Intersections of Ecofeminism in Kamala Markandaya’s Novel Nectar in a Sieve

Abstract

Crucial to feminists studies concerning to degradation is the textual analysis of
male world’s domination over ecology and women on parallel level. Ecofeminism
is a multidimensional term that has roots in different feminist practices and
philosophies. These different perspectives reflect a variety of feminist
approaches and mirror different understandings of nature and solution to
burning environmental problems. I trace within Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in
a Sieve that how women have been marginalized and devalued on a large scale
since the very birth of colonization. Similarly, the other oppressed non-human
body; environment has also been degraded, devalued and mistreated by the
local domination of masculine regimes and by the colonizers. This text highlights
how poor live under inhuman conditions in these male chauvinistic societies. In
these patriarchal societies, particularly in the villages of third world countries
women and nature are regarded as equal and same due to their nurturing and
reproductive qualities. Gender discrimination and exploitation of these rural
families and other evils are also at affinity. The arrival of white missionaries in
these agrarian societies creates the problems for innocent village dwellers in the
form of alienation and displacement. The study objective includes finding out
not only women’s relation to nature and society's treatment to nature but
finding their place within class and gender discriminated patriarchal and
capitalist societies also. It also aims at to trace the gender and class issues in the
novel to ascertain a triangular relationship of the theory (ecofeminism, Marxism
and post colonialism) by developing an intersectional medium.