Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environmental Analysis

Reader 1

Char Miller

Reader 2

Jordan Daniels

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Rights Information

© 2024 Willa G Frank

Abstract

This thesis explores the lives and careers of botanical painter Marianne North, landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, and literary nature writer Mary Hunter Austin to examine the interplay of femininity and the representation of nature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All three figures had an approach to environmental representation which was based in field work, knowing a place truly, and a sense of harmony between subject and context of the produced work. This method did not occur because they were women or because it was an inherent feature of their assigned sex. Rather, their socialization in the Anglo-American world influenced their approaches as they navigated the gendered strictures placed upon their careers. They were necessarily unconventional women, tenacious in their imagination of a professional life beyond the oppressive ideal of femininity suggested to them in their youths. These three women offer an understanding of the challenges facing (white) women within the Anglo-American world during this time period who were interested in working outdoors, studying the natural world, and pursuing a career in art, design, or writing. These three women illustrate a surprisingly unified reaction to nineteenth-century femininity and to environmental exploitation in favor of harmony between subject and object, between product and context, and between human culture and its environment.

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