Introduction

The immediacy and urgency of the climate crisis have been increasing during the last decades. The overwhelming scientific evidence about anthropogenic climate change is reflected in the labels used in social, political, and educational discourses like the Anthropocene and Capitalocene (see Moore, 2016) to refer to the contemporary geological epoch. Meanwhile, environmental attempts have largely focused on eschewing further harm while striving to slow down or reverse previous destructive actions.

Calls for more effective sustainable education (cf. Garrard, 2007). Gaard (2009), for instance, point to three characteristics of effective ecopedagogy in children’s literature: challenging the binary of human/nature and the resulting power imbalance; solving environmental issues through community engagement rather than by children alone; and giving nature its own subjectivity and agency without a hero-and-damsel dynamic. More recent attempts have paid particular attention to the intersectionality of environmental crises with adjacent socio-political topics including gender identities and sexual orientation, as members of marginalized communities tend to be disproportionately affected by the negative impacts of climate change. Doermann (2021; see Flanagan, 2008, 2010 for queer readings of children’s literature), for instance, studies the intersections of gender, racial, and queer politics with environmentalism, and Zekavat (2021) explores how creative, dynamic, and playful interactions between text and illustration can clear a space for diverse gender and sexual identities to emerge in a suppressive socio-political milieu and express dissent.

This article contends that gender and sexual identities can shape the human-nature rapport; at the same time, nature can also clear a space for expressing and affirming gender and sexual identities in picturebooks. I will contend that the multimodal interactions between texts and pictures can open up spaces for exploring the intersections of different identities, providing opportunities to represent and give voice to historically marginalized communities. In order to convey how multimodal intricacies can clear new and liberating discursive spaces, I will comparatively analyze an Irish and a Persian picturebook. This article builds on picturebooks as works of visual and narrative art, usually intended for children, which rely on the interpretation of both words and images to make meaning. Picturebooks appeal to both adults and children as visual art because the images carry as much narrative weight as the words (Beckett, 2011; Salisbury & Styles, 2012). As they are adult-mediated art, they also communicate the implicit social and cultural context of the artists in unintentional ways and are therefore unparalleled resources for reading adult expectations of children’s behaviour and worldviews (Nikolajeva, 2002; Nodelman, 1988, 1998). However, the way in which images and words work cannot be controlled by the adult educator (Haynes & Murris, 2017) since “[b]oundaries have dissolved,” in picturebooks, “inviting a promiscuous mixing of forms” (Lewis, 2001, p. 90). My promiscuous reading of these picturebooks unfolds on such dissolving boundaries.

It is not possible to capture the spirit of gender studies in children’s literature in a short article, but recent examples of comparative analyses of children’s literature within the framework of gender studies include Shen (2018) who investigates the construction of gender identities across Chinese and US-American books to reveal its social and individual dynamics, focusing on cross-gender and tomboyism. Kaniklidou and House (2018) expose ideological leanings and discursive preferences in translating children’s literature in their comparative analysis (see Waksmund & Michułka, 2014 for the benefits of opening the canon of children’s literature to intercultural influences).

Investigating gender politics in his picturebook reveals that Jeffers calls for reforming the notion of need and absolute masculinity in modern societies. The less interactive and dialogic relationship between the text and images, however, hinders The Fate of Fausto to effectively foreground more nuanced interspecies dynamics and interdependencies and underscore the symbiotic relationship between different critters. By contrast, the playful and transgressive relationship between the text and illustrations provides an effective tool for Hadadi, who takes a more radical approach by appropriating a canonical female poet to dismantle the plots of male homo-sociality and erotic counterplotting.

Masculinity, Unsatiable Desire for Possession, and a Sense of Entitlement

Oliver Jeffers, a visual artist and author, was born in Australia in 1977, raised in Belfast, and is now partly based in New York. His extensive international experience has made it possible for him to work across a wide variety of media including poster illustrations, commissioned artworks, and album covers. He made his debut in children’s literature with How to Catch a Star in 2004 and has continued experimenting with the creative boundaries of picturebooks ever since.

The Fate of Fausto: A Painted Fable (2019) is the story of a man, Fausto, obsessed with a desire to subjugate and possess the world. Faust, also called Faustus or Doctor Faustus, is the hero of a legend. Though a very successful scholar, he is not content with his life. After attempting to end his life, he decides to sell his soul to Mephistopheles for unlimited knowledge and pleasure, but he never really experiences a sense of fulfillment. In Jeffers’ picturebook, Fausto manages to subdue a flower, sheep, tree, lake, and mountain, but his final encounter with the sea brings him to a bitter end as a result of his hubris, greed, and obtuseness. The lonely and isolated patriarch clearly subscribes to the narrative of mastery, and his megalomania stops him from feeling any empathy for the natural world; his behavior is the antithesis of the role Homo sapiens is to take in what Donna Haraway (2016) conceptualizes as Chthulucene (for a definition see Haraway, 2016, p. 55).

The narrative starts with introducing Fausto as “a man who believed he owned everything.” He sets on a quest to survey what he assumes to be his possessions. He is depicted as a middle-aged bald man with a moustache, wearing a three-piece suit and a tie. His arms are folded, and one might discern a whiff of self-centered stubbornness in his facial expression.

“You are mine” appears on an otherwise entirely blank page. On the recto, we see the picture of a flower that is the audience of his utterance. Fausto effortlessly triumphs over the flower that readily surrenders to his claim to possession, by plucking the flower and putting it in his pocket. He does not face any resistance from sheep and a tree when he claims he possesses them, either. The sheep responds, “I suppose I am.” The choice of sheep as a submissive animal suggests passive acquiescence. One can argue that the narrative is critical of succumbing to oppression on a symbolic level. In other words, it implies that when confronted with excessive demands, one must not cave in because one will eventually suffer as the flower is plucked or the sheep is marked with a red “F.” The tree also submits without resistance; it says, “Oh, all right, I can be yours.”

We are told that owning a flower, sheep, and tree make Fausto happy. However, we see that the sheep goes on its way in the opposite direction to that of Fausto, and the tree stands erect again. The visual narrative seems to suggest a different perspective in which the seeming acquiescence of the sheep and tree are actually acts of indifference. In other words, they do not object to Fausto’s claims to possession, not because they cannot resist him, but because he does not really matter to them. It is his megalomania that deludes him into thinking that his claims are consequential, but the sheep and tree seem to know better, and that is why they effectively ignore him.

This becomes more evident as the narrative advances, and the lake pretends not to hear him. Faced with such indifference, Fausto is infuriated. His red face, threatening fist, red reflection in the lake water, and his shouting manifest his rage. Such confrontation and (passive) resistance climaxes when Fausto reaches a mountain. After he repeats his claim to ownership, the mountain retorts, “No … I am my own.” Fausto shows a similar reaction in “stamp[ing] his foot and … [making] a fist.” As the mountain remained unimpressed and defiant, “Fausto put up such a fight you would not believe, and showed the mountain who was the boss.” We see him red with anger, shouting, and moving his arms in rage. The mountain eventually yields by acknowledging Fausto’s claim to ownership in saying, “Yes. You are in charge. I am yours.” But the miniscule size of Fausto as compared to the mountain and the long pause before the mountain decides to yield before him as shown by a white double-page spread on which only one word, i.e., “eventually,” is printed, tells a different story. The reader-viewer can be pretty sure by now that this is not a genuine concession, but an empty lip service to get rid of Fausto and his tantrum.

In the next step, Fausto “conquer[s]” a boat and sets off on a voyage because all he has subdued is simply not enough for him. The following double-page spread depicts him in a yellow raincoat and hat, looking determined. When far away from the shore, he repeats his claim to ownership to the sea. The illustration is just a blue wavy line which implies that Fausto is entirely encompassed by the sea, but the irony is that he is not aware of this. He repeats his claim to ownership to the sea, but the sea ignores him again and then only quietly responds, “You do not own me.” The double-page spread does not feature any illustration.

Fausto fails to see the immensity of the sea and that he is actually at her mercy. The fact that he fails to understand the origin of her voice conveys his ignorance and limitations. The next double-page spread further underlines the omnipotence of the sea by depicting a small boat and a tiny Fausto floating on the azure boundless presence of the sea. While this spread does not feature any printed words, the next one does not have any images. It only records the reaction of the sea in words. Despite her might, the sea takes a different approach in responding to Fausto. She reasons with him, saying, “But you do not even love me,” to which Fausto falsely responds, “I love you very much.” The fact that they both know he is lying is emphasized in plain words over a white double-page spread. Emotion, therefore, is woven into the narrative in order to redefine the man-nature relationship. A sustainable rapport requires genuine emotion and feeling for nature. For the exploitative Fausto, by contrast, nature is merely a material possession.

But genuine emotion is not the only criterion that defines a healthy relationship: the sea also demands to be understood. Fausto takes a similarly aggressive approach to refute the sea again by talking down to her. This is immediately followed by a threat and a furious fit to coerce her to admit that she belongs to Fausto: “Now, admit you are mine, or I will show you who is boss.” The double-page spread is again devoid of any images. While the sea keeps her calm, Fausto delivers on his threats by throwing another tantrum. The picture only depicts Fausto in yet another agitated state. The sea does not object to this; in fact, it meets Fausto where he is by saying, “If you wish to stamp your foot, then come to show me how it is done so I understand.” And when her voice is heard, the double-page spread is not illustrated: the sea is an omnipresent and a composed presence. Fausto climbs overboard to show the sea who the boss is, but he does not understand this means his falling to his death by being drowned. The next double-pagespread shows him drowning in the sea.

Fausto is defeated, but this is no cause for celebration for the sea over her victory. In fact, the sea just “carried on being the sea.” So did the mountain, lake, forest, field, tree, sheep, and flower. The illustration depicts them all untouched; even the letter F is no longer visible on the sheep. Despite what he likes to believe, Fausto is not the master, and his tantrums do not disturb the world. His power struggles and insatiable thirst for possession turn out to be empty and inconsequential megalomania, “For the fate of Fausto did not matter to them.”

This is of course not to say that his behavior has not caused any damage as the only illustration that goes with the first half of this sentence, i.e., “For the fate of Fausto,” on the whole double-page spread is the stem of the flower that Fausto had picked earlier. The only harm he is capable of doing during the plot is plucking the flower. The picture of the dead flower, that reappears immediately after we see Fausto submerging in the sea, creates a strong irony. It could also suggest that all damage to nature is on a continuum. Fausto does not harm nature; he harms himself. This is further underlined on the next double-page spread. The latter half of the sentence is printed on the verso and a similar flower growing and blooming beside the one that Fausto had picked in the last picture on the recto. This regeneration, which happens regardless of Fausto’s behavior, implies what we do impacts nature as a result of our self-centeredness, rampant greed, and anthropocentric desire for mastery, as much as ourselves. Although human beings might disturb the natural balance in rather small and inconsiderable ways, nature is so enormous that it can simply regenerate itself. Human beings are the ones who suffer from what they inflict on nature. This resonates with the attitudes of those who are concerned with human extinction as a consequence of climate change; the planet, they believe, will survive anyway.

Erasing Heteropatriarchy

Hoda Hadadi, writer, poet, and illustrator, was born in 1977 in Tehran. She has written and illustrated more than sixty titles and has been awarded many accolades in her artistic career. She is especially known for using transparent papers to create collages. She revisits and revises human-human and human-nature relationships to envisage an alternative in her selection and illustrations of Forugh Farrokhzad’s poetry. Farrokhzad (1934–1967), an Iranian poet, was a maverick, not only in her writing career, but also in her experimentations with cinema and in her unconventional lifestyle. Her acclaimed poetry is rich, challenging, and difficult to understand. She explores passion and dwells on female and personal experiences in her poetry. Hadadi has selected excerpts from different poems by Farrokhzad and illustrated them in her picturebook I’ll Sow My Hands in the Garden (2020), which, according to the website of the publisher, is marketed at young adult readers.

The cover page illustrates a woman holding a pen in one hand and a plant in the other. Her complete body is not illustrated, and it looks as if her chest, neck, head, and her two hands have grown out of the earth. The picture seems to suggest she originates from the same ground on which plants grow. The woman faces a bird, and the first double-page spread inside the cover also depicts plants over which a bird is flying. The image of bird as a symbol of freedom in Persian literature recurs many times in the book. Before we get to the first page, therefore, Hadadi manages to establish an affective relationship between woman and nature and imply its liberating potentials.

Forugh was considered a radical pioneer, but Hadadi adds another level of recalcitrance to Forugh’s poetry by selecting excerpts of it and coupling them with her illustrations. Removing male figures and depicting an unmediated woman-nature rapport is one strategy Hadadi frequently resorts to. By isolating four lines of Forugh’s poem in extract 3, for instance, Hadadi cuts—as she does with collage—Forugh’s female persona from her heterosexual desire and links her with nature. The illustration depicts the full body of a standing woman for the first time in the book (Fig. 1). She is standing on one foot and two plants have grown on her spread arms. The color of the sun on the recto matches the blush on her face, and we see another plant on the right side of her neck. Her posture reminds one of a bird taking off or a dervish during Sama. Her facial expression suggests felicity and spiritual elevation. Instead of grappling with the sadness of loss and unfulfilled heterosexual desire as in Forugh’s poem, therefore, the re-created persona seems to have found a new reassurance and felicity in disconnecting her desire from men and in establishing a relationship with nature. The gloomy tone of Forugh’s poem is replaced with a bright and colorful space, and the melancholic persona with a liberated one.

Fig. 1
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Preserve the memory of flight. / The bird shall one day die (© Hoda Hadadi. All rights reserved)

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Hadadi’s project is primarily focused on redefining the “erotic paradigm.” This paradigm entails the relationship between a woman and two men who compete over her hand. This male-female-male triangulation constitutes the “plot of male homo-sociality” (Castle, 1990, p. 231) in patriarchy. Castle (1990, p. 219) contends that a female-male-female subverted triangle clears the space for “erotic counterplotting,” in which the man “now occupies the ‘in between’ or subjugated position of the mediator” (p. 217). As illustrator, Hadadi goes one step further by replacing man with nature in this triangulation, striving to subvert heteropatriarchy through dismantling the erotic paradigm and substituting an alternative woman-nature-woman triangle. An intimate relationship between women and nature that defies “the logic of domination” (Warren, 2000, pp. 47–63) constitutes this alternative triangulation (also see Zekavat, 2021).

This eco-feminine genesis continues in excerpts 1 and 8 as taken from Forugh’s “Reborn.” This is the title poem of Forugh’s collection from which Hadadi’s picturebook is entitled. Forough’s poem reflects on the meaning of life and meditates on loss and memory. It narrates the intimate experiences of women which were deemed taboo and largely suppressed when Forugh pioneered such openness, which of course proved to be controversial (Oehler-Stricklin, 2005; Radjy, 2019). The female persona addresses a male object of desire who seems to be lost which she seems to mourn. Reflecting on loss, she ruminates on how she will die, missing the sound that told her, “I love your hands.” The poem continues with the lines Hadadi has selected to illustrate:

I plant my hands in the garden soil—.

I will sprout,

 I know, I know, I know.

And in the hollow of my ink-stained palms.

swallows will make their nest.

I will adorn my ears with twin-cherry sprigs,

wear dahlia petals on my nails. (Farrokhzad, 2007, p. 80)

The persona who was meditating on her death, now uses planting instead of burying, to suggest that being loved will make it possible for her to rejuvenate and grow again. Hadadi has decided to change the order of these lines. The last five lines appear in excerpt 1 in her picturebook. The illustration accompanying this excerpt depicts a woman as if she is growing out of the earth. She is wearing double cherries for earrings, and a bird is perching on her fingers. Hadadi takes a bolder approach in explicitly depicting her reconfiguration of desire in illustrating the first two lines of this extract in excerpt (Fig. 2). We see a woman, wearing a red dress, bending down, and pouring water on the ground. In the ground, we see another woman from whose mouth a plant is sprouting. This is an explicit depiction of the woman-nature-woman triangulation. In other words, the dynamic interactions of the text and image allow Hadadi to re-create Forugh’s poetry. She manages to push the still refreshing and bold stance of the poet even further by excluding heteropatriarchy and replacing an alternative dynamic in its stead.

Fig. 2
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I plant my hands in the garden (© Hoda Hadadi. All rights reserved)

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Hadadi has similarly reordered five excerpts from the long title poem of Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season for her picturebook. As one might expect from Forugh’s title, the persona reflects on time, loss, mourning, and death. The poem opens on the winter solstice, and the persona insists that she has a tangible sense of the materiality of time and that she knows that “The Messiah sleeps in a grave” (Farrokhzad, 2007, p. 85).Footnote 1 The poem partly concerns the loss of a man. Later on, the persona asks,

Where have I been?

Where have I been that my body so smells of the night?

The grave is still soft—.

 I speak of the grave of two green, young hands. (Farrokhzad, 2007, p. 91)

The image of planting the hand recurs here. At this time, however, it refers to internment with little or no hope of regeneration and rejuvenation.

In excerpt 4, Hadadi has chosen two lines rich in visual and olfactory imagery.

I saw his reflection, pure and bright as the mirror.

and suddenly he called to me, and I became an acacia bride. . . (Farrokhzad, 2007, p. 89)

Although there is little if anything that suggests sadness in this image, the whole stanza pivots on a sense of regret. The persona regrets why she has not looked at the man who is passing by the wet trees. She ruminates that her mother must have wept the night she was conceived. She believes that her other half had returned to her when she was a zygote; that was when she saw him in the mirror. The pronoun used in this line is gender neutral because Persian does not feature grammatical gender, but the translator has made the right choice to translate it to “his” in English because of the larger context. In singling out just these two lines, Hadadi, however, effectively removes the reference from the excerpt she publishes in her picturebook. This makes it possible for her to re-conceptualize this heterosexual relationship. The illustration depicts a woman looking at herself in the mirror. She has a large flower (not a cluster of wisteria or what Wolpé has translated into acacia) in her hair, and a bird is perching on her head. The obvious change in the type of the flower and the addition of a bird are clear indications for the unwary reader-viewer about Hadadi’s reformative project and liberating intentions. Hadadi again removes the male figure from the relationship and creates a sense of immediacy between woman and nature. The woman that Forugh describes is a small one whose eyes are compared to the empty nest of simurgh, a mythical bird that rises out of its ashes, akin to the phoenix. Hadadi’s illustration marks a distinct contrast by depicting a blushing young woman who does not seem to lack vigour in any way. She depicts the resurrected, rather than the dying, woman.

Excerpt 12 is taken out of the next stanza in Forugh’s poem where the persona poses a series of existential questions regarding the transitory nature of life:

Will I ever again comb my hair with the wind?

Will I ever again plant purple pansies in the garden,

or set geraniums in the sky behind the windowpane? (Farrokhzad, 2007, p. 89)

By contrast to the existential crisis in the poem, the illustration suggests a sense of composure and certainty. We see a woman, with a prominent blush, sitting crossed-legged on the ground, combing the green plants and leaves of her long hair (Fig. 3). By now, the woman-nature rapport is so close that they are effectively intertwined. In the opening illustrations to the picturebook, we see plants and women arising from the same ground; now we see that plants are growing from the woman while she is grooming them.

Fig. 3
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WomaNature: “Will I ever again comb my hair with the wind?” (© Hoda Hadadi. All rights reserved)

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In excerpt 2, Hadadi reprints the italicized parts of this stanza:

What is silence, what is it, my trusted friend?

What is Silence but Unspoken Words?

I am Bereft of Words, but the Sparrows’ Language

is nature’s unyielding euphoric flow.

The sparrows’ language means: spring, leaves, spring.

The sparrows’ language means: breeze, fragrance, breeze.

The sparrows’ language dies at the factory. (Farrokhzad, 2007, pp. 91–92)

The first line of the stanza addresses the questions to her “darling” or “trusted friend,” the same man we repeatedly saw walking by the wet trees. In removing this, Hadadi maintains her reformative strategy.

The poem attributes language to sparrows. Language is frequently associated with human beings, but here Forugh means the language of nature. In claiming that this language dies in factories, Forugh underlines the nature/culture bipolarity. Hadadi, however, strives to do away with this binary and redefine the contrast into a linear progression in which the persona cannot find appropriate words to express herself and that is when her silence commences. This is not to say that she cannot find an alternative to the logocentric and phallocentric system of language. As soon as language lets her down, the living language of nature speaks. The illustration depicts only two birds in front of a window, removing both human interlocutors.

Forugh’s poem ends on a rather optimistic note. In the last stanza, the hope for rejuvenation eventually resurfaces. The persona returns to those young hands that were interned under heavy snow in winter, but this time there is a hope that

[…] in the coming year.

when spring mates with sky behind the window,

fountains of green saplings will erupt—

saplings that bloom, beloved, my truest friend.

Let us believe in the dawn of the cold season. . . (Farrokhzad, 2007, pp. 93)Footnote 2

Hadadi just reprints the visual image in excerpt 5. This extract is coupled with the illustration of a woman with long hair, wearing a traditional dress. She has flowers in her hair and is holding a plant in one hand. The double-page spread also features two twigs. Hadadi’s strategy of removing male figures culminates in removing the imagery of penetration and ejaculation in the last stanza. The regeneration that the poem hopes for is aligned with femininity in the illustration. “My truest friend” or “the unique darling” is still left in the excerpt, but since the reference is removed, one might be led to think that the woman is addressing the plant in the illustration, rather than the male figure who is entirely peeled off the picturebook.

Another example of erasing heteropatriarchy is evident in excerpt 7 taken from the opening stanza of “Inaugurating the Garden.” The poem opens,

The crow that soared

above our heads and plunged

into a vagrant cloud’s restless thoughts,

its voice a short spear traveling horizon’s length,

will carry the news of us to town. (Farrokhzad, 2007, pp. 67)

Hadadi seems to have decided to remove the fourth line because of its prominent auditory aspects and phallic imagery. As opposed to previous poems, this one strikes a much more optimistic tone. It concerns a perfect relationship based on reciprocated love between the female persona and a man. The persona is celebrating her intimacy with her beloved to which nature seems to provide a suggestive background. Hadadi, however, rips the poem from its original intentions by removing all references to the heterosexual relationship and its fulfilments. Instead, she focuses on the opening when a crow (a bird traditionally thought to communicate news according to legends) takes their word to the city. We are kept in the dark about what this news might be and to whom the pronoun “our news” might refer. The illustration depicts just one person as opposed to the plural pronoun in the poem and excerpt (Fig. 4). We see a girl with a book in her hand. In her backdrop, there is a blue droplet shape. She is looking above at a bird flying overhead. It is not the bird that passes through a cloud, but rather the girl seems to be in one. One might imagine that the act of reading has transported and uplifted her to the world of imagination. In other words, this act of imagination fosters autonomy and empowers her to transcend heteronormativity. She no longer needs to celebrate her relationship with a man as the persona in Forugh’s poem does. No longer associated with corporeality and passion, she is depicted as a creative, rational, and independent figure.

Fig. 4
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A vagrant cloud’s restless thoughts (© Hoda Hadadi. All rights reserved)

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This continues in excerpt 6 from the same poem. In Forugh’s poem, the persona maintains she is not excited about a formal but emotionally loose attachment to her beloved as in the institution of marriage. Rather,

I speak of my hair,

happy with your singed poppy kisses,

our bodies’ defiant intimacy,

and our nudity’s sheen like fish scales in water.

I speak of the silver life of a song

a small fountain sings each dawn. (Farrokhzad, 2007, pp. 67)

In reprinting the italicized lines, Hadadi is removing the tenor from the simile. Reading the picturebook, one learns that something is like fish scales, but the reader-viewer has no way of identifying it. The same story is true about the metaphor in the following two lines. The suggestive synesthesia Forugh uses effectively evokes the visual, auditory, and olfactory sensations that accompany sexual intercourse. Hadadi, however, has decided to expel men and the phallus from her ecofeminist republic. This is reflected in the illustration that features two fish parts of whose bodies are made of aluminum foil in the collage, to emulate the glimmer. They are swimming around a large foil circle, and we see some leaves thrown around them. Hadadi condenses the metaphor and simile Forugh has used into a single image. We see the fish swimming in the same fountain that sings a silver song in the dawn. In other words, she is transforming the heterosexual tone of the poem into an alternative aesthetic, ecocentric and sensual reality. Not only are men expelled from the scene, but so is Homo sapiens.

Hadadi’s reformative reworking culminates in excerpt 11. In Forough’s poem, the persona and her beloved ask the hare, the sea, and the mountain what they should do. They all know the answer,

[We] have found the truth in the garden,

in the shamefaced gaze of an unnamed flower;

found eternity inside a boundless moment.

where two suns eye each other. (Farrokhzad, 2007, pp. 68)

The first-person plural pronoun refers to the persona and her beloved, but again judging from the picturebook, the reader-viewer has no clue what the reference for the pronoun “we” might be. The interaction of this decontextualized text with the illustration creates a new and different meaning (Fig. 5). We see two blushing women looking fondly into each other’s eyes. The middle parts of their bodies are covered behind a plant, one branch of which is bearing a red flower that one of these women seems to be offering to the other, without plucking it. There are other traces of greenery on the double-page spread. The hypallage in the poem, i.e., the coy look of the flower, is reworked in a way that coyness is attributed to people rather than the flower. The two suns staring at each other are now two women, the affectionate relationship between whom is facilitated by nature, making it possible for them to experience immortality within the finite world. Their hair that seems to be standing on its end indicates their passionate excitement. Thus, Hadadi manages to propose new, plural “Truths.” Her ingenious use of the possibilities that text-image interactions proffer makes it possible first to depict a concrete picture of these Truths and second to redefine the role of different species and their interrelationships in forming them. The illustration is a clear depiction of the woman-nature-woman relationship. Their hair, gaze, blushes, and the red flower are strongly suggestive of a lesbian intimate relationship.

Fig. 5
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A boundless moment where two suns eye each other (© Hoda Hadadi. All rights reserved)

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Conclusion

A comparative study of the multimodal dynamics of two Irish and Persian picturebooks reveals how they frame the human-nature relationship that maps onto their gender politics. Jeffers concentrates on the man-nature relationship to draw attention to the social construction of the notion of need. The picturebook closes with a poem by Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) that discourages intemperance and advocates satiety. Fausto is guilty of Icarian insatiability, and his tragic ending, akin to that of Goethe’s Faust, calls for reconsidering the notion of need and resonates with ecosocialism (see Claeys, 2022). Consumerism and capitalism (Ghosh, 2016 and Chakrabarty, 2021, among others, add colonialism to the list as well) are blamed not only for environmental destruction but also for ecological and social injustices. Accordingly, ecosocialism grants the Marxist discourse a pivotal role in addressing ecological crises. The basic argument is that capitalism depends on profit, creation of material wealth and growth as its essential features and primary justifications. These, in their turn, are mainly driven by constant consumerism and inevitably cause the depletion of natural resources. The advertising and fashion industries, as two rather obvious examples, create the illusion of false need in individuals to persuade them to buy material goods that are surplus to real need or use. Unbridled production links consumerism to the exhaustion of resources and environmental destruction. While capitalism is driven by “cancerous production and addictive consumption” (Kovel, 2019, p. 24), ecological thought requires “reciprocity, mutual recognition, and interconnection” (Kovel, 2019, p. 16). This is probably the main reason why many countries shun their duties to reduce their emissions, despite the fact that they are fully aware of the gravity of the situation, because they do not want to compromise their economic growth. On the contrary, ecosocialism calls for revolutionary responses to capitalism as the root cause of ecological crises by substituting ecocentric ethics and a form of socialist alternative. This is partly possible through modifying and curtailing the notion of “need” in order to curb ravenous consumerism if ecological crises are to be genuinely addressed (Crane, 2010; Cohen et al., 2017; see also Albritton, 2019; Baer, 2018; Borgnäs et al., 2015; Croeser, 2020; Huan, 2010; Löwy, 2015; Pepper, 1993; Saito, 2017; Wall, 2010).

Besides the notion of need, Jeffers’ picturebook also manages to comment on gender as a determinant of environmental behavior (Zekavat & Scheel, 2023). It associates emotional insecurity, as well as destructive and possessive attitudes with masculinity and strives to explore their impact on environmental behavior. In doing so, the picturebook strives to challenge not only environmentally destructive ethos but also abstract masculinity. This is evident in Fausto’s claims to possession throughout the picturebook. In such a gender market, wage and what it can be converted to is men’s capital, while beauty constitutes capital for women. “In this analysis,” therefore, “the social constructions of masculinity and femininity originate in specific positions that have no direct relation to sex but are instead created by the sphere relationship of production and reproduction” (Holter, 2005, p. 28). Thus, at one level, The Fate of Fausto criticizes hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995; see also Stephens, 2002; Kimmel, Hearn, Connell, 2005).

Besides challenging abstract and hegemonic masculinity, the picturebook also undermines men’s inflated sense of self-importance. This is very similar to ecofeminist critique exposing how masculinity “validates competition among men and domination over women also imperils the planet. … This masculine arrogance … leads to the extinction of species, the depletion of natural resources, war, and the destruction of ecosystems necessary for human survival” (Gardiner, 2005, p. 40). The Fate of Fausto suggests that the negative associates of masculinity can add up to a logic of domination. For Karen J. Warren (2000, pp. 47–63), the logic of domination presents all forms of oppression as interrelated and that the same logic that perpetuates and justifies the subordination of women by man also justifies the subordination of nature by human beings. The protagonist of The Fate of Fausto sports the conventional features of masculinity both in his looks and in his words, while both the sea and flower could be viewed as feminine. The flower readily submits to Fausto and subsequently pays a dear price for yielding to oppression. The antagonist that eventually takes the oppressor down, by contrast, is the sea that refuses to yield to his unfounded claims to possession, knowledge, and love. We see how the logic of domination manifests itself in his possessive, tyrannous behaviors, and desire for mastery, among others. The absorbing, encompassing, and all-powerful femininity of the sea, with its balance of rationality and emotional composure, effectively brings an end to his domination.

The Fate of Fausto: A Painted Fable, thus, calls for a revision of the notion of need, absolute and hegemonic masculinity, and the logic of domination. The plot is largely narrated through parallel verbal and pictorial (painted) narratives. In other words, illustrations tend to be transmediations of the linguistic text. This absence of a more dialogic and playful interaction between the text and images is also reflected in the indifference of nature to Fausto that does not really strive to start a dialogue with him or negotiate the terms of his possession; rather, nature simply ignores his claims altogether. One of the implications of such non-dialogic rapport is the view that it is the welfare and continuation of human race that is at stake in confronting climate change; the planet will persevere whether we are here or not. This approach fails to see and acknowledge delicate interspecies dynamics and connections. In other words, such an attitude largely fails to depict the symbiotic relationship between different critters (cf. Haraway, 2016). Though the picturebook criticizes anthropocentrism, therefore, it falls short of acknowledging that human beings do not merely jeopardize their own existence. They simultaneously drag down other species and the planet by disturbing its natural balance.

A more dynamic and playful relationship between the text and illustrations in I’ll Sow my Hands in the Garden proffers enhanced potentials for expressing and facilitating a more nuanced take toward the logic of domination in human-nature and man-woman relationships. In illustrating and appropriating short excerpts of Farrokhzad’s poetry, Hadadi builds upon woman-nature-woman triangular relationships between her all-female characters and natural elements to provide a subversive alternative to heteropatriarchy and anthropocentrism. While Farrokhzad openly expresses heterosexual passion and desire, Hadadi dwells on same-sex relationships by removing male characters and masculine images, underscoring the woman-nature relationship, and employing fissures and discrepancies between the text and illustrations. She achieves this through a deliberate selection and omission of the poetic text in order to open up the picturebook to young readers.

In her radical reading/recreation of Farrokhzad, Hadadi uses the intertwined human-human and human-nature relationships to offer a reformative approach that not only dispenses with mastery, anthropocentrism, and the logic of domination, but also builds upon care and sympathy to give voice to lesbian desire and jouissance. This revises the human-human and human-nature relationships, dispenses with mastery and anthropocentrism, and acknowledges the oneness of human experience with nature. Revising the human-nature relationship, in other words, goes hand in hand with revising the human-human relationship. Pairing a careful selection of poems with her unique style in illustration allows Hadadi to acknowledge that different forms of oppression intersect and implies that we need to reckon with gender and sexual injustice in order to address ecological crises (see Barca, 2020). The impact of Hadadi’s style in the creation of meaning becomes clearer on comparing an image that recurs in both picturebooks. There is an untouchable similarity to the simplicity of the way flowers and plants are depicted by both artists; however, it is Hadadi’s use of collage that creates semi-transparent layers of color and meaning. The semi-transparency of multilayered signification as the culmination of playful textual and visual interactions has liberationist potentials in the ideologically suppressive milieu in which Hadadi creates her work.

This is noteworthy because picturebooks are particularly important genres, not only because they instill ideologies in children at an early age but also as they form ecological attitudes and beliefs. As Steg (2023, p. 398) notes,

It is generally believed that values have their source in basic human needs and societal demands … and that they are formed in childhood, on the basis of personal experiences and the cultures individuals are intertwined in …. Once values are formed, they are relatively stable across time … .

Thus, picturebooks can exert an immense impact on the formation of values in social subjects. In fact, they are part of the cultural institutions that implant and perpetuate these values in the process of socialization. Yet, they do not need to reinforce the dominant values and can instead reflect and enact upon societal demands for change. As the selected picturebooks have demonstrated, an informed representation of the relationships between different communities in their contexts and between people and nature in picturebooks might contribute positively to the environmental behaviour and security of future generations.