From Justice to Care: A Gendered Reading of Encounters with the Sea in Ahl-e Gharq

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Maryam Rahbani ¹

Atefeh Jamali ²

¹ Department of Atmospheric and Oceanographic Science, Faculty of Marine Science and Technology, University of Hormozgan, Bandar Abbas.

² Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, University of Hormozgan, Bandar Abbas.

10.22067/jls.2026.94960.1741

Abstract

Moniro Ravanipour’s novel Ahl-e Gharq (1989) is one of the most prominent works of contemporary Iranian literature in representing the relationship between humans and nature—particularly the sea—within the cultural context of southern Iran. Using qualitative content analysis and an interpretive approach, this study examines gendered encounters with the sea in the novel through the combined theoretical frameworks of the ethics of care, ecofeminism, and environmental sociology. The findings indicate that the women of Jofreh perceive the sea as a living, generative, and relational entity, and their engagement with it is grounded in care, mourning, ritual practice, and the preservation of communal bonds. In contrast, the men predominantly regard the sea as a domain of labor, risk, and domination; even their traditional rituals primarily serve purposes of control and ethical distancing. The advent of modernity transforms this gap into open conflict: the masculine logic of justice shifts toward instrumental domination and the commodification of nature, while the feminine logic of care becomes marginalized, politicized, or culminates in mythic death. The character of Mahjamal—depicted as the only male embodying an ethics of care—stands as a tragic exception whose liminal position between land and sea grants him the potential to mediate between the two perspectives, yet he ultimately becomes a victim of complete rupture. The novel concludes with the collapse of the settlement and the sea’s symbolic vengeance, offering an eco-ethical warning about the consequences of erasing the feminine voice of care and ecological embeddedness in the process of modernization.

Keywords

Ahl-e Gharq

ethics of care

ecofeminism

environmental sociology

gender

human–nature relations

Subjects

• Feminism Studies

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Authors retain the copyright. This is an open access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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