What makes the heroines of Tokarczuk's prose generally feel and see more is also, apart from their capacity for empathy, a special bond with nature. Some of them exist on the borderlands of worlds, like Kłoska – the femme fatale from Prawiek, who smells like a baulk, close to the earth and its vegetative rhythms. Joanna Kasperek, who played this character twice, made of her an allegory about a foremother who embodies the indestructible energy of life. A return to the state of primordial harmony with nature is also desired by the female characters brought up in urban culture, such as Renata from Transfugium. Janina Duszejko declared a private war on the entire civilisation, based on cruelty and the mindless exploitation of nature, by conducting a bloody, anti-hunting crusade. Renate Jett marked her character with the stigma of double alienation – as a foreigner who is distanced from her surroundings by speaking broken Polish and her eccentric lifestyle, and as a female shaman who understands the language of animals.
Tokarczuk's female characters' capacity for transgression is enhanced by their indeterminacy. Femininity in her texts, in contrast to the distinctly characterised male figures, can be fluid, unpredictable, open to that which does not fall within the limits of rational cognition. The character, who thanks to such an ambiguous status of 'being in between' began experiencing parapsychological abilities, was Erna Eltzner in E.E. (directed by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, 1998). This indeterminacy of a maturing girl, no longer a child and not yet a woman, was suggestively rendered by Agata Buzek. The heroine, at first colourless and bland, transformed in the moment she revealed her psychic powers into a mysterious figure, electrifying the surroundings with her mystery.
Otherness, coupled with an ability for supernatural perception, also characterised the heroine of Skarb, Krysia Popłoch, a provincial bank clerk who sets out into the world to find the owner of a mysterious voice speaking to her ear. Maja Ostaszewska, playing this character in Piotr Mularuk's television production, made her a proud girl, alienated from her small-town environment, ready to follow her hallucinations without hesitation in order to fulfil her dream of love.
Femininity in Tokarczuk's prose challenges everything that is mature, absolute and rational, which is why it has revolutionary potential. This power manifests itself in the figures of lone rebels, strong women ready to make radical moves in order to eradicate evil from the world and change its unjust order. Janina Duszejko challenges the anthropocentric rules of civilisation, Renata from Transfugium abandons her privileged human existence to return to her animal roots and hear within herself the voice of her evolutionary ancestors. Ninshubur, the heroine of the opera Ahat ilī, declares war on death. Her journey to the land of eternal darkness, to help the goddess Inanna imprisoned there, is also a gesture that overturns the entire metaphysical order. Ninshubur's mission will only be partially successful – Inanna will return to the world of the living through an exchange transaction that will guarantee the balance of souls, but the logic of all creation will be questioned. The woman, driven by love for her mistress, will set in motion a powerful machinery that will expose the weaknesses of the gods and force them to negotiate.