Longing for the lost (m)other – Postcolonial ambivalences in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

Abstract

Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things is frequently praised for its sensitivity to social injustice and its feminist politics, but it has also been criticized as exoticist and melodramatic. Thus, for instance, the representation of the lower class “subaltern” is essentially a fantasy, simultaneously unreachable and desirable, morally superior and physically perfect, a mythical “god of small things”, but also an object of terrible fear, mean and disgusting, driven by the lowest possible instincts. The present essay seeks to examine the various ways in which the political message carried by Roy's novel is embedded in and undermined by a range of such fantasies, desires and fears.

Keywords:

• psychoanalysis
• India
• caste
• class
• postcolonial theory
• Lacan

Notes

1. The Adivasi in the fiction of Mahasweta Devi are often represented as awe‐inspiring, sublime subjects of rebellion that scare and terrify the caste Hindu characters. The rebellious chamars (leatherworkers) in Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy who threaten and deride Kedarnath and Haresh, both of whom are upper caste, also symbolize the aggressive, revengeful aspect of the subaltern (m)other. Similarly, the demonic, egotistic peasant woman Kunthi in Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve, who is the exact opposite of the over‐feminine, benevolent and accepting narrator‐protagonist, personifies the destructive side of an otherwise idealized (m)other India.

2. See also Vogt‐Williams for a discussion of Roy's usage of capitalization.

3. See Thormann for a Lacanian reading of Roy's novel.

4. This passage can also be read as a reference to caste politics in Kerala. Until the 1950s, untouchables were supposed to wipe away their footprints in order to prevent an upper caste person from being defiled by stepping into an “impure” footprint (Harish 224).

5. Velutha's brutal murder can also be read in terms of the Syrian Christian milieu which is so significant for the moral universe of the novel. In such a reading, Velutha would thus be a Christ figure (see also Kinsky‐Ehritt 111).