Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 2 (2008), p. 242

Does the world need another biography of Rachel Carson? As Mark Hamilton Lytle notes in the Afterword to The gentle subversive, prominent biographies of Carson already exist, most notably Linda Lear’s definitive work Rachel Carson: witness for nature (1997). Lytle’s intention is not so much to fill in gaps left by such accounts, for he believes few if any, exist. Rather, his aims are roughly threefold: to render an abbreviated and more narrowly focused account of her life and legacy (Lear’s book is nearly 500 pages); to provide an update of Carson’s legacy in light of current controversies surrounding Silent Spring and DDT; and to tell Carson’s story in ‘narrative’ form – that is, to tell it from Carson’s point of view as much as possible. A narrative approach seems appropriate for a biography of Carson, Lytle suggests, given that her writing often sought to tell a story from the perspective of non-human life-forms, so as to minimize human biases. But such an approach also requires that the writer – in this case, Lytle – must struggle to ‘stay out of the story’ (p.253). Presumably, Lytle’s fidelity to the narrative form explains why the bulk of his original and insightful commentary on Carson’s life and legacy is relegated to the book’s Epilogue and Afterword.

This is not to say that Lytle offers nothing of interest for readers already familiar with Carson’s life and work. Even while he struggles to stay out of the story, Lytle gives welcome attention to Carson’s religious background and sensibilities, noting that her work echoes ‘the jeremiads of her Presbyterian forebears’ (p.62). He also draws parallels between Carson’s understanding of ecology and that of the ‘Ecology Group’ of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, which flourished during the 1930s and 1940s. Like those thinkers, Carson tended to reject reductionism in favour of an organicism aimed at restoring ‘moral values to the scientific enterprise’ (p.89). Unlike them, Carson cared little for deriving political implications from ecology. Reforming society in the light of ecological principles such as cooperation was not her goal; protecting nature from humans was. (p.90). Yet Carson’s harshest critics were quick to draw such connections, even suggesting that communist sympathies motivated her arguments in Silent Spring. Lytle’s genealogy of Carson’s ecological ideals is interesting and it covers some ground not covered by Lear (Whiteheadian ecology makes no appearance there; Donald Worster briefly comments on Carson’s Whiteheadian ideals in Nature’s economy). But it may be a stretch to link Carson’s interpretation of ecology so closely with a ‘cooperative ideal’ evident, according to Lytle, in ‘The sea around us and books that followed’ (p.90). Nature’s interdependence and the ‘web of life’ were indeed prominent themes in Carson’s writing. But interdependence frequently takes on Darwinian overtones of fierce competition and harsh struggle, particularly in Silent Spring, where Carson draws on Darwinian principles to illustrate the folly of targeting insects with chemicals. She advocates using nature’s own ‘weapons’ against it (what she terms ‘biological controls’) as the more effective option. Hers was no arcadian vision.

Lytle resumes an analysis of Carson’s brand of ecology in his Epilogue, situating her within the environmentalism of Pinchot and Muir (she had affinities with the latter’s rejection of anthropocentrism), and the ecological models of Elton and Tansley (she embraced the former’s community concept). But this discussion never picks up the earlier thread regarding the Ecology Group’s influence on Carson, leaving readers to guess about the precise connection. The constraints of the narrative approach make some of the biographer’s observations appear almost as non sequiturs.

In the Epilogue and Afterword, Lytle reveals his rationale for the book’s title. Carson may have appeared thoroughly conventional, even quaintly old-fashioned in dress and demeanour, but a subversive fire burned below the surface. Carson challenged authority – scientific and governmental – and encouraged citizens to do the same. Though her life was extinguished by cancer within two years of the publication of Silent Spring, that fire would spread to a ‘community of dissenters,’ a counterculture seeking an ecologically responsible life (pp.205–06). The Epilogue sketches the history of the ecology movement from these subversive roots to the rise of environmental legislation, the first Earth Day, and the 1972 ban on DDT in the United States. Lytle concludes with a detailed discussion of current controversies surrounding DDT, mosquito-borne malaria, and Carson’s work. Internet blogs (and respected sources such as the New York Times) have laid the blame for the deaths of ‘third-world’ children from malaria directly at Carson’s door. Latter-day critics depict Carson (as they did 45 years ago) as the very symbol of an environmental movement concerned more with birds and bugs than with human babies. Yet, as Lytle notes, Carson never called for a complete ban on DDT, but only for more moderate and responsible use. Moreover, the DDT ban in the United States did nothing to prevent other countries from using it, nor did it preclude the use of DDT in public health emergencies. In fact, the reasons for phasing out DDT in malaria-stricken regions have relatively little to do with Carson’s crusade and much to do with patent law, the global economy, and the proliferation of newer, and more profitable, chemical pesticides. Lytle’s tempered analysis of this nettlesome issue is one of the book’s most valuable contributions.

Carson’s subversiveness was equally matched by a gentleness that was not wholly a media stereotype. In labelling Carson ‘gentle,’ Lytle notes that she was morally outraged at cruelty to animals, for example; she loved birds and wildlife, detested hunting, and she formed close bonds with women and appealed strongly to women through her writing. Themes of home and domesticity ‘were central to Carson’s descriptions of the interdependence of living things’ (p.242). With such references to her gentleness, Lytle implies that Carson exuded, or retained, a certain femininity or womanliness, a nurturing quality. But precisely what Lytle intends by juxtaposing these two dimensions of Carson’s character remains somewhat elusive. (Does he believe that her subversiveness and gentleness were at odds, something paradoxical? Did Carson’s gentleness make her an unlikely subversive? Or, on the contrary, did it make her an effective subversive? Was Carson more or less ‘gentle’ than other women of her generation?) At times, Lytle seems to hint at a certain proto-feminism (or eco-feminism) discernible in Carson’s work and in reactions to it from female readers and colleagues. This is a theme worth pursuing and one wishes Lytle would stay in the story a little longer. In the absence of a sharper analysis of these features of Carson’s character and their relationship to one another, Lytle’s portrait might be read as condescending. Lytle intends no disrespect; his admiration for Carson is clear, even when his observations about her are not. Carson might respond to Lytle much as she did to readers (especially men, she noted) who were shocked to discover that not only could a woman write about the subjects Carson tackled, but also that this particular author was not a masculine or ‘oversize, Amazon-type female’. ‘I can offer no defense’, Carson replied with customary equanimity, ‘for not being what people expect’.