Tamara, hi. (I did my phd at Miami '87-92 and wrote an ecofem diss in the English dept. Small world. AND I wrotea ch about Rachel, on whom I still have a major crush.) So my answer is that she is very important as a figure and as one of the pre-ecofeminist thinkers. (ecofem is not a word until the early '70s, I think.) But she's making the connections. Some of this you can go find in my diss chapter in the ol' library if you're interested (_Women Writing Science: Creating an Ecofeminist Praxis_ or something like that). But since I wrote that, I've learned more about her that makes her very interesting to ecofeminism and queer studies. The letters btwn her and Dorothy (in _Always, Rachel_) are drippy even by "boston marriage" standards--clearly love letters, plus we're told that some were destroyed by Rachel and by Dorothy, some they even burned together! Beyond what may be only titillation about Rachel as a lesbain (and by theway, there's NO suggestion ever that she's straight), you also get a sense of how lesbian-in-a-lesbian-continuum-sense her life was, which I think contributes to the whole ecofem discussion. I'd love a summer of reading and writing tofigure out how, but have fun with it while I go grade papers! Let me know how your paper comes out. Sara, UHoustonDowntown
