Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko
"Gardens in the Dunes" by Leslie Marmon Silko is a novel that explores themes of cultural conflict, identity, and the relationship between humans and the natural world. The story follows adolescent Indigo, a member of the Sand Lizard people, who finds herself separated from her community near the Arizona-California border. Throughout the narrative, Indigo engages in significant discussions with Hattie, an upper-class scholar who believes she can help Indigo navigate Western culture, despite her own complex relationship with it.
The novel contrasts Indigo's spiritual and subsistence-based understanding of life with the scientific and capitalistic mindset of Hattie’s husband, Edward, whose reckless ambitions lead to his downfall. As the characters embark on a Grand Tour of Europe, their experiences highlight the differing values and belief systems that shape their understanding of existence. The text also delves into themes of motherhood and nurturing across cultures, ultimately suggesting that personal and cultural self-awareness is essential for spiritual fulfillment. Hattie's journey culminates in a return to Europe, reflecting her newfound understanding of her cultural roots and the sources of power within her own identity. "Gardens in the Dunes" invites readers to contemplate how diverse perspectives influence one's relationship with the earth and community.
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Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1999
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes received more acclaim that the lengthy Almanac of the Dead, and a number of critics, as well as professors and students in higher education, compared the text favorably to her earlier book-length works Ceremony and Storyteller, in terms of both the beauty of the prose and the ultimate positive resolution of the circumstances of the text.
Adolescent Indigo is separated from her Sand Lizard people in the hidden gardens near the Arizona-California border. She spends most of the balance of the novel engaging in compelling discussions of cultural conflict, principally with upper-class Hattie, who views herself initially as Indigo’s savior and form of entrée into mainstream Western culture. Hattie herself is an iconoclastic figure in being a female scholar, in refusing to follow the protocols of academe, and then in marrying Edward, a much older scholar and botanist, but not becoming a mother.
Edward’s defilement of the natural landscape through his foolhardy, greedy scheme concerning citron stock and illegal orchids ultimately destroys his life and his relationship with Hattie. The Grand Tour of Europe that the improbable threesome—Edward, Hattie, Indigo—undertake results in Edward’s arrest in Livorno, Italy, and Indigo’s increasing boredom with the trappings of Western culture. However, a visit to Bath, England, shows Hattie the ancient Celtic gardens that Aunt Bronwyn continues to maintain, and after Hattie later endures physical assault and abandonment in the Arizona desert, humiliation after her husband’s arrest, and the disdain of an embarrassed family, her resolution at the end of the novel to return to Europe shows that she seems to have come to the realization that her spiritual sanctity will be achieved by a deeper understanding of her own cultural background rather than in ministering to others.
Gardens in the Dunes is especially concerned with how different human cultures manifest different presuppositions and belief systems concerning how to live on, and with, the earth. Even though Indigo is in her early teens and has had virtually no formal education beyond some brief interactions within the Riverside Indian School, her spiritual and subsistence understanding of human life on earth is modeled as a more reasonable mind-set than Edward’s scientific and capitalistic approach or Hattie’s alternately accepting and rejecting attitudes toward Western value systems and norms. As well, there is a recurrent and underlying theme of motherhood and nurturing in the text that is revealed in a number of ways and in multiple cultures. Hattie’s return to Europe at the conclusion of the novel cannot therefore be understood as a failure on her part to understand and live in concert with the geography and spirituality of the New World; instead, it should be seen as her self-actualizing understanding of the manner in which each individual and each culture needs to know its sources of power and where to go for insight and renewal.
Bibliography
Aithal, S. K. “American Ethnic Fiction in the Universal Context.” American Studies International 21 (October, 1983): 61-66.
Antell, J. A. “Momaday, Welch, and Silko: Expressing the Feminine Principle Through Male Alienation.” American Indian Quarterly 12 (Summer, 1988): 213-220.
Chavkin, Allan, ed. Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony”: A Casebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Danielson, Linda. “The Storytellers in Storyteller.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 5, no. 1 (1989): 21-31.
Dunsmore, Roger. “No Boundaries: On Silko’s Ceremony.” In Earth’s Mind: Essays in Native Literature. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.
Garcia, Reyes. “Senses of Place in Ceremony.” MELUS 10 (Winter, 1983): 37-48.
Hirsh, B. A. “The Telling Which Continues: Oral Tradition and the Written Word in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller.” American Indian Quarterly 12 (Winter, 1988): 1-26.
Jahner, Elaine. “Leslie Marmon Silko.” In Handbook of Native American Literature, edited by Andrew Wiget. New York: Garland, 1996.
Lincoln, Kenneth. “Grandmother Storyteller: Leslie Silko.” In Native American Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Nelson, Robert M. “Rewriting Ethnography: The Embedded Texts in Leslie Silko’s Ceremony.” In Telling the Stories: Essays on American Indian Literatures and Cultures. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.
Sax, Richard. “One World, Many Tribes: Crosscultural Influences in Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” In Celebration of Indigenous Thought and Expression. Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.: Lake Superior State University Press, 1996.