J. Binola is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in English (II M.A.) at Holy Cross College, affiliated with Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, India. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in English from the same institution. Her research interests include postcolonial literature, ecocriticism, and gender studies, with a particular focus on regional and indigenous narratives. She aims to explore how literature reflects issues of identity, ecology, and cultural resistance in contemporary Indian contexts.
Dr. A. Annie Divya Mahisha, M.A., M.Phil., NET, Ph.D., is an accomplished academic with nine years of teaching experience in English literature. An alumna of Holy Cross College, she specializes in Ecocriticism and African Literature. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students, fostering critical thinking and literary appreciation. She also contributes to literary research, editing, and event organization within the academic community.
This article explores the concept of eco-masculinity as an alternative framework to understand masculine identities, with a focus on Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman. Traditional patriarchal norms define masculinity through domination, virility, and reproductive success, marginalizing men who do not conform. Eco-masculinity, on the other hand, emphasizes the value of caring, reciprocity, and the interconnectedness of men, land, and non-human life as legitimate manifestations of masculinity. This alternative approach is best illustrated by the character Kali, whose masculinity is based on his closeness to the earth, his compassion for cattle and his synchronization with ecological cycles. While society ridicules him for his infertility and forces his wife into coercive rituals of reproduction, his dignity emerges from ecological stewardship and emotional vulnerability.
Through this lens, Kali’s woundedness is exposed as the result of patriarchal erasure of alternative masculinity rather than as a personal weakness. Eco-masculinity not only challenges the violence of patriarchal systems but also gestures toward sustainable, ethical models of manhood that affirm both human and ecological survival. By reading One Part Woman, this paper argues that eco-masculinity provides a transformative framework that redefines masculine identities beyond patriarchal binaries, making space for tenderness, ecological consciousness, and ethical coexistence.
“Write on, High Court bench tells Perumal Murugan.” Deccan Chronicle, 6 July 2016, deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/060716/write-on-high-court-bench-tells.
