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Ecofeminism and Pakistani Anglophone Literature

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DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2018.1558099

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 Interventions
International Journal of Postcolonial Studies

ISSN: 1369-801X (Print) 1469-929X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/riij20

Ecofeminism and Pakistani Anglophone Literature

Neelam Jabeen

To cite this article: Neelam Jabeen (2018): Ecofeminism and Pakistani Anglophone Literature,
Interventions, DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2018.1558099

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 ECOFEMINISM AND PAKISTANI
ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE

Neelam Jabeen
Department of English, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan

..................Ecofeminist discourse is primarily developed by western scholars. It does not

always take into account the discrepancies that the non-western examples of
Pakistani
Anglophone human–nature and women–nature relationships provide. This essay studies
literature certain Pakistani Anglophone texts that abound in such examples that help
develop an alternative ecofeminist analysis to explains these discrepancies. I
postcolonial term this alternative analysis “postcolonial ecofeminism” which does not
ecofeminism
completely depart from mainstream ecofeminism. Postcolonial ecofeminism
women–nature still rests in the basic ecofeminist assumption that there is a connection in
relationship how one treats women and the environment and all feminized and

................. naturalized entities. However, it contends that to explain the women–

nature relationship, especially in the South Asian, post/neocolonial
Pakistani context, it is important to consider the material realities of
women (and men) that are directly related to their status as members of
post/neocolonial societies.

Considering the worldwide readership that Pakistani Anglophone literature is

gaining, it is worthwhile to see how it is responding to the issues and crises
that have hit the globe, irrespective of region and geography. This essay

.......................................................................................................
interventions, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2018.1558099
Neelam Jabeen neely_jabeen@hotmail.com
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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generally concerns itself with the ecofeminist debate – more specifically, how
Pakistani literature in English presents the women–nature connection and
resulting unique women–nature relationship that helps develop insight into
ecofeminism and the role Pakistani Anglophone literature is playing in this
regard.
Ecofeminist philosophy is primarily developed by western scholars. It
emerged out of a concern that there is a connection in how societies treat
women and the natural environment. Since its inception, ecofeminism has
been political. When French feminist Francois d’Eaubonne (1920–2005) in
her 1974 work Le Feminisme ou la mort (“Feminism or Death”) coined the
term “ecofeminism”, she suggested that women had a potential to bring
about ecological revolution (Warren and Erkal 1997, xvi–xvii). Karen
Warren (Warren and Erkal 1997), like many other ecofeminists, later declared
that environment is a feminist issue. Despite such claims on the part of
eminent ecofeminists, ecofeminism is criticized for disregarding the political
nature of environments, as well as gender divisions, as both are politically
constructed to privilege a certain group (James 1996; Agarwal 1992). Also,
ecofeminism is criticized for considering “women” as a unified category
(Agarwal 1992). It is because of such valid criticism that one may question
the relevance of ecofeminism, especially in postcolonial societies where the
material realities of women, particularly in relation to their environments,
are different from those of women in the West. A postcolonial ecofeminism
may be the solution to this problem.
The term “postcolonial ecofeminism” as a literary analytical tool is already
in use but lacks effectiveness, as it uses the mainstream western ecofeminist
lens to analyse a postcolonial text. Youngsuk Chae (2015) states: “The con-
vergence of postcolonialism with ecofeminism [is] what I call postcolonial eco-
feminism” (520). Such definitions of postcolonial ecofeminism disregard the
discrepancies that the non-western examples of the women–nature relation-
ship provide. A postcolonial ecofeminism should not only locate a woman–
nature connection and society’s treatment of both but should also critically
examine the women–nature relationship unique to postcolonial societies
owing to the double bind of postcolonial women. Not only gender, but also
class, race, religion, geography, and politics affect this relationship.
One of the basic tenets of ecofeminism is the assumption of women’s
relationship of care and compassion with nature either because of their
innate capacity, as cultural ecofeminists like Judith Plant (1989) and Starhawk
(1989) assert, or because of their socialization as caretakers, as constructivist
ecofeminists like Carolyn Merchant (1992) and Ariel Salleh (1997) believe.
Cultural ecofeminists (also referred to as “nature” or “spiritual ecofeminists”)
are labelled as essentialists for claiming that women are essentially more
caring and compassionate toward nature (Carlassare 2000). Constructivists,
on the other hand, assert that women and men are equally capable of
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showing care and compassion for nature. It is just because women are socia-
lized to live as nurturers and caretakers that they are more responsive toward
the natural environment. Men are socialized to live differently. Despite the
differences among both schools of thought, there is one general assumption
that women do have a special concern for nature, as compared to men, and
if women fail to show care and compassion for nature it is because they
have internalized patriarchal/androcentric ideologies that sanction the
oppression of women and the environment (Shiva 1988; Plant 1989). It is
important to note that these assertions are made primarily by western scholars
and philosophers, or by those who are directly influenced by western ecofemi-
nist philosophy. Non-western examples, specifically those studied through
Pakistani literature, present some contradictory insights regarding the
women–nature relationship.
As already mentioned, since ecofeminist discourse is primarily developed by
western scholars, it does not always take into account the discrepancies that
non-western examples of human–nature and women–nature relationships
provide. The Pakistani Anglophone texts selected here abound in examples
that help develop an alternative ecofeminist analysis that considers and
explains these discrepancies. I term this alternative analysis “postcolonial eco-
feminism” which does not completely depart from mainstream ecofeminism.
Postcolonial ecofeminism still rests in the basic ecofeminist assumption that
there is a connection in how one treats women and the environment and all
feminized and naturalized entities. However, it contends that to explain the
women–nature relationship, especially in the South Asian, post/neocolonial
Pakistani context, it is important to consider the material realities of
women (and men) that are directly related to their status as members of
post/neocolonial societies. This relationship is neither an outcome of
women’s innate quality of care and compassion for nature and life in
general (as cultural ecofeminists would believe), nor because of women’s
socialization as nurturers and caretakers (as constructivist ecofeminists
would assert). Instead, the women–nature relationship is determined by
women’s material realities, which include the sociopolitical and religious con-
ditions of their societies.
For this study, I have chosen multiple novels, and short stories by Pakistani
authors to show how these representative texts provide examples of human–
nature and women–nature relationships that cannot always be explained
from a mainstream ecofeminist perspective as it neglects the material con-
ditions in which characters live. I use a postcolonial ecofeminist perspective
that helps understand the women–nature relationship in new light and also
highlights the interventions Pakistani Anglophone literature is making in
the mainstream ecofeminist paradigm. I use the terms “nature” and “environ-
ment” with their traditional definitions: nature to refer to the non-human (e.g.
animals, plants, water, land) and environment to refer to the more abstract
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representation of the natural phenomena. Some work has already been done
on the environmental consciousness of Pakistani Anglophone authors
(Rahman 2011a; Yaqoob 2015). Rahman (2011b) presents an ecofeminist
study of a Pakistani film, but there is no substantial work on the ecofeminist
inclinations of fiction writers, more specifically on women–nature relation-
ships as presented in Pakistani fiction. Among several reasons for an underde-
veloped discourse on ecofeminism from Pakistan, one significant reason is the
minimal relevance of mainstream ecofeminist theory to the texts produced
here. In this essay, I use Pakistani Anglophone literature as a vantage point
to study the unique women–nature relationship that problematizes predomi-
nantly western assumptions, and call for a revision of mainstream ecofemin-
ism to include an alternative/postcolonial perspective. As a disclaimer, it is
necessary to add that owing to the relatively short history of Anglophone
Pakistani literature, women–nature representation in the texts discussed is
not the only way of seeing the women–nature relationship in Pakistani
culture. Literature produced in the national language of Urdu and in other
regional languages would certainly provide additional insight into this
relationship.
One of the major interventions that Pakistani Anglophone literature makes
in mainstream ecofeminist discourse is to challenge its assumption of a typical
women–nature relationship in which women have a caring and compassio-
nate attitude toward their natural environment and, if they fail to do so, it
is because they have internalized patriarchal ideologies that sanction the
oppression of both women and nature. Instead, this intervention underscores
multiple facets of the woman–nature relationship.
Uzma Aslam Khan is one of those Pakistani authors who skilfully depict a
unique women–nature relationship. In her novels The Geometry of God,
Trespassing, and Thinner Than Skin she presents numerous female characters
from different social classes, religions, cultures, and geographies. These char-
acters’ relationships with their natural environment vary according to their
class and/or religions, and/or culture, and/or geographical region. Also,
since environments are political (Mukherjee 2010) and politically con-
structed, the post/neocolonial status of the characters affects their relationship
with their natural environment. In The Geometry of God, the female protago-
nist Amal provides a striking example of an unconventional woman–nature
relationship. The novel is set in Zia’s dictatorial regime, notorious for its Isla-
mization of the country that implied a clash between Islam and science. Khan
takes the opportunity to criticize the notion by portraying her protagonist as
an upper-middle-class woman who is a paleontologist. Her interest in the dis-
covery of lost marine species, anatomy, the origin of life, and “examin[ing] the
living” (Khan 2014, 245) is scientific, problematizing the reason–emotion and
culture–nature dualisms in which reason and culture are synonymous and
emotion and nature are identical. Dualism, according to ecofeminist
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philosopher Val Plumwood, results from “a certain kind of denied depen-

dency on a subordinated other” (2002, 41). Science and nature stand in the
same dualistic relationship as culture–nature and reason–emotion, where
science, culture, and reason are considered superior, and nature and reason
as inferior. Since science is considered to be the domain of reason and
culture that men own, a woman’s interest in both might assert her denial of
the feminine sphere of nature and emotion. Amal’s interest in the origin of
whales is not because of her physiology or her socialization as a nurturer
and caretaker, but because of her training as a “practitioner” echoing the
meaning of her name, “Amal. Practice” (Khan 2014, 4). Amal’s scientific
interest in nature and the origin of life is not that of an explorer who wants
to explore in order to dominate. Along with her “Nana” (grandfather)
Zahoor, their knowledge and exploration are more humbling toward the
self and life. The major characters’ interest in fossils and origin of a species
of fish correlates with the idea of human beings as first “imagined” (8) by
God. Khan implicates both these ideas side by side. On the one hand, the
paleontologists are practically involved in finding the “original whale” (9);
on the other hand, there are characters who are confused about the scientific
and/or religious explanation of their creation/existence. According to the
character Zahoor, the reason for the apparent clash between science and reli-
gion is that some people try to use science to prove their faith, instead of using
it for “an urge to learn about the world” (6). Khan dismantles the dualisms of
science–nature, culture–nature, science–religion, and man–woman, giving
new meanings to the woman–nature (and human–nature) relationships.
Khan’s Thinner Than Skin (2012) provides another example of theoretical
intervention into the mainstream ecofeminist paradigm. Khan dismantles the
binary of man–woman with regard to their relationship with nature – man’s
as that of domination and domestication; woman’s as that of care and com-
passion. The women–nature and men–nature relationships she presents are
not consistent but vary according to the cultural, sociopolitical, and religious
status of the characters. She achieves this goal by using the contemporary
sociopolitical and religious fabric of the areas of Northern Pakistan and
weaving her fiction through this fabric to highlight the lifestyles of nomadic
tribes, and the intrusion caused by urban tourists who use their voyeuristic
gaze to “know” the place and its inhabitants, the armed forces who consider
the place as an abode of terrorists, and the religious leaders who want to clear
the valley of infidels. Nomads – some pagan and some Muslim – fearful of
being forcibly converted to Islam, live in a biomorphic unity with their
places. Their sustainable lifestyles are disrupted by the tourists, forest inspec-
tors, and the military. The tourists deem them gypsies who might want a
better lifestyle. One of the characters, Irfan, who seems to understand the
nomadic lifestyle more than others, wants to help bring water to these
places but, knowing the nomadic way of life, is torn between two impulses:
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Do they need it? If for thousands of years people have survived, with varying degree
of success, by building irrigation channels from glacier melt, despite their poverty
and isolation, did they need a man from the city to bring them pipes and taps? It
was a fine line, the one between helping and hurting. To do nothing could mean
becoming a witness to a potential calamity. To do something could mean becoming
the agent of a worse calamity (Khan 2012, 71–2, original emphasis).

Irfan understands that living in the hills, the nomads have their own special-
ized knowledge, along with their myths of jinns and fairies, that help them
sustain themselves. On his previous trip to the valley, he and his friend
Nadir learn about the nomads’ belief in the glaciers’ marriage and that for
the mating of the glaciers, places for the collection of male and female ice
are carefully selected. Female ice is collected from the area where, besides
being beautiful, women are also talented:

Talent meant knowledge of yak milk, butter, fertilizer, and, of course, wool. From
caps to sweaters all the way down to socks, the questions were always the same.
How delicately was the sheep’s wool spun? And what about the kubri embroidery
on the caps – was it colourful and fine? Most importantly, did all the women
cooperate? (Khan 2012, 40).

This list of talents also shows that the people of the valley acknowledge
women’s talent. They realize that the community depends on women as
well as men for its survival, on their share of work and knowledge. Men
also are supposed to have specialized knowledge: “of firewood, agriculture,
trekking, and herding” (40). The greatest secret of their sustainable lifestyle
is “they did not fell that which gave them life” (139). There is necessarily
no difference of attitude between men and women toward the environment.
Both are equally concerned for the natural environment. Furthermore, this
relationship is determined by their need for a sustainable natural environment.
In contrast to Irfan, the female character Farhana visits places to conduct “a
comparative study of glaciers in northern Pakistan and northern California”
(57). She is unable to understand the hospitality of the nomads. She takes
young Kiran with her in a boat, misunderstanding her father’s hospitality
for his approval. Irfan is aware of the intrusion that tourists make by trying
to help the nomads. Farhana, on the other hand, tries to behave like a
saviour without knowing what it is that the nomads need to be protected
from – tourists, men with guns, forest inspectors, or religious extremists.
Khan seems to be incorporating the idea of maldevelopment, a concept pre-
sented by Vandana Shiva (1998), a renowned Indian physicist, environmental
activist, and anti-globalization activist, who considers western developmental
plans for the Third World as more harmful than beneficial: “development
could not but entail destruction for women, nature and subjugate cultures,
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which is why, throughout the third world, women, peasants and tribals are
struggling for liberation from development just as they earlier struggled for
liberation from colonialism” (2). Shiva sees developmental plans for the
Third World as a continuation of the colonization process that expands the
wealth of the colonizer and produces more poverty for the colonized;
hence, “maldevelopment”. In Khan’s novel, when Maryam was young, her
mother would tell her that “it was the Angrez who invented the whole
business, the whole revenue-generating forest policy that bound the herders
to pay a grazing fee and tree-cutting fee. Before the Angrez, they had been
free to graze and chop” (2012, 250–1). Even the efforts of the government
that apparently seem to help the nomads, without understanding their
needs, damage them. The herders are forced to buy Australian sheep whose
dietary requirements are hard to satisfy because of restrictions by forest
inspectors, and when “the free grazing lands are turned to state farms” (245).
It is the intrusion from various sides that disrupts the sustainable lifestyle of
these nomads. Kiran’s death forces them to leave the valley earlier than usual
and move to the plains. Their untimely arrival in the plains brings problems
for them and their animals – the extreme heat of the plains and a lack of
food for the animals. Some of these nomads are tricked into abandoning
their traditional lifestyle and settling down: “giving up free grazing rights,
purchasing small plots of land from the state that told them what to plant
and when. The same cash crops … [for] the same people who took away
their grazing rights” (251). These people would “wait fifty years for each
pine, deodar and fir to reach maturity. Only after maturity could each be
cut. Hardly anyone waited anymore” (248). They now turn to unsustainable
practices because of the restrictions of the forest police. For Khan, maldeve-
lopment as a material condition of these characters determines their relation-
ship with their environment. The apparently damaging practices of these
nomads are survival tactics more than anything else.
Khan’s (2013) presentation of ambivalent women–nature relationships is
yet another example of theoretical intervention. Her characters in Trespassing
do not always exhibit a typical caring and compassionate attitude toward
their natural environment and life in general. Their relationship with the
natural environment is ambivalent, as they establish it according to their
material conditions. The female character Dia, on the one hand, marvels at
how the silkworms spin their silk, and on the other hand wonders “would
the Empress have squashed the caterpillars if she had known what would
happen twenty-five hundred years after her find? If so, the Sicilians who’d
been trying to make silk from spider webs wouldn’t have kidnapped and tor-
tured their neighbors” (11). Dia is concerned more for human life than for the
worms who are boiled in water to obtain silk. Similarly, her mother runs the
factory that breeds the worms and produces the silk, but she is against the
toxic dyes and instead prefers organic dyes that are harmless for the
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environment. Both these women have a human-centered approach, unlike the

ecofeminist assumptions of women’s care and compassion for life in general,
including animal life. For ecofeminists, women’s closeness to nature as a result
of their socialization as nurturers and caretakers does not empower them, as
this closeness and association are used to inferiorize both women and nature.
Plant (1989) asserts: “It is true that women have been socialized in such a way
that allows them to experience compassion” (3); this quality does not afford
them any power because their inferior status as female means their care and
compassion for others “becomes entangled with personal frustrations over
feelings of powerlessness, leading to an inability to take responsibility” (3).
Plant stresses the need for women to claim those attributes resulting from
socialization that are beneficial for the species. She encourages women to
overcome internalized patriarchal values that reinforce their own inferiority.
Only then will women take their own responsibility and make men take
theirs. However, interpreting Dia and her mother’s relationship with non-
human life as an internalized patriarchal ideology would be problematic, as
they are both strong women who can stand up for their rights and of those
they value. Besides, Dia is aware of the cruelty of silkworm breeding:
“people have always depended on animals for food and clothing, and then
four thousand years ago, along came a Chinese empress who made insects
our property too” (Khan 2013, 106). Khan is acutely aware of the neoliberal
environmental agendas that commodify nature (Robertson 2004) and the
ambivalent relationship that her female characters have with the environment.
This relationship cannot be explained as internalized patriarchal oppression.
These characters are portrayed as emancipated women who happen to care
for human life more than non-human life. Unlike the nomadic characters of
Thinner Than Skin, Dia and her mother’s lack of interest in non-human life
is another striking example of how material conditions determine human–
nature relationships. The survival and sustainability of these upper-middle-
class characters rest in a flourishing silk business where they are well aware
of how to breed the silkworm and how to keep the environment clean for
better standards of human life.
In addition to Dia’s mother using organic instead of chemical dyes, there are
other references to environmental pollution caused by war in the East.
Daanish, one of the major male characters, wonders at the irony that he
observes in the United States:

Up in the sky, white clouds drifted. No haze, no smog. No potholes, beggars,

burning litter, kidnapping or dismissed governments. Such beauty in the country
that consumed thirty per cent of the world’s energy, emitted a quarter of its
carbon dioxide, had the highest military expenditure in the world, and committed
fifty years of nuclear accidents, due to which the oceans teemed with plutonium,
uranium, and God alone knew what other poisons (Khan 2013, 48).
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He marvels at the ambivalence of the preferences of the government common

to all capitalist countries. Their own environments are apparently clean
because they are “dumping” all the poisons “on them” (48, original empha-
sis), exhibiting their selective environmental justice. This example is an
extreme form of othering in which US environmental policies find elite US
lives as more important, relegating the lives of others to the status of non-
human. Here, “them” for the United States is parallel to the silkworms for
Dia and her mother. Selective justice is happening in both cases, and exhibit-
ing the ambivalent human–nature relationship.
Khan’s fiction sheds light on class, culture, religion, and politics as deter-
mining factors in women–nature and human–nature relationships. Rukhsana
Ahmad, on the other hand, brings to light another cause of the human–nature
divide that challenges mainstream ecofeminist assumptions. Anthropologist
Brian Morris (1991) argues that economic development and technological
advancements have resulted in the commodification of nature that in turn
has affected human–nature relationships. This has also changed the respective
roles of the human and the non-human such that one is the controller and the
other the controlled, widening the human–non-human divide. Wildlife con-
servation programmes imported from the United States to South Asian
countries like India are examples not only of the master-over-nature role of
humans but also of the resulting animosity between the human and the
non-human. For Ahmad (2014), the politically constructed environment as
development agenda creates animosity between the human and the non-
human. In the short story “The Gatekeeper’s Wife” in her collection of the
same name she makes a similar point. Zoo manager Annette, the Memsahib
from the West, takes a long time to understand that her western ideals of
animal rights clash with the situation she is in. Her compassion for the zoo
animals and her sense of justice dwindles when she learns that Tara, the gate-
keeper’s wife, steals meat from the tiger’s cage to feed her children. She fails to
question the absurdity of Tara’s claim that Heera the tiger wants her to take
the meat from its cage, otherwise, it will starve itself. For the first time, Annette
realizes that the zoo animals are better fed than the families of those who are
working there. Tara’s theft in these circumstances can’t be judged as injustice
to the animal. Ahmad strategically alludes to the tigers of Sundarbans as an
intertextual reference to Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005), in which
Ghosh highlights a similar human–animal divide that becomes the root
cause of the destruction of both. Ghosh has a striking way of bringing
home his point. By choosing Sundarbans as the setting of the novel, an area
known for its tigers and crocodiles, Ghosh asserts that humans and animals
have lived together for ages and they have their own ways to survive. It is
only international pressure for Bengali tiger preservation on the local govern-
ment that forces the authorities to take measures that prioritize animal life
over human life. The lives of human refugees who take refuge in tiger
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conservation areas are considered less precious than animal lives. The point
that Ahmad hints at is that valuing and caring for animal lives should not
be at the cost of human life. From a mainstream ecofeminist perspective,
this approach may sound human-centered, but such ambivalent human–
nature relationships are the outcome of material conditions and a regular
feature of a postcolonial ecofeminism.
Ahmad’s short story “The Spell and the Ever-changing Moon” relates to many
sets of dualisms: man–woman, mind–body, reason–emotion, and culture–nature.
In all these sets, man, mind, reason, and culture are synonymous; and woman,
body, emotion, and nature are identical. Because women are connected to
nature, as both reproduce, they belong to the bodily realm – hence the embodi-
ment of both women and nature. Some ecofeminists denounce the body and
embodiment debate as essentialist (Gaard 2011). Some, however, insist on claim-
ing the body, since rejecting it coopts the discourse that privileges mind and
reason and devalues body and emotion, creating binaries between man and
woman, culture, and nature. Feminist and environmental philosopher Terri
Field (2000) claims to be a non-essentialist, yet considers the body to be indispen-
sable for ecofeminism: “Given that it is our bodies that have situated us as ‘mere’
nature, animality, flesh, immanence, I suggest that it is to our bodies that we
should turn to rethink these notions” (56). Ahmad’s “The Spell and the Ever-
changing Moon” takes a similar stance when its female protagonist finds the
way to emancipation through owning her body. Ahmad uses a cultural supersti-
tion as a tool to make her character Nisa own her body. Nisa goes to a woman
named Talat who apparently has some magical powers to perform miracles,
including bringing sadistic and abusive husbands back on track. Talat suggests
to Nisa that she should add a drop of her menstrual blood in her husband’s
drink to subdue him and make him her slave. Nisa shudders at the thought of
performing such an “impure” act but, as her husband’s abuse increases, she
gradually comes to think of her menstrual blood as not as impure as she pre-
viously thought. Although she never does add her blood to his drink, “her atti-
tude to her own body change[s] subtly”, and she “[begins] to refuse him. That
was the way of wayward women, she’d been taught, but she no longer cared”
(154). Her name, Nisa, is also symbolic, as it is the title of one of the chapters
of the holy Quran. It means “woman” and the chapter deals with the rights
and obligations of women. Her acceptance of her body reveals her rights as a
human being. It frees her of her acceptance of her husband’s abuse. Learning
that Talat is a fraud, Nisa also learns there is no spell that can change her circum-
stances other than her own actions and decisions. Instead of waiting patiently for
a miracle or a spell that would work, she leaves her husband’s house. Nisa’s
acceptance of her body is a step toward her emancipation. In societies like
Nisa’s, where women internalize their inferiority because of their femininity,
going back to their bodies would help them escape their inferiority, as Field
suggests.
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11

By portraying another female character, Fariha, as a foil to Nisa, Ahmad’s

“The Nightmare” makes yet another significant intervention into ecofeminist
discourse. In mainstream ecofeminism, women–nature embodiment that
results in naturalizing women and feminizing nature is considered a symbolic
connection that can be seen in religion and literature (Warren et al. 1993).
Terms like “virgin”, “barren”, “fertile”, “seed”, “womb”, “rape”, etc. are
synonymously used for both women and land. Similarly, women are referred
to in animal terms: cows, bitches, foxes, etc. These so-called symbolic women–
nature connections are not merely symbolic in many South Asian societies,
including Pakistan. Women’s bodies are treated as land where their only func-
tion is to reproduce. If they fail to do so, they are useless, just like barren land.
Ahmad continues this embodiment debate in “The Nightmare” where Fariha,
the female protagonist, does not find emancipation. Where Nisa’s acceptance
of her body emancipates her, Fariha’s lack of this realization perpetuates her
oppression. She considers her body as a “vessel” and fears that she would
“break if she didn’t yield” (Ahmad 2014, 80). She is sexually abused as a
child by an “uncle”, and her marital relationship is forced, since it is the
only “way to get babies” (80). Her husband only needs her body for repro-
duction. She does not even have the right to refuse abortion, as it is her
husband who decides whether she should have the baby or not. Her
husband also body-shames her, calling her “fat” and the children “so dark”
(82–3). His constant torture in one way or the other depresses her so much
that she ends up in a hospital for six months. Her depression, which her
husband overtly defines as madness, is an excuse for him to leave her and
take the children with him. Fariha has clearly internalized oppression, since
she blames herself for everything. After her abortion, she considers herself
“barren … unable to produce a normal baby … what’s a woman worth if
she can’t even bear children?” (85). It is only in her dream that she acknowl-
edges her plight as a victim. She sees her relationship with her husband in the
“nightmare” as that of a “huge vicious-looking vulture and a trembly little
dove” (81–2). In a trance-like state, she explains to the nurse how the
“bird” hurt and wounded her and later tells the nurse that her husband
adores her. Fariha is unable to understand that she does not deserve what
she is going through and this helps her husband violate her even more.
Through the stories of both Nisa and Fariha, Ahmad suggests that the route
to female emancipation is not rejecting their bodies but accepting and owning
them. Rejecting embodiment as essentialist cannot solve the problem when
women’s bodies are actually treated as commodities. Such examples from
Pakistani texts shed light on the inadequacy of mainstream ecofeminism to
explain women–nature connections as lived experiences and pave the way
for a comprehensive postcolonial ecofeminism.
In all the texts discussed, the women–nature relationship cannot be ascribed
to one attribute: compassion. The authors have depicted this relationship as
............................
in ter v enti ons – 0 :0 12

multifaceted, determined by the material conditions of their characters. Khan

dismantles the binaries of man–woman, culture–nature, science–nature,
science–religion, and reason–emotion dualisms presenting unique women–
nature relationships that are at times ambivalent. Her female characters
Amal, Dia, and Farzana cannot be homogenized into one category of
women who share similar concerns for nature. Similarly, Khan presents
male characters like Irfan, who seem to exhibit more compassion for life as
compared to women. Ahmad brings other serious issues to the fore. She high-
lights the human–nature divide that results from the neoliberal agendas of
animal conservation that force humans to take actions that they might not
take in other circumstances as survival strategies. Ahmad also highlights
another significant ecofeminist issue regarding the body. Her depiction of
the issue helps to understand the importance of body and embodiment for
women–nature emancipation.
All these depictions of various women–nature relationships problematize
western ecofeminist assumptions and provide major interventions that can
help broaden the scope of ecofeminism. Without rejecting the twin domina-
tion of women and nature at the hands of patriarchy, Pakistani Anglophone
literature challenges mainstream ecofeminist discourse for its lack of relevance
to post/neocolonial societies. In doing so, it helps ecofeminism to expand and
embrace diversity in women–nature and human–nature relationships, posi-
tioning itself in the ecofeminist discourse.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Neelam Jabeen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0112-7137

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