Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love

Rachel Carson’s environmentalist tract Silent Spring was profoundly influenced by her romantic relationship with her neighbor Dorothy Freeman, according to this bracing treatise. Maxwell (Insurgent Truth), a political science professor at Boston University, recounts how in 1953, Freeman introduced herself to Carson after the writer moved down the street from her in Southport Island, Maine. The pair bonded over their love of nature, Maxwell writes, suggesting they inspired in each other the same wonder with which they regarded the anemones, veeries, and wood thrushes they observed while exploring Southport’s beaches and forests together. Maxwell contends that just as Freeman helped Carson envision romance beyond heterosexuality, she also helped the writer envision a future unburdened by the capitalist excess that Carson blamed for polluting the environment. The close study of Carson and Freeman’s letters reveals an underexamined side of the environmentalist, and Maxwell’s assertion that “heteronormativity is a climate issue” is provocative. She posits that mainstream notions of the good life often revolve around straight couples who derive happiness from purchasing goods and services, a consumerist ethos that harms the climate while obscuring the rewards of appreciating the natural world. A more sustainable future, she suggests, requires adopting a “queer” (i.e., outside the mainstream) outlook that’s able to critically assess the environmentally ruinous consequences of capitalism. A stimulating blend of biography and queer theory, this intrigues. Photos. (Jan.)