Chapter I

Chapter I

Introduction

Nature is an incredible treasure that nurtures earthly beings through its abundance. Green is the primary colour which has harmony over life and its poignant magnificence around the world. Nature is always nourishing with its terrestrial grandeur and it is persistently associated with women as maiden earth, fertile land and mother nature. Women and nature are cherished together from the embryonic classical mythology. Their connection is noble and precious and they are club ultimately forever. Nature is allied with women because both have a balanced cycle, potency and fertility. Women and nature have fused with green ecology and ecofeminism. Ecofeminism is the new-fangled movement which bonds feminism with ecology. It finds its place in this cosmos right from the beginning of man and nature. In 1974 Francoise d’Eaubonne, the French writer concocted this term. This approach inter-twins the exploitation and hegemony over women and the environment. Ecofeminism evolved by enhancing the rapport between ecology and feminist theory. Nature is set as a background in literature from the ancient era through diverse genres such as prose, poetry and novel that protracted their hands to expose it in ecofeminism.

The novel is an elongated fiction in prose format spectacles, an active role. Initially, for prose and poetry, nature serves as a central theme and in the later eighteenth century, it evolved gorgeously in the form of a novel. Nature with narrative technique through the fiction is always intimate and takes its global audience. Generally, the story realistically portrays a society. The gradual rise of the novel intensely influences the communal, cultural, partisan, fiscal and technical progression of the nation. The book has primly focused through the eyes of the intermediate class. English novel cherished well in the nineteenth-century. Some spectacular Victorian novelists handle symbolic representation and complexities in their fiction efficaciously. Buoyancy and constancy are the critical features of nineteenth-century novels, but there are tremendous changes in the writings of twentieth-century novelists. First World War, the collapse of the British Empire, political differences are the factors enriched in the writings of contemporary novelists. Fictitious fabulous description of nature in prose attracts a good number of writers almost in all ages.

Novels have categorized into different types such as sociological, historical, regional, ecofeminism and pastoral, etc. The social and economic settings are implicit and explicitly acclaimed through sociological fiction. Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe is an American sociological novelist who dealt with the theme of African American harsh enslaved depiction in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Next to Stowe, Upton Sinclair is an American novelist famous in the mid-twentieth century. In his novel The Jungle, he narrates the labour and sanitary conditions in America and it is a classic muckraking social novel. Then John Steinberg is a realistic and imaginative writer. His stories fused with sympathetic humour and social perception. He received the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize for his writings. Some of his best novellas are Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony.

At the heart of discourse, historical novels are the portrayal of ancient background and characters. The stories have revolved around the central narrative and elaborately explained. Sir Walter Scott, who is the founder of the historical novel, effectively handled communal resolution and individual disposition. He proved himself through his flowery language and Scottish dialect. As an advocate, he touched politics and classics in his writings. Some of his famous works are Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality and The Lady of the Lake. Whereas Charles Dickens brilliantly revealed the social evils that occurred through the industrial revolution. His Pickwick Papers is the best serial publication that gained literary success and few of his other works are Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. Kenneth Lewis Roberts; is an American Historical novelist known for his works Northwest Passage and Saturday Evening Post. Next to the Hungarian pre-Stalinist Marxist and Historical novelist George Lukacs gained popularity by coining the term ‘transcendental homelessness’ in his theory of the novel. He calls his unfinished work as Tailism and the Dialectic had published in 2000 as A Defence of History and Class Consciousness.

After that, the Regional novel takes its setting on particular locality, colour, character, thinking, feeling and acting. Thomas Hardy is a man with the extraordinary power to depict nature through his proficient description. Many of his novels set in the background of Wessex and his well-known works are The Woodlanders, Desperate Remedies and Under the Greenwood Tree. The American novelist, William Faulkner, is the only Nobel Prize winner in Mississippi who portrayed his country in Yoknapatawpha and his first novel, Soldiers’ Pay and some of his other books Mosquitoes and Flags in the Dust.

Ecofeminism novels are a combination of feminism theory with ecology. The woman has linked with land and their environment. In ecofeminism novels, nature and culture are interlinked and practice intersectional and multidimensional approach. Many authors emerged by using this theme. Some of them are Susan Griffin, Maria Mies and Alice Walker. Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside her is the foundation work of pairing ecology and nature. In A Chores of Stones, she dealt with the themes of war, climate change, democracy, terrorism, colonialism and body. Another writer Maria Mies is a German Professor in Sociology and an activist ecofeminist writer. Her novels shed light on feminism, ecology and world developing issues and she worked in India. Some of her major works are Indian Women and Patriarchy and Women: The Last Colony. Successively Alice Walker affirmed the new term womanist in literature and her books have blended with ecofeminism. Her famous works are The Temple of My Familiar and The Color Purple.

Further insight poses to Pastoral novels. It is the experience of revival roots like antiquity of the European Renaissance and Baroque. The world literary legend William Shakespeare’s As You Like It is a dazzling English pastoral comedy deal with the countryside portrayal with the depiction of lamb and shepherd. Then Scottish novelist Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows is a classic child English pastoral novel. It is a collection of essays and appealed by Chinese readers who deal with humans like animals, pets, domestics and nourishment. His other best work is The Reluctant Dragon, later filmed and enacted as a drama. In Much Ado About Mutton by Bob Kennard talks about mutton. The slaughter of a lamb for meat kindled him to write his book to safeguard the life of animals. In The Farming Ladder, George Henderson deals with post-war period farming. He talks about crop fertility and animal health.

English novelist and their sampling pay significance on momentous authors and their masterpiece from Henry Fielding to contemporary writers. Henry Fielding, who is the father of the English novel, evolved the intentional reflection of nature from his mighty hands. His picaresque fiction Tom Jones had endowed with abundant earthly humour and satirical dexterity. Meanwhile, Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji has considered being the world’s precursor novel. It is the classical Chinese novel based on the Ming dynasty. Daniel Defoe, a satirist, writer, pamphleteer, journalist and trader, produced more than three hundred works through his versatility. His Robinson Crusoe was the pioneer of English fiction, which had published in 1719.

Next, William Makepeace Thackeray depicted the high society in his writings and his Vanity Fair is the panoramic portrayal of English society through his satire. Then, Joseph Concord is the most enduring and loyal writer produced ample of novels that glorify his talent and his best novella is Heart of Darkness, through that he touches the heart of Africa. August Wilson African American playwright depicted the twentieth century through Anglo Saxon language and spectacularly revealed the life of the middle class in his novels. He won Pulitzer Prize for his novels Fences and The Piano Lesson. Whereas, Indian born Rudyard Kipling spent most of his existence in the British army. So his novels depict the glory of British military life and vivacity of the Indian forest. He was known for his famous novel Jungle Book later produced by Walt Disney, which created a visual impact among readers. E. M. Forster, next to Kipling, dealt with different facets like inner and outer aspects of life. Class differences and hypocrisy have handled in his novels. Some of his books are A Passage to India and A Room with a View.

Arnold Bennett, the accurate novelist, dealt with industrial society as his major theme. He is known for his journalism, propaganda and films and his best works are A Man from the North and Tales of Five Towns. Whereas, H. G. Wells, the modern futuristic scientific writer, took middle-class people as their heroes and revealed the real happiness access through hard work. His best science fictions are The Time Machine and The Invisible Man. Somerset Maugham is the best short story writer and novelist. He dealt with the life of slum people and their difficulties in fighting conventional society. His first novel is Liza of Lambeth and few of his other works are Lady Frederick and The Magician.

1. H. Lawrence is the refined writer who used language, religion and family as a skillful tool to depict the psychological problems through his charisma. Man and his intimacy with environment, intellect and instinct have used fastidiously. Some of his famous works are Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. James Joyce tremendously handles artistic creation. The old Greek mythological stories are illustrated remarkably by his adroit language. He is known for his magnum opus Ulysses and many other great masterminds also contributed their masterpieces in literature unceasingly, which would glorify the position of novels uniquely in contemporary literature.

Exquisite insight into men and matters has added a new facet by the women writers. Their novels constitute a significant segment of contemporary writing, provides cognizance, a wealth of understanding, a reservoir of meanings and a basis of discussion. Women writers revealed the place and position of women in society, their problems and plights from time to time. Through their harmonious analysis, women’s relationship with surroundings, socio-cultural modes and values have achieved. The hidden mystery of their lives has divulged.

Women Writers cherished novel skillfully in their hands in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Some of the famous novelists evolved in this period are as follows. Jane Austen appeared in the second half of the eighteenth century who deals with shrewd fictions and some of her best novels are Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. Marriage plays a vital theme in most of her stories, which attracted many book lovers. The writer, Mary Russell Mitford, is a rural author who drafts her pastoral settings magnificently in her novel. Some of her works are 100 literary sketches of rural life and A hamlet in the parish of Shinfield. Mary Shelley, the Gothic novelist, touched her hands in different genures of writings. She was renowned by her masterwork Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus, Gothic fiction and she was the wife of great romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Swedish Independent novelist Fredrika Bremer concentrated on romantic stories dealt with marriage. Her most influential work is The Hertha debate.

Bronte sisters gained a special place in literature and their novels horn the splendor through their fabulous stories. They use a pen name for their writings, Charlotte Bronte, as Currer Bell, Emily Bronte as Ellis Bell and Anne Bronte as Acton Bell.

Charlotte Bronte wrote with intense feelings of human character and got success. Her best novels are The Professor and Jane Eyre. Her sister Emily Bronte spins her glory in literature through her single work of art Wuthering Heights. She powerfully used skillful language to expel her characters. Another sister Anne Bronte who is least popular among the other two sisters and her best novel is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, republished after her sister Charlotte’s death. Next comes the ingenious modern classical writer, iconic Virginia Woolf. She artistically handled stress-related psychological approach, the stream of conscious technique, camera eye and ecofeminism outlook in her novels. Some of her works are To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway and Orlando.

Margaret Atwood draws the insight of readers through her powerful writing. She is the inventor of the robotic inscription of documents. As a fairy, Atwood touches her hands in all themes and profounds her contribution mainly on Canadian literature. She is an iconic author of The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace. Moreover, Mary Ann Evans has known by her pen name George Eliot. Her novels have a psychological insight and realism of provincial England. Some of her best-known books are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Middlemarch. Meanwhile, Agatha Christie is popularly known as a best-selling author. Her detective stories are digitalized and the latest generations used it as books, plays, TV, film, games and audio. Her best works are Endless Night and Five Little Pigs.

Toni Morrison is a living American novelist who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in the year 2012 for the novel Beloved. It was taken as a film with the same title. The Bluest Eye is her first novel. A new wave of fiction flourished in the hands of J. K. Rowling. She is a trend-setting contemporary English novelist who wrote her volume in a series under the name Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Remarkably five hundred million books sold after publication in the ever history of London. Her novel Harry Potter is taken as a film and gained numerous viewers. Some of her best fictions are The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm and Career of Evil. Not only English novel flourished through the writers of the native of English, the authors of India also commemorate it.

Indian writing in English has experienced a considerable measure of changes since its start. The native of India inscribed in the English language is Indian writing in English. Learning through English had a significant impact on Indians. Many embryonic writers are fond of English literature and tried to use their competence by expelling their ideas. The exploration falls under two dimensions pre and post-independence of India. The alien tongue helped Indians to fight against colonial rule before independence and the culture and heritage expressed amicably after independence. The emotional illuminating stories have aroused after the independence of India. It dealt with the themes of public ferocity after the partition of India and Pakistan, momentous nationalist movement, Gandhi’s impact on Indian veracity and literature, World War II, Nethaji’s establishment of Indian Army and its antagonism, abhorrence towards British rule by commoners commendably revealed by the post-independence novelists.

Indian English writing has entered into an extensive area across the widespread fame for itself. Many writers are making their existence felt and creating their works with grand success. Indian writers have known among the colossal novelists of the world and they have achieved many international honours. Meanwhile, Indian English writers have specified a new aspect to the Indian English Literature. V.S. Naipaul stated that Indian novels have written to satisfy necessary human hunger. Many Indian novelists theme is on self-violation and mimicry about the west, but later the trend has changed and gained their own position in literature.

1. D. Brunton observed that there is no rule for writing fiction, but it must be an original, pragmatic reality and adaptable to any situation will reach the international audience. Indian novels highly based on the social, cultural, political and economic state of the country. The social novels touch the abolition of Sati, the prohibition of throwing girl child in the river of Ganga and infanticide. In progress, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, social reformist raised his voice against these social injustices. The superstitious belief of Indians has revealed and there is a gradual change occurred in a radical transformation of religious belief. English education brought cultural change among Indians and it portrayed officiously in Indian fictions. The orthodox sections slowly transformed and reformed themselves to modernity in cultural novels. Then, Indian political novels reveal the political condition of India before and after independence.

In the 1980s and 1990s, social realism novels gained its crowning in Indian fiction. In the nineteenth century, social realism came from European countries to the Indian novels and the novelists voiced for social discrimination and marginalisation. Social realism mirrored the social evils of Indian Society. The rebirth of Indian fiction flourished in the hands of great authors like Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and many others. Raja Rao is a modern Indian English novelist coloured with the plethora of social realism in his novels. Some of his best works are Kanthapura, and Cat and Shakespeare. Then Mulk Raj Anand holds a unique position in social realism and he portrayed the life of lower class with social sanity. His novels shed light on oppressed, exploited and misfortunes. Some of his novels are Coolie, Across the Black Waters and Untouchable. Another famous sociological novelist is R. K. Narayan. His mentor and friend Graham Greene helped him to publish his earlier novels. He portrayed his village Malgudi and depicted social reality vividly in his novels. Some of his works are Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher.

Indian Cultural based novels witnessing the flowering of vast and diverse Indian art, culture, tradition and heritage spread all over India. It is glowing in the works of great authors like Amit Chaudhuri, Vikram Seth and Khushwant Singh. Amit Chaudhuri is a modern contemporary novelist. Through his literary activism, he gathered academics, writers and artists for annual symposium each year. He includes de-professionalisation and literary activism in his writing. Some of his best works are A New World, Freedom Song and Friend of my Youth. After Amit, Vikram Seth represents postcolonial European culture, landscapes, characters and myths in classical times. An Equal Music is one of the best novels he ever made and signified the culture and landscape exuberantly. Some of his other novels are The Golden Gate and A Suitable Boy. Whereas, Khushwant Singh is an Indian author, lawyer, journalist in All India Radio, IFS officer, diplomat and politician. He is a man of acid wit, humour, and trenchant secularism. His well-known novels are Train to Pakistan and I shall not hear the nightingale. He had inspiration on Indian culture and heritage, which is well represented in his novels.

M.K. Bhatnagar stated that Indian novels always have inextricable bonds with the socio-political milieu. The grass-roots of politics is mirrored loyally in Indian English novels. The political developments like Indian independence, the holocaust of a partition of Pakistan, assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, war with Pakistan and China and in modern political democracy. Earlier phase political novels dealt with rebellion against British rule, Gandhian Philosophy, Partition mutinies, Post-Independence and political themes. Some of the considerable authors evolved in this phase are Kylas Chunder Dutt, S.K.Ghose and S.M.Mitra. Kylash Chunder Dutt is the pioneer of an Indian fiction writer in English and his earlier works touch humanitarian and political issues. Some of his works are A Journal of Forty-eight Hours of the Year 1945, Republic of Orissa: Annals from the Pages of the Twentieth Century and The Young Zamindar. The writer S. K. Ghose dealt with the theme of colonial struggle in the political formation of India. The Prince of Destiny: The New Krishna leads the political opinion in the parody of British rule. Hindu Bengali author S.M.Mitra published his works in London. In his fiction Hindupore, George Birdwood, an Anglo-Indian official wrote the introduction and he dealt with the main themes like Bengal partition and Indian politics.

Indian novelists in English tarted their contribution from the early 1830s and their sampling started from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, followed by a rapid succession to the contemporary writers. Hence, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee is the composer of Vande Mataram and a pioneer of prodigious novels. His first English novel is Rajmohan’s Wife and his well-known other works are Durgeshnandini, Kapalkundala and Anandamath. Another notable Indian novelist was noble laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a humanist, naturalist, internationalist, and ardent anti-nationalist. He inscribed eight novels and four novellas. His best-known works are The Broken Nest, Fair-Faced and The Home and the World. He is a composer of the Indian National Anthem Jana Kana Mana.

Amitav Gosh assertively throws light on communal violence and the Indian psyche in his novels. Many of his fictions set in the historical background by having Indian Ocean periphery. His best-known works are The Shadow Lines, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. The contemporary to Gosh, Ramachandra Guha is a historical writer, acts as a columnist for The Telegraph and Hindustan Times and contributes some books on Indian cricket. His few works are Gandhi before India, History of modern India and A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian history of a British Sport in 2002.

Next comes Aravind Adiga, who is an Indo-Australian novelist who won Man Booker prize for his novel The White Tiger. After Salman Rushdie, he is the fourth Indian to receive this honourable prize. His other known books are Between the Assassinations, Last Man in Tower and Selection Day.

Ruskin Bond is popularly known for his supernatural fiction and he contributed more than fifty books for children. He gathers an exclusive place in India for children’s literature. Penguin India published his first two novels in one volume, Vagrants in the Valley and The Room on the Roof. His other few best stories are Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, With Love from the Hills and The Cherry Tree. Manohar Malgonkar, the novelist, is a game hunter, civil servant, lieutenant colonel, mine owner, farmer and fiction and nonfiction writer. His novels focus on socio-historic outlook, action, adventure and biography. Some of his works are The Sea Hawk: Life and Battles of Kanhoji Angrey, A Bend in the Ganges and The Devil’s Wind.

Another writer Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri is also an ingenious historical culture writer of English and Bengali. He vividly pictured the Victorianesque morality of middle-class Bengali women through his incredible novels. He had accused of leaking the whereabouts of Sharatchandra Bose to the British Army. His well-known works are The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, The Continent of Circe and To Live or Not to Live. The next great literary legend who passed away recently on the tenth of June 2019, known as the best play writer, novelist and a noted actor, is Girish Karnad. He dealt with the theme of existentialist of modern man. His best-known works are Tughlaq, Naga-Mandala and Hayavadana. He received top honours as Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith award.

Apart from male writers, Women’s writings have witnessed extraordinary success in recent decades of Indian English literature. Indian women writers like Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Nayantara Sahgal, Kamala Das, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Gita Hariharan, Bharati Mukherjee, Kiran Desai and others have located identified the problems and issues tackled by the women as their thematic distresses. These women writers pronounce the whole realm of women wherever they are with fabulous outspokenness. Their review work gives glimpses of the unfamiliar female soul, which had no convenience earlier.

Lakshmi Debi is an ancient writer and a pioneer Indian English novelist who inscribed The Hindu Wife or The Enchanted Fruit, which was inspired by many authors. Like some of the British women writers, Kamala Markandaya wrote in her pseudonym Kamala Purnaiya Taylor. She published several short stories in Indian newspapers and her novel horn her glory in literature. Some of her best works are Nectar in a Sieve, Inner Fury and Possession. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a German-born British and settled in India. Her dozen novels rolled with the Indian themes. Her best works are The Nature of Passion, Like Birds, Like Fishes and Poet and Dancer. Another famous writer Nayantara Sahgal who is a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family, well established herself as a great novelist. Some of her works are Rich Like Us, A Time to Be Happy and Mistaken Identity.

Then Kamala Das is established by her mono pen name Madhavi Kutty and after her marriage wrote under the name of Kamala Das. She touched diverse topics in her novels and she converted as a Muslim at the age of sixty-five and her assumed name as Kamala Surayya. Her famous work is Alphabet of Lust. Then another great pillar Anita Desai whose novels are three times shortlisted for Booker Price and contributed seventeen fictions in English. In Custody was filmed by Merchant Ivory Productions and won President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture. Her other best works are Fasting, Feasting, The Village by the Sea, Fire on the Mountain and Where Shall We Go this Summer.

Shashi Deshpande came from a literary background that contributed many novels and won several awards and honours for her publication. Her father, Adya Rangacharya, accessible by his penname Sriranga, is a marvellous Kanadian dramatist and a writer who kindled her spirit to enter into the same field. Some of her major works are Roots and Shadows, If I Die Today and Small Remedies. The novelist, Gita Hariharan, is a versatile author born in Coimbatore and brought up in Mumbai. Her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night, acquired Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1993. She has written a short story collection for children, extend her hand in edition and translation. Some of her best works are The Art of Dying, The Winning Team and In Times of Siege.

Bharati Mukherjee was an Indian American writer born in Kolkata. She used to travel after independence with her parents and later for her master’s study. She journeyed to the United States, which made her contribute ample works in travel literature. Some of her famous novels are The Tiger’s Daughter, Wife and Miss New India. The Indian Diasporic writer Kiran Desai is the daughter of Anita Desai, who has listed as the top twenty most influential Indian women by The Economic Times. Like her mother, her novels are short-listed for Booker prize three times. In 2006 she received Booker prize for the fiction The Inheritance of Loss and her other best fiction is Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. Great minds think alike; the ideas and values shared by masterminds have compared with other works and authors, which added flavour to its core.

Comparative literature is the culture shared across the country, the language with universal relations. It is a scholarly arena managing the investigation of writing and social expression crosswise over semantic, national, and disciplinary without any borders and it is also called as world literature. The Comparatists must have proficiency in literary criticism, international perspectives of multilingual and scholarly works of great minds. Comparative literature originated in the year 1827 with the notion of world literature drawn by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. It is the study of writings deprived of boundaries. Zest to study writing in association with diverse structures which would chiefly focus on real writers, speculations and their methodological system of various similar works on other culture or literature.

Comparative literature has turned into a most esteemed province of research in the Indian Universities. This branch of intellectual research has discovered astonishing sustenance with the researchers. Such reviews precisely empower the general populace to grasp the writing of parlances other than they obligate. Distinctive identities, various periods and assorted developments can be taken up as the points of the similar review. The present century is pre-prominently reasonable for studies in analogous analysis and to treasure the regular regions among the different literary works.

Comparative literature is a sort of co-appointment, which looks for resemblance in a few regards. Truth has told in every single incredible written work that looks into the specific circumstances and looks forward and in reverse. The procedure of correlation is a whiz capacity of the reason. Indeed, even in the regular daily existence, the examination is precise in reaction and conduct. Hence, it is, by all accounts, a typical and inescapable mental process. Henceforth the review and valuation for writing might be persistently near.

Different schools evolved in the twentieth century from the comparative literature are French, American and German. In French school, scholars focused on the origins and influence of different nations which evoke European comparative literature. The German Comparative literature instigated in the late nineteenth century after World War II developed by Peter Zondi, which influenced structuralism. Responding to the French postwar, the American school emerged. It has affiliated with the transnational revelation of Posnett and Goethe revealing the literary archetypes of truths. Current comparative literature bloomed in full shape in the1970s and 1980s. Then it reached its standard in globalization and inter-culturalism.

The two discipline followed by Totosy de Zopetnek for comparative literature is the comparison between more than one language or literature which would have the same kind of application and knowledge over the discipline. The second approach is the comparison between the ideology and the inclusion of marginality among various texts. The comparative literature continually enhances the readers to recall the works of prodigious writers and bourgeon the fruitfulness of reading. Many researchers extend their hands in using the feministic approach to explore new dimensions.

Feminist literature is supporting women in prose, poetry, drama and fiction to get equal social, political and economic status as men. Feminism is the text refers to the approach of female experience in literature. It had its origin from the oppression of women across the country. Feminist fiction explores an unimaginable reality with the attitude of seeing, feeling and measuring the existence of women with their point of view. Women tolerated their suffering in the past with deep silence, but now they started reacting through feminist literature. The conflicts and suppression of women are the crucial themes handled by the majority of feminist writers.

Nineteenth and early twentieth-century feminism have considered being the first-wave feminism treated with identical property, marriage, contract, economic, reproductive and parenting for women. It has supported with the new legislation acts such as Custody of Infants Act 1839, Married Women’s Property Act 1870 and Representation of the People Act 1918. The early 1960s gave significance to women by gaining authority to vote and handle gender discrimination and in the mid-twentieth century, the second wave feminism started. The third-wave feminism begins from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, which voiced for the women’s equality and the evolution of women leaders touching the global issues. Fourth-wave feminism progressed in 2012, linking the social media which focused on sexual harassment and violence against women. The recent post-feminism evolved in the 1980s echoed the voice of second-wave feminist gender equality and equal rights in all discourses. Various novelists handled different themes in their writing and the latest emerging feminism, which holds the upper hand in literature, is the recently evolving ecofeminism.

Ecofeminism is academic feminist movements that assist in cognizing ecology in the women’s perspective. Ecofeminists succour to grab the human relationship between the natural worlds from the pre-old classical mythology. Its activism grew in full swing from the 1980s and 1990s among anti-nuclear, lesbian movement and ecology. Ynestra King is an eminent feminist theorist who is responsible for popularizing Ecofeminism in his article The Nation at the year 1987. King’s article created a revolution in the American minds and it made them realize that the exploitation of earth and the oppression of women has to be put to an end by the support of philosophical scope.

Ecofeminism has broadly categorized into five distinct schools, namely, Modern Science and Ecofeminism, Vegetarian Ecofeminism, Materialist Ecofeminism, Radical Ecofeminism and Spiritual or Cultural Ecofeminism. Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies practise modern Science universal value-free system. It has projected as the western man’s impact, which is privileged and controlled by men. In an annual review of Anthropology, Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp analyzed the medicalization of childbirth and the industrialization of plant reproduction through the natural evolution of science. The logical procedure of giving birth to the child has now converted into specialized technology. Modern Science ecofeminism claims to have patriarchal structures through binary opposition and its dominance justifies it by observing religious and scientific constraints.

Vegetarian Ecofeminism is the solicitation of reputed rights for the animal. It is against meat-eating and supporting of vegetarianism. According to Carol J. Adams, people failed to protect life without knowing its value. Many people often fuse with environ by eating meat by considering one among nature and they didn’t recognize their mistake. Adams, in his interview, mentioned humanity is associated with the culture of meat-eating and dominance over nature and women. The ethics and action are refining the culture and politics by taking steps into account for blending compassion over animals and enriching vegetarianism.

Materialist Ecofeminism is the superfluous facet of ecofeminism. The efforts of supremacy and scarcity subjugate women and nature is the principles of construction and replica. Carolyn Merchant pointed out men lead production for the possessions of biological and communal facsimile and even assaults the womb of a woman. The materialistic ecofeminism removes social hierarchies and it has also denoted as Social, Socialist or Marxist ecofeminism. Whereas, Spiritual or Cultural ecofeminism has popularized by the authors Starhawk, Riane Eisler, Carol J. Adams and many. Starhawk expresses the liveliness of earth and praised earth-based mysticism. Spiritual ecofeminism is a religion based concentrates on concerned, compassion and diplomatic. Nature has worshipped as goddess Gia from the ancient mythology and Wicca and Paganism have swayed by spiritual ecofeminism. It rallies respect over the environment and communal ethics.

Radical Ecofeminist condemns the humiliation of patriarchal society for using women and nature for cheap resources and it demolished the contradictory ideas over them. It convicts the adverse and commodifiable association of women and nature theories attributed by men. In the chapter, division raises the voice for the exploitation of women and nature for cheap labour and they need recognition as a capable of establishing order with the attributes of resources.

Cultural ecofeminists progress the alliance of women with the surroundings. Women are the family custodian and sole founder of the cosmos who have a close rapport with nature by their biological and gender roles.

Some ecofeminists did not favour the bifurcation and they got worried that it may create stereotype exploitation. Cultural ecofeminism has a heritage in nature-based religious reverence and spirituality. Their close bondage would promote vegetarianism and organic farming in promotion with spiritual and religious unification.

Several movements evolved to equalize women and share their virtues all over the universe. The following branded Ecofeminist movements have followed in various parts of the world, such as Anti- Militarist progress in the US and Europe, the Chipko movement in India, Anti-Dumping Hazardous Wastes movement in the US and Green Belt evolution in Kenya. These movements are trying their level best to bring out their micro-level of power contribution between women and nature, the protection of the environment and the liberalization of women not to be achieved within a day. Several threats are waiting in the modern world that is opposing ecological annihilation, the menace of atomic devastation, evolving new progress in biotechnology, reproductive technology and genetic technology.

Idiosyncrasy is the combination of three Greek letters, which signify ‘Idio‘ as own/private, ‘syn‘- with, and ‘crasy‘ means mixture. The exact meaning for idiosyncrasy is the mixture of specific characteristics of an individual or –ism. The eccentricity of Ecofeminism is not to be constrained with distinctive bias and it has a broad scope of connotation with dogmas. It criticizes the patriarchal supremacy of dichotomies and its encounters and reevaluates the human dominance over nature. Various dimensions embraced the comprehensive continuum of Ecofeminism. It accepts an integral part of the life cycle and ecofeminists respect death and birth as their identity. They predict the dangers of handling Biogenetic Engineering for the removal of women for reproduction and it may cause mass destruction in the society. They considered the menstruation of women is mythologically powerful and it has compared with the primordial cadence of the moon. For the formation of civilization, women play a pivotal inventor like farmers, weavers, doctors, astronomers, mathematicians, authors, artists, potters and have believed that women developed language in association with nature.

For Ecofeminists, spirituality has centred on oneness with nature. They curl their level best to find cultural roots of multiculturalism and diversity in environs. To counter-intuitive thought, they propagate that nature does not need human survival, but each individual has to transcend environ for their welfare. Ecofeminists do not project men are male bashers, but they stress that women have a closer association with nature than men. Ecofeminists compare the obliteration of life with femicide. The female infant is aborted or killed worldwide by giving preference to male children. In the present scenario, many preventive acts arrive to save the killing of a girl child. Similarly, nature’s devastation has to be clogged.

From the ancestral reference, women possess the virtues of perseverance by having intimacy with nature. They have universal acquaintance with birthing, fertility, and reproduction. The colossal fermentation of greenery evacuated natural turmoil. Women have the responsibility to use Eco-friendly products, which will be easy to organize. In the 1990s, women had the upper hand over environmental issues and they mirrored their ecological progress, which is currently concerned about green marketing and green consumption. Women have taken active steps to reduce household waste generation and appear environment-friendly in general issues. Women do eighty percentage of household shopping; now, they are making tough decisions by buying non-biodegradable and reusable products. Women also play the role of a caretaker of their family and environment. Some of the famous Ecofeminist writers in the twenty-first century in America and India are Carol J. Adams, Carol P. Christ, Mary Daly, Francoise d’Eacubonne, Virginia Woolf, Barbara Ehrenreich, Anita Desai, Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Alice Fulton, Medha Patkar, Mahesweta Devi, Arundhati Roy and C.K. Janu.

Francoise d’Eacubonne, who was the founder of Ecofeminism, made a revolution in the field of the environment by safeguarding nature through her iconic works. The trendy ecofeminist Carol J. Adams deals with the vegetarian theory and coercion of gender in her significant works. Another ecofeminist writer, Carol P. Christ, is a theologian and the founder of women’s studies who pursues goodness for women. Mary Daly is a radical ecofeminist Lesbian execrating on ecology. Cohort agnostic persistence on ecofeminism has put forth by Barbara Ehrenreich as a columnist and Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a post-trauma specialist and toiled for the prosperity of women and nature. Alice Fulton is an innovative writer who throws light on the distinctive epistemological style of the environment. These researchers found out there is a close relationship between patriarchal dominance and violence against women.

Many Ecofeminist writers are highlight the rapport among women, man and environment in their writings, such as Susan Griffin (1978) and Mary Daly in 1978, Carolyn Merchant at 1980, Ynestra King at 1981, Ariel Kay Salleh at 1984, Karen Warren from 1987 to 1990, Val Plumwood (1993) and others. Ecofeminists ponder animals, water, trees, toxins, food production and more typically naturalism. In literature, there are ten types of possessions incorporated in ecofeminism. They are historical, conceptual, empirical, epistemological, socioeconomic, spiritual and religious, linguistic, symbolic, literary, political and ethical interconnections.

In India, ecofeminism fairy raises its voice after independence. Medha Patkar is a famous socialist and eco-feminist who caught the eyes of everyone to renovate the nature-oriented disputes in India. Mahesweta Devi was a Bengali novelist who fought for the welfare of people and doughtiest fighter for the preservation of nature. Suzanna Arundhati Roy lingers on post-colonial ecofeminism in her narratives and argues about ecological deterioration. C.K Janu is the lady who has unbiased in the spotlight for battling for a natural cause in Indian literature. Though there are estimable legends that handle the tool ecofeminism in their novels, two iconic writers who belong to different centuries and regions have touched their hands on the trait of ecofeminism in their excellent works. The present study focuses on the select novels of Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai.

Virginia Woolf, the classic modernist writer and ecofeminist, was born in a blended family as a seventh child out of eight in the twenty-fifth January 1882. She was born to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Duckworth Stephen. Her father inherited many prominent errands as a historian, author, critic, mountaineer and compiler of the National Biography dictionary. His work later influenced Woolf’s experimental biography. Her mother was born in British India through that Woolf had a connection with India and she had great remembrance of aesthetics of nature. Her mother is famously known as an artist’s model for Pre-Raphaelite.

Woolf’s mother, Julia’s first marriage, was with barrister Herbert Duckworth and she had three children within three years and left her as a widow. She was devastated by her first husband’s death and she had prolonged mourning. Leslie Stephen, a man of letters, wed Harriet Marian, the youngest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray in the same year as Julia. Harriet gave birth to a mentally disabled daughter Lara and died in childbirth. The widowed Julia and Leslie united by their agonistic writing. Their preoccupied mourning of the first marriage has ended with their intense correspondence of Julia and Leslie’s second marriage. After Stephen’s wedding, they found apt and gave birth to four more children, including Virginia Woolf. She grew with the siblings of three marriages.

Woolf’s parents are basically from the literary background, so she was taught at her home. She had a great chance to meet great authors from her childhood. In later years she had grown as a great writer. She learned Greek, Latin, and German. Her mother’s death brought her first nervous breakdown in 1895, and her father’s death in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse, second jumpy breakdown, and health fluctuation. Woolf got treated in private nursing of women for a nervous disorder. Her instability of mental health affected both her social and personal life. There are few continuous breaks in her literary productivity.

Woolf started her literary career in 1900. Woolf wedded with Leonard Woolf on tenth August 1912 and amalgamated professionally by starting Hogarth Press and published many of her contemporaries and her work in their press. Woolf’s first publication is Haworth, November 1904. She was one of the prime modernists in twentieth-century English literature. Virginia Woolf has inscribed prodigious novels and has also mentored English movies. Nature plays a dynamic role in her fiction. Her works are meticulous as a crucial leading light in the English literature. She is the trendsetter of using ‘stream of consciousness’ in her novels and also nostalgia, ecofeminism and woman empowerment strategies have traced through her characters. She is disputably the paramount lyrical novelist in the English language. Her craving for poetic prophecy hoists the wartime milieus.

During the Interwar period, she played a vital role in Bloomsbury and the London group of intellectuals. She raised her voice for the public beyond Bloomsbury and she illuminates her war thoughts in her novels like The Voyage Out and Between the Acts. Woolf is an incredible novelist handling the themes of nature and ecofeminist concepts in her fiction competently. She was a legendary figure in the reprimand of the pervasive mode of writing fiction and the scrutiny of humanity, realism and naturalism personified. She disparages the perception that the author is like a God. A new technique was requisite to convey new radical concepts. Her characters are not palpably described as in the style of naturalism, but analyzed through the characteristics of thinking and construing events. The inner perception of existence and sensitivity of characters takes a new connotation. In pursuance of attaining this omniscient chronicler have to be out of the scene.

Virginia Woolf followed non-linear free form prose style, which impressed many of her cohorts. Her mood smacks style and striking of dejection pictured in her novel. She suffered from severe mental trauma and closeness with nature; at last, she drowned herself at the age of fifty-nine in the year 1941. Her urge to escape from the monotonous, mundane world is expressed in the form of ‘Stream of Consciousness’ vividly in her novel. She wrote thirteen nonfiction books, four volumes of collected essays, three biographies, six short story collections, one drama, one translation, seven autobiographical writings and diaries, three bulk collections of her letters and the best ten novels eternally lingered her glory in the literary world.

The Voyage Out Woolf’s first sustained novel published in the year 1915. Rachel, the heroine, is innocent and did not expose to the real world and she had brought up without a pertinent edification. Her only consolation was playing the piano. Woolf broke conventional technique in this novel by stating without the plot construction. The story initiates a fair collection of people who started their voyage from London to Latin America in the boat. The heroine was guided by her niece Helen to explore the outside world for the first time. Mrs. Dalloway accompanied them in their journey and left in the middle of the novel and reemerged in her fourth novel ten years later. She dexterously handled nature in this novel and she manifested it with camera eye technique. Nevertheless, she abruptly finished the book with the death of the heroine due to a sudden illness. She standardized her novel with reunification with nature.

The second novel Night and Day (1919) portrays Katharine Hilbery, the most pretty and fortunate who is ambiguous about her future. This novel focuses on two couples and their romantic turning point, which effectively illustrates Woolf’s ultimate handling of modernism, naturalism, and ecofeminism. She first engaged to William Rodney, a prosaic poet, later she was attracted to ardent Ralph Denham. Katharine had intriguing consequences with the two other female characters, women futurist Mary Datchet and Katharine’s mother, Margaret. Woolf made her second story as a combination of the love-based social comic novel. Her capturing of London city proved herself as a prodigious writer in her period and she illustrated every character assured by nature.

Jacob’s Room (1922) is Woolf’s third defining novel attested herself as a traditional realist writer of her period. This novel faced many criticisms on her career and they gauged her cleverness, which was not only the prime quality of the novelist. This novel is concerned with interiority and cinematic approach. It begins with the maternal presence of her mother. The critical character of this novel is Jacob Flanders. The story revolves around him and shares his infantile in Scarborough, edification at Oxford and adulthood in London. The action consequences shatter throughout the novel like Jacob’s flirt, affairs, Greece trip and ends with his death. Woolf handles each chapter in different domicile and time. Woolfian fashion had followed and she puzzles her readers with that. The central core of Jacob’s character had abstractedly narrated and so failed to attract the global market.

Woolf’s writings horn her grandeur in the literary world. Mrs Dalloway (1925), the fourth novel taken for this study, follows the trend of a complete smash from conventional techniques. This novel opens on a ‘day in June’ and ends on the same evening at the party, which is given by Clarissa. The protagonist Clarissa and Septimus have articulated their love of nature all through the novel.

Jawaharlal Nehru, in one of the letters to his daughter Indra, writes about Virginia Woolf by stating To the Lighthouse created magic, the more he read, the more he like her. Her writing is ethereal, transparent like running water and deep and intense like a mountain lake. His ideology about her novel has filled with the web of natural connections, which make the readers encounter themselves to dissolve amidst nature while reading her novel.

Woolf’s fifth novel To the Lighthouse also taken for this study, focuses on Ramsay’s and their trip to the Isle of Skye in between 1910 and 1920. Woolf’s use of bantam dialogue has written as merry feelings and interpretations acquainted with nature. It recalls childhood emotions and points to adult relationships. Mrs Ramsay, a mother of eight children, plays a bulbous role. She begins with the optimistic note “If it remains fine tomorrow, you’ll have to be up with the lark” (LT1) and we will reach the lighthouse tomorrow. Mr Ramsay denies this prediction by saying that the weather will not be clear. This particular incident proved to continue throughout the relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, finally realized his slip-up and fulfilled the wish of his dead wife by taking their children to the lighthouse as grown-ups. This novel culminates with a satisfactory note.

Woolf’s sixth novel was Orlando covering over three hundred years 1588 to 1928. Throughout this period, Orlando’s age was only thirty-six. He had a vicissitude from male to female. Young Orlando wants to be like his paternities requisite to take adventure throughout the world. He accidentally met a queen and was impressed by his handsome look and after two years, she called him to the court for his virtues. She made him as Curator, bursar and lover.

Nevertheless, the queen banished him from seeing with another woman. Orlando then moved to King James. There he was attracted by the Russian princess Sasha. He later felt heartbroken by her and Charles II propels him to Constantinople as ambassador. He then has promoted as Duke by his noble deeds. He had a trance for weakness and he transformed as a woman. At last, Orlando discerns his soul companion as Marmaduke Bonthrop. He marries Orlando with the proper idealistic ritual and then he went to ship voyage. The novel concluded in 1928. Orlando finally obliged as an excellent wife and a mother and stood poised with the promising women.

Woolf’s seventh novel is The Waves (1931) evergreen British novel and voted as sixteenth preeminent British novel by the poll conducted by BBC in 2015. It is the experimental soliloquy conducted by six characters such as Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, and Louis. Bernard is the narrator of the story who shares the aspects of E.M. Forster. Louis, as the success seeking outsider, shares the qualities of T. S. Eliot. Neville represents transcendental love shares the qualities of Lytton Strachey. Jinny, a corporal beauty, represents Mary Hutchinson. Susan prefers to be in the countryside rather than the city associate with Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell. Rhoda, a self-doubting man, reminds Shelly’s poems The Question. Percival, a miraculous morally flawed hero who died in the middle of the novel, represents Woolf’s brother Thoby Stephen. This novel is the waving of individual consciousness to multiple consciousnesses. The story flows from childhood to adulthood by the individual soliloquy.

Flush: A Biography of the eighth novel wrote in 1933. It is an imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Cocker Spaniel. The story narrated through the eyes of Mongrel dogs in Italy. It is the harsh criticism of modern life. Through Flush, Woof exposed her emotional and psychological thoughts. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s adaptation of dog travels to London. It was born on his friend’s house Mary Russell Mitford and handover to Elizabeth. She met Robert Browning and her love for him grew and she forgot her dog. While shopping, it accompanied the master and was stolen and demanded six guineas by robbers. After returning, the dog becomes the witness for the happening in their family and the story ends with the death of the Flush. Its death just narrated as the lively dog died suddenly by leaving everything perfectly still.

The Years, the ninth novel, was written in 1937. It was the prevalent novel that emphasized the Pargister family’s antiquity from 1880 to the current day. David Garnett remarked it was the greatest masterpiece in English and the most exquisite novel ever written. It created a record for best-selling in England and America. She followed a lack of unity and fragmentation technique. The chapters and sections are assumed and arcane. The chapters have divided chronologically 1881, 1891, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1917, 1918 and the present day. In it, she revealed the idiosyncratic upper-class kinfolks privilege and negligence. She handled the years as a tool and she meticulously finished it.

Woolf’s tenth novel Between the Acts published in 1941 and it is the last novel of her. The novel setting is the outbreak of the Second World War and the celebration of a festival in the country house of London. Bartholomew Oliver is the widower and owner of the home living with his sister Lucy, his son Giles and his wife Isa and their two children. Giles working in London and all others are in the pageant. The narration falls under three parts. After the prologue by children, the first scene deals with the romantic dialogue of Shakespearean. The second scene proposes the parody of restoration comedy and the third scene falls under regulating the traffic by police in Hyde Park like the Victorian triumph and the final act ends with the confrontation of fox and vixen story.

Woolf bearing to literary ecosphere was incredible and her life expectancy has filmed and acquired voluminous accolades by diverse artist and actresses after her period harmoniously. In 1998 Michael Cunningham won the Pulitzer Prize for focusing the Woolf’s novel The Hours. The film version of Mrs Dalloway had released in 2002. Nicole Kidman earned the best actress Academy Award. Mrs Dalloway also excelled Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. Philip Glass, the American composer’s gratitude, was also highlighted by this movie. The sibling relationship of Woolf was an exploration in 2008 on Vanessa and Virginia. In 2010 Elizabeth Wright performed this novel on stage under Theatre Company.

In BBC theatre, her three parts of drama series showed as Life in Squares which displayed by Lydia Leonard and Catherine McCormack. In the National Portrait Gallery, Woolf’s exhibition had conducted from July to October 2014. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was taken as a film and was performed by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and she acquired the best actress award in the year 1966. Woolf generated five hundred periodical groups right from 1905.

To Woolf, the novelist’s business is to explore the human personality to achieve a vision of life’s meaning. Her characters live, think and unfold time and leave their perception with the problems relating to it. As a twentieth-century novelist, she does not deny the importance of external factors. Also, she concentrates on the internal and the nature of reality as a period of various psyches. She follows the trend of an absolute smash from the conventional technique. Her novels carry all the characteristics of naturalism, modernism, camera eye technique, internal monologue, suppression of plot, poetic style, the stream of conscious and objective character descriptions.

Woolf as the omniscient narrator, she obtrudes the formal trend and her main characters flow on through the minds of the diverse styles. She deals with the sensational and momentous, but with the ordinary experience of life. She presents the moments of life through the characters in her novel, chained to each by memories. Male chauvinist brutally handles fertile earth and the fertility of women in the name of modernity or technological advancement. The flaccid landscape for the intrusion of soil and women have always steered by male experts, medical doctors, agronomists, business people and others.

Virginia Woolf has rightly alleged as the feminist literary theory founder. Her main protagonist Clarissa in Mrs Dalloway, sees people passing through the window. She observes all the tiny details of nature like lark plunge, open-air, flapping and kissing of waves. While crossing Victoria Street, her leaden circles have dissolved in the air. Clarissa loves life amid nature. Virginia Woolf artistically delivers the accurate nuances in the mind of their characters through her excellent delineation. She penetrated deep into the soul of their roles and painted her pictures vividly. She crafted characters with the nostalgia of the memory of the past. Her novels are the remarkable constituent of art and thought. After getting satisfaction only, Woolf penned her book and revealed the pictorial aspects of nature, through her characters from commencement to the expiration of the novels.

Woolf’s most of the novels reveal herself as Eco Woolf. She dealt intensely with the Eco-oriented atmosphere and she never left any minute details of nature. Woolf discloses ecofeminism avowals through her characters. She powerfully used camera eye technique to sort out to visualise the naturalistic depiction prevailed in all the characters. Woolf precedes the minuscule of depicting a tranquil existence and universal implications of handling the problem. She takes time as the relieving tool to resolve all the wounds and capture all the things in a sort of good old memories. She gives the power of women who associates and evacuates depictions by the excellent portrayal of the healing all our reminiscence through nature.

Though Woolf produced the number of works, this thesis throws light on the idiosyncrasy of ecofeminism in the novels of To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway. Woolf’s To the Lighthouse had published in the year 1927 which was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the top hundred English novels from 1923 to the contemporary. Modern Library also nominated To the Lighthouse as number fifteen on its list of the hundred best English language novels of the twentieth century. Woolf, as a perspective narrator, begins her story in the middle and forms muddled by striking out brazenly backwards and forward. She deals with the sensational jiffies but the conventional familiarity of existence. She swiftly uses the third person as she raconteur and elucidates her characters and actions intuitively and gives us insight into the veins of her protagonists.

Woolf’s splendours writing reached its pinnacle in 1970. Many directors had attracted by her cinematic imagination. Some of her novels like Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse was filmed and appreciated for its splendid nature. Her works had translated into more than fifty languages. Woolf, as a lyrical novelist has obscure with the sense of narration. Her novels refract and dissolve in the stream of conscious technique and nature is handled as a useful tool to narrate her inner soul. Woolf has connected with nature in all her novels and find nature can solve many of psychological and mental clogs. She tried to seek solace from nature and she skillfully used lyric to touch the sense of nature.

Like Virginia Woolf Indian female writer Anita Desai is also an ecofeminist. This study further focuses on Anita Desai’s ecofeminist perception. Her father, D. N. Mazumdar and her mother Toni Nime, made her life an honourable author. She speaks German at home and also communicates Urdu, Hindi, Bengali and English. English has become a literary language to her and she started writing at the age of seven and published at nine. Like Woolf, Desai also started her career as a writer at a young age. Though her father was a businessman and mother, a German Immigrant, she learned a lot and became a compatible writer at a young age. Woolf’s novels profoundly influenced her. Desai married computer software director and writer Ashvin Desai and they have blessed with four children; one among them is Kiran Desai, who is the winner of the Booker prize. For Desai’s family vacation, they used to go to Thul, reflecting much in her novel. She worked as a professor at Mount Holyoke College, Baruch College and Smith College. She wrote ample of fiction and won many awards. Her book In Custody was directed and won President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture in 1994.

Anita Desai, a new invincible ecofeminist writer, is the omniscient narrator, obtrudes the formal trend and her central theme on Ecofeminism flows on through the minds of the various characters. Her novels afford a juncture in the lives of their characters, united to each other by memories. As a twentieth-century novelist, she is accepting the importance of external factors. She also concentrates on the internal and the nature of reality as a retro of various psyches. Her literary works prove her supreme attitude and deliberation to solve things in the captivation of nature. She used dexterous narration as a magic wand in her hand that proceeds to the past, unwavering clutches over the present and chisels her characters in the future. Times of India stated her works as the skillful narrative dramatization perched between myth and social reality. Her talent is exceptional and she has the innate sensibility and craft fiction awareness.

Anita Desai rides her novel as a jockey by having ecofeminist traits in her hands and rides the reader’s mind like a horse who always obeys its master. The interpreter grasps the novel through the eyes of the writer and nature and its presence felt throughout the book. All five senses arouse aesthetically by her vivid pictorial representation. Smell the sweet fragrance of the ripening fruits and honey crammed flowers. Hear the musical note of bulbul in the forest lawn, literally visualize the fire on the mountain and symbolically notice the fire in the eyes and minds of the protagonists Ila Das, Nanda Kaul and even Raka. Entirely one can also taste the delicious nectar overflowed from the ripen fruits and jam. The novel Fire on the Mountain is the packed visual treat for the readers who enjoy themselves amid nature.

Anita Desai penned eighteen novels, within that more than eleven fiction achieved numerous awards. Her novel Clear light of the day and Fasting, Feasting have shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1983 she won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for the book The Village by the Sea: an Indian family story. In 1993 she received the Neil Gunn Prize; in the year 2000, she acquired Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature afforded by Italy. In 1994 her novel was directed as a movie and achieved “President of India Gold Medal” with impressive star cast. She recently received the Padma Bhushan award in the year 2014. Her literary works prove her supreme attitude and deliberation to solve things in nature.

Anita Desai received wide-ranging awards for her countless writings. In 1978 she received Winifred Holt by Memorial Prize and Sahitya Akademi Award for Fire on the Mountain. In 1980, Clear Light of Day shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She achieved Guardian Children’s Booker Prize for The Village by the Sea in 1983.1984 In Custody had shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She got Neil Gunn prize in 1993 and 2000 she acquired Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature given by Italy. In 2003 got Benson Medal of Royal Society of Literature award. She obtained Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2007 and 2014 she was honoured by the Padma Bhushan Award.

Anita Desai’s first novel vanquisher of Sahitya Academy Award Cry the Peacock had published in the year 1963. She revealed the inner feelings of Maya, who was exasperated by marriage with a middle-aged lawyer Gautam. She vibrantly exposed what womenfolk want beyond food and space and they seek love and affection from her counterpart. Her wedding dejected Maya and she finally slew her husband. The Protagonist Maya allied with the psychopath and neurotic disorder who got consolation only by the acquaintance with nature.

The second novel, the Voice in the City, focused on the Calcutta mediocre class intellects. The Crosscurrents of mutable communal ethics dealt with Bohemian brother and his two siblings. This novel revealed that the new ethos had not evolved and the ancient culture had not gone out of place. This novel emphasizes the potential effects of city life tackled by the Indian family. Nirode, Monisha and Amla can not deal with their existence in Calcutta and they urge to lead their Mother Nature oriented life.

Bye-Bye Blackbird is the third novel by Desai, which mainly engrossed in human rapport. Dev and Adit are the protagonists. Adit had a significant impact on western culture chiefly of England. Dev, though, lives in abroad loved India. Adit’s wife had compromised between east and west culture. Adit, in the end, bids farewell to England and decides to settle in his native land. Adit, Dev and Sarah’s identity crisis and their dilemma to align themselves with alien culture conveyed meticulously in this novel and their passion for their motherland have dexterously portrayed.

In 1974 The Peacock Garden was a small seventy one page novel narrated from the perspective of a conscientious child. This novel brimmed with the eco- feministic outlook and the fantabulous outlook of nature. Zuni, a delightful child, is the narrator of the story. Gopal, the Hindu protagonist, safeguarded the property of Zuni’s family and helped them a lot. This novel revealed the history of India in 1947. The relationship between Hindus and Muslims and the possessions in virtually demolished during the period expelled in a naturalistic way. Desai narrated the story with spectacular scenery though it has some melancholic note overall, which would grab readers.

As an Indian luminary, Desai broke the bond created by Indian women by implicating the ideal womanhood who suffers everything without voicing their problem. Where shall we go this Summer had published in 1982. It is the fourth novel of Desai that depicts the inner-outer world and fatigue for life. The book narrates the story of middle-aged Sita, who is a rebel against environmental crises and her escape from the polluted city of Bombay to the parental home in an island of Manori. She feels suffocated in her well-ordered, posh flat in Mumbai and struggles hard to break away from it.

Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain has ecofeminists’ persona and she tries to present nature in the primary concerns of the environmentalists and ecologist’s perspective. She reveals the feminine quest for self-identity and she tries to correlate themselves with nature. Fire on the Mountain portrays vividly the ecological food chain by which eco-consciousness constrains by foregrounding the landscape, interpreting human behaviour in animal terms, and discovering the diverse nature of mountain biosphere that aims at achieving an integral relationship between man and nature. This novel affords to caution against the human-made rampage on nature in the form of overpopulation. She correlates the mindsets of people with nature; people are always happy and they feel gloomy if they are apart from nature.

In 1978 Desai inscribed her novel The Games at Twilight with the widespread of the refrain with whims and fancies of childhood memories. Desai narrated the story in the third person and vividly portrayed the bliss of nature by the child’s point of view. The story initiates in the hot summer afternoon in the Indian village accompanied by the set of boys to play hide and seek game. The first part of the novel elaborated on the brutal and disgusting environment in the home and the second and subsequent paragraphs made readers exuberantly visualize the image of intoning depiction on the garden and meticulous description of dark shades. At last, the novel ends with the characterization of soft and tender twilight attempt to tempt all the readers’ senses with Ravi’s character.

Anita Desai’s The Village by the Sea had published in 1982 and it is a children’s motivating story that received the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Thul; is a small village near Mumbai, a poor Indian family with three sisters and a brother living with their parents. Their mother is seriously ill and their father is a drunkard. Lila, the eldest girl who is thirteen, had taken the responsibility of their family and her twelve-year-old brother Hari who also supported her endeavors. They live on a piece of land with the thatched shed in a humble life with noble qualities. The village people live a simple life with a bounty of joy. Poverty pushed Hari to Mumbai and made him work for his family. In the end, he tried to set up a watch shop in their home town.

The present study is an attempt to examine the indispensable role of Anita Desai and Virginia Woolf in the field of Ecofeminism. Many writers depict the splendor of nature as it is, but Woolf and Desai situate lofty in revealing the magnificence and the manifestation of women over nature through their characters. Woolf and Desai did not find feminism aesthetically acceptable and their concern is not with any movement but with womanhood as a whole. They vividly depict the landscape of their respective country. Woolf has a deep root in the classics of the country. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia glorified London as glittering, pointed and domed London in a splendid way.

The researcher indented to shed light on the theme of this thesis to be the way if one close with nature, automatically it solves all mental problems. It reduces stress, dilemma and enables one to live in a comfort zone. Nature has all its power to cure all the physiological and psychological pain and make to live a peaceful, stress-free life. Being with nature is not the only solution to the present problem but if one is with, it can save the earth and it protects to suffocate from any outward and inward hazardous facing in life.

The explicit eco-feminism has broadly interpreted in Anita Desai’s Fire on the mountain in 1977. She portrays women’s life is predisposed and integrated with nature. Nature and women are always devouring unique familiarities and they are juxtapositional. Desai explains women, nature and their inner self are intimate and she reveals in her novel women are the manifestation of the natural world. She depicts how nature has carved and organized by culture and carnivals the customs of diverse people who are entirely divergent from each other in reforming the environment. Desai illustrations the protagonist from Fire on the mountain Nanda Kaul, an Indian woman, believes and feels proud of her environmental culture with a feminine sensibility. She demonstrates her character having a stronghold over nature and compassion with culture.

This study intended to overarch the theme that man has to resolve what he did to nature and pay the wage for his blunder. Mother Nature calibrates human atrocity of polluting environs, killing animals, looting wealth and destroying its abundance. Through the pandemic covid-19, nature communicated to man and made him realize his mistake. It thought man this universe has not only created for humans; other species also have equal right to live. Man surpasses the law of fairness; he takes the precious life of all. Now his life is also threatened and victimized by the invisible virus. It teaches him the lesson to follow vegetarianism, safeguard nature, practice culture and heritage, uphold harmony, cleanliness and social distancing.

Earth started healing from worldwide lockdown. Water resources cleared impurities and appear calm and serene. After many years of pollution, the river Ganges in India uncontaminated all dirt and regained the purity. The water in Venice seemed to be apparent, and all little fish shoals have seen. Dolphins back to Sardinia and central Italy; happily swam in the empty spot. They have created a positive impact on the marine drive and regained magnificence. Pollution level is dropped down all over the universe. Deer and wild animals roam freely in open space without human threats. Thought man to stay at home, observe self-security, hygiene and maintenance of social harmony and communal isolation.

The advancement of science and technology would never stop a natural disaster, pandemic, synthetic hunger, starvation and scarcity. The action and reaction of nature is the knowledgeable theory that proves the presence of God. The global surface temperature doomed now, gloomed by the universal lockdown, which shows the invisible eye behind all. The lens of ecofeminism has intertwined with the impact of women and the liberation of nature from human destruction. Environmental justice now affords by systematizing toxic waste, pollution and food security. The safety and closeness of environment have intensely portrayed in the novels of Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai.

The works of Desai and Woolf, the readers, find a mosaic of the moments sewn together by the memory of the capricious seamstress. Both the writers did not find that feminism aesthetically acceptable and their concern, not with any movement but with womanhood as a whole. These authors vividly depict the landscape of their respective countries. They have a deep root in the classics of their country. Thus, their novel echoes the nature of man and Nature itself disappearing in a Wordsworthian communion.

The review of literature throws light on the available critical works on the writer, including the critics like Julian Bell (1988) illustrated Virginia Woolf, the hidden meanings of her works have searched by the sophisticated readers. UshaBande (1990) “eloquently describes how their aesthetic sensibilities contribute to their growth, a theme neglected by many of Desai’s critics”. A search into the getting back to nature and conserving nature, as depicted in Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai, is intended in the following chapters. The novels of Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai handled ecofeminism personas in their books in various enormities. Ample research activities had already done on two prodigious authors works with different topics and analysis and bounteous research activity have to be going to evolve in the upcoming entity. Their works are an abundance of knowledge and splendid in expression. Preserving nature and transmitting to our future progenies is visualized in the oracular works of both novelists. The following credentials of these novelists’ abstracts of the national and international conference and seminar research aspects seek to understand the background of future research reinforcement.

Dr Varsha P. Zanwar (2014) dwells on both authors rooted in two different milieus, yet their works share not only in structure and themes but also imagery, style and technique. They have a deep interest in depicting the family structure. In both Woolf and Desai, the readers find an almost obsessive involvement with the characters’ past as a key to their consciousness, their lives. A preoccupation with nostalgia and memory thus becomes an integral part of their craft. Both the authors portrayed the interior landscape of the mind artistically in their works.

Knan A. J (2010) comments on the preliminary discussions of a comparative study of each of the two novelists in the parameter of psychological theories and psychoanalytical interpretation, distinctly reveal that both Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai are chiefly concerned with the psychoanalysis of the minds of their characters, principally the women characters who usually occupy the central place in their novels. Each novelist has been influenced basically by the modern psychological interpretation of their behaviour, actions, reactions and response under given circumstances.

Kanwar Asha (1989), devoted the exploration of how time and Memory are used artistically both by Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai for thematic as well as for formal purposes. It is rewarding to investigate two authors belonging to different ages and different cultures seem to have such striking similarities. Woolf and Desai show their passion towards nature and they depict the pictorial quality of new earth and new women prevailing in their works.

Rezanezhad Farzaneh (2014) focuses on the love of women toward nature in Woolf’s novel and shows nature as a whole, is the manifestation of nature as a part or women; however, nature is inside them being not separable from their inner self. She portrays how the landscape is shaped and controlled by culture and displays different people’s perceptions in different environments, which are different from each other. Woolf shows that Clarissa Dalloway, an English woman, is proud of her English literature and believes England has a high ecological civilization. She demonstrates that the administrators of every country, especially those of England, control nature and decorate her with their environmental culture. Therefore this study illuminates the relationship among women/nature and nature/culture and shows nature’s incredible power.

Czarnecki Kristin and Rohman Carrie (2011) presents a discussion on the relationship between Woolf’s thought with ecofeminism. It addresses two central questions: Can Woolf’s work help to understand how feminism is vital for environmentalism, that is, how solving the problem of gender and women’s oppression is necessary for solving the environmental crisis. Can Woolf’s writing helps us imagine the reality and subjectivities of other-than-human beings. It argues the solution to the global and local ecological crises lies in changing the modes of thinking and therefore, actions. The people need a paradigm shift that decenters both man and homo sapiens. The need for literature will help to develop ecological imaginations and de-activate dualistic thinking.

Sheoran Bharatender (2016) remarks that understanding the after-effects of industrialization on ecological balance helps study human culture through a reunion of the theme of ‘nature.’ It has depicted in the works of different writers who write for nature, thereby highlight the harmful effects of human alliance with nature. Anita Desai is a genre of such writers who fits herself with the basic ideas of the environmentalists and ecologists.

Emara Moneim (2017), absorbed on Ecofeminism, as a social, political and philosophic movement, considers the oppression of women and the exploitation of nature as interconnected phenomena. This study analyzes Anita Desai’s Fire on The Mountain (1977) in the light of Ecofeminist critical theories. The text explores how oppressive practices linked to patriarchal society operate forcefully on levels of gender and environment. It deploys a deft patterning of botanical, zoological, atmospheric and colour imagery to convey the symbolic centrality of the narrative and the various analogies of the darker shades of nature and the more mysterious aspects of femaleness.

Kaur Gurpreet (2012) seeks to outline postcolonial ecofeminism in India in terms of both activism and fiction that explicitly foreground women. It also argues that women’s relationship to the environment is ambivalent, thus disputing the dualism of nature/culture and yet straddling the grey area between these two binaries. The duality has particularly highlighted by women writing Indian fiction in English. An explication of nature/culture dualism has given to contextualize this study and to explain how the polarity effects upon notions of a gendered (ecological) citizenship. This research work is further divided into four chapters to analyze the ecofeminism traits in the select novels of Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai. The second chapter, “Making Ideas Alive: Persisted Ecofeminism in Virginia Woolf’s Select novels“, focuses the themes of naturalism and ecofeminism concepts in her select fiction. She was a legendary figure in the reprimand of the pervasive mode of writing fiction and the scrutiny of humanity, realism and naturalism have personified in her writings. She disparages the perception that the author is like a God. A new technique was requisite to convey new radical concepts. Her characters are not palpably described as in the style of naturalism, but analyzed through the characteristics of thinking and construing events. The attitudes sensitivity and the inner perceptions of existence take on a new connotation, which leads to attaining the omniscient chronicler out of the scene.

The third chapter, “New Women, New Earth, Triggered Ecofeminism in Anita Desai Select novels,” elaborates on her contribution towards green fuse and ecofeminist persona. She has the most exquisite language in depicting nature. She illustrates her characters through intense imagination and takes us to enjoy and glorify the beauty of precious nature. The busy schedule of a man leads him to get away from the environment, so they are suffering from neurotic and psychic impediments. Being with .nature and enjoying its beauty will direct our path out from compression triggered with the manifestation of the new eco-friendly universe.

Anita Desai heralds women, nature, culture, and religion as an ecological treatise in Fire on the Mountain. Nature and women are always devouring unique familiarities and they are contiguous. Her theories of eco-feminists, like Catriona Sandilands and Erika Cudworth, are alleged as an interdisciplinary method that signposts the relationship between woman and nature and the resemblances that subsists between them. She depicts how nature has moulded and organized by culture and carnivals from different people in diverse environments that are unique from each other. She demonstrates her character having a stronghold over nature and compassion with culture.

The fourth chapter, “Ecofeminism-Analogous and Incongruities in Anita Desai and Virginia Woolf’s Select novels,”

designs with characteristic and peculiar features of their novels. Anita

Desai’s Fire on the Mountain and Where shall we go this summer, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse has more resemblances by concentrating on present biological issues and relaxing in

nature. In all the four novels, the impact of nature and its effect on women’s characters have revealed meritoriously. Their heroines are loved to be with nature and tried to escape from the current busy schedule. They want to get solace from nature. These novelists moved away from the noises, crowds, humdrum and traffic of cities towards solitude, silence, nature of small Islands and landscapes of less- frequented hills and mountains.

In the fifth chapter, “Summation” arrives at some significant inferences. Being

intimate with the environment will reduce our stress and dilemma and enables us

to live in a comfort zone; if one is close with nature automatically, it solves

all mental problems. Nature has all its power to cure all physiological and

psychological pain and make us live a peaceful, stress-free life. Being with

the cosmos can save our earth and it protects to suffocate from any outward and

inward hazardous facing in life.

Thus this study has a broader scope in the future. It may further

discuss man’s fall and redemption, social alienation, naturalism, realism,

existentialism, psycho-analytical, aesthetic, sociological and futuristic

approaches. By taking the ecofeminist outlook and makes everyone realize the

approaching grind with eco-friendly dimensions. Concord in the assortment is

the crucial asset of ecofeminism. Ecofeminist fought for nature and their

culture from the diverse arena and battle to discover elucidation to this

crisis. The struggle consents the progress and novelties of the remedy. The

present situation from December 2019 to May 2020, the world-wide lockdown due

to Covid-19 thought man a lesson, he is nothing before nature. It renovated his

arrogance and made him realize before nature; human power is nothing. The

supremacy of nature is once again proved to man and obliged to support and live

along with the ecosystem.

The limitations of this study are it would never reach the widest audience. Most of the newly evolving writing concentrates only on academic language. This study partially makes everyone realize that nature and text are intimate wherever declaim the original inscription and inculcate the habit of far sight of nature in everything and appreciate it. Then automatically, it would be the practice and brand to upswing the reality and enjoy sort one among with nature.