Baby Kochamma Revenge

In the post colonization society of the 1960’s, India was under a strict Caste system. It was expected that one would marry within one’s social class and follow the strict rules of the system. If a member of the family did something forbidden, it brought shame to both the individual and the family as a whole, and the chances of that member finding a spouse were minimal at best. In Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, the antagonist, Baby Kochamma, struggles throughout her life to find love. She fails, and eventually sinks into a state of jealousy and bitterness while seeking revenge on the world that brought this upon her. However, some may see her as someone who just wants to follow the rules of the caste system, and that her actions are

With the the need to get revenge on the world she begins to rip her family apart. Due Baby Kochamma’s failed love affair, she is now determined to keep pride in the current family name because of her current rank in the caste system and does not want her high status to be jeopardized. In this society and in many religions at the time, twins are seen as a curse due to their abnormality. Many people believe there is an essence of the devil inside of them. Ammu, Baby Kochamma’s niece, has twins and instantly Baby Kochamma wants them separated and gone. What disgusts her even more is that Ammu has kids with Baba and then gets divorced. In this Indian society, divorce is something one should be ashamed of and Baby Kochamma makes sure Ammu feels this way. Eight years Later Ammu falls in love with an untouchable, Velutha, which whom she has had an affair with. Ammu is having a similar forbidden relationship much like her aunt, only hers is working out more. This infuriates Baby Kochamma and she resents“Ammu, because [Baby Kochamma] saw her quarreling with a fate that ... she had graciously accepted” (44). Baby Kochamma, while still ashamed of her niece, is bitter that someone else in her family has a chance at happiness and does not care about social expectations.Unlike Ammu, Baby Kochamma cares about flaunting her high class so much, that she insists on appealing to a seven-year-old girl, Sophie Mol. Baby Kochamma takes her actions further by accusing the twins of their cousin Sophie Mol’s death. She tells them that they “are murderers” and that “it wasn’t an accident. I know how jealous of [sophie] you were” (300). It is ironic that Baby Kochamma mentions jealousy because all of these actions that she has taken against her family have partly come from her own jealousy. She is the one who is jealous of other people finding love and Baby Kochamma’s