A Comparative Study of the Human-Nature Relationship in The Fate of Fausto and I’ll Sow My Hands in the Garden

Abstract

This article contends that the representation of human-nature relationship in children’s literature can map onto its gender politics through a comparative study of multimodal dynamics of Irish and Persian picturebooks. It builds upon the premise that children’s literature can play a significant role in sustainable education and forming pro-environmental values in the process of socialization during childhood. Oliver Jeffers’ The Fate of Fausto: A Painted Fable (2019) and Hoda Hadadi’s I’ll Sow My Hands in the Garden (2020) are examined within the framework of environmental humanities for their verbal and pictorial depictions of the human-nature relationship. The findings convey that characters’ gender and sexual identities can impact their interactions with nature; at the same time, nature can clear a space for expressing and affirming underrepresented and historically marginalized gender and sexual identities in children’s literature through creative and dynamic multimodal interactions between the text and illustrations. A comparative analysis reveals that Jeffers challenges abstract, absolute masculinity and masculine arrogance and calls for reforming the notion of need in modern societies, while more playful and transgressive dynamics between the text and illustrations provide an effective tool for Hadadi who appropriates the poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad, a maverick female writer, to undermine the plots of male homo-sociality and erotic counterplotting with a subversive alternative to heteropatriarchy and anthropocentrism.