Gendering the Apocalypse: Dystopia, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Manjula Padmanabhan's Escape

Manjula Padmanabhan's dystopian novel Escape (2008) presents one of the most radical feminist visions in contemporary Indian English fiction. Set in an unspecified future where women have been entirely exterminated, the narrative interrogates the terminal logic of patriarchal power by depicting a world that has literally consumed itself in pursuit of absolute gender dominance. This article analyses Escape through the intersecting lenses of dystopian theory, feminist literary criticism, and Foucauldian power analysis to examine how Padmanabhan constructs gender as a site of existential crisis. The study argues that Escape is not merely a speculative narrative but a sustained philosophical meditation on the violence embedded in normative gender hierarchies, the fragility of masculine identity when deprived of its constitutive Other, and the possibility of feminist resistance even in conditions of near-total extermination. Through close textual analysis of characterisation, spatial metaphors, and narrative structure, the article demonstrates that Padmanabhan deploys the conventions of dystopian fiction to expose the genocidal potential latent within patriarchal ideologies. The discussion further contextualises the novel within the broader tradition of feminist dystopia from Margaret Atwood to Octavia Butler, while foregrounding its distinctly South Asian resonances in the context of India's crisis of female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, and gender-based violence. The article concludes that Escape functions as both a warning and a counter-narrative, insisting on female subjectivity as the irreducible condition of any viable human future.