When nature “punches back”: a new materialist reading of Alice Perrin’s East of Suez

Abstract

ABSTRACT Alice Perrin’s East of Suez is a collection of short stories set in India. She immediately plunges her readers into an unfamiliar and intense world where nature is not a passive object onto which the human subject can impose its will. Instead, nature is persistently visceral, vibrant, and vital in ways that echo changing perceptions of the natural world, especially in relation to matter and energy, in the fin de siècle. These shifts presented a challenge to patriarchal and colonial authority by dismantling dominant dualist ideologies. This article briefly sets out the development of non-dualistic scientific ideas about matter and energy, before outlining how this encouraged alternative approaches to material realities, such as theosophy and yoga philosophy. Finally, I look at Perrin’s East of Suez to show how non-dualistic ways of thinking contributed to anti-imperialist ideologies by challenging colonial attitudes to the indigenous environment.