In the introduction to her new book, Sylvia Bowerbank states that her aim in writing it was “to reclaim the contributions made by early modern English women to ecological thought and practice” (4). In terms of women's literary contributions, at least, the book is a success. Bowerbank examines the works of several female English authors, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, within the context of the history of ecological feminism. Her analysis of each author in turn reveals a particular tension, a double burden that Bowerbank claims is fundamental to the very concept of ecological feminism itself: the ecological feminist writer must not only articulate “women's responsibility to speak and act for nature” but also “critique the very definitions and practices that perpetuate ‘nature’ as a system of violence and injustice” (3). Nature, Bowerbank argues, was understood during the early modern period to be a highly gendered space in which the feminine was almost always subordinate and subject to ongoing exploitation. While many scholars have considered the use of rape as a metaphor for the process of scientific discovery in Francis Bacon's natural philosophy, for example, Bowerbank demonstrates that the sustained exploitation of nature advocated by Bacon corresponds closely to the early modern conception of marriage.

The authors whom Bowerbank analyzes display a wide range of ideas concerning the proper use and understanding of nature, as well as women's place in it. Some adopted a conservative or nostalgic tone, seeking to preserve nature from an increasing (masculine) trend toward commodification and reductionism, while others sought to redefine radically the idea of nature itself, imagining it from a feminine perspective in which women were at least equal partners. Some of the authors even seem to display contradictory tendencies. In her analysis of Mary Wroth's Urania, for example, Bowerbank explores Wroth's use of nostalgia in longing for a return to a wild, forested nature, unsullied by the manual labor of agriculture, in keeping with contemporary aristocratic ideology. However, Wroth's text also shows how “wild” nature could be patriarchal, isolating, and a dangerous place for women—her female characters relate stories to one another (and the reader) of rape and abuse at the hands of men. Wroth's book thus reinforces the aristocratic, nostalgic view of nature, while simultaneously critiquing the subordination and mistreatment of women within such a wild natural space. Likewise, Margaret Cavendish repeatedly criticized the predominant current of natural philosophy in seventeenth-century England for its depiction of nature as a soulless machine, a passive resource to be exploited for profit. Cavendish sought to restore a vital spirituality to nature, denying that it could ever be fully understood, let alone mastered, by purely rational means. At the same time, however, Cavendish and her husband (the duke of Newcastle) did not hesitate to exploit the forested areas within their vast estates for profit, and Cavendish's own idealized view of nature required the rational, benevolent management of aristocratic landowners. For both Wroth and Cavendish, then, their clashing gender and class sympathies create an unresolved tension in their understandings and depictions of nature.

While most of Bowerbank's chapters focus on one or two authors, her book might be most powerful in the fifth chapter, an examination of eighteenth-century pedagogical dialogues on “the study of nature.” Bowerbank argues that, just as nature was itself a gendered space, so too was the study of the natural world—proper natural philosophy remained the sole province of men, requiring the sort of scientific, objective detachment of which men were capable, and women were not. Women, however, had a complementary role to play: their inherent sentimentality and empathy with nature's creatures could serve as an important counterbalance, reining in the hubris of the male natural philosophers and inculcating a respect for nature in girls and very young boys through passive observation and imaginative identification with suffering animals. The children in a woman's care were supposed to engage in a sentimental “study of nature” (as opposed to scientific natural philosophy), in which their mother would teach them to empathize with the animals, to understand their “feelings,” so that the children might learn to be charitable, rather than cruel. In demonstrating the correct approach to teaching children about nature, the dialogues were thus meant to impart compassion and charity, first toward animals and ultimately toward people. However, Bowerbank argues that the charity in question was still intended to reinforce the human dominion of nature—a good human steward of nature was supposed to reward the animals for their faithful service and passive sacrifice by minimizing their pain and suffering during life. The animals remained subordinate and dependent and were meant to serve mankind—part of the same patriarchal system in which mankind was below God, woman below man, and child below woman.

In concentrating on literary analysis, Bowerbank provides a fascinating, but inevitably narrow view of what early modern Englishwomen thought about nature. Her book is most interesting when the reader is able to look beneath the rarified world of most female writers, to catch a glimpse of how the vast majority of women might have perceived and interacted with their natural and domestic environments. Along with her chapter on pedagogical dialogues, it is perhaps ironic that the chapter devoted to Mary Wollstonecraft gives the reader a rare view of northern European women's lives during the eighteenth century. In her Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Wollstonecraft was critical of the rustic simplicity and good housekeeping of her female hosts, believing that their creation and maintenance of prosperous domesticity served only to support a patriarchal “natural” order that was oppressive to them. While Wollstonecraft's ungenerous critique of the Scandinavian hospitality she received is certainly interesting, her “speaking for nature” in this case obviously did not reflect the views of the vast majority of her female contemporaries in northern Europe—and it is their voice that is largely missing from the book.

Nevertheless, in assembling and assessing so many early modern Englishwomen's literary perceptions of nature, women's proper role in it, and how both might be altered to advantage, Bowerbank has done a service to students of women's history, environmental history, and early modern British history in general.