Chapter 21 - Plath and Nature

Summary

Richard Kerridge describes the literary, cultural and scientific context of Plath’s interest in wild animals, landscape, climate and pollution. The letters and journals show that this interest was intense, but also that it was not scientific or systematic, even in a rudimentary way. Plath’s strategy was to preserve the dramatic immediacy of unexpected encounters with wildlife, rather than frame those encounters with scientific information. Nevertheless, an emergent ecological consciousness and environmental concern are evident in her writing. Kerridge provides the historical and scientific background for this concern, by outlining the major conceptual shifts that were taking place in ecological science, the recent history of wild nature in literature, and some of the changing popular attitudes in Britain and the USA.