The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy depicts the inner lives and hardships women in a patriarchal society face. Roy provides a reflection of the social injustice in India in the form of abusive and tyrannical males who abuse women - both physically and psychologically. The novel is a vehicle for the author to express her disillusionment with the postcolonial social conditions. This response will critically analyse the lives of the female characters in Roy’s novel, specifically Mammachi and Ammu and explore the ways they have been marginalised. Mammachi, the mother of Ammu and Chacko is representative of the older generation of women in the novel and is a victim of oppression and discrimination at the hands of her husband, Pappachi.
As Ammu grew older, she “learned to live with this cold, calculating cruelty. She developed a lofty sense of injustice and the mulish, reckless streak that develops in Someone Small who has been bullied all their lives by Someone Big” (TGST 181-82). Her revolt against her father is symbolic of women’s revolt against all patriarchal authorities which dehumanize and devalue women and deny them their proper space. But Ammu is determined and she “did exactly nothing to avoid quarrels and confrontations. In fact it could be argued that she sought them out, perhaps even enjoyed them” (TGST 182).
Her role as God’s Wife of Amun, while she was the chief consort of Thutmose II, would have gained her the support of the Amun priesthood. Many of these had also been supporters of her father, Thutmose I, and so were likely to have transferred their support to his
Her society frowns upon her because of one mistake she made, generating her anxiety to ever live again. Ammu then gathers her courage to defy society to love an untouchable, yet even when she tries to live again she ends up miserable with a death partially on her hands. If Indian society became more open to improvement, all characters, specifically Ammu, would have the opportunities to follow a life they want. In order for this social reform to occur history must be overlooked, so progress for all people would be accessible. Roy conveys how ultimately strict societal norms lead to no one’s happy ending and without empathy no human
A critical analysis of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The God of Small Things, in many ways reflective of her own life experiences and journeys, is Arundhati Roy’s acclaimed masterpiece. It looks at the many layers and aspects of life under the shadow of its time- a newly emerged Kerala after independence that lived in denial of its Anglicization, a conservative Ayemenem town facing spurts and waves of change trying to embrace the ideology of communism. With the protagonist twins Estha and Rahel, Roy powerfully “explores the tragic fate of a family” (Christina Patterson, Observer) that was bound was the laws of love and societal obligation. The foremost way in which the reader connects with the title of the book is through Roy’s use of the free indirect discourse style.
Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things This prose piece by Arundhati Roy written in 1997 raises critical questions about the British legacy in the colonial exploitation and suppression of India. Throughout the extract and through the story of an “Anglophile family”, Arundhati Roy examines the loss of Indian culture and identity. The enigma of the title - who is this God, what is this God? - suggests the insignificance of the Indian culture in comparison to the British. Yet the association of the “small things” with the word ‘God’ reinforces a hope for the preservation of the Indian culture.
In The God of Small Things Roy has used a brand of English that very often deviates from the established norms of Standard English. These deviations has taken place at various levels, such as words, phrases, sentences, italics, uppercase letters, spellings and punctuation marks. These deviant details in the novel are so abundant that a random enumeration of these may be inefficient and imprecise. Therefore, an attempt is made here to categorize them under different headings. The defining characteristic of The God of Small Things is its strong regionalist identity which represents the socio-cultural life of Kerala, India.
ABSTRACT: In Indian writing in English there are so many writers who have written a number of novels in the respect of feminine perspective like Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Nair, Arundhati Roy etc. Manju kapur and others have intuitively perceived the gender issues upsetting women and presented women as an individual who fights against suppression and oppression of the patriarchy. Manju Kapur has presented the women of the 1940s when women had no choice to assert their rights. Women were not supposed to raise voices for their rights, protest against injustice. In her novel A Married Woman, Manju Kapur shows the life of Astha, heroine of the novel, who struggles in her whole life and she indulges in lesbian relationship with Peepilika.
Throughout the novel, Shyamanand’s behavior remains deplorable whereas Urmila, as a wife and as a mother is cared for by her sons to a certain extent. They manage to construct and share a house built on their ‘Own clod of earth’ (87). As soon as they leave the Government flat and shift into their own house in a colony near the sea, their elder son moves out to a job. And soon gets into matrimony. Shyamanand always had differences with Urmila which escalated to such an extent that a minor topic could also take a mammoth proportion.
LIBERATION OF WOMEN IN ARUNDHATI ROY’S THEGOD OF SMALL THINGS M. Suhashini , M.A, B.Ed , Mphil, Assist Prof in ShriSakthi Kailassh Women’s College, Salem-3. S.J Melitta B.A, B Ed II M.A English Govt Arts College for women, Salem-8 Abstract The present research paper has attempted to explore the elements of Feminism in Arundhati Roy’s novel “The God of Small Things”. In this novel she beautifully studies the predicament of Indian women against the setting of Ayemenem , a southern Indian state of Kerala where the complex web of relationships enmesh the female characters subjecting them to repeated suppression and stifling their individual freedom. She has shown the plight, fears,