Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part F (2025)

Feminist dystopias are closely related to critical dystopias, while criticizing the prevailing social inequalities, it resist the ultimate catastrophic circumstances through the incorporation of utopian hope. Raffaella Baccolini has given the credit for defining feminist dystopias under critical dystopias. He, in collaboration with Tom Moylan extended the following definition of critical dystopias:
“Texts that maintain a utopian impulse by foregrounding resistance, even in the most oppressive conditions”
It is important to understand that feminist dystopias are not treated as a distant genre; nevertheless, Literature is brimming with such works which fulfil the requirements of being considered feminist dystopia. The easiest way to understand the feminist dystopian work is that it uses dystopian narratives to exaggerate and intensifies the existing set of evils comprising; gender inequality, oppression, subjugation of women to speculate a monstrous future. It deals with the” bad place”, the dystopian world where one gender is being oppressed by the other one in various ways, which includes the limitations of reproductive rights also. That one gender is often females, who suffers under the tyrannical state and any kind of violation leads to critical retribution. Even though, feminist dystopias demonstrates a terrifying, appalling society however: it also works like a warning and calls for a change. It incorporates the ‘utopian hope’ in the form of rebellion or resistance against the prevailing order and eventually the justice and social order is achieved. Utopian hope brings out the fact that things can be drastic in future, but transformation is not implausible and can be achieved through revolution. While writing this research paper I carry this aim to answer the question that in what ways feminist dystopias works to critique the society as well as inspire us to transform it to avoid the extremity of the evils. I will be analysing Manjula Padmanabhan ‘s “ Escape” set in an unnamed misogynistic world driven by technology rather than humanistic values and is devoid of females. The story revolves around the female Protagonist Meiji, who is the “last of her own kind” and is being protected by her three uncles: the eldest, middle and the youngest who symbolizing the three levels of patriarchal protection and control. This “ no women’s land’ is the grotesque description of unchecked misogyny and power distribution. This land, which once seen women as merely the reproductive objects, now eradicate the entire race of women through technological advancements, reflecting on the imbalance between science and moral values. Manjula Padmanbhan through this intriguing story not only shed light on the overreach of technology, lack of humanistic values, extreme patriarchal control, and misogyny, but also shakes the world into waking up to the transformation- before this conjectured world becomes a reality. The study employs feminist criticism to explore the themes of gender inequality, patriarchal structure and misogyny through a close textual reading. Additionally, concepts from critical dystopias will also be applied to study the narrative within the framework of feminist dystopias.