The Iron Woman: 1

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Cixous, Helene. (1976, Summer). The Laugh of the Medusa. Keith Cohen & Paula Cohen (Trans.). Signs, 1(4): 875–893. Written as an intervention on behalf of water quality and public health, The Iron Woman has a much stronger and more active environmental agenda than The Iron Man and can be read as a redemptive story for a society that has cut itself off from ‘being human’ and from being part of the larger web of life. By raising awareness and engaging directly with our ecological crisis both novels can be read as eco-fables or healing myths which can challenge us to alter our perceptions from anthropocentric to biocentric. Ted Hughes firmly believed that the most important way to communicate is through storytelling. People understand and become more engaged when they learn through stories. Visual arts and literature are important vectors of change in the ethical plane and, as such, can be seen as valuable tools of ecological awareness and moral transformation. Literature promotes attitudes and values—especially in the young reader—and can stimulate reflection on the moral consideration of the non-human world and even induce action. In response to drastic climate change, it is necessary today, more than ever, to offer a discourse of hope. One that inspires and allows us to imagine resilience. But how can younger generations persuade older generations and take agency to take steps to repair and protect our environment? Can literature lead to action and become a rationale for change? Kerslake, Lorraine. (2020). Ted Hughes: The Importance of Fostering Creative Writing as Environmental Education. Children’s Literature in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-020-09427-4.

Conserving the new materialist understanding of the nonhuman (biotic and abiotic) as already part of the human in the world’s becoming, posthuman ecocriticism seeks to maintain a sustainable ecological critique of the material interaction of bodies and natures in a highly technologized world and their conceptualizations in literary and cultural texts (Oppermann, 2016, p. 30). fruit of a human and reason-centred culture that is at least a couple of millennia old, whose contrived blindness to ecological relationships is the fundamental condition underlying our destructive and insensitive technology and behaviour. To counter these factors, we need a deep and comprehensive restructuring of culture that rethinks and reworks human locations and relations to nature all the way down (Plumwood, 2002, p. 8). Castro, Ingrid E. (Ed.). (2021). Childhood, Agency, and Fantasy: Walking in Other Worlds. Lanham, Lexington Books: Rowman & Littlefield. At times of political and social unrest, contemporary texts like these can offer insight into environmental issues and engage students in debate. As Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad and Carrie Hintz claim, “[YA dystopias] revolve around two contrasting poles: education and escape. The novels simultaneously seek to teach serious lessons about the issues faced by humanity, and to offer readers a pleasurable retreat from their quotidian experience” ( 2013, p. 5). urn:oclc:863542439 Republisher_date 20120517214318 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20120516215950 Scanner scribe7.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition)

Following this, The Iron Woman can be read as a redemptive story, written for a society that has cut itself off from being part of the larger web of life. By exposing the effects of toxic chemicals from a waste factory, the Iron Woman vows to destroy those who have poisoned the river and marshlands, and all the creature that live there. Hughes, Ted. (1992). ‘Introduction’ in Your World. London: HarperCollins. Also published in The Observer Magazine (29 November 1992), 30–39. Seeling, Beth J. (2002). The Rape of Medusa in the Temple of Athena: Aspects of Triangulation in the Girl. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 83, 895–911. The Iron Woman is much lesser known and is much much stranger. The Iron Woman rises from the marshes early on to warn humanity that pollution is killing everything and it must stop. With appearances from Hogarth and the Iron Man this is another story that will have children snorting with laughter but also have them thinking about the environment and how we have caused so much damage to it. A very timely reminder throughout the novel that it is men who have been the main cause of the damage and they bear the brunt of the punishment and learning of the lesson. Gifford, Terry. (2008). Rivers and Water Quality in the Work of Brian Clarke and Ted Hughes. Concentric, 34(1), 75–91.

Curry, Alice. (2013). Environmental Crisis in Young Adult Fiction: A Poetics of Earth. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Massey, Geraldine, and Bradford, Clare. (2011). Children as Ecocitizens: Ecocriticism and Environmental Texts. In Kerry Mallan and Clare Bradford (Eds.), Contemporary Children’s Literature and Film: Engaging with Theory (pp. 109–126). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Set in 1937 during the so-called “Roosevelt recession,” tight times compel Mary Alice, a Chicago girl, to move in with her grandmother, who lives in a tiny Illinois town so behind the times that it doesn’t “even have a picture show.”

About Ted Hughes

While concern over the human impact on the environment has existed for decades, there is now a call for a new sense of urgency which demands a shift to transform the understanding of our place in and our impact on the physical world, as well as of the relationships we share with other life forms that cohabit the earth. Such concerns may seem less pressing at times like the present when the most devastating virus to date in modern history is transforming the society in which we live. Living in the middle of a pandemic has left us with a disturbing sense of unreality. Books that used to read like science fiction have lately become uncomfortably real. While fiction allows us a way to escape reality, it can also provide us with a window through which to confront our fears and even contribute towards change. However, the present crisis is part of a much broader problem, one deeply connected to our dysfunctional relation with nature. Taylor, Diana. (1997). Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War”. Durham and London: Duke UP. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Whilst in America Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (1971) is considered by many as the book that began “the environmental movement in children’s literature” (Dobrin and Kidd, 2004, p. 11) and as a canonical text of literary environmentalism for the classroom, Ted Hughes’s The Iron Man (1968) has long been part of the curriculum throughout schools in Britain and continues to remain on the reading lists as a standard text for primary schools in the UK. Both read as examples of early environmental texts that convey didactic messages about the need for humans to become better caretakers of the earth. One of the primary functions of such texts is that they can help young children understand contemporary ecological issues and reveal how humans have disrupted the harmony of our planet, positioning young people to reflect on responsible ecocitizenship. Young, Rebecca. (2018). Confronting Climate Crises Through Education: Reading Our Way Forward. Lanham, Lexington Books: Rowman & Littlefield. Despite its problematic and idealistic ending, The Iron Woman puts forward many of Hughes’s own social and political concerns and can be read as a potential healer of broken bonds between humanity and nature and, especially in the present environmental crisis, as a wake-up call, where children act as agents of change.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-02-13 23:03:40 Boxid IA177901 Boxid_2 CH110001 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor

The Iron Woman is a science fiction novel by British writer Ted Hughes, published in 1993. It is a sequel to the 1968 novel The Iron Man. Written half-way between a modern fairy-tale and a science-fiction myth, Hughes’s narrative describes how a giant “metal man” appears from the sea and falls from a cliff, only to reassemble himself, and begin devouring anything metal. He soon becomes a problem for the local farmers who decide to dig a pit to capture him and bury him. However, after being buried he rises again and when a monstruous alien descends from outer space and threatens the extinction of all life on Earth, the Iron Man defends the people and restores peace.

LoveReading4Kids Says

British poet Ted Hughes with full name Edward James Hughes served as poet laureate from 1984 to 1998; people note his work for its symbolism, passion, and dark natural imagery. Hughes really doesn't soften the ecological message intended for his young readership; the fantastical scenes have a very real, matter-of-factness about them. Even the surreal humour of the factory workers and ignorant townspeople, transforming into all varieties of fish and pond life, asks the horrific question of 'is it too late? Have we gone too far?'. Despite the positive ending to the book, those questions will be the resounding sentiments to its readers. Alter, Charlotte, Haynes, Suyin and Worland, Justin. (2019). TIME 2019 Person of the Year: Greta Thunberg, TIME.com. https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2019-greta-thunberg. Accessed 21 May 2021. It becomes clear early on that this story, and the Iron Woman herself, is retaliating to the built-up destruction of the planet by humanity's excesses and waste.