Dying Women and Already Dead Land: An Ecofeminist Reading of Manjula Padmanabhan’s Escape

Abstract

Ecofeminism conceptualizes that exploitation of both women and environment results from the patriarchal setup of the world. Dystopian fiction have not only been warning us of the dangers of an autocratic regime powered by potential technological advancements, but have also portrayed how the nature and land forever changes in such a dystopian fate. This paper intends to analyze Manjula Padmanaban’s Escape – a feminist dystopian fiction with an eco-dystopian narrative that follows the life of the only known woman survivor in a post-apocalyptic country called “The Brother Land” formed after the national femicide; new humans (men) are genetically cloned under the iron-fist rule of their cloned Generals brothers who were coded to eradicate the remaining ‘vermins in hide’ and spread their ideology throughout the world.