The Not-So-Silent Rachel Carson
Born in 1907, scientist, writer, and activist Rachel Carson played a pivotal role in launching the environmental movement. Carson spent her childhood living in a two-story clapboard house on a 64-acre farm in western Pennsylvania. She wrote stories about the nature around her. “I can remember no time, even in earliest childhood, when I didn’t assume I was going to be a writer,” she said. “I have no idea why.” She left home for the Pennsylvania College for Women to study English.
“Ray,” as she was known to her friends, went to a college prom in 1928, but never displayed any romantic interest in men. She was, however, deeply passionate about her biology professor, Mary Scott Skinker. It was Skinker who convinced Carson to change her major and go with her to Woods Hole for a summer research project. That was where Carson first saw the ocean.
Carson began graduate study in zoology at Johns Hopkins, completed a master’s degree, and entered a PhD program in 1932. Carson worked as a lab assistant and taught biology and zoology. Her mother, her ailing father, her divorced sister, and her two young nieces moved to Baltimore to live with Carson, their only wage-earner. Carson had to leave graduate school to take a better-paying job in the public-education department of the Bureau of Fisheries, and brought in extra money by selling articles to the Baltimore Sun.
When she joined the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a biologist in 1936, Carson was one of only two women holding professional positions there. During that time, she drafted an 11-page essay called “The World of Waters.” Her department head told her it was too good for a government brochure and suggested she send it to The Atlantic. After it was published, as “Undersea,” Carson began writing her first book.
The Sea Around Us is a captivating combination of scientific knowledge and poetic prose. Initially, The New Yorker published it as “Profile of the Sea,” the magazine’s first-ever profile of something other than a person. It became one of the most successful books ever written about the natural world, landing on the New York Times best-seller list, where it remained for a record-breaking 86 weeks and ultimately sold well over a million copies. The book has been translated into 28 languages, inspired an Academy Award-winning documentary, and won both the National Book Award and the John Burroughs Medal. Even so, it is her lesser-known work.
Silent Spring was the Seneca Falls, the Stonewall, the March on Washington of the environmental movement. It informed, outraged, inspired, provoked, and launched a movement. It prompted passage of the Clean Air Act (1963), the Wilderness Act (1964), the National Environmental Policy Act (1969), the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act (both 1972) and led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, in 1970.
Despite extensive research (55 pages of scientific endnotes), she was mocked as a “hysterical woman” and even labeled a Communist for her unyielding efforts to force government and business to confront the dangers of pesticides, especially DDT. Yet subsequent study proved her right and DDT, once used extensively, was banned in the US in 1972.
Rachel Carson loved two things: the sea and Dorothy Freeman, whom she met in 1953. Carson was 46 and Freeman was 55. Freeman was married, with a grown son, but the women felt a connection immediately. When apart, they wrote letters expressing their love for each other. In one, addressed to “My Darling,” Carson told Freeman, “I can imagine no substitute for you in my life.” They began to write two letters at a time—one that could be read aloud to Carson’s mother or Freeman’s husband, and a second, private one. They arranged to be together as often as they could and longed for each other when apart. “I know I need you terribly. (And I believe you need me, too. Shameless!)” wrote Carson.
After 10 years, with Carson battling breast cancer, their relationship was still strong. After one visit, Rachel left a note under Dorothy’s pillow that said, “And as long as either of us lives, I know our love ‘will never pass into nothingness’ but will keep a quiet bower stored with peace and with precious memories of all that we have shared. I need not say it again but I shall—I love you, now and always.”
Carson died of breast cancer just 18 months after Silent Spring was published.
Rachel Carson was an introvert but didn’t stay quiet when others tried to silence her. She once said she had “no wish to start a Carrie Nation crusade” with the publication of her new book, Silent Spring. Nevertheless, her non-crusade changed the public’s understanding of and appreciation for the delicate balance between humans and their environment. ▼
Nancy Sakaduski is an award-winning writer and editor who owns Cat & Mouse Press in Lewes, Delaware