Analysis Of Beyond Nature's Housekeepers By Nancy Unger

Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History. By Nancy C. Unger.

In Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers, Nancy Unger synthesizes a trans-historical and cultural synthesis of American women’s experience and their relationship with the environment in her 333 pg book. The language she uses in capable of being grasped by someone from any back ground. Unger text contains thoughtful connections between the exploitations of capitalism, failures of legislation, gender oppression, racism, and environmental justice. Unger's purpose is to show that these connections have been as relevant to U.S. history and how it is still affecting modern environmental relationships. Beyond Nature's Housekeepers is an extensive examination that employs

The first three chapters focus on women in agriculture and reproduction and in the process unveils how the “internalization of prescribed gender traits colored people’s reactions to the world around them (p. 25).” Unger spends a great deal of time discussing how Native Americans and enslaved Africans used reproduction as a means of resistance and autonomy in their status. Unger does not shy away from practices that uncomfortable like abortion and infanticide. Unger notes the practice of “prolonged lactation, Native American women, like their European counterparts, also practiced infanticide and abortion (25).” She discusses these topics with unbiased language and does so without using any judgmental tone or justification for such practices. Reproduction is discussed in terms of its effects on the

This term emerged out of the values associated in the Republican Mothehood, providing a “different definition of women’s proper sphere (p. 54).” “True Womanhood” begins to take of more responsibility as the living conditions become more difficult due to capitalism and industrialization that “could not have been set than that provided by western expansion (p. 69)”. As protectors of the household, they had to use their principles of “womanhood” to change their environment to protect the household. The pace and purpose of the book becomes evident in her discussions of the Progressive Era. In these discussions Unger highlights the way women used their traditional roles to gain respect in the municipal and community spheres. She focuses on conservation efforts lead by middle-class white women and minority women movements. This transitions well into the movements against chemical and nuclear weapons and then into alternative lesbian communities, “remak[ing] the world” in “alternative environments” such as communes and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (pp. 163–65). Unger ends the book with a review of modern environmental justice movements. The review of women in environmental history is exceptionally important since women are not discussed in history. This is not because they didn’t have a role, but because history left