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All of the Birds Are Laughing: An Ecofeminist Interpretation of Female Pastoral in Kate Bush’s A Sky of Honey
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2025
Abstract
This article offers an ecofeminist interpretation of female pastoral expression in Kate Bush’s song cycle A Sky of Honey (2005). By identifying points of overlap between the re-visionary strategies of female pastoral and the ecofeminist ethics of care, I examine how A Sky of Honey’s sound world interrogates and restructures the primacy of dualist thinking common in pastoral convention. Exploring the creative background of A Sky of Honey, including the accompanying artwork, I first establish points of convergence with and divergence from pastoral tradition. I then analyse musical motifs to trace the development of character voices, before considering how the interactions of human voice and birdsong articulate a pastoral space that dissolves dualist structures in favour of collaboration. Reflecting on how this space demonstrates an ecofeminist ethics of care, I frame A Sky of Honey as an expression of female pastoral that reconfigures pastoral mythologies to envision an alternate vision of empathy and relationality.
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