Patriarchy is a hierarchy under which men possess the supreme power and act as a political leadership, social privilege, moral model and possession of wealth。 In the family, fathers dominate women and children。 They become men’s followers and vassals。 Women become tools to produce babies and wash clothes and they only to meet the expectations of males。 Under the dualistic hierarchy, ecofeminism criticizes patriarchy by analyzing people's attitude toward nature with the so-called “others”。 As Karen Warren says, “Ecofeminism is the position that there are important connections between how one treats women, people of color, and the underclass on one hand and how one treats the nonhuman natural environment on the other” (Warren&Erka1 129)。 

3。3 Toni Morrison’s ecofeminist consciousness

     Toni Morrison, whose works came from her own experience。 She was born in a working class family, where her father was a shipyard welder and mother was a devout christian and worked as a maid at a White house。 In order to get rid of the racial discrimination, they moved from Oregon to the south of the United States。 Her parents feel proud of the black culture and often told her lots of stories of the black community, which has a profound significance on her later writings。 Once she said: “my work requires me to think about how free I can be as an African-American woman writer in my genderized, sexualized, wholly racialized world” (Morrison 4)。 From above, we can see she thinks that it is her duty to struggle against the racial and sexual discrimination from Anthropocentric Dualism。 

 As a black woman writer, she has a great affection of the nature。 In her novel, she adopts the basic principle of ecofeminism properly and gives a lot of description on natural environment, animals and plants。 She also concentrates on the natural elements and believing these natural images can be beneficial to study her works 。 

     For example, illustrations of nature in Beloved include the tree image on Sethe's back, Baby Suggs' preaching in the clearing, Denver's emerald room, Paul D's tree Brother nature has played an important part in their self salvation。 Morrison shows great sympathy to black women who pursue their self-identity through depicting the pains of black women with the images of nature。 From all of above, they reflect Toni Morrison's ecofeminist consciousness。

4。 The Relationship between Women and Nature

     Based on the above discussion about ecofeminism, we may have doubt that why do women have awareness to protect earth and lead the ecological revolution? Why do they support that we should respect all the living things and oppose all kinds of dominance? May be these can be explained by the link between women and nature。 

     In this chapter, we will study the close link between women and nature which include their common characteristics and the role that nature plays in women’s struggling for their self identities。

4。1 The common features between women and nature文献综述

     From the angel of ecofeminism, there are two common features。 One is that a woman delivers children and makes the food into milk to feed her children; the other is that the earth provides lots of resources and products, and sustains a good balance between mankind and nature。 Due to their common features, women start to realize mankind are similar to nature and only natural problems are solved can women gain liberation。 Therefore, women lead a tendency to fight against the environmental crisis and the ruling of men to pursue themselves with the power of the nature。

     Not only that, ecofeminists argue that they have a relationship on cultural idealization。 Because they all dominated by the anthropocentric dualism and patriarchy in western’s culture, just as the saying goes women has been “naturalized” and nature “feminized”, which makes them have the same miserable fate and succumb to the males’ dominance。