Title: Alternative Fruits, Tints of a Postgendered Thoreau

Abstract: Thoreau's gender has garnered great attention. Unfortunately
the discussion remains anachronistically mired in the taxonomies of
twentieth century modernism. This is regrettable, as the alternative
fruits of Thoreau's late nature writings offer a clear, nonmodern
alternative to the constricting dichotomy of current discourse.

Attempting to compel an identity bound to sexuality, current scholarship
has ranged from unsuccessful heterosexual synecdoche built around a
youthful romance and proposal to Ellen Sewall to attempts to produce a
homosexual Thoreau based on unduly foregrounded homoeroticism in his
journals.  This uncertainly has allowed the production of Thoreaus as
diverse as an archetypally oppressive middle-class, heterosexual
founding father of American nature writing to an ahistorical proponent
of a distinctly queer politics.

That Thoreau fits into exactly none of - nor any combination of -
modernist gender categories is paradoxically enlightening. Lost in the
dialogue are the affinities of Thoreau's late nature writings with
postmodern, postgendered metaphors, particularly Donna Haraway's cyborg,
and a comparison of Haraway's cyborg to the alternative fruits of
"Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples" proves surprisingly successful.  In
these essays, Thoreau aligns himself with images of thawed apples and
red maple leaves, each without literal, conventional worth or
reproductive value.  By remythologizing these alternative fruits, a
well-developed, alternative, nonmodern sexuality is revealed.  These
fruits provide a new picture, a fair reading of Thoreau's sexuality that
eliminates the previously confusing fluidity of his possible gender
roles.