Christiane Ritter: Why this forgotten feminist nature writer deserves to be celebrated
In 1933, an Austrian
housewife called Christiane
Ritter travelled with her hunter-trapper husband to spend the winter
in the icy wilderness of Svalbard. Five years later, she published an
extraordinary book about how “the peacefulness of nature” affected her. It’s a
radical, feminist text that speaks to the disconnection from the rest of nature
we are experiencing at unprecedented levels today. It’s hard to believe it was
written over 80 years ago.
I read the book before
and during a research trip to Svalbard for my book Losing Eden: Why Our
Minds Need the Wild. It’s a cult classic in some circles, but it deserves
to be more widely known. It proved that women could thrive, let alone survive,
in a tough environment like the Arctic tundra. A Woman in the
Polar Night is remarkable
for a few reasons. First, accounts written by women about hanging out in the
wilderness in the early 20th century are hardly two a penny.
At the time, few
women were published, let alone female writers of the landscape. Nature writing
by women existed – Susan Fenimore Cooper, Dorothy
Wordsworth, Phillis Wheatley and Emily
Brontë, for example – but it wasn’t until the 20th century that Nan
Shepherd, Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard paved the way for the growing number
today...
read more:..
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/christiane-ritter-woman-polar-night-feminist-nature-writer-a9347386.html
