From Utopia to an Eco-Feminist Critical Dystopia: Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness

Abstract

In this article, I discuss Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness (2020) as an eco-feminist critical dystopia that presents the precarious nature of human lives connected with the more-than-human world. The novel achieves this through Bea and Agnes’s journey from the City to the Wilderness that is mainly constructed by balancing utopian and dystopian elements and thus offering a critical look at our contemporary world under the risk of climate change. While doing this, the novel reminds readers of the interdependent relation between nature and human beings who tend to forget nature but try to meet the demands of the post-industrial capitalist world. In addition, the novel portrays Bea and Agnes as strong women who can challenge systems of power and patriarchy and present the possibility of a change that would heal the wounds of the climate crisis at least to a certain extent. At the same time, however, they need to go beyond patriarchal definitions of being a mother and a daughter by caring for their individual needs and showing their self-determination in deciding on their present and future lives. Thus, this article demonstrates that the novel presents not only a powerful warning to readers about the possible calamities of environmental degradation but also a glimpse of hope in its female characters.

Keywords:

• Ecological degradation
• climate change
• relationality
• motherhood
• survival

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Moylan describes the late twentieth century as an age suffering from ‘the forces of phallocratic capitalism [that] have remained dominant and produced a hierarchical society that is overpopulated, polluted, sexist and racist’ (1986: 136).

2 See “Climate Action” for further information at https://ec.europa.eu/clima/climate-change/causes-climate-change_en