The Healing Mother: Ecological Consciousness in Namita Gokhale’s The Blind Matriarch

Abstract

Aims: The present study is focused on exploring the conceptual connection between women and nature discussing how Namita Gokhale, a famous Indian novelist in English, has created the character of Matangi Ma who has deep rooted ecological consciousness and holds a benign and protective attitude to the natural world.

Methodology and Approaches: Both primary and secondary sources are consulted to explore a conceptual connection between women and nature, a kind of positive affinity where women hold a more benign and protective attitude to the natural world and also feel a spiritual connection with her.

Outcome: The findings of the study highlight that the ecological ways of knowing nature are primarily participatory and Matangi Ma is attributed with this kind of participatory epistemology. The textual analysis makes explicit the close affinity between nature and women in which the most common similarity lies in the concept of maternity that both Nature and Women are mothers. Moreover, both Nature and Matangi Ma are in the role of a healing mother- to others as well as to each other.

Conclusion and Suggestions: As we are closely tied to the environment, the ecological consciousness enables us to understand the relevance of being connected to the roots that define the sense of identity, sense of existence. It is suggested that the future researchers should explore the novel The Blind Matriarch how there is an ethical substrate – a cosmic sympathy, expressed through emotional qualia, that comes alive or becomes apparent in communicative encounters between living entities.