Doğanın yetiştirdiği: Delia Owens'ın Where the Crawdads Sing adlı romanının ekofeminist okuması

From the first humans to the present day, women and nature have a deep bond because of their similar characteristics. Although their similarities of giving life and nurturing caused women and nature to be seen as sacred entities often referred to as "Great Mother" and "Mother Goddess" respectively in Paleolithic and Neolithic societies, this bond has also led to their exploitation especially with the rise of patriarchy. Ecofeminism as a movement, which emerged from the merging and development of feminism and ecology, attempts to raise consciousness against this exploitation. The ecofeminism movement aims to raise awareness of the oppression of a patriarchal society and lead an egalitarian, oppression-free, sustainable life with high prosperity. Ecofeminist thought is a radical critique of patriarchal capitalism because ecofeminists challenge Western binary oppositions, which lie at the root of all hierarchies and exploitative ideologies. This thesis will demonstrate how Delia Owens's novel Where the Crawdads Sing challenges these dichotomies especially by offering an alternative unity in the Paleolithic image of the Great Mother, whose wholeness was divided in the Neolithic image of the Earth Mother. Whereas the Great Mother encompasses oppositions between light and dark, life and death, good and bad in a continuing cyclicity, the Earth Mother, whose sole purpose is to serve humans, was created in the image of men. While making this analysis, the views of various ecofeminists such as Carolyn Merchant, Vandana Shiva, and Val Plumwood have been referred to; especially Catherine M. Roach's references to the binary opposition of good mother and bad mother has helped analyze nature's nurturing and destructive features. In examining and analyzing the undivided image of the Great Mother as it is manifested in Where the Crawdads Sing in the continuity of the marsh and swamp, life and death, light and dark, day and night, this thesis aims to provide an ecofeminist alternative to the existing patriarchal norms based on binary oppositions that exile disobedient women such as the protagonist Kya and wild nature to margins and non-existence.