Abstract:
This paper examines postcolonial ecofeminism in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve
and Toni Morison’s The Bluest Eye. Nowadays, ecofeminism is considered as one of the major
disciplines in literature due to its active association of bridging the gender and environment
conspicuously in ideological terms. The ecological crisis due to the massive environmental
destruction and the oppression of women in male dominated society adjoin the fact that race, class,
caste and gender are intrinsically interconnected. In this context, this paper explores how the
concept of ecofeminism forms the ideologies of postcolonial regions, specially South Asian and
African-American spheres. Rukmani, in Nectar in a Sieve represents an ordinary feature of a South
Asian rural woman, who maintains an outstanding bond with nature, ultimately turns into the victim
of the postcolonial industrialization. On the other hand, Pecola in The Bluest Eye, is the victim of
racial discrimination in the American society. Therefore, this paper takes an ecofeminist approach
to highlight women identity crisis and seeks to outline how nature is degraded by humans and
women are oppressed by men. This paper also presents a comparative analysis between the
ecofeminist features of these two novels and shows how the identities of the protagonists are shaped
in the postcolonial capitalistic grounds.
Description:
This thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MA in English Language and Literature of East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
