25 Social Order and Law: The Woman Question: Arundhati Roy – God of Small Things

Ananya Bhattacharjee

Introducing the Author

Arundhati Roy is an Indian English writer who is popularly known for her work, The God Of Small Things which received Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997. She was born on 24 November, 1961 in Shillong, Meghalaya. She is the daughter of Rajib Roy, a tea plantation manager from Kolkata and Mary Roy, a women’s rights activist from Kerala. Arundhati Roy was two years old when her parents got divorced and she went to Kerala along with her mother and brother and settled there. She completed her schooling from Tamil Nadu and later went to Delhi to study architecture in School of Planning and Architecture. There she met Gerard da Cunha, an architect, and both of them lived together in Delhi and spent two years in Goa before they broke up.

Roy returned to Delhi and in 1984 she met Pradip Kishen, a filmmaker who gave her an opportunity to work in an award-winning movie named Massey Sahib. Roy and Kishen later got married and both of them worked together on a television series based on India’s independence movement. They also collaborated on two films Annie and Electric Moon. Roy was however not satisfied with her work in the television world. She took on other jobs like giving aerobic classes. Eventually the couple separated and Roy achieved immense popularity and money with the success of her novel, The God Of Small Things which was published in 1997.

Roy started writing this novel in 1992 and completed it in 1996. The book is partly autobiographical; a large section covers her childhood experiences in Aymanam. The God Of Small Things bagged Roy many awards and recognition. The book secured international fame and was listed as one of the New York Times Notable Books of the year in 1997. The God Of Small Things received good reviews from major publications such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Toronto Star. Her other works include a television serial called The Banyan Tree and a documentary DAM/AGE: A Film With Arundhati Roy (2002). She also wrote a book named We Are One: A Celebration of the Tribal Peoples published in 2009. Besides these she contributed several essays on contemporary politics and culture. She has been working for political activism since a long time and is a strong opponent of India’s rapid industrial development that includes Sardar Sarovar Project and India’s nuclear weapon policies which found expression in The End Of Imagination which she wrote in 1998.

Introducing the novel

The God of Small Things is about a family living in Ayemenem, a town in the state of Kerela during post-independence times. The past and present are intertwined in the novel and the story is thus non-chronological in its structure. Rahel and Estha are twins of Ammu living in Ayemenem with their grandmother Mammachi, great-aunt Baby Kochamma and uncle Chacko. Their father lives in Kolkata whom Ammu divorced while they were two years old. The family is awaiting the arrival of Chacko’s ex-wife and daughter, Margaret and Sophie Mol respectively who are staying in London. Joe, Margaret’s second husband, died in an accident therefore Chacko invited them to Ayemenem for the Christmas so that the loss might be a little recovered. With Sophie’s arrival, the twins receive little attention so most of the times they are seen by the side of a river walking and one day they find an old boat. They manage to repair the boat with the help of Velutha and they often visit a house which is abandoned on the other side of the river. Velutha is an untouchable, an old acquaintance of Ammu and Chacko. He has been helped by the family who sends him to a school and later employs him in their pickle factory as a mechanic and a carpenter.

During her stay with the family, Ammu gets attracted towards Velutha. One day they decided to meet by the side of the river and eventually they slept together. Realizing that what they had done was socially unacceptable, an untouchable having relation with a superior caste, both of them decided to keep their relation as a secret. Unfortunately the secret is revealed one day when Velutha’s father observes them. He immediately reports it to Mammachi and Baby Kochamma. Following this Ammu is locked up in a room and the twins ask her why she has been locked. Utterly frustrated, she comments that they should leave her and go away and that without them she would be totally free to act on her own will. So they decided to leave their house and stay at the house on the other side of the river. Sophie hears their plans and demands to be taken along. While crossing the river, their boat capsizes. Rahel and Estha swim to the other end but Sophie is carried away by the current. The twins search her for quite a long time but fail to find her. They reach the abandoned house and fall asleep on the veranda. Not knowing that their affair has been discovered, Velutha visits Ammu’s house earlier that night. Mammachi insults him when he arrives and soon he leaves the place. In the morning the family discovers that the children are missing. Meanwhile Sophie’s death is reported. Baby Kochamma goes to the police station and wrongly blames Velutha for all that had happened. She accuses him of attempting to rape Ammu and also the kidnapping of the children. The police arrived and arrested Velutha and beat him so inhumanly that he almost died. Baby Kochamma forces the children to confirm the false statement she made at the police station. Velutha died the next day in the prison.

Ammu and her children are held responsible by Chacko for Sophie’s death. Their stay in the house turns to be unpleasant and so they decide to leave. Estha is sent to his father who lives in Kolkata. He attends school and college there. Ammu leaves Ayemenem to look for a job while Rahel stays there. Ammu finds no work and she dies of ill health in a lodge with no one by her side. Rahel marries an American and goes to America with him but the two gets divorced eventually. Twenty three years later, Estha is returned to Ayemenem by his father who was emigrating to Australia. Rahel also returns to the family’s house as she longs to see Estha. The twins are reunited and they sleep together that night.

Some Characterizations in the novel

Ammu–Ammu is one of the most tragic characters in the novel. Bereft of any happiness and hope in life, she comes to Ayemenem with her twins. Her marriage with Babu was a failure as he was an alcoholic. Being disillusioned with her marriage she divorces him. During her stay with the family, she falls in love with Velutha, an untouchable. Regarding this as a sin Ammu is treated badly by almost all the members of the family. She and her children are also held responsible for Sophie’s death. She ultimately leaves Ayemenem in search of a job and later dies alone in a lodge.

Rahel–She is the female twin of Ammu. Most part of the story is narrated from her perspective. She spends her childhood in Ayemenem and witnessed how indifferently her mother was treated in the family. This left an indelible impact upon her. When she was an adult, she married an American and went to live in Boston. She comes back to Ayemenem many years later to meet her brother Estha.

Estha–He is the male twin of Ammu. His full name is Esthappen. After the death of Sophie, Estha was sent by Ammu to live with his father in Assam. He returns to Ayemenem at the age of thirty one. During the stay with his father, he suddenly stopped talking one day. Since then he has not uttered a single word. Many people consider him insane but for Rahel he is as normal as he previously was.

Mammachi–Mammachi, meaning grandmother, is the wife of late Pappachi. Her name is Soshamma Ipe and belongs to a Syrian Christian family. Her marital life was unhappy; Pappachi had regularly beaten her with a brass vase leaving scars on her head. She has a daughter, Ammu and a son, Chacko. Earlier she used to make pickle and jam in her kitchen and started a small business out of it. This was further developed by her son who turned it into a factory of pickle making. Her role as a wife was always a submissive one and therefore later in her life she projected her repressed behavior towards other people mostly Ammu.

Baby Kochamma–Baby Kochamma’s real name is Navomi Ipe. She is the sister of Pappachi whom Ammu’s twins fear the most. She is shrewd and cunning who is always seen conspiring against Ammu and her children. Her love for Father Mulligan, an Irish monk, is unrequited. Her hideous act of accusing Velutha of Ammu’s attempted rape makes her a despicable figure. She leads an unmarried life in her father’s house.

Velutha–Velutha is an untouchable of the lowest kind, a Paravan. He lives in a small hut with his father and brother near the Ayemenem house. Velutha was sent to an Untouchables’ school and later he received training in carpentry from a workshop that was organized by Christian Mission Society. Velutha worked wonders with his hands. He could repair everything from a clock to a water pump and was employed as a carpenter and a mechanic at the pickle factory of the Ayemenem house. Despite being a paravan, Velutha is extraordinarily gifted, who according to Mammachi could have become an engineer had he not been an untouchable.

Chacko–Chacko is Ammu’s brother who was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He is divorced to Margaret Kochamma and has a daughter Sophie Mol. Although the marriage was a failure he still has an affinity towards them. When he returned to Ayemenem after his separation from his wife he took over Paradise Pickles and Preserves from Mammachi and made it a big business.

Pappachi–Pappachi is Ammu’s father who is absent from the main events of the story. As a husband he is shown as dominating one who always beats and abuses Mammachi. His regret in life is that a moth that was discovered by him was not named after him. In the novel, we come to know about Pappachi from the flashbacks.

The other minor characters in the story include:

Margaret-Ex-wife of Chacko

Sophie Mol-daughter of Chacko

Babu-Father of Estha and Rahel

Vellya Paapen-Father of Velutha

Kuttapen-Brother of Velutha

Father Mulligan-a priest in Ayemenem

Comrade Pillai-leader of the Communist Party in Ayemenem

Larry Mcaslin-husband of Rahel

Joe-Margaret Kochamma’s second husband and stepfather of Sophie.

Thomas Matthew-Inspector at Ayemenem police station.

Orangedrink Lemondrink Man-the person who molested Estha at the Cinema.

Themes and Issues in the novel

Forces of social order, custom and law

In The God Of Small Things Roy shows how the private and public lives are intertwined with one another. The private lives are regulated by the social, political and religious order of the day. These structures have a profound impact upon the lives of the individuals inside and outside their homes, their behavior towards other people, their way of viewing the world and so on. Communism, distinction among castes, customs and laws determine the lives of almost every character in the novel. Velutha, the untouchable, is portrayed as a marginalized and subordinated figure. Mammachi’s depiction of the Untouchables in the earlier days is a reflection of the subaltern position that they occupied, “paravens were expected to crawl backwards with a broom, sweeping away their footprints so that Brahmins or Syrian Christians would not defile themselves by accidentally stepping into a Paravan’s footprint.”

Velutha was also not allowed to join a school where other touchable went to study. Rather he was sent to a special school meant only for the untouchables. But with time, Velutha is seen to transgress the social and political order of the day. He becomes a trained carpenter whereas during those days an untouchable could indulge only in simple works. Not only that he secretly joined the Communist Party and took part in a procession. The most forbidden act he commits is that he loves a woman of a superior caste. For an untouchable it was a sin to have a relationship with a Syrian Christian. In spite of that Velutha crosses many boundaries that the society had placed before him.

Arundhati Roy criticizes the social and political scenario of the contemporary times. The first issue that comes forth is that of ‘untouchability’. A traditional Hindu form of society divides people according to their respective castes. This further determines the kind of life the people are going to lead. The ones occupying the topmost position in the hierarchical order will enjoy every possible privilege of life. The caste system also decides who will indulge in what kind of work, the dress they will wear, education they will receive and so on. Velutha, the untouchable, in The God Of Small Things faces discrimination all the time. Although this caste prejudice was banned in the 1950 Constitution, it still prevails in many parts of the country.

Roy is candid in presenting the political condition of the times. The Communist Party of India was formed in 1920 to work for the Indian working class. During the 1950s and 1960s the party got divided into two different groups. One came to be known as Communist Party (Marxist) and the other was Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). The year in which the novel is set is 1969, the time when the CP (M) was quite dominant in Kerala. In The God Of Small Things, Roy presents the bias in the party’s views. The aim of social justice for all Indians is what the party states but in reality the members are contradicting their aims mostly seen in their behavior and views about Velutha, the untouchable.

The Women Question

In The God Of Small Things, Roy has presented women with a range of possibilities regarding their outlook on life and society. Some are seen as complacent, resistant and even transgressing the dominant order of the times. Roy does not idealize or criticize any of them, rather portrays them as having complex traits. She has shown how each of them has been dominated in some way or the other by the system of oppression. But Roy gives them ‘voice’ and ‘agency’ who struggle for their right to possess a sense of identity. Let us examine some of the characters of the novel to make the point clearer.

Mammachi is first seen as a submissive and docile woman who is quite traditional in her views of life. She silently bears the torture of her husband who used to beat her regularly and she never opposed him. But she finds her way out all by herself. She transcends the limits imposed upon her by the society and emerges out to be independent when she starts her business of pickle making in her kitchen without Pappachi’s consent. This act can be regarded as an agency through which Mammachi tries to carry out her idea without her husband’s and society’s opinion. Mammachi’s emancipation is a little different from others’. She adopts a more indirect and subtle way of doing things which actually works for her.

Baby Kochamma is more indirect in her mode of operating things. Her life is less constrained as she is not under any marital commitment. She does not have a man to submit to but all her life she remains heartbroken because of the unreciprocated love of Father Mulligan. The values and mores of the society may influence her life but she remains unrestricted in her will to act as she wanted. She exercises her agency all the times to influence the lives of others. This is seen in her manipulative nature which she uses to control other people in her family and even outside it. For instance she knowingly misrepresented Velutha and Ammu’s relationship to save the honour of the family in the eyes of Inspector Thomas Matthews. She takes recourse to lying to serve her own ends many times in the novel. She silently manages to realize her wishes by using other people’s passions. During Mammachi and Velutha’s encounter after the secret of Ammu’s relation was revealed, Baby Kochamma,

…used her hands to modulate Mammachi’s fury, to stoke it anew. An encouraging pat on her back. A reassuring arm around the shoulders. Mammachis was completely unaware of the manipulation.

Considering the other female characters in the novel, Ammu can be regarded as a marginalized figure. She is a divorced woman who is left with two children to suffer. Utterly helpless she comes to her father’s house where she is badly treated with her twins. During her youth, Ammu did not conform to the rules imposed on her by her family or the society. She quickly accepts the first proposal made to her and marries a person outside their religion. She took her own decision and later when things went wrong after her marriage she divorced him as well. But now she has been disinherited from the family’s property by Chacko, her brother, who says that she has no legal right to inherit the factory or the house.

Even her children are marginalized to a great extent. According to Baby Kochamma they are “half-Hindus whom no self-respecting Syrian Christian would even marry.” Although Ammu is disregarded by the family, she is a little feared of due to her ‘unsafe edge’; the fact that she has lost much in her life could make her defiant and bold enough to take serious steps,

It was what she had battling inside her. An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber.

This depiction of her character shows that as a mother she always tries to be protective towards her children but as an individual she can break free from all the constraints of life and the ‘ordered world’ that surrounds her. Like Velutha she too transgresses many bounds put to her by the family and the society at large.

Ammu turns out to be the most rebellious character of the three. Her experience of growing as a child in a house where Pappachi terrorized his family at home and was often abusive in his treatment made her develop a critical attitude towards life. The narrator tells us that she did “nothing to avoid quarrels and confrontations…perhaps even enjoyed them” and this shows her pugnacious nature. Ammu is depicted as being essentially ‘herself’ when she criticizes or bursts out at others. She is presented as one who, “had not had the kind of education, nor read the sorts of books, nor met the sorts of people, that might have influenced her to think the way she did. She was just that sort of animal.”

Roy seems to suggest that Ammu acted according to her own ‘essence’ unaffected by the society. Her experience as a child and an adult was responsible in shaping and influencing her life. She was familiar with the ways of patriarchal rule and the worst outcome of female submission towards it which made her reject and resist it. She is bold enough to go to the police station and complain against the detention of Velutha, an untouchable, which is otherwise against the values of her community. Her affair with an untouchable should not be considered just as a sexual transgression but also an act of resistance that sought to bring about some change in the prevailing structures of the days.

Narrative Structure and Style

One of the most challenging features of the novel is its narrative structure and technique. The past and the present are inextricably blended with one another, that is, the narrative time is non- linear and does not follow the conventional mode of structuring the plot with a beginning followed by a middle and an end. Roy makes use of flashbacks and flash-forwards to narrate the story in a non-chronological manner. In The God of Small Things, A Reader’s Guide, She explains herself why she had employed this kind of a technique in the novel,

The structure was the most challenging part of writing the book. It begins at the end and ends in the middle…if it had been a straight, linear narrative, it would have meant something altogether different. Each ordinary moment becomes more heightened, more poignant because it is viewed through the complex lens of both past and present.

In the novel, ‘time’ has been used both as a structuring principle as well as an important theme in the novel. The fragmented narrative time of the novel suggests the effects of the trauma of the past on the present lives of the characters. People who have traumatic experiences often forget them completely or it remains suppressed which surfaces sometimes. The fact that past and present are blended in the novel speaks of how the trauma sufferers in the novel are haunted by the past memories in their present and its influence on their lives. The God Of Small Things can be read with regard to two storylines that moves between two points in time 1969 and 1993. The first storyline is set in 1969 in Ayemenem when the twins are seven years old. A number of events take place during this period and can be enumerated in the following manner:

• Sophie Mol and Margaret visits Ayemenem
• Estha is molested by the Orangedrink Lemondrink man
• Ammu’s secret affair with Velutha gets disclosed
• Sophie Mol dies by drowning in the river
• Velutha is beaten to death in prison
• Ammu leaves Ayemenem to find a job and eventually dies one day in a lodge
• Estha is sent to live with his father in Kolkata
• Rahel remains in the family house in Ayemenem

The second storyline is set in 1993 when the twins meet in Ayemenem for the first time since the above incidents had taken place. Their reunion finally leads to an incestuous sexual encounter. Both storylines contain flashbacks to give more information about the characters and their past lives while narrating the main events of the story. The reference to Baby Kochamma’s love for Father Mulligan, Chacko’s education at the Oxford and his marriage with Margaret, Ammu’s failed marriage and so on are some of the flashbacks used in the plot. Roy intentionally switches between narrative times to make the novel more complex as is the lives of the characters. The memories of the past, its trauma and its relevance with the present could be carried out most effectively by employing this technique of juxtaposition.

The narrator in The God Of Small Things speaks in the third person. But the narrator also inserts Rahel and Estha’s thought processes and ideas. Since Estha and Rahel’s point of views are incorporated we have a hybrid narrative voice in the novel. Representing a child’s point of view, Roy is playful with the language itself. Roy’s innovation with the language is quite interesting as she uses unconventional spelling, grammar and sentences to characterize the children’s thought and their satirizing of the language and world of the adults. Roy’s innovation with the language lies in her creation of new words, reworking with capitalization, adding lists and catalogues in the novel. She breaks with the standard rules of grammar, syntax, spelling etc. to adopt a child’s thought and language.

Another aspect of the narrative style is the use of intertextuality in The God Of Small Things. Intertextuality is a short or continued reference of text or texts within a text. There are many intertextual references in the novel which shows that literary and cultural texts move across cultures. There are references to Heart of Darkness, Tale of Two Cities, The Tempest and others which suggest that the British and American influences on India results in globalization and India’s cultural hybridity.

Story-board

Arundhati Roy: Life and works

• Roy was born on 24 November, 1961 in Shillong, Meghalaya.
• She completed her schooling from Tamil Nadu and later went to Delhi to study architecture in School of Planning and Architecture.
• Her work, The God Of Small Things received Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997.
• Her other works include a television serial called The Banyan Tree and a documentary DAM/AGE: A Film With Arundhati Roy (2002).
• She also wrote a book named We Are One: A Celebration of the Tribal Peoples published in 2009.

The God Of Small Things

• The God of Small Things is about a family living in Ayemenem, a town in the state of Kerela during post-independence times.
• It revolves around the story of Ammu who bereft of any happiness and hope in life, comes to Ayemenem with her twins, Rahel and Estha.
• Her relationship with Velutha, an untouchable, brings a lot of suffering to her life. She eventually leaves Ayemenem.

Themes and Issues in the novel:

• Forces of social order, custom and law
• Communism, distinction among castes, customs and laws determine the lives of almost every character in the novel.
• The theme of untouchability is dominant in the novel. Velutha, the untouchable, is marginalized and subordinated.
• Roy presents the bias in the Communist party’s views, which was a dominant political party in Kerala during the times in which the novel is set.
• She explores the women question in the book.
• The novelist gives the women ‘voice’ and ‘agency’ who struggle for their right to possess a sense of identity.

Narrative Structure:

• The narrative time is non-linear.
• It does not follow the conventional mode of structuring the plot with a beginning followed by middle and an end.
• The past and present are inter-mingled with each other.
• There are two storylines that moves between two points in time 1969 and 1993.

Reference

• Dhawan, R.K. Arundhati Roy, the novelist extraordinary. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1999
• Dodiya, Jaydipsinh; Joya Chakravarty. The Critical Studies of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. New Delhi: Atlantic, 1999
• Durix, Carole; Jean-Pierre Durix. Reading Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Dijon: Editions universitaires de Dijon, 2002
• Mullaney, Julie. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: A reader’s guide. New York: Continuum, 2002
• Pathak, R.S. The fictional world of Arundhati Roy. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2001
• Shashi, R.S.; Bala Talwar. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: Critique and commentary. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1998
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