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God Of Small Things By Arundhati Roy Analysis

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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. She was physically abused as she was beaten either with a brass vase or an ivory handled riding crop and psychologically traumatised by her husband. Mammachi however, kept mum and as a post-colonial Indian woman she succumbs to the lures of pre-colonial caste rules thus, she becomes an instrument of patriarchal domination despite being a victim herself. Moreover, it is evident that the men in the novel, particularly Pappachi, suffer from an inferiority complex. Pappachi expresses jealousy when he refuses to help her when she started a pickle making business even though …show more content…

The reader notices that an older generation of women have accepted their role in society over the years and silently approve of the male sovereignty by abiding by norms. On the other hand, Ammu represents a more rebellious generation by transgressing social norms of sexuality and breaking the “love laws”, hence providing a resistance to patriarchy. However, despite her quest for freedom and identity, she remains victim of male chauvinism at every stage of her life because of her marginalisation by social institutions of family and marriage, amongst

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