Vol. 6, Issue 1, Part D (2024)

This paper uses an ecofeminist lens to examine the intersection of gender and nature in Anuradha Roy's The Folded Earth (2011), exploring how the novel weaves together women's struggles with environmental degradation. Set against the increasingly threatened landscape of the Himalayan foothills, this narrative follows Maya, a young widow who seeks refuge from personal trauma in the small town of Ranikhet. The novel reflects this ecological decline of the surrounding landscape as well as reflects larger systemic exploitations on both women and nature; while Maya grapples with her own loss as well as the constraints of a patriarchal society, the paper draws upon the core ecofeminist ideas to analyse how the female characters depicted by Roy, each negotiating their existence in a patriarchal social order, demonstrate complex interconnections between gender, ecology and power. This parallel marginalisation and objectification of women and the natural world both come under exploitation in the capitalist and patriarchal structures. With its narrative of ecological degradation and feminine resilience, The Folded Earth underlines the inseparable bond between feminine identities and the environment. Therefore, this paper argues that by critiquing the different forms of cultural and environmental destruction, Roy's work reveals how gender and ecological concerns are interlinked through these convergences that the paper explores, helping to further the discourse over ecofeminism but emphasising that the two could not be approached in separate manners.