An Ecocritical Reading of Muinar by Latife Tekin and Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

Abstract

This study aims to analyze ecocritical explorations and ecofeminist diologics inherent in Muinar by Latife Tekin and Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. These novels portray female characters who undergo important changes in awareness in their pursuit of their identities as both novels have a primary emphasis on critiquing patriarchal perception of women and nature. This study sheds light on how the authors’ sensitivity and concerns about women and environment are manifested with the phases of the modifications in female protagonists Elime through her interaction with the internal voice of Muinar, who enters the minds of many women, in Muinar and a nameless woman through her spiritual journey to her homeland in Surfacing after their closeness to nature. This affiliation consequently results in the characters’ independence, self-sufficiency, resistance to oppression, self-discovery and environmental awareness. Focusing on female characters’ encounter with patriarchal oppression and the necessity of their physical immersion with the land, the authors criticize the harmful and destructive effects of modernized and technologized city life. Asserting alienation from nature and separation between body and mind have brought about the current crisis, these novels concomitantly put the emphasis on the wholeness with all beings on earth in order for women to complete their recuperation and recover from the all the sickness threatening their lives.