Premodern Europeans personified nature as a female being of many guises

Evidence

Nature was contrasted with art (techné) and with artificially created things. It was personified as a female-being, e.g., Dame Nature; she was alternately a prudent lady, an empress, a mother, etc. The course of nature and the laws of nature were the actualization of her force. The state of nature was the state of mankind prior to social organization and prior to the state of grace. Nature spirits, nature deities, virgin nymphs, and elementals were thought to reside in or be associated with natural objects. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 70

Categorization

• DEFINE: Enumerates the feminine personifications (Dame Nature, prudent lady, empress, mother) that anchor the course’s ecofeminist vocabulary.
• XREF: connects to: Grammatical gender made nature feminine across European languages — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 71; The female earth was central to premodern organic cosmology — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 61; Premodern thinkers conceived the cosmos as a living male-female animal — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 449 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Premodern nature was a female imagined alternately as nurturing mother and wild disorder #expands (0.95) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 77
• Premodern thinkers conceived the cosmos as a living male-female animal #expands (0.85) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 449
• Woman’s apparent naturalness is itself a product of history #expands (0.72)
• Woman is made by civilization, not nature or biology #expands (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1976