An Ecofeminist Reading of So Far from God, Solar Storms, and My Year of Meats

Abstract

Ana Castillo’s So Far from God, Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms, and Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats markedly depict women’s systematic oppression by patriarchy in modern Western culture. In this paper, it is argued that female characters in the novels are oppressed due to biology, gender roles, and ejection from the male scale-of-reason. As ecofeminism relates womanhood to historical socioeconomic circumstances as well as traditionalist conceptions of patriarchy, body, and God, this paper examines relevant passages from the novels, all of which reflect the female novelists’ endeavor to write against patriarchy, ascertain the intersectionality of oppression and connectedness of women. The literature shows that a non-androcentric / non-anthropocentric concept of difference is exigent to dismantling androcentrism and acknowledging the inherent value of both women and nature.  In research, this paper distinguishes between patriarchy, the male-dominated system of social relations and cultural values; and hierarchy, the relations of power and command dictated by patriarchal infrastructure and superstructure. As the essentialist view of both woman and nature is rejected, nature is both materially and ideologically determined. Gender is, too, culturally constructed; it is a historical variant.