“Can a wild stream and a girl be one and the same?”: An Ecofeminist Reading of Select Short Stories from Nandini Sahu’s Shedding the Metaphors

Abstract

This paper attempts an ecofeminist reading of select short stories from Nandini Sahu’s Shedding the Metaphors (2023). The stories explore the complexities of human emotions, relationships, and experiences and are diverse in their themes of love, loss and self-discovery, where the personal frequently intersects with the political. They contain imagery and symbolism from the natural world to provide the setting and allegorize the distinct experience of being a woman in a patriarchal world and assert the interconnectedness of all beings. Most of the stories have female protagonists whose journey can be traced to draw attention to patriarchy’s exploitation of women as well as nature. In some of them, gender intersects with issues like sexuality and class to demonstrate how systems of oppression mutually reinforce each other. While connecting feminism with ecology, ecofeminism contends that women's oppression and ecological degradation are outcomes of patriarchy and capitalism. However, ecofeminism is not restricted to connections between nature and women, but it is about the relationality and interconnectedness of all beings, hence arguing against all systems of domination. human beings. This paper will attempt an ecofeminist reading of select short stories from Sahu’s collection. Close textual analysis will expose the underlying oppression of women and the environment and how they are intertwined. Such a reading will be geared towards making a call for dismantling all hierarchies and fostering universal sympathy for all beings, human or non-human.