Soil-searching: Grief and Healing in Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s The Grassling (2019)
Abstract
The rift in the relationship between human beings and the natural world necessitates healing. The anthropocentric perspective inscribed in much of the Western codification of the nature/culture dynamic is based on the misplaced idea of the pre-eminence of humankind over the rest of the natural world, which has resulted in largely dismissive and/or downright destructive actions perpetrated within the confines of a dominator mindset (Eisler 2002) and the (often wilful) disregard for or lack of self-awareness in regards to the environmental interlinkages, effects, and interdependencies which tie the human and the non-human (Milstein & Castro-Sotomayor 2020). This article seeks to investigate this specific topic by examining how this conflicting relationship is challenged, redrawn and restored in The Grassling by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett. The ecopoetic memoir, centred around a sense of grief both personal and environmental, employs the trans-corporeal (Alaimo 2010) device of a metamorphosed human/plant hybrid (the eponymous Grassling) to bridge, and ultimately heal the human/non-human fracture.
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