The Upholders of Anthropocentrism and Biocentrism in Annie Proulx’s Barkskins

As the bedrocks of the French imperialism in North America, the fur trade and the logging industry led to a drastic depletion in the populations of fur-bearing animals, particularly that of the beaver, and massive deforestation on the continent. Examining Annie Proulx’s Barkskins from an ecocritical point of view, this article seeks to investigate the novel’s representations of the detrimental impact of anthropocentrism. We will show that the prevalence of anthropocentrism in New France resulted in the over-harvesting of beavers to procure precious pelts for European markets, where fur clothes were in vogue during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this scenario, French merchants went from rags to riches at the cost of losing myriads of beavers. On the other hand, our study will also address the indirect endorsement of biocentrism by the indigenous North Americans, who refrained from inflicting irreparable damage on nature in a vast territory in which the European settlers relentlessly cut ancient trees to make their fortunes. Hence, the focus of this article is the distinction between the perspectives on the natural world held by French settlers and Native Americans in Barkskins.