Wastelands and Wasted Lives in Winterson’s The Stone Gods

Abstract

This work investigates Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) in order to show how the author questions the environmental exploitation of nature in connection to the exploitation of racial others, such as the poor, robots and women. The analysis is carried out in terms of ecofeminist theories and environmental justice conceptualisations. Winterson’s novel focuses on exploitative systems that devalue nature and socially underprivileged humans who have greater risks of exposition to environmentally degraded spaces. In her novel, waste is caused by careless and greedy human activities, which undervalue both the importance of the environment as well as the role and survival of other people. For the purpose of this work, the focus of this textual analysis is on the wasting of natural resources and of human/nonhuman beings.