Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture undertakes the task of comparing two prevailing literary metaphors: swamps as the dark underside of the antebellum South’s pastoral myth, and swamps as a site of social and cultural resistance--the authentic underground of a distinct southern culture. Using the tools of eco-criticism, literary studies, and ecological history, Anthony Wilson makes an argument for the significant influence of swamps on southern cultural history and literature. He proposes that swamps, as physical settings and ideological constructs, presented powerful opposition to efforts by mainstream white Southerners to establish an agrarian paradise and a singular, gentrified southern identity. He also traces the role of swamps in nudging along a psychological shift in southern writing towards an increasingly pluralistic and complicated conception of the South as a place of mixed physical, racial, and cultural features that defy mono-cultural visions. By drawing attention to swamps as a ubiquitous feature of southern life, Wilson also adds a meaningful ecological dimension to the study of the South as a region. He draws on the environmental ideologies of eco-criticism to raise important questions about how our literary/cultural metaphors and perceptions hinder or encourage responsible stewardship of wetlands.
The swamp--as both a physical reality and a cultural construct--deserves consideration in any study of the South. As Wilson points out, a substantial portion of the southern U.S. is home to a disproportionate percentage of low-lying land. Responses to this southern ecology in history and literature are as varied as its visitors and inhabitants. To early European colonists the heavily wooded swamp was often a place linked with sin and impurity; to the plantation elite, it was a practical obstacle to agricultural development. For the many excluded from the white southern aristocracy--African Americans, Native Americans, Acadians, and poor, rural whites--the swamp meant something very different, providing shelter and sustenance and offering separation and protection from the dominant plantation culture. As someone who has spent substantial fieldwork time in North Carolina’s swamps and sounds, I can corroborate the role of wetlands as a place of refuge and isolation. Many scattered southeastern Indians did settle into low-lying lands and carve out a living in the face of frequent flooding and limited access to outside resources. Understanding the ecological and political dimensions of southern settlement and land-use adds an important layer to our scholarly understanding of historical processes and present realities in the South. And Wilson also effectively underscores the power of public perceptions to influence environmental policy and action--or inaction. In the case of southern wetlands, misperceptions and fear have wrought considerable destruction and damage on essential eco-systems.
Wilson’s book unfolds chronologically, following literary and popular discourses from the colonial and antebellum eras, the Civil War through Reconstruction and the turn of the century, the modern era, and the postmodern era, to trace connections between southern identity and swamp ecology. Wilson moves among primary and secondary sources, general history, southern literature, popular culture, tourism literature, and film as the building blocks of his arguments. By looking at multiple texts side by side, Wilson effectively illustrates the ideological trends and forces at play as southern and northern writers have interpreted swamp ecology within changing historical contexts. I found these juxtapositions to be useful and convincing--although the book can sometimes feel hit or miss in its development. As a reader, I was not always sure of how and why Wilson prioritized particular texts over others, other than for their corroboration of his thesis. To tackle all southern swamp discourse over two centuries is an ambitious task. This broadness spells the greatest weakness of the book. Yet for anyone interested in southern regional identity, southern ecosystems, southern literature, or examples of the eco-critical method, Shadow and Shelter offers useful perspectives and thought.
--------
[Review length: 622 words • Review posted on February 22, 2007]