Postcolonial Subaltern Agency in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Abstract

Cultural plurality and heterogeneity have always been the main concerns in postcolonial studies. Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things examines India’s cultural transformation from colonial, postcolonial period to contemporary era of globalization. Analyzed from this perspective, the novel communicates the most predominant issues of class, caste and the elements of oppression and marginality of lower class people in the socio-cultural context of India. The aim of this thesis is to critically consider Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things from a Marxist and postcolonial feminist perspective with a special focus on how the author creates different representations of women and the working class people. The examination of the text employs its reference from postcolonial feminism, subaltern and the concept of agency in cultural studies. The study compares three main female characters in the novel: Mammachi, Baby Kochamma and Ammu focused on their different ways of relating to the male hero of the novel, Velutha, an untouchable in the persistent caste system of India. The study argues that Roy has come up with diverse representations of the subaltern and shows that despite their oppressed and marginalized status in the Indian society, they display agency and are portrayed as responsible for their own actions. I have attempted in the text to prove that “subaltern can speak” and to retrieve that subaltern can exude the power and act out to transgress the existing cultural positions.