Indicting Frost for Androcentric Speciesism: An Ecofeminist Reading of Robert Frost’s “The Most of It”

Abstract

Using the critical framework of ecofeminism, this paper examines Robert Frost’s attitudes towards both women and nature in his poem “The Most of It”. Whether ecocritical or feminist, the mainstream readings of Robert Frost fall into two main axes: 1) Frost for Nature and/or Women Views argue that Frost’s poetry is for nature and women (Srivastava, 2017; Shah, 2022); and 2) Frost for Ambiguity Views claim that Frost’s poetic work is ambiguous—it could be for or against nature and women (Benin, n.d). This paper belongs to neither of the two. This study makes it unequivocally clear that Frost's view of nature, in “The Most of It”, is androcentric as well as anthropomorphic. Ecofeminism is about making connections, on the one hand, between the earth and the entire forms of life on it, and on the other hand, between the patriarchal exploitation of nature and women’s domination. This paper, too, attempts establishing many connections: between the poet’s use of the male generic language and the oppression of nature and women; between the female’s invisibility in the poem and women’s domination in the Western patriarchal culture; and between Frost’s fame as a poet and his advocacy (through his poetry) for the androcentric worldviews of the patriarchal American society of his time. The findings of this research reveal that “The Most of It” contains strata of male-centric, speciesist worldviews and, consequently, stress the need for more research into Frost’s oeuvre using ecofeminist theory.