Diana’s Dilemma: A Historical Religious Study of Female Hunters and the Intersection of Nature, Death, and Gender

Abstract

A critical field of memoirs that has not had the mainstream academic or popular attention afforded to many environmental narratives is the hunting memoir. Hunting is a well-established cultural icon among more conservative facets of our country. Yet, its social, religious, and political history is far more complex than what much of academia and the greater public zeitgeist give it credit for. Between 1850 and 1930, many women entered the field and wrote about their experiences. In their stories, we find a unique interplay of nature, death, and individual development, often within what they consider a spiritual template. This is a work of gender studies on this topic that bridges environmental education and studies and conservative Protestant communities. I will focus on three women: Martha Maxwell, Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson, and Paulina Brandreth. Their stories and personal reflections offer a useful framework and language that religious and historical studies might use to encourage a healthier relationship with nature and death among religious communities, particularly more conservative and/or Protestant. Even within the field of hunting, considered by most modern academics as a backward hobby, there arose counter interpretations to the dominant masculine narrative - women entered this male-dominated realm and claimed for themselves a socially and spiritually liberating narrative, one that when read even today would be considered radical. The primary focus of my research is threefold: First, the connection between community (particularly Protestant) with the environment, and the subsequent effects on personal and communal spirituality, theology and gender constructions; Second, this connection’s relationship to a healthy perspective on the environment and its natural cycles, such as death, at both a personal and communal level. Third, the potentiality of nature-based memoirs on this research.