Rethinking “motherhood environmentalism” as a productive insight into the poetics of climate fiction : A comparative study of its portrayal and outcome in Diane Cook's The New Wilderness (2020) and Megan Hunter's The End We Start From (2017)

Details

Supervisors

De Bruyn, Ben

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [60] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation générale

Abstract

This thesis studies and compares the portrayal of motherhood in two contemporary climate fictions: The New Wilderness (2020) by Diane Cook and The End We Start From (2017) by Megan Hunter. We start from the analysis of maternal figures, in whom we hypothesize a resilience in literature supported by the poetics of climate fiction. This thesis aims to explore how the concept of resilience reveals an alternative form of femininity at work, which attempts to distance itself from a stereotypical portrayal of motherhood. By answering this question, we aim to rethink the notion of “motherhood environmentalism”, as a productive insight into the poetics of climate fiction. The research question was first contextualized by the discussion of the key theoretical fields surrounding the corpus, such as climate fiction, ecofeminism, “motherhood environmentalism”, resilience and econarratology. It is then further explored in a comparative literary analysis, through the contribution of four clues of resilience in maternal figures. Our comparative analysis was constructed around the key notions of survival, the everyday Anthropocene, the "broken world" and its objects, temporality, and the materiality of the female body. This allowed us to consider mothers as resilient individuals, whether through the avoidance of sentimentality or through the images and narrative strategies used to describe motherhood in a “broken world”. Through comparative analysis, this thesis enabled us to recognize the fundamental thematic and poetic nature of motherhood in climate fiction. The unprecedented confrontation of these two contemporary works allowed us to see resilience as both the outcome, the keystone of the representation of female literary figures and as a dynamic reframing of mothers facing ecological crisis.