Lumbering Woman: Madge Macbeth’s <i>The Patterson Limit</i>

Abstract Through the lens of Madge Macbeth’s The Patterson Limit (1923), this article examines women’s entry into the forestry industry. Exploring the feminist, eco-feminine, and ecofeminist positions articulated or anticipated by Macbeth’s fiction, this article will explore feminism and ecology in conversation with The Patterson Limit . Further, this article will show a number of points of intersection between the ecofeminist representations anticipated by Macbeth and the feminist theories articulated in the 1920s, before women’s enfranchisement, by writers such as Nellie McClung. The article will conclude by looking at how women, forestry, and forestry-related industries are figured in the 21 st -century works of non-fiction by Elizabeth May and Charlotte Gill, thus demonstrating the ways in which Madge Macbeth’s work anticipates the later evolution of women writers’ understanding of their connection to nature.