A Comparative Ecofeminist Reading of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Forūğ Farroḵzād’s “I Pity the Garden”

It took a long time for ecocriticism to emerge as a concerted interdisciplinary approach in literary studies. Glotfelty (1996) maintains that it concerns the study of the asymmetrical relationship between nature and human beings. Ecocriticism questions human’s violation towards the environment. As the study of a similar relationship between man and woman has been a pivotal concern in feminism, ecocriticism and feminism found a common ground for merger. Ecofeminism investigates the woman-nature relationship towards which its various proponents take different stances. The violation of nature by human beings is on a par with the suppression of women in a patriarchy because they are both determined by what Warren (2000) calls the “logic of domination,” which sanctions and justifies the subordination of women as well as the nature. This paper aims at comparatively investigating the interrelatedness of sexism and naturism in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972) and Forūğ Farroḵzād’s “I Pity the Garden” through an ecofeminist perspective to illustrate their simultaneous literary, social and political involvement with femininity and nature. Both poets relate the inferiority of women to the subordination of nature as the binary logic that perpetuates patriarchy which also establishes and reinforces anthropocentrism and inevitably leads to the subordination of nature.