Search

The ecofeminist epistemologies recognize the ecological and social interdependencies in the planetary system. Carolyn Merchant’s (2014) concept of partnership ethics is grounded on the interdependencies between the biotic and abiotic communities: “A partnership ethic holds that the greatest good for the human and nonhuman communities is in their mutual living interdependence” (83). Following this line of thought, this paper studies Barbara Kingsolver’s fiction and nonfiction, namely, High Tide in Tucson (1995), Small Wonder (2003), Prodigal Summer (2000), Flight Behaviour (2012), and Animal Dreams (1990) through the lens of Ecofeminist Partnership Ethics (Carolyn Merchant 2014) and foregrounds the interrelationship between women, women-nature, and human-nature. This paper also analyses the ecofeminist thoughts of Karren Warren, Val Plumwood, and Carolyn Merchant and how Kingsolver’s works repudiate the limitations of dualistic thinking (culture/nature, man/woman) and the subordination of nature and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interweaving three stories set in a small town community of the Appalachian mountains, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer (2000) details its leading female biologists' attempts and struggles to emphatically engage science with nature. All three storylines start with parties in conflict that eventually reach compromise by coming to terms with the engaged entanglement of women with men, mind with matter, reason with emotion, humans with nonhumans, as well as environmentalist or scientific ideologies with theological or agricultural doctrines. Prodigal Summer accentuates the inevitability of interaction and adaptation to support the necessity of cultivating communicative response-ability and responsibility for productive change in attempts to realize a more sustainable future for all matters interdependently coexisting in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prodigal Summer is a story of a small town in Appalachia, during a single, humid summer specifically focusing on the lives of Deanna Wolfe, Lusa Landowski, and Garnett walker. These main characters are introverted and solitary individuals who have unique and strong views about their natural surroundings. Throughout the course of a spring and summer, their lives change drastically, and they realize that they, like other creatures, are not solitary. The characters are connected with all living things like a complex web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]