In this thesis the Swedish author Elin Wägner’s debate book Alarm clock and the American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel Herland are analysed and compared from an ecofeminist perspective. Since the use of an ecofeminist perspective can be perceived as anachronistic as the term ecofeminism was drafted far later than the literary works in question I have chosen to distinguish between empirical and analytical concepts to approach their texts. In order to interpret their texts in their intellectual and historical contexts, concepts such as ecofeminism, matriarchy, utopia, vision and science have been of significance. This as the authors’ theoretical approaches in matriarchal theories, utopic perception, vision and science shaped their literary point of departure. The sociologist Lester Frank Ward’s theories on social planning had a huge impact on Gilman’s ideas as had the influence of the Darwinian movement focusing on evolution and eugenic, theories that at the time around the turn of the 19th century influenced social science, history and psychology. Elin Wägner found her inspiration in works by Johan Jakob Bachofen, Rosa Mayreder and Mathilde Vaerting, anchored in the Central European literacy discourse of her time; ideas significant for her civilization-critical thinking focusing on the relationship between women’s subordination and the environment, where the ruling of the earth is understood by the same logic that drives men’s dominion over women. Wägner and Gilman follows a line in the eco-feminist theorem, based on the statement that women are more responsive than men to nature and environmental issues, a biological determinism, conceptual essentialism and universalism, based on women’s different experiences in a gender society.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-152796 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Karlsson, Micael |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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