Disruption and Subversion of Patriarchal Normativity in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

Abstract

This research work is an attempt to analyze the subversion and disruption of the patriarchal normativity in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. Various critics have interpreted the novel in different ways. Most of them study it as a story of love laws. Some others study it as a story of children whose innocence is shattered by the hypocrisies of adults. But most of the critics have ignored the subversive and disruptive nature of the novel as well as its other major issues like gender, class and caste that are represented in it. In such a context, this researcher mainly deals with the question of how Arundhati Roy has tried to dismantle the oppressive patriarchal normativity by showing the love and relationship between two characters belonging to different social strata.Thus in spite of the multiple interpretations of the novel from different perspectives, it is quite surprising to note that the critics have failed to deal with the issue of the subversion and disruption of the patriarchal normativity which is quite dominant in the novel. That is why, the issue of patriarchal normativity and Roy's attempt to undermine it is the main contention of this research.