Pastoral longing for benign nature encoded masculine commodity attitudes toward it

Evidence

But while the pastoral tradition symbolized nature as a benevolent female, it contained the implication that nature when plowed and cultivated could be used as a commodity and manipulated as a resource. Nature, tamed and subdued, could be transformed into a garden to provide both material and spiritual food to enhance the comfort and soothe the anxieties of men distraught by the demands of the urban world and the stresses of the marketplace. It depended on a masculine perception of nature as a mother and bride whose primary function was to comfort, nurture, and provide for the well-being of the male. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 97

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The image of uninhibited vitality itself recycles commodity fetishism; Romanticized nature and desire directly translate rather than oppose capital — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 460; Male admiration of beauty hides fear and contempt for nature (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Romanticized nature and desire directly translate rather than oppose capital #corroborates (0.85) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 460
• The image of uninhibited vitality itself recycles commodity fetishism #corroborates (0.80)
• Male admiration of beauty hides fear and contempt for nature #expands (0.75)
• Postmodern nature imagery memorializes a nature already systemically eliminated by capitalism #corroborates (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 396