Ecofeminism in Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve

Kamala Markandaya deals with the imbalance, plight and predicament of women, especially of working class women and another oppressed entity: the environment. As Markandaya, Ecofeminism also recognizes the oppressed entities: the environment and the women as two different and independent entities. She portrays; how a society’s women are totally degraded due to poverty, women’s strong ties with nature and nature’s exploitation by patriarchy and industrialists.

The aim of my paper is to show how Ecofeminism have made its way into the novel and like Markandaya how Ecofeminists too establish women and environment as two independent and different entities. Markandaya portrays Rukmani, the protagonist, and the environment as oppressed beings. Rukmani’s work in the garden and total dependence on this resource through her hard labour depicts her deep rooted link with nature.

Ecofeminism as a combination of ecology or environmentalism and feminism it suggests a unique mixture of literary and cultural perspectives that provides literary and cultural perspectives that provides literary and cultural critics a specific lens through which they can investigate the ways nature is represented in literature and linked with representations of race, gender, class and sexuality. Ecofeminists believe that patriarchal society is built on four interlocking pillars: sexism, racism, class exploitation and environmental destruction. They argue that there is close relationship between women and nature that comes from their shared history of oppression by male domination. Ecofeminism literary criticism is similarly concerned with the depiction of nature; it emphasized how traditional representations often see the land as innocent, female and ripe for exploitation.

The term/word ‘Ecofeminism’ has its origin in Francoise d’ Eabonne book Feminism ou la Mort(Feminism or death) published in 1974 and translated into English in 1989. Moreover Ecofeminism (a combination and connection of environment and women) is a value system, a social movement, an interdisciplinary approach and now a practice also, which offers a political investigation that explores the link between androcentricism (men as centre of power and authority) and environmental mistreatment and exploitation. We are in the dire need to change the dominant patriarchal nature in the prevalent system of society by snatching control and power from patriarchy.

Nectar in a Sieve is replete with the dominant issues of urbanization, when these villagers are evicted from rented land, women’s oppression and exploitation in male dominated society, women’s connection with nature and environment’s degradation, class and gender issues. Indira Ganesan writes in the introduction to the Nectar in a Sieve that by giving voice to the main character Rukmani, Markandaya gives us a woman who has great affect on us through not only the problems of rural life but also the problem that she is a woman. (Ganesan, 2002).