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Illustration by E. Boyd Smith in Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain, 1903 

The Siren Song of the Desert: 
Feminized Desert, Nature, and Water as Cultural Critique in Mary Austin’s The Land of 

Little Rain 

Lucy Sandeen, Stanford ’24 

Abstract: In her 1909 book The Land of Little Rain, Mary Austin’s descriptions of the 
Southwestern desert are informed by a feminist perspective as she characterizes the desert 
landscape as feminine, capturing its power over the male mind. Austin argues that men attempt to 
render the desert landscape subordinate to their ways and to exploit its resources and landscape
—much like how women, Native Americans, and Mexican residents were oppressed in the 
American West. In The Land of Little Rain, Austin depicts a feminized landscape by combining 
Western realism with magical, spiritual elements, and uses this feminist perspective in her 
cultural critiques of water resource issues. This magical, feminine aspect is lost, however, in 
men's interpretations of her writing, which flatten Austin's writing into a simplistic nature 
narrative of the American West. 



In Greek mythology, sirens hold immense power in their enchanting voice, entrancing 
and seducing passing sailors with their songs and luring these sailors toward their doom. These 
sirens represent the maddening nature of the vast ocean. Isolated, desolate, and monotonous, it 
had the ability to drive men insane. With the absence of water, among the barren sand and 
otherworldly plants and animals, the desert holds a similar power. There is beauty and seduction 
to the brutality of the landscape.  

Mary Austin, the daughter of Californian homesteaders and one of the earliest nature 
writers of the American West, published her book Lost Borders in 1909, which explored the 
experiences of white and Native American women in the desert. Austin was heavily concerned 
with the gendered and racialized politics of the Southwest desert and its water, and Lost Borders 
was published in the midst of a mass land rush by white settlers to buy up Native land in the 
West. In the book, Austin metaphorically portrays the desert as a woman (Sawyer, 2001, p. 43). 
Austin’s desert descriptions were often informed by a feminist perspective; in The Land of Little 
Rain, while less explicitly so, she also characterizes the desert landscape as feminine, capturing 
its power over the male mind. Austin argues that men attempt to render the desert landscape 
subordinate to their ways and to exploit its resources and landscape—much like how women, 
Native Americans, and Mexican residents were oppressed in the American West. In The Land of 
Little Rain, Austin depicts a feminized landscape by combining Western realism with magical, 
spiritual elements, and uses this feminist perspective in her cultural critiques of water resource 
issues. This magical, feminine aspect is lost, however, in men's interpretations of her writing, 
which flatten Austin's writing into a simplistic nature narrative of the American West. 
 Water emerges as the defining theme and resource throughout The Land of Little Rain. 
This emphasis is representative of a broader cultural shift after the Newlands Reclamation Act 
was passed in 1902—just a year before Austin published The Land of Little Rain. The Newlands 
Reclamation Act, which funded irrigation projects in the West, was one of the most critical acts 
in Western land management. As a result of this act, the West transformed from a region defined 
by its mining to a region defined by the availability and distribution of its water. Long depending 
on portrayals of resource extraction to establish their realism, authors of Western literature, from 
Foote's The Chosen Valley to Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, refocused their writing to 
describe an emerging world where social, political, and economic relations were shaped by water 
(Witschi, 2002, p. 109). Austin was no different. As a writer who had always understood that 
nature was inextricably linked to its use by humans, she began to shift her themes after 1902 
from “mining and individualism” to “water and community” (Witschi, 2002, p. 113). Austin's 
writing, which spanned genres and topics about the American West, always included cultural 
critique at its core. Witschi notes, “To write about water in a land of little rain was not 
necessarily to write about nature” (Witschi, 2002, p. 123). The Land of Little Rain was just the 
beginning of Austin's long career of advocacy for equitable distribution of water resources 



(Witschi, 2002, p. 125).  Unlike many male writers of the American West, Austin recognized that 1

writing about nature was political, social, and ethical—not simply an escape from urbanized 
society. Water and nature, she understood, were linked and subordinate to the needs and wants of 
men. 
 Austin saw similarities between the exploitation of nature by men and the oppression of 
women, Native Americans, and Mexican residents in the American West (Sawyer, 2001, p. 38). 
She makes this connection clear in The Land of Little Rain as she depicts the arid landscape of 
the Mojave Desert and Owens Valley as simultaneously feminine and supreme, harsh and 
terrifying while still alluring. Austin's uses of pronouns are conspicuous and pertinent. In her 
preface to the book, she refers to the earth with feminine pronouns: “The earth is no wanton to 
give up all her best to every comer, but keeps a sweet, separate intimacy for each” (Austin, 1903, 
p. viii). While Austin alludes to the land throughout her text as “it,” she imbues it with typically 
feminine characteristics and dynamics: the powerful allure it holds over men, its beauty, its 
purity. Additionally, she constantly refers to the typical desert visitor as a man. In doing so, she 
immediately establishes a gendered dynamic between the land and her male inhabitants. 

From the first paragraphs of the book, Austin paints a world that feels distinctly 
disorienting, alien, and brutal yet still saturated with beauty and magic. “East away from the 
Sierras,” she writes, “south from Panamint and Amargosa, east and south many an uncounted 
mile, is the Country of Lost Borders” (Austin, 1903, p. 3). The reader is instantly dropped in the 
middle of the desert, disoriented by Austin’s use of direction and landmarks, and wary of her 
warnings of “Lost Borders.” She continues, asserting that “not the law, but the land sets the 
limit,” and that while the desert “supports no man… void of life it never is, however dry the air 
and villainous the soil” (Austin, 1903, p. 3). Still, there is beauty and hope in its landscape. The 
hills, “chrome and vermilion painted,” aspire to the snow-line in the distance. Here Austin 
utilizes the ambiguous meaning of “aspire,” which can mean to hope or reach toward a goal. Its 
Latin root, however, literally means “to breathe,” which hints at another draw of the desert: its 
air, which is the “divinest, cleanest air to be breathed anywhere in God's world,” and holds the 
promise of wealth and gold (Austin, 1903, p. 17). 

The hope and clarity of the desert is perhaps the root of its allure, the siren song that 
captures the men who visit it. Austin describes the land as having “little in it to love,” yet 
impossible to abandon (Austin, 1903, p. 6). Again and again, she describes the siren’s call. The 
desert has a “lotus charm” that tricks one’s sense of time “so that once inhabiting there you 
always mean to go away without quite realizing that you have not done it.” (Austin, 1903, p. 17). 
The land’s promise of wealth tempts and “bewitches” men, specifically (Austin, 1903, p. 17). 
One Pocket Hunter who finally makes it rich and intends to take his wealth to England 
eventually returns and is found by Austin next to a dripping spring. “No man can be stronger 
than his destiny,” she writes—his destiny being the irresistible pull of the desert (Austin, 1903, p. 

 Austin was a staunch advocate against the Owens Valley water grab in 1906, which was one of the first projects of 1

reclamation after the Newlands Reclamation Act. The Owens Valley project was originally intended to create an 
irrigation system, but after a series of dishonest deals and mismanagement, the project instead created an aqueduct 
used to supply Los Angeles with water. Austin denounced the project for destroying the culture and society of the 
region from which the water was taken. Austin later involved herself in the negotiations for the Hoover Dam in the 
hopes of preventing a similar outcome. 



80). Throughout this dynamic, the land holds the upper hand. It remains utterly indifferent to 
man, and it eventually prevails over human efforts as the old ground is “retak[en]... by the wild 
plants, banished by human use” (Austin, 1903, p. 131). Even as the land is used by humans, it 
remains supreme.  

Austin imbues land and water, the land’s dominant resource, with magical, spiritual, and 
religious elements, adding to their sublimity. In the land of little rain, there is either too much 
water or not enough—either drought or flood. The lack of water in the land of “little rain” causes 
the rare presence of water to be imbued with wonder and beauty. When mountains “swim into 
the alpenglow, wet after rain, you conceive how long and imperturbable are the purposes of 
God” (Austin, 1903, p. 186). Austin often anthropomorphizes the water and land; in one 
instance, she describes a creek doing its best to reach a river and the “willows encouraging it as 
much as they could” (Austin, 1903, p. 170). Storms are particularly awe-inspiring, and a strong 
downpour exerts powerful wrath. “Weather does not happen,” Austin writes, “it is the visible 
manifestation of the Spirit moving itself in the void” (Austin, 1903, p. 247). However, one must 
avoid mountain ranges predisposed to floods, as “you will find it forsaken of most things but 
beauty and madness and death and God” (Austin, 1903, p. 184). Austin describes the mysterious 
origins of mountain streams and the secret workings of snow-fed flowers, and portrays lakes as 
the eye of the mountain. The wet coves of hills evoke wonder in their extravagant blooms. A 
field of irises “have the misty blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand, and quicken the 
senses to the anticipation of things ethereal” (Austin, 1903, p. 238). Especially in the presence of 
excess water, the land is saturated with beauty, magic, and spirituality.  

As awesome as the land can be, it is still vulnerable and tied to its use and abuse by 
humans. Austin describes the land as “voiceless,” yet another suggestion of its similarities to the 
women’s condition (Austin, 1903, p. 10). Human life in The Land of Little Rain is organized 
around what little water there is in the desert, as it represents hope, promise, and survival. 
Jimville, a mining town, grew out of Squaw Gulch, and in the spring, Jimville’s population sets 
out to find gold, guided by the “peaks and a few rarely touched water-holes, always, always with 
the golden hope” (Austin, 1903, p. 120). Austin describes a gold miner’s hunch as “an intimation 
from the gods that if you go over a brown back of the hills, by a dripping spring, up Coso way, 
you will find what is worth while” (Austin, 1903, p. 120). Again, man’s hope is connected, even 
adjacently, to water. “Campoodies,” or Native American villages, were always established 
around water. Water also had the ability to create human connection; Austin’s Pocket Hunter was 
“full of fascinating small talk about the ebb and flood of creeks” (Austin, 1903, p. 74). When 
water is removed from its source in the mountains, however, and harnessed for human use, it 
transforms from something magical and powerful to something vulnerable and skittish.  

While streams in the mountains sing to each other, Austin dryly states that “it is the 
proper destiny of every considerable stream in the West to become an irrigating ditch. It would 
seem the streams are willing” (Austin, 1903, p. 225). In this statement, Austin demonstrates how 
the fate of water is inextricably linked to the needs and wants of human communities. It has 
unsettling undertones, however, especially when we consider how Austin has written the land as 
a feminine entity. “It would seem the streams are willing” suggests an assumed consent by the 
water. She continues, “[the streams] go as far as they can, or dare, toward the tillable lands in 
their own boulder fenced gullies…” (Austin, 1903, p. 225). As the brook or stream warily 



transforms into an irrigation ditch, it seems to lose its life. “Sickly, slow streams” become 
infested with tulares, which are either a “ghostly pale” or a “deep poisonous-looking green” and 
contain “mystery and malaria” (Austin, 1903, p. 240). The waters become “thick and brown” and 
filled with rotting willows (Austin, 1903, p. 241). Her descriptions of overflow waters bring to 
mind a quote from Mark Reisner: “We set out to tame the rivers and ended up killing them” 
(Reisner, 1987, p. 486).  

While Austin was a proponent of irrigation when used equitably and for the communities 
from which the waters came, she was vehemently opposed to the unequal distribution of water, 
which destroyed rural societies. She describes a greedy, individualistic treatment of water rights 
in “Other Water Borders” that led to murder and racial violence. The water, again 
anthropomorphized, is depressed by this: “you get that sense of brooding from the confined and 
sober floods” (Austin, 1903, p. 228). On the other hand, El Pueblo de Las Uvas, a small town 
that Austin describes at the end of her book, escapes this individual greed over water. In this 
town, “land dips away to the river pastures,” and the people are warm and live communally and 
generously; “there is not much villainy among them” (Austin, 1903, p. 266, 281). Perhaps this 
warm community has escaped the individualism and greed over the desert’s scarce water because 
it has accepted the desert on its own terms. Austin concludes her book with an appeal to the 
necessity of community in the desert, imploring her reader: 

“Come away, you who are obsessed with your own importance in the scheme of things, 
and have got nothing you did not sweat for, come away by the brown valleys and full-
bosomed hills to the even-breathing days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of El Pueblo 
de Las Uvas” (Austin, 1903, p. 281). 

Written years before the women’s suffrage movement, Austin’s depictions of the desert as 
feminine and her indications that the abuse of the land was connected to the oppression of other 
groups, including women and Native Americans, were undoubtedly informed by her acute 
awareness of the politics of gender and authorship, and her time spent in the desert learning from 
Native Americans (Witschi, 2002, p. 120). Austin sought to write in the feminine and to have her 
writing still be respected (Witschi, 2002, p. 120). However, the crucial feminine aspect of her 
writing was lost by the men who attempted to interpret her work in both the 1903 and 1950 
editions of The Land of Little Rain. Carl Van Doren, who wrote the introduction to the 1950 
edition of The Land of Little Rain, which accompanied Austin’s text with photographs by Ansel 
Adams, was dismissive of Austin as a writer and reduced her to her gender. While Austin was a 
“prophet,” he claimed, she still did not lose her womanhood (Austin & Adams, 1950, p. xi). A 
“matriarch in the desert,” she was a “woman’s woman,” he claimed; while men listened to her 
words, women hung onto them (Austin & Adams, 1950, p. xii). 

The critical themes of Austin’s writing were overlooked by both men who attempted to 
accompany her words with visuals: E. Boyd Smith, the illustrator of the 1903 edition, and Ansel 
Adams, the photographer of the 1950 edition. Smith was commissioned by Houghton Mifflin to 
provide illustrations for Austin’s text; the publisher’s “Note on the Illustrations” includes no 
mention of any control Austin had over the choice of illustrations. The publisher only expresses 
gratitude for being able to secure Smith as the illustrator for Austin’s “charming sketches” of The 



Land of Little Rain (Austin, 1903, p. xi). Adams’s edition was published long after Austin’s 
death; it followed a similar 1948 edition of John Muir’s Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada. Adams 
describes his photographic additions as an attempt to “distill the spirit and mood of the land as 
[he] see[s] it,” although he believes that he sees the land “more clearly” because of his friendship 
with Austin (Austin & Adams, 1950, p. 111).  

In the 1903 edition, Smith begins the book with a cover illustration of a barbed-wire 
fence, splitting the land in half, wrapping around the title; directly above the fence flies a black 
bird. A singular peak is in the distance, and the suggestion of a mountain range extends to the 
right. Another black bird, possibly a crow, sits in the shadow of the fence and pecks at the post. 
The rest of the land is bare, save for a few scattered, tiny plants. The drawing is made of simple, 
black and white lines; the ground itself is stark white. Throughout the book, Smith's illustrations 
are composed of simple, colorless lines, which appear as a stark contrast to Austin’s rich and 
colorful descriptions of the landscape, from “deep poisonous-looking green” tulares to the “misty 
blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand” (Austin, 1903, p. 240, 238). Smith’s illustrations 
preside at the start of each chapter and sit in the margins of the text, occasionally spilling over 
into the page. The first illustration in the book is a white sun blazing over the text, its rays full 
and sharp, its center a blinding white (Austin, 1903, p. 1). The drawings are decidedly literal 
interpretations of the text, providing a visual aid to the reader. As Austin writes of a cattle fence, 
“one could be sure of finding a bird or two in every strip of shadow,” Smith illustrates a singular 
bird in the shadow of a fence post (Austin, 1903, p. 16). If Austin describes a creosote or a yucca 
tree, Smith supplies a thumb-sized drawing in the margins to accompany its description. There is 
no attempt to capture the humanized and ethereal components of Austin’s landscape, and Smith’s 
interpretations allow little room for nuance or subtext within Smith's drawings. Instead, they 
simplify an incredibly rich and complex text into its very literal meaning. 

In Austin and Adams’s 1950 edition, published over a decade after Austin's death, the 
book is bound in yellow fabric and titled in a barely distinguishable burnt orange print, 
suggesting the color of desert sand. Austin's text is located in the first part of the book, while 
Adams’s photographs are set after the text on glossy photographic paper—a jarring division 
between the two contributions to the book. Austin's writing is bare and stands on its own. The 
front and back endpapers display a map of California and Nevada, including markers for the 
Sierra Range, Death Valley, and National Parks.  

In Adams's section of the book, his photographs are set on the right page opposite a 
mostly blank page with a short, unattributed quotation at the top and a brief description of his 
photograph at the bottom. The amount of blank space on the pages evokes the barrenness of the 
desert while also asserting an assumption of importance in occupying so much space in the book. 
In a “Note on the Land and on the Photographs,” Adams admits that he feels a “temerity” in 
“attempting an amalgam” of Austin's writing in his photographs (Austin & Adams, 1950, p. 109). 
Despite a long friendship with Austin, he confesses that he has “depended somewhat on 
conjecture” in his “choice of subjects for the photographs” (Austin & Adams, 1950, p. 111). The 
quotations, he notes, are taken mostly from the body of Austin's text and were selected based on 
logical and emotional relationships to the subjects of his photographs. Adam’s failure to fully cite 
Austin’s quotes, which he selected to fit his photographs, reflects the same theme of gendered 



exploitation that Austin explores in relation to the land. Instead of sapping the desert of its 
resources and magic, Adam saps Austin’s sharp and layered narration of its feminist critique. 

It is unclear if Adams composed the photographs for the book or if he selected them from 
an already existing portfolio, but it would be unsurprising if it were the latter. It is clear, however, 
that Adams chose quotes from Austin (and others, although he does not distinguish between 
them) to serve his photographs, not the other way around. In doing so, he does an immense 
disservice to her text. Austin's quotations are shortened and taken out of context. Where Austin 
wrote about irises,  

“Single flowers are too thin and sketchy of outline to affect the imagination, but the full 
fields have the misty blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand, and quicken the 
senses to the anticipation of things ethereal…” (Austin & Adams, 1950, p. 238). 

Adams selected the singular fragment, “...the anticipation of things ethereal,” to accompany a 
photograph of a sparse tree against an oncoming spring storm (Austin & Adams, 1950, 
photograph 16). Most of Adams’s photos are of dry landscapes, dusty roads, and vistas of the 
Sierras; he includes a few portraits of men and boys in the desert. While he captures the 
sentiment that nature triumphs over man in a photograph of ruins, set with the quote, “not the 
law, but the land sets the limit,” Adams erases any elements of femininity from Austin’s text and 
overlooks the seductive, siren song of the desert (Austin & Adams, 1950, photograph 21). 
Adams’s desert is one even more devoid of life than Austin’s—like Smith, his photographs are 
entirely in black and white. Gone is any sense of magic or femininity; gone is the intricate 
connection between the use of the land and the oppression of minority groups. Set beside 
Adams’s photographs, Austin’s quotations are indistinguishable from the prolific nature writers 
of the American West. 
 In The Land of Little Rain, Mary Austin used a key characteristic of the American West—
its aridity, its scarcity of water—and used it to make broader cultural critiques about the human 
exploitation of natural resources. Austin's feminization of the desert landscape allowed her to 
reveal how water reflects the cultural values and issues of the American West. By infusing her 
realism with the feminine, the magical, and the spiritual, Austin challenged the predominantly 
male literature about the landscape and nature of the American West to expand its cultural 
critiques and understand the complexities of natural resources and how we use them as 
agricultural, survival, and spiritual resources. Her brilliant and rich criticism, however, was 
received and drained of its power by Smith and Adams’ attempts to interpret it. Even years after 
her death, her feminist cultural critiques were overlooked by the overwhelmingly male world of 
Western nature literature and art. 



References 

Austin, M. (1903). The Land of Little Rain. Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Project 
Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51893/51893-h/51893-h.htm#h_243  

Austin, M., & Adams, A. E. (1950). The land of little rain. Houghton Mifflin; Gunst 
Collection. 

Reisner, M. (1987). Cadillac desert: The American West and its disappearing water. 
Penguin Books. 

Sawyer, T. L. (2001). Writing the American desert: Abbey, Austin, Stegner and Williams and 
the preservation of the arid *West [Ph.D., The University of New Mexico]. https://
www.proquest.com/docview/304705079/abstract/BC52B82605314285PQ/1  

Witschi, N. S. (2002). Traces of Gold: California’s Natural Resources and the Claim to 
Realism in Western American Literature. The University of Alabama Press. https://
eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-
b207-7018e5a19601%40redis&vid=0&format=EB 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51893/51893-h/51893-h.htm%23h_243
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51893/51893-h/51893-h.htm%23h_243
https://www.proquest.com/docview/304705079/abstract/BC52B82605314285PQ/1
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https://www.proquest.com/docview/304705079/abstract/BC52B82605314285PQ/1
https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-b207-7018e5a19601@redis&vid=0&format=EB
https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-b207-7018e5a19601@redis&vid=0&format=EB
https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-b207-7018e5a19601@redis&vid=0&format=EB
https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-b207-7018e5a19601@redis&vid=0&format=EB

