Women and Nature in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple: An Eco-Feminist Study

Abstract

This thesis attempts an ecofeminist study of two contemporary novels, Housekeeping (1980) by Marilynne Robinson and The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker. Ecofeminist readings explore and analyze a relationship between women and nature in literary texts. Ecofeminism strongly holds that the ideology that allows the domination of women (sexism) is the same that allows the degradation of the natural environment (speciesism). It, therefore, intersects with several theoretical disciplines; feminism, ecocriticism, and post-colonialism. The thesis will explore, on the one hand, how both narratives provide a critique of the oppression of women in contemporary white American and African-American societies and the parallel abuse of nature. It attempts to explore how the chosen novels are not only examples of feminist speculations, but also address wider issues of discrimination based on race, class or species. On the other, the thesis seeks to reveal that Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple are both feminist utopias with some elements of dystopias within them. In addition to that, it seeks to explore the meaning of utopian thought