Becoming-with Nature: A Re-evaluation of the Female Body in the EcoGothic.

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My interdisciplinary project is an innovative investigation of the EcoGothic from a feminist perspective. The contemporary Gothic has made some progression towards challenging the conventional connections between the maternal body and monstrosity; my project takes this further. Within the EcoGothic, this monstrosity manifests in disordered nature that must be 'slain' in order to restore patriarchal order(Parker, 2020). In gendered terms, ordered nature is seen as 'male', whilst disordered nature is 'female' (Roberts, 2008). My project challenges these gothic conventions by dismantling the value judgments attached to a gendered vision of nature. I eschew the limitations of dualistic thinking, using Haraway's (2016) notion of symbiosis (the biological interconnections between species) as a critical framework. Sheargues that such dualisms (culture/nature, male/female) have been systemic to the 'domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals [...] of all constituted as others' (1985). Butler (1990) also discusses how a binary, hierarchical relationship between culture/nature renders nature an 'Other'.In using symbiosis as a methodology for my research, I am dismantling the gendered dualisms of ordered/disordered nature as being male/female by considering these categories as fluid and dynamically interconnected.My project considers the Gothic within the context of ecofeminism, investigating the way in which the reproductive female body and the forest manifest as 'landscape[s] of fear', thus expanding upon contemporary EcoGothic research (Parker, 2020). In 2013, Smith and Hughes' EcoGothic was the first text to consider the Gothic through ecocriticism. In 2020, The Forest and the EcoGothic was the first to examine the forest in the context of the ecocritical Gothic. These discourses revolve around fears of nature's agency and it is a non-nurturing 'mother nature' that is the focal point of this masculine fear (Estok, Hillard, 2009). My project challenges the alignment of unruly nature with the 'female', expanding upon these EcoGothic narratives that only identify these links.The novel (creative component) furthers the demythologising practices of Angela Carter, deconstructing the threat of nature and female agency. I portray the female body as a catalyst for viewing nature as simultaneously ordered and disordered. This collective view of nature is aligned with 'femininity' that dissolves the division between male and female. I present an ecofeminist identity that is chaotic, controlled, masculine, feminine and everything in between. My novel is focused on 'becoming-with'-a form of 'worlding' grounded in connectivity rather than in difference and separation (Haraway, 2016). My novel is culturally relevant because it 'matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories' (Haraway, 2016). The language we use defines our concepts of nature and femininity, and creative writing is capable of acting as an agent for radical change, achieving that work practically.