis, however, Deloria has done a creditable job of bringing out some of the real abuses in America's dealings with the Indians, and the fair-minded reader will profit from the reading of God Is Red. ROBERT E. FLEMING Robert E. Fleming (Associate Professor of English at the University of New Mexico) is presiding officer of the Ethnic Studies section of RMMLA. THE LAY OF THE LAND: METAPHOR AS EXPERIENCE AND HISTORY IN AMERICAN LIFE AND LETTERS BY ANNETTE KOLODNY (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975. 185 pages, $8.95.) The promotional material on the cover flap promises that The Lay of the Land will appeal to "ecologists, feminists, and scholars alike," but the thesis of the book suggests that we must become all three in order to change the destructive pattern of our relationship with the land. Throughout American literature the prevailing metaphor for the landscape has been "land-aswoman "; Kolodny carefully enumerates references to validate this metaphoric vision : ... at the deepest psychological level, the move to America was experienced as the daily reality of what has become its single dominating metaphor: regression from the cares of adult life and a return to the primal warmth of womb and breast in a feminine landscape. This interaction with the land-as-woman has continued throughout our history and is significantly reflected in the literary tradition of American pastoralism. Male dominance, long synonymous with Progress in the American mind, the "urge to mastery and possession of the land," appears throughout American literature. Accompanying this theme, however, is the hero's childlike refusal of responsibility and retreat from sexuality in novels from James Fenimore Cooper to James Dickey—a retreat that leads to an embrace with the land. Kolodny argues: Our continuing fascination with the lone male in the wilderness, and our literary heritage of essentially adolescent, presexual pastoral heroes, suggest that we have yet to come up with a satisfying model for mature masculinity on this continent. . . . ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW125 This hypothesis echoes Carolyn Heilbrun's critical vision of the masculine wilderness of the American Novel, as well as Leslie Fiedler's characterization of the deficiencies in The American Male's ability to interact appropriately with women. The author points out in her preface that she is not suggesting that the repetitive land-as-woman symbolization and its consequent assumptions, regarding the land not only as "essentially feminine" but also as "the total female principle of gratification," account for all the environmental and ecological ills. She declares, "No such simplistically reductive thesis is intended"; however, that is the message strongly implied as she develops her thesis. The breadth of scholarship evidenced in sections of the book is impressive . The second chapter, "Surveying the Virgin Land," where she seems to have chronicled every written description of the New World, is especially illuminating. Her sources are as diverse as sea captains, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe (1584); a knight, Sir Walter Raleigh (1595); and a lawyer, Richard Hakluyt (1578). In their statements and in the accounts of many others, she has carefully documented the myriad verbal images that described the New World as both Mother and Virgin. The theory developed, then, is that this perception of the land as woman "allowed, indeed, invited the newly arrived immigrant to feel himself reborn" because of the absorption into a new Mother Country. This feeling ultimately inspired images of Americans as "a new race of men" created through the melting together of many races. The opportunity to begin anew is metaphorically a rebirth through the body of a new Mother, the New World. Kolodny suggests that this rebirth might account for the refusal of this new man to develop a mature masculinity. In order not to violate the mother, the man must remain a child. Notwithstanding my appreciation for the merits of this work, several things leave me less than satisfied. The tide itself is a bit too glib and inappropriate for the general tone of the book. If Kolodny's style were more like Germaine Greer's or Mary Ellman's or Leslie Fiedler's—full of wit and ironic word play—this would not seem a fault...