WOMAN AND SUN: AN ECOFEMINIST READING OF ZULFIYA QUROLBOY QIZI'S STORY "AYOL"

This paper offers an ecofeminist reading of “Ayol” (“Woman”), a short story by the contemporary Uzbek writer Zulfiya Qurolboy qizi, centered on a woman's final days as she faces a terminal illness. Drawing on the theoretical framework developed by Warren, Plumwood, Merchant, and Shiva, the paper argues that the story builds its meaning through a sustained parallel between the female protagonist and the natural world, most visibly through the recurring image of sunlight. The narrative opens with the protagonist greeting the sun as an intimate companion and closes with a reversed version of the same image: after her death, the light can no longer be reflected in her eyes, only in the facets of her ring, while the sun itself lingers in the room, indifferent to human mortality yet strangely tender toward it. The analysis further identifies a contrast between the clinical vocabulary used to describe the woman's declining body and the lyrical register reserved for nature, a contrast that mirrors the “logic of domination” identified in ecofeminist theory as structuring both the subordination of women and the instrumentalization of nature. At the same time, the paper shows that the protagonist retains a degree of agency over her own body and image until the end, through small but deliberate acts – asking that her husband be kept out of the room, bargaining with the doctor over her treatment, and applying make-up moments before her death. These acts are read as quiet forms of resistance to the medical-institutional gaze. The paper concludes that “Ayol” offers a rich, previously unexamined case for ecofeminist literary analysis within contemporary Uzbek prose, and proposes directions for extending this approach to the writer's other stories.