Position Of Women In The God Of Small Things By Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy wrote the novel “The God of Small Things” in 1997. The book captures a great part of her experiences as a child in Aymanam. Roy explores the values, social stratification and family customs that the imperialism has left and remain in India until nowadays, because of the British colonial regime. In this essay I will study how Roy criticises the position of women, besides criticising other aspects of the Indian society, from a postcolonial feminist perspective. The novel has important female characters, three of them are Ammu, Mammachi and Baby Kochamma and I will explain how their lives are a way that Roy uses to criticise and portray women’s position.

We need to know about Ammu’s previous life to understand her character. Roy

After a negative response to Baba’s proposal, he punches Ammu and subsequently she leaves him.

However, Ammu’s objectification does not overshadow the decision she makes, demonstrating independency and willpower, uncommon among other Indian women at the time. Divorcing Baba makes Baby Kochama dislike her, and her tilt towards going against social norms brings her a future of hate. After the death of Velutha, Ammu cries, being “the first time they’d (the twins) seen their mother cry”. Although she has suffered a lot, she shows a tough and mature personality concerning her

We clearly see this when she build CHACKOS ENTRANCE

Baby Kochama is Ammu’s aunt, and Mammachi’s sister in law. She is portrayed as an arrogant, self-centred and mean woman, “In her mind she kept an organized, careful account of Things She’d Done For People, and Things People Hadn’t Done For Her”. She is also pretentious, always trying to assimilate with British because she is an Anglophile. This female character that Roy develops helps us to understand the mind-set of anglophiles in India, which were common at the time.

Roy defines Baby Kochama as insecure. After the failure of fulfilling her dream of marrying father Mulligan, which she chased for a long time, the only thing she is actually left with is a good social reputation. As a consequence she builds up insecurity for her and her family’s reputation, being capable of doing anything to uphold it when she finds out about Velutha and Ammu’s affair. She sends Velutha to prison, where he is killed, and she has no remorse for it. Like Mammachi, she submits to social rules about who should be loved and how