Exploring Postcolonial Ecofeminism in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

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.