cover image Woman the Hunter

Woman the Hunter

Mary Zeiss Stange. Beacon Press (MA), $25 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-4638-8

A recent New York Times article reported that archeologists have uncovered burial sites of what are thought to be Sarmatian warriors from about the sixth to the second century B.C.--and that the bodies uncovered are women's. This is a timely article for Stange, an instructor of religion and women's studies at Skidmore College, who argues that women, too, possess a natural hunting instinct that ""has more to do with a mode of awareness, a discreet style of engagement, than with pulling a trigger."" Writing as a feminist, Stange attacks the theories and arguments of radical eco-feminists, who oppose women's participation ""in such male-identified activities as hunting,"" and argues that such a position assumes ""a close connection between women and the landscape"" that ""not only reinforces familiar stereotypes of women as creatures of emotion, rather than reason, it also establishes for women an essentially privileged relation to nature and animals."" Throughout the book, which is written in two styles--one scholarly, the other memoiristic--Stange maintains that when approached ethically and responsibly, hunting does not destroy or change nature nearly as much as farming does; in fact, she argues, ""[i]t is the farmer, not the hunter, who approaches the world of nature as something over which he must seize control."" Stange can write, and she can make convincing arguments; unfortunately she doesn't do both at the same time. The chapters about her hunts are well written but rarely go beyond the impressionistic. And while the chapters containing her arguments are strong and insightful, they are also burdened by an earnest, clotted, graduate-school style. When she unites reasoning and writing, she will be ready for a broad trade audience. (May)