Woman the Hunter

Woman the Hunter juxtaposes unsettlingly beautiful accounts of the author's own experiences hunting deer, antelope, and elk with an argument that builds on the work of thinkers from Aldo Leopold to Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Exploring how women and men relate to nature and violence, Mary Zeiss Stange demonstrates how false assumptions about women and about hunting permeate contemporary thinking. Traditionalists and feminists alike view hunting as a symbol for men's activity in the world - ignoring the reality of women hunters now and in the past. In fields from anthropology to religion and in movements from environmentalism to feminism, women are often seen as nonviolent and allied with the natural world; men as aggressive and alienated from nature. By bringing Woman the Hunter back into the spotlight, therefore, Stange upsets basic assumptions across the political and intellectual spectrum. Woman the Hunter also challenges the notion that human beings - male or female - are separate from nature, anidea reflected in the environmentalist impulse to keep wilderness safe from people. If instead we see people as part of nature, Stange argues, then hunting takes on symbolic value for us all. We become vividly conscious of our inevitable complicity in animal death, and of how we all fit into the web of life. It is by appreciating the value of hunting that we understand what it means to be human.

MARY ZEISS STANGE teaches religion and women's studies at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. An experienced hunter, she makes her home in Montana when she is not teaching.