Feminism In The God Of Small Things By Arundhati Roy
The term Third World is to some degree obsolete, initially meaning nations that did not have a place with the ‘First World’ (the Western, capitalist nations) or the ‘Second World’ (the Soviet Union with socialist allies). As emphasized by Robert Young, the term Third World was considered as a positive, empowering name for an alternate point of view on “political, economic, and cultural global priorities” than the transcendent enraptured world with capitalism on the one side and Soviet communism on the other. Nevertheless, that third way was never appropriately explained, and after some time the term rather progressed toward becoming related with the issues of the Third World rather than special solution, and it step by step turned into a pejorative. Another shortcoming with the idea is that it hides the numerous social and cultural contrasts that exist inside the Third World; there is merely no such uniform group of nations. A different term would possibly be ‘women in developing countries but since that idea is similarly unclear and since ‘Third World women’ is an idea that has remained broadly being used in numerous areas, it will be a theoretical and strategic purpose of departure in this paper, as we go after a more nuanced understanding. It is critical to recall however that these ideas are, as McLeod puts it: “provisional categories of convenience rather than factual denotations of fixed and stable groups”. Nevertheless, which idea we use, the reality remains that an average Third World woman does not exist, which is the reason any ordinary tag would hide various historical and cultural distinctions.
Inside the postcolonial literary discipline, there has been a growing discourse about First World feminism in relation to Third World women. However well-implied, comprehensive cases of worldwide womanhood always run the risk of criticizing somebody and of leaving culturally discrete examples of power and abuse unnoticed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty reprimands western feminists in her essay ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’ and blames many of them for unknowingly recreating the inconsistent power relations that as of now is grinding away politically and economically, inside their survey. Mohanty demonstrates how Third World women are on numerous occasions are defined as religious, family-oriented, ignorant, and local, putting them in a situation as ‘the other’ as opposed to the purportedly increasingly dynamic and modern women in the First World. Besides, Mohanty responds against how western feminists will, in general, allude to monolithic, global patriarchy that “apparently oppresses most if not all the women” in the Third world and they will, in general, depict women as weak misused objects and unfortunate victims, as opposed to the, assumed powerful male exploiters. She closes: “Sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete historical and political practice and analysis”. Mohanty additionally notes that the relationships between women are usually overlooked, just as various types of connections among women and men. This is the reason Roy’s novel is especially fascinating in light of the fact that it centers on how women relate to other women yet in addition to various types of men. There is no standard dichotomy in the novel but instead a majority of relationships. Probably it is at this point clear to the reader how unrealistic it is to accept that all women share the equivalent social or political interests simply because of their comparable bodies. Women as a group are bound to be profoundly isolated by boundaries like class, ethnicity, and nationality.
All women “live in an ‘imperialist’ situation in which men are colonialists and women are native… some basic relations of inferiority and superiority, of powerlessness and power… prevail between women and men in all countries”. The ‘Sati-Savitri’ picture of women, anticipating them as delicate and obedient, mellow and quiet, feeble and docile, has offered a route to the possibility of utilizing women as an infant doll. The phallocentric frame of mind of thinking about women as the item, the capitalist perspective on regarding women as commercial objects, the lustful demeanor of treating women just as sex items have decreased them to the subaltern other. Despite the fact that Ammu wedded Velutha by resisting her family esteems and tossing a challenge to the caste-submitted society, she turns into a casualty of her intoxicated husband’s savagery. Not long after marriage, Ammu found herself in a similar net of male misuse. Her alcoholic husband torments her physically and pesters her psychologically. Ammu’s physical misuse by her husband demonstrates the common Indian male’s acquired supposition of prevalence. Velutha even goes as far as possible by imposing her to acknowledge the proposition of having sex offered by his English supervisor Mr. Hollick. The endeavor of utilizing Ammu as a product and consistent physical assault caused upon her by her better half forces Ammu to abandon him.
Chase for sexuality is vital to colonial interference as is shown by Said in his Orientalism. Sexual abuse of the factory women and the tea pickers by Chacko and Mr. Holick individually is a declaration of the coherence of such sexual quest in the postcolonial time. The superior white Englishman is coveting his subordinate’s wife; it is the colonizer’s coveting. Prior to this, he pined for the poor tea-pickers and ended up fruitful. The tea-pickers did not challenge, neither did Ammu’s husband. It is the silence of the colonized just like Velutha’s in front of Mammachi and Chacko.
Inspector Thomas Mathew’s tapping of Ammu’s breast with his police baton is postcolonial depravity of sex propagated by an Englishman – a colonizer Mr. Hollick does it with the local Indian women; Chacko, the Anglophile does it with the factory women and Inspector Thomas Mathew with Ammu. Mathew’s lustful look at Ammu’s breast and flinging foul remarks on Ammu by addressing her as ‘Veshya’ are an indication of the shared traits among the powerful and the ruling class. Another resemblance that is regularly found with the power mongers is that the influential individuals abuse their intelligence to deal with sex and society. Michel Foucault (1980) in his idea of ‘Discourse’ demonstrates how various discourses in the social battle for power utilizing knowledge. He expresses that power controls sexuality and utilizes knowledge for its very own advantage and in this way directs the knowledge of sexuality to guarantee a knowledge-based organization of authority. Mr. Hollick, Chacko, Pillai, and Mathew know that the powerless don’t have a say, they cannot challenge. So they set out to direct them as they wish. Mr. Hollick utilizes his colonial status, Mr. Chacko his ‘Oxford’/capitalist knowledge, Pillai his knowledge into a socialist belief system, and Inspector Mathew his knowledge into criminology in misusing Ammu and Velutha. Arundhuti Roy voices against the commercialization of sex in the worldwide market cornered by men. A woman aches for balance physically and spiritually. Ammu feels that she is not just in possession of a man who by virtue of being a man, has his sole directly over her body. Apart from her physical self, she is also a person who longs for emotional communication. In The God of Small Things, Roy shares the stunning knowledge of the obscene and animalistic nature of man.
