Magical Realism: A Step Further Towards Eco-Feminism With Special Reference to Marquez’s Innocent Erendira

This paper aims at investigating the contribution of magical realism as a
narrative mode to the thematic critical content of eco-feminism as a current
influential literary domain. Eco-feminism is a thematic critical theory in the
sense that it tackles themes and ideas more than techniques and structure. In
comparison to formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism, eco-feminism
proves to be more thematically oriented. For this reason, it is the interest of
this paper to work on extending the domain of this theory to embrace magical
realism as a narrative mode that defamiliarizes its thematic definition. The
paper is based on proposing that between magical realism and eco-feminism,
there is a relationship that springs from the similarity between them, in
addition to the significance attributed to eco-feminism when enhanced by
magical realism as a mode of narration. This brings into concern both ‘duality’
and ‘defocalization’ as leading terms that knot both magical realism and ecofeminism
to postmodernism as a basic context of reference, bringing the theme
of accepting the ‘Other’ into the scene. Literary cross references are to be
made to Garcia Marquez’s short novel The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent
Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother. This short novel is used to explain
and show how magical realism, through the theme of avenging abuse, has
enhanced the eco-feminist reading that is based here on naturalizing woman as
a step towards feminizing Nature in the text