“The Question of Land and Woman: Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country from an Ecofeminist Perspective”

Alan Paton’s maiden novel, and still his magnum opus, Cry, the Beloved Country has often been interpreted as a post-colonial literary document that records the segregational discrimination of the 1940s, which was later institutionalised as the ill-reputed apartheida few months following the publication of the novel. Indeed, such readings are true. However, they do not take into consideration the feminist considerations and ecological implications permeated in the novel. The examples that show the political, social and economic exploitation of women along with the degradation of land are numerous. This article is an ecofeminist reading of Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country: It aims to elucidate that both white and black women do not have much leverage within the colonialist and patriarchal society in which they live. The weak and minor position given to women here goes hand in hand with the degradation of African land. To the dismay of many, more particularly feminists, almost all the female characters depicted in the novel are stigmatised as helpless, naïve or immorally decadent. Even the good ones of them stereotypically play second fiddle under pater familias and endure the monotonous chores of mothering and domesticity. As for land in pre-apartheid context, it is not any far better off than woman as it has been degraded and eroded by man-induced factors such as inappropriate agricultural practises, overcultivation, overgrazing and gold mining. Furthermore, poverty-stricken tenants have deserted their land for urban regions in search of better life.