With exams and deadlines looming, this can be a busy time of year. Across the Bodleian Libraries, we’ve been thinking a lot about wellbeing and how we can offer support, from alpacas (and a llama!) and therapy dogs to walks and coffee mornings. Here at the EFL, we’ve done what we do best – we’ve turned to literature!

You might have noticed a new display in the library, exploring how mental health and wellbeing has been represented in literature since the nineteenth century. If you’ve not caught the display yet, read on to find out more about it. Or if you have seen the display and want to discover more about some of the topics for yourself, read to the end for a handy list detailing the resources used in putting the display together.

Madness in nineteenth-century literature

Madness was a common and popular theme in nineteenth-century literature. The field of psychology and understandings of mental health as we know them today were starting to emerge in this period, and novelists and poets could play just as important a role as scientists and philosophers in the formation of this emerging discipline.

Although it’s now an outdated term, for Victorian authors and readers ‘madness’ encompassed a whole range of different conditions which are today recognised as mental disorders and illnesses. Those suffering from madness – who were often (though not always) women – might withdraw from the world, waste away, or even be hidden and locked away. Whether they were locked up for their own good, for the safety of those around them, or because their condition and behaviours were shameful, is not always clear.

Not all nineteenth-century literatures of madness approached their theme in the same way. Here, we have two different examples: Romantic madness and Gothic madness.

The Romantic view

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poems often feature a Romantic version of madness, with women who are isolated and trapped becoming dream-like and ethereal as a result of grief and suffering. Think of Mariana waiting in her ‘lonely, moated grange’ for someone who will never return, or the Lady of Shalott who can only watch reflections of the world from her isolated tower.

The Gothic view

Charlotte Brontë takes a much more Gothic view of madness than Tennyson did. In Jane Eyre, Bertha – Mr Rochester’s first wife, who is kept under lock and key in the attic – embodies a far more menacing type of madness than Tennyson’s other-worldly women. She is a source of danger and horror, presenting a threat which can only be resolved through her death.

Illness in twentieth-century literature

In the twentieth century, attitudes toward mental illness in literature began to change. Gone was the madwoman in the attic and the Romantic woman sighing over lost loves – twentieth-century authors (and society) understood ‘madness’ very differently.

Part of the change was in the medium of writing about mental illness. Instead of poems or novels, there was a shift toward authors drawing on their own experiences of mental illness to inform their writing. That could sometimes be in the form of essays or memoirs, but it could also include autobiographical (or semi-autobiographical) fiction.

This shift meant twentieth-century literature about mental illness brought with it a more sympathetic approach to mental ill-health in literature. There was a recognition of the experience of the sufferer rather than just the reactions of those around them, and the causes of mental ill-health began to be explored.

Shellshock

Virginia Woolf struggled with mental illness, and her personal experiences of ill-health informed her writing. In Mrs Dalloway, this is reflected in Septimus, a veteran of WWI suffering from what would now be recognised as PTSD. Unlike many of her contemporaries (including medical professionals) who considered ‘shellshock’ to be weakness or cowardice, Woolf portrays Septimus sympathetically, revealing the callousness of a society and medical profession which failed him.

Society and expectations

Like Woolf, Sylvia Plath’s struggles with mental illness fed into her writing. Many readers see echoes of Plath’s own depressive episodes and hospitalisation in The Bell Jar. Other critics have suggested The Bell Jar speaks to more than Plath’s personal experiences, revealing the pressures resulting from the toxic culture of a society with contradictory and conflicting expectations of women.

Mental health in twenty-first century literature

Today, we are far more open about mental health than in years gone by. We’re still a long way from dismantling all taboos and stigma around mental health, but society as a whole is far more ready to acknowledge mental health issues – including in literature.

This openness took on new importance during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. The first ‘pandemic novels’ are only just starting to appear – Ali Smith’s Summer, published in 2020, was one of the first out of the gate. Summer is the last instalment of Smith’s rapidly-written Seasonal Quartet, a series which aimed to respond to events in as close to real-time as possible. In Summer, she explores how the pandemic increased the pre-existing fragmentation in her characters’ relationships with one another.

Books are immensely powerful, as Emma Smith has revealed in Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers. Perhaps that’s why many consider books and literature to be uniquely placed to support people’s mental health. As the examples below show, both readers and authors can reap the benefits of literature …

Mental health in literature

In modern literature, we can see the development of the twentieth-century trend of writing about – and from – one’s own experiences. In Transcendent Kingdom, Ghana-born and Alabama-raised Yaa Gyasi explores the consequences of immigration for an entire family: from the brother who succumbs to addiction and the mother struggling with depression, to the father who cannot cope and returns home, all viewed through the eyes of Gifty, a high achieving yet repressed first-generation American.

Carmen Maria Machado similarly writes from her own experiences. In the Dream House is Machado’s response to the abuse she herself suffered, an attempt to help others suffering abuse in same-sex relationships know that they are not alone. Through her innovative and experimental form and style, Machado catapults the reader into the fragmented and disorienting mental state that she experienced.

Mental health through literature

As well as representing mental health issues, literature can also be a way of supporting mental health, through what has been termed ‘bibliotherapy’. While studies can be inconclusive in terms of the concrete psychological benefits of bibliotherapy (have a look at the list below for some examples), the two writers here show through their memoirs how literature unequivocally helped them to deal with illness.

Yiyun Li writes about her struggles with depression and mental health, reflecting in Dear Friend… on the importance of literature in the wake of her hospitalisation following suicide attempts. She describes reading as her means of survival, offering both recovery and discovery. Similarly, in Metamorphosis Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has written about how turning to literature helped him after he was diagnosed with MS. In literature, he found characters who shared his suffering, through whom he could understand and make sense of his illness.

Hopefully you’ve found this whistle-stop tour of mental health in literature interesting. As promised, to end this post, here are some of the sources and resources used in creating this display, which you may like to use as a starting point to find out more about some of the topics covered.   

Sources and Resources

Featured in the display (in order of appearance)

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Selected Poems (London, 2007).

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Oxford, 1969). First published 1847.

Peter Melville Logan, Nerves & Narratives: A Cultural History of Hysteria in 19th-Century British Prose (Berkeley, 1997). Also available as an open access e-book.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (London, 2011). First published 1925.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (London, 1966). First published 1963.

Elizabeth J. Donaldson (ed.), Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health (London, 2018).

Ali Smith, Summer (2020).

Emma Smith, Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers (2022).

Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom (2020).

Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House (2020).

Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life (2018).

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Metamorphosis (2023).

Nineteenth Century

General Background

Chaney, Sarah, “A Hideous Torture on Himself”: Madness and Self-Mutilation in Victorian Literature’, in The Journal of Medical Humanities, 32:4 (2011), pp.279-289.

Pedlar, Valerie, The Most Dreadful Visitation: Male Madness in Victorian Fiction (Liverpool, 2006). Also available as an e-book.

Rylance, Rick, Victorian Psychology and British Culture 1850-1880 (Oxford, 2000).

Shemilt, Jane, ‘Tracing the portrayal of mental disorders in literature over time, through five books’, on CrimeReads (3 May 2022). Accessed 11 May 2023.

Romantic madness

Demoor, Marysa, ‘“His way is thro’ chaos and the bottomless and pathless”: The gender of madness in Alfred Tennyson’s poetry’, in Neophilologus, 86:2 (2002), pp.325-335.

Whitehead, James, Madness and the Romantic Poet: A Critical History (Oxford, 2017).

Gothic madness

Horner, Avril and Sue Zlosnik (eds.), Women and the Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh, 2016). Also available as an e-book.

Sinha, Sunanda, ‘Gendering Madness and Doubling Disability in Jane Eyre’, in The Grove, 28 (2021), pp.111-126.

Twentieth Century

General background

Taylor, Steven J. and Alice Brumby (eds.), Healthy Minds in the Twentieth Century: In and Beyond the Asylum (Cham, 2020). [Open access]

Viusenco, Anca-Luisa, ‘The madness narrative, between the literary, the therapeutic and the political’, in Romanian Journal of English Studies, 10:1 (2013), pp.309-323.

Virginia Woolf

Gordon, Lyndall, ‘Woolf [née Stephen], (Adeline) Virginia’, in ODNB (23 September 2004). Accessed 12 May 2023.

Lohnes, Kate, ‘Mrs. Dalloway: novel by Woolf’, in Encyclopedia Britannica (27 July 2018). Accessed 12 May 2023.

Yu, Eileen Xiaoxi, ‘Indifference over Sympathy: Transcendental Communication in Virginia Woolf’s On Being Ill and Mrs Dalloway’, in Virginia Woolf Miscellany, 89/90 (2016), pp.57-59.

Sylvia Plath

Churchwell, Sarah, ‘An introduction to The Bell Jar’, from British Library Discovering Literature: 20th & 21st Century (25 May 2016). Accessed 2 May 2023.

Hunt, Daniel and Ronald Carter, ‘Seeing through The Bell Jar: Investigating linguistic patterns of psychological disorder’, in Journal of Medical Humanities, 33 (2012), pp.27-39.

Marcarian, Hannah and Paul O. Wilkinson, ‘Sylvia Plath’s bell jar of depression: Descent and recovery’, in The British Journal of Psychiatry, 210:1 (2017), p.15.

Twenty-first century

The Books

Arbuthnot, Leaf, “It felt like a piece of bad news I should pass on to someone else” – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst on his MS diagnosis’, in The Spectator (25 February 2023). Accessed 16 May 2023.

Conrad, Peter, ‘Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers review – a spine-tingling adventure’, in The Observer (15 May 2022). Accessed 15 May 2023.

Lea, Richard, ‘Calloused, not callous: Healing the scars of displacement’, in TLS (21 March 2021). Accessed 15 May 2023.

Mbue, Imbolo, ‘Yiyun Li’s brave look at depression and the consoling power of literature’, from The Washington Post (16 February 2017). Accessed 3 May 2023.

Morrison, Blake, ‘Metamorphosis by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst review – books as therapy’, in The Guardian (17 February 2023). Accessed 16 May 2023.

Sagers, Flora, ‘Time on our hands in Ali Smith’s Summer’, in Moveable Type, 13 (2021), pp.102-105. [Open access]

Thomas-Corr, Johanna, ‘In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado – review’, in The Observer (5 January 2020). Accessed 15 May 2023.

Books as Bibliotherapy

Carney, J. et al., ‘Five studies evaluating the impact on mental health and mood of recalling, reading, and discussing fiction’, in PLoS ONE, 17:4(2022)

Feigel, Lara, ‘Inside story: the first pandemic novels have arrived, but are we ready for them?’, in The Guardian (27 November 2021). Accessed 15 May 2023.

Troscianko, Emily T., ‘Fiction-reading for good or ill: eating disorders, interpretation and the case for creative bibliotherapy research’, in Medical Humanities, 44:3 (2018), pp.201-211.

Wigand, Moritz E. et al., ‘Migration, Identity, and Threatened Mental Health: Examples from Contemporary Fiction’, in Transcultural Psychiatry, 56:5 (2019), pp.1076-1093.

For Women’s History Month, we’ve put together two displays in the library exploring the history of women writing from the seventh century BCE (Before Common Era) to the twentieth century, as well as an exploration of some of the women who’ve studied at the University of Oxford in the last hundred-odd years. The displays highlight examples of writing by women and try to place those texts within the context of broader change.

If you’ve not caught the display in the library, or if you’ve already left Oxford for the vacation, don’t worry! We’ve put together an overview of the display here. Read to the end for a list of all the texts featured in the display, as well as some other resources you can find at the library.

A Brief History of Women Writing

The First Women Writing: 7th Century BCE to 14th Century CE

The first ‘writing women’ featured in this display are Sappho and Christine de Pizan. Sappho ‘flourished’ – that is, ‘either lived or was born or was known to be living’ – roughly 2,000 years ago, in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. Very little is known about her life. She was from the island of Lesbos, and at some point was exiled to Sicily – though we don’t know when or why. But despite this dearth of knowledge about her ‘real person’, her poetry remains as fascinating today as it was popular in antiquity. Today, only one poem survives in its entirety (you can have a look at the original Greek alongside a translation into modern English in If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson, which features in the display); the rest are fragments.

We know more about the other early woman writer in the display – Christine de Pizan. In 1390, de Pizan was widowed, left with no inheritance or income and three small children to support. Out of necessity, she turned to her pen, becoming the first woman to earn a living through her writing.

De Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies – which is the book included in the display – represents nothing less than the first work written by a woman in praise of women. De Pizan argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but that they lack the opportunities – and most importantly, education – afforded to men at that time. To a modern reader, her ideas are strikingly feminist; to her contemporaries, they were revolutionary and unprecedented.

(Later in this post, we’ll discuss Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she makes a similar argument roughly 400 years after de Pizan was writing. Depressingly, it was considered just as revolutionary then.)

Writing Fiction in English: 17th to 18th Centuries

From fifteenth-century France, we jump to seventeenth-century England, where Aphra Behn is writing both plays and prose. Behn has often been cited as the first professional female writer, including by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own (we’ll return later to Woolf and A Room of One’s Own!). There are striking similarities between Behn and her predecessors: Christine de Pizan was earning a living through her writing in the fourteenth century, and we know very little of Behn’s early life – though admittedly more than we know about Sappho.

Christine de Pizan notwithstanding, Behn was the first known Englishwoman to make a living through her writing, and – as Woolf argued – paved the way for the women who would write after her. But later audiences and readers turned away from her work, put off by her open treatment of sexuality and other ‘unfeminine’ topics. While she was a trailblazer, eighteenth-century women’s writing was markedly different. Enter: Charlotte Lennox.

Lennox wrote novels, plays and poetry; her most popular work was and remains the novel, The Female Quixote. It recounts the adventures and misadventures of Arabella, a socially isolated young woman who believes that the romance stories she reads accurately reflect real life.

One reason given for the growing number of female writers in the 1700s was women’s ability to commercially exploit ideas of femininity. They explored the ambiguities of innocence as both integral to femininity and a potential source of danger which could leave young women open to corruption. The Female Quixote encompasses these themes, as Lennox shows how Arabella’s innocence and naivety get her into trouble. It is a marked departure from the more open sexuality in Behn’s writing.

For Women, Of Women, By Women: 18th to 20th Centuries

It wasn’t only fiction that women were writing in the eighteenth century. Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, is best remembered for her political writing. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she argues that women are not weak and superficial by nature. Instead, their supposed inferiority stems from their lack of education. Society taught women to be pretty and to please men, not to be rational, independent moral people.

Her arguments are similar to those made by Christine de Pizan in the fourteenth century: just because so many learned (male) writers say women are inferior to men, does not mean that it’s the natural order. But there are key departures in Wollstonecraft’s work, not least the anger that shines through her writing and her witty ripostes to her (predominantly though not exclusively) male critics. After 400 years where so little seemed to have changed, perhaps her anger and frustration aren’t surprising.

In the early twentieth century, Virginia Woolf was equally concerned with women’s rights. In A Room of One’s Own, she offers a history of women’s writing and of female authors – or, more accurately, a history of the reasons why women have not been able to write. Her argument builds on what Wollstonecraft had said, in that a lack of education held women back. But Woolf went further, arguing women need not only an education, but also the opportunity to use it: women historically lacked an income and privacy, epitomised by having a room of their own. A Room of One’s Own explores themes which form the undercurrent of all Woolf’s writing, namely the question of woman’s nature and what she can contribute to civilisation.

So there you have it – a brief overview of women’s writing, in the smallest of nutshells! You can find links to the SOLO records for all the books at the end of this post, as well as links to some other resources.

At this point, you may be thinking: the history of women’s writing is all very well, but what were women closer to home writing? Well, wonder no longer! Our second display case for Women’s History Month explores writing by women who were students at Oxford in the twentieth century.

A Brief History of Oxford Women Writing

It was only 103 years ago that women first received degrees from the University. Women had been able to study at Oxford before then – Vera Brittain, for example, first came up to Oxford in 1914, though her studies were interrupted by the First World War – but it wasn’t until 1920 that women were able to receive their degrees.

Early Twentieth Century: Vera Brittain and Dorothy L. Sayers

Brittain attended Somerville College in 1914, reading English Literature. At that point, she wouldn’t have been able to use the English Faculty Library, which only allowed women in from 1916. After one year of studying, Brittain decided to delay her studies so she could support the war effort, working as a nurse. Testament of Youth (1933) is based on diaries she kept of her experiences during the First World War. In 1919, Brittain returned to Oxford to read History.

Brittain wasn’t the first woman to study at Oxford by any stretch. Dorothy L. Sayers, for example, received the Gilchrist Scholarship for Modern Languages to Somerville College in 1912, graduating with first-class honours in 1915. Although she couldn’t receive her degree at the time, Sayers came back in 1920 and was among the first women to receive an Oxford degree. Gaudy Night (1935) is a mystery novel set at the fictional Shrewsbury College, Oxford, and draws on Sayers’s own university experiences.

Mid- to Late-Twentieth Century: Iris Murdoch, Jeanette Winterson, and Wendy Cope

By the mid-twentieth century, the pace of change was picking up. In 1948, Agnes Headlam-Morley was appointed Professor of International Relations at St Hugh’s College, the first woman to be awarded a full professorship at the University. That same year, Iris Murdoch started teaching philosophy as a fellow of St Anne’s College.

Murdoch had been a student at Sommerville College from 1938 to 1942. While she had initially intended to study English Literature, she ended up switching to ‘Greats’ (a combination of classics, ancient history, and philosophy). The Sea, The Sea (1978) – which features in the display – was her nineteenth novel.

In 1974, male colleges at Oxford started to admit women (it wouldn’t be until 1979 that women’s colleges would begin to admit men). One of the first male colleges to admit women was St Catherine’s College; four years later, Jeanette Winterson went up to St Catherine’s to read English Literature. Her 1985 novel, Oranges are not the only fruit, is a semi-autobiographical work inspired by her experience of coming out as a lesbian.

To give another example of Oxford students’ writing: Wendy Cope read History at St Hilda’s College, training as a teacher and teaching in primary schools before becoming a freelance writer in 1986. Her poetry collection, Two Cures for Love, features poems she wrote between 1979 and 2006. In 2010, Cope was awarded an OBE – nearly a decade before Oxford would achieve gender equality in undergraduate admissions, in 2019.

Women’s writing has certainly come a long way. From Sappho to Virginia Woolf, and from Vera Brittain and Dorothy L. Sayers neither able to use the English Faculty Library nor collect their degrees in the early twentieth century, to the University of Oxford being awarded the silver Athena Swan award for progress towards gender equality in 2023, the pace of change has picked up considerably over the last 100 years.

Interested in finding out more? Have a look at some of the other resources you can access, either in the library or online using your Oxford SSO.

Featured texts (in chronological order as they appear in the display)

Carson, Anne, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (2003).

De Pizan, Christine, The Book of the City of Ladies (1983). First published 1405.

Behn, Aphra, Oroonoko (2020). First published 1688.

Lennox, Charlotte, The Female Quixote: or, The Adventures of Arabella (1986). First published 1752.

Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Men: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, [and] An historical and moral view of the French Revolution (2008). First published 1792.

Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own; Three Guineas (2000). First published 1929.

Brittain, Vera, Testament of Youth: An autobiographical study of the years 1900-1925 (2014). First published 1933.

Sayers, Dorothy L., Gaudy Night (2016). First published 1935.

Murdoch, Iris, The Sea, The Sea (2001). First published 1978.

Winterson, Jeanette, Oranges are not the only fruit (1985). First published 1985.

Cope, Wendy, Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems 1979-2006 (2008).

Other sources and resources

Amory, Hugh, ‘Lennox [nee Ramsay], (Barbara) Charlotte’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 21 May 2009. [accessed 8 March 2023]

Anderson, Emily Hodgson, ‘Novelty in Novels: A Look at What’s New in Aphra Behn’s “Oroonoko”’, in Studies in the Novel, 39:1 (2007), pp.1-16.

British Library, ‘Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, 1688’. [accessed 8 March 2023]

DuBois, Page, Sappho (2015).

Gallagher, Catherine, Nobody’s Story: The vanishing acts of women writers in the marketplace, 1670-1820 (1995).

Goldberg, Jonathan, Sappho: Fragments (2018).

Gordon, Lyndall, ‘Woolf [nee Stephen], (Adeline) Virginia’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004. [accessed 8 March 2023]

Taylor, Barbara, ‘Wollstonecraft [married name Godwin], Mary’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 1 September 2017. [accessed 8 March 2023]

Todd, Janet, ‘Behn, Aphra [Aphara]’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004. [accessed 8 March 2023]

Turner, Cheryl, Living By the Pen: Women writers in the eighteenth century (1992).

Podcast: The Great Forgetting: Women Writers Before Austen (2016). ‘A free podcast series addressing the lives and works of eighteenth-century women writers, devised and produced by one journalist and three academics.’ 

Timeline: 100 years of women’s history at Oxford. [accessed 6 March 2023]

This week (20 to 24 February) is Green Action Week across the University, hosted by the University’s Environmental Sustainability team and featuring a host of exciting events that empower and celebrate environmental action.

Our first display this term focused on Pastoral Poetry, and if you’ve seen it in the library you may have wondered what pastoral themes look like in contemporary literature. That’s where the Green Action Week display comes in!

Modern versions of the pastoral are often associated with activism, for example around climate change or other environmental concerns. They might aim to raise awareness or inspire action, celebrate green choices and explore ethical concerns, or incorporate environmental awareness into literary and wider humanities research.

For Green Action Week, we’ve brought together some examples of literature from the EFL’s collections which show the huge range of environmental issues, discussions and activism in contemporary literature. You won’t find any dystopian sci-fi or fantasy in this selection, but if that’s something you’re interested in have a look at our blog post from last term.

Some of the choices here might seem surprising, but they all tie into the University’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy, focusing on the themes of Biodiversity, Research, Travel, and Sustainable Food. Read on to find out more about the books we’ve selected, and check out the list of sources and resources at the end if you’d like to find out more.

And don’t forget to have a look at the full event programme for Oxford Green Action Week – whether you’re interested in science, research, activism, comedy, art, literature or food, there’s an event for everyone!

Biodiversity

Identify and address the University’s principal biodiversity impacts through its operations and supply chain and enhance biodiversity on the University’s estate.

‘… because she was a scientist in love with the English language, and an observer of the natural world with few peers, her ability to communicate what she saw increased exponentially.’

(L. Lear, review in Environmental History, Summer 1993, p.32)

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962).

Silent Spring was Carson’s response to the death of wildlife and birds as a result of chemical pesticide use. She was an accomplished scientist who amassed a huge amount of research and evidence, bringing public attention for the first time to issues which scientific organisations, governments and the chemical industry ignored or hid. But more than her scientific knowledge, Carson was a gifted writer.

Carson’s belief that we must balance human needs and actions with nature was radical among scientists at the time. Today, no informed person would countenance the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides – but with ongoing biodiversity loss and environmental damage, have we really learnt anything?

This edition was published in 2002, to mark the 40^th anniversary of the original publication.

Research

Increase research and engagement in environmental sustainability.

‘… climate change fiction builds worlds in which readers might be immersed and creates characters with whom we identify in order not merely to evoke emotional response but to provoke ethical reflection.’ (p.54)

Adeline Johns-Putra, Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel (2019).

It’s not just the sciences which conduct environmental research, and nor are humanities scholars limited to helping scientists communicate with the public! Ecocriticism in the humanities is an important and growing approach to research. From explorations of climate change in fiction to the terms in which we discuss environmental issues, literary studies have a lot to offer our understandings of environmental issues, and how people can be encouraged to engage with them.

In Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel, Johns-Putra interrogates and problematises the ways literature inspires environmental activism. In particular, she takes issue with appeals to posterity – the idea that we should protect the natural world for the sake of our children and grandchildren – which is a common centrepiece of calls to environmental action.

Johns-Putra makes a vital point, that we cannot limit our ethical concerns to the legacy we leave for the next generation, nor can we assume they’ll ‘fix’ the problems we create. It’s a powerful demonstration of the value of ecocriticism in literary research.

This book is also available online with your Oxford SSO.

Travel

Limit transport emissions by reducing the need to travel, encouraging walking, cycling and the use of public transport and managing the demand to travel by car.

‘Transit time is experienced so differently across modes of transport – with trains in particular, your attention is manipulated by the anticipation of particular stops and the way a timetable becomes a measure of distance between stations. Your route rolls along a set of tracks, and that can make you less alert to the present moment.’

(Helen Oyeyemi, interviewed by Sarah Neilson for Shondaland)

Helen Oyeyemi, Peaces (2021).

Peaces is a surrealist fantasy novel which takes place on a train. The Lucky Day is a former tea-smuggling train, now home to its reclusive owner, Ava Kapoor, and her friends/employees Allegra and Laura. When Otto and Xavier Shin embark for their not-honeymoon honeymoon, the train and its inhabitants begin slowly revealing their secrets.

This may not be your traditional train, but Oyeyemi’s intricate and playful novel nonetheless explores the possibilities and potentialities of train travel. Aboard The Lucky Day, ‘barrelling forward toward an unknown destination of unknown import, lurching back and forth between the interiors of eccentrically decorated train cars and the playfully enigmatic interiorities of the characters’ (from New York Times review), you can’t help but think – this is so much more fun than driving!

Sustainable Food

Reduce the carbon emissions and biodiversity impact of our food.

‘Violence is part of being human, and how can I accept that I am one of those human beings? That kind of suffering always haunts me. […] Eating meat, cooking meat, all these daily activities embody a violence that has been normalised.’

(Han Kang, interview in World Literature Today, May/August 2016, p.64)

Han Kang, The Vegetarian: A Novel (2018).

Food can become a fraught issue when we start to consider the environmental impacts of what we eat. There are certainly implications for climate change – we can choose to eat locally grown food, avoid pesticides, and limit our consumption of meat. But there are also ethical considerations which go to the heart of our relationship with animals, nature, and indeed each other – and it’s these ethical questions which Han’s novel explores.

Following horrific dreams, Yeong-hye, a hitherto dutiful and obedient housewife, announces she will no longer be eating meat. Her decision is met with astonishment and contempt. Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism is a response to the violence she has seen perpetuated against animals, but it leads to violence against her (including force-feeding, sexual objectification and abuse), and her eventual refusal to eat anything at all.

This is a deeply disturbing read, pitting one woman’s ostensibly personal (albeit extreme) decision against the inflexibility of the patriarchal society around her. Amid the violence, it may seem the novel doesn’t have much to do with food choices. But it prompts us to ask: how can we respond to human violence against each other and our planet, and can our dietary choices make a difference?

Sources and Resources

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962).

Work by Carson at the EFL 

Carson, Silent Spring (2002).

Carson, Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment (2018). Edited by S. Steingraber.

Articles and reviews 

Atwood, Margaret, ‘Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, 50 years on’, in The Guardian, 7 Dec 2012. [accessed 31 Jan 2023]

Lear, Linda J., ‘Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”’, in Environmental History Review, 17:2 (1993), pp.23-48.

Maxwell, Lida, ‘Queer/Love/Bird Extinction: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring as a Work of Love’, in Political Theory, 45:5 (2017), pp.682-704.

Adeline Johns-Putra, Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel (2019).

Work by Johns-Putra at the EFL 

Johns-Putra, Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel (2019).

Johns-Putra, The History of the Epic (2006).

Articles and reviews 

Buckley, Chloe Germain, ‘Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel by Adeline Johns-Putra (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019)’, in Open Library of Humanities, 8:1 (2020).

Johns-Putra, Adeline, ‘Climate change in literature and literary studies: From cli-fi, climate change theater and ecopoetry to ecocriticism and climate change criticism’, in WIREs Climate Change, 7:2 (2016), pp.266-282.

Johns-Putra, Adeline, ‘“My Job Is To Take Care Of You”: Climate Change, Humanity, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road’, in Modern Fiction Studies, 62:3 (2016), pp.519-540.

Han Kang, The Vegetarian: A Novel (2016).

Work by Han at the EFL

Han, Human Acts: A Novel (2020).

Han, The Vegetarian: A Novel (2018).

Articles and reviews 

Kim, Won-Chung, ‘Eating and Suffering in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian’, in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 21:5 (2019).

Lee, Krys, ‘Violence and Being Human: A Conversation with Han Kang’, in World Literature Today, 90:3-4 (2016), pp.61-67.

Tai, Yu-Chen, ‘Hopeful Reading: Rethinking Resistance in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian’, in College Literature, 48:4 (2021), pp.627-652.

Helen Oyeyemi, Peaces (2021).

Work by Oyeyemi at the EFL 

Oyeyemi, The Icarus Girl (2005).

Oyeyemi, White is for witching (2010).

Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel (2014).

Oyeyemi, What is not yours is not yours (2016).

Oyeyemi, Gingerbread (2018).

Oyeyemi, Peaces (2021).

Articles and reviews 

Bingham, Chelsea, ‘PEACES by Helen Oyeyemi’, in Harvard Review Online, 13 Aug 2021. [accessed 3 Feb 2023]

Kleeman, Alexandra, ‘Helen Oyeymi’s New Novel Is Not a Fairy Tale’, in The New York Times, 6 April 2021. [accessed 3 Feb 2023]

Silcox, Beejay, ‘Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi review – a hurtling hothouse of a novel’, in The Guardian, 3 Nov 2021. [accessed 3 Feb 2023]