Toward A Political Ecology in Lydia Maria Child’s “Chocorua’s Curse”

“Chocorua's Curse,” Lydia Maria Child's retelling of a White Mountain legend, found its way into middle class Boston homes through its publication in the 1830 gift book, The Token, accompanied by an engraving based on a Thomas Cole painting. Child's short sketch contrasts with typical iterations of the tale—and with the several paintings of the dramatic pyramidal peak by Cole—by its inclusion of homes spaces, a female figure, and a sense of the landscape as a watershed and not merely the iconic mountain peak. In addition, using ideas about household economy, educational transmission, and sympathy, Child prefigures ways of writing about the ecological flow of energy and materials through systems that include human and nonhuman entities. With this reading, the poison intended for a “troublesome” fox is an essential part of the subsequent chain of revenge killings and doubles with the final curse on the waters. Using the trope of sympathetic transmission, I argue that Child anticipates ecological thinking through a gendered lens. Material and emotional energy move through human and nonhuman entities, and mindful consideration can perhaps thwart the disaster caused by the men who, as critics have noted, seem disengaged from larger social systems.