In the novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, the domination of women is a common theme that manifests itself in each generation of the novel . Roy writes about the difficult social issues plaguing Indian society; he wrote The God of Small Things after the caste system had been removed in India, but describes how the caste system was outlawed but continued to rule India. Roy was raised to see the flaws in Indian society and as a result he wrote a novel with a message that showed the problems that exist and go unmentioned. Through the main theme of gender identity, Roy conveys the message that all people should be equal and that no caste system or gender bias should create a society that does not revolve around equity and opportunity, regardless of caste or by a person's sex. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Judith Butler's theory of gender as performance is extremely relevant to the characters in The God of Small Things who are forced to conform to society. The idea that gender is just a performance because society has created the illusion that to fit in one must suppress one's inner desires and conform to society's ideal image to survive in the world describes the problems that make up privileging the first in a whole of binary oppositions. Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement theorize how society sees the importance of binary oppositions and their ordering has become a given. Binary oppositions favor the first overall, which is always the masculine, and subvert the second, the feminine. The masculine is always favored in society, but in Roy's novel the unpopular in the opposition is favored, describing the flaws that exist within it. Indian society. Roy portrays gender inequality through his female characters who simply show how women in Indian society have evolved through three generations. Roy clearly shows the problems that exist within Indian society by writing about a relationship between a touchable and an untouchable who both end up dying due to the violation of Indian "love laws". For Roy, child suppression and inequality in a nation are unacceptable. Roy makes it clear that these issues need to be brought into the spotlight for forward movement to occur. The God of Small Things challenges patriarchy by bringing about changes in conventional notions of gender and sexuality in a patriarchal society. Roy grew up in a Syrian Christian community, whose grandfather founded a school for untouchables and her mother left her hometown in Kerala to get married. a Bengali Hindu. (Friendman 118) Her mother ended up divorcing the Bengali Hindu and returning to her hometown of Kerala with her children, where she opened a coeducational school and “successfully challenged in court the Syrian Christian ban on female inheritance of family property. ” (Friedman 118) Roy's upbringing in a home where women were not repressed and ultimately fought for what they believed in is evident in her feminist writings. (Friedman 118) The differences that divide a nation are deep and intertwined , writes Friedman. Boundaries of caste and class, gender, sexuality and age run through the home, legacies in particular of what Roy calls the "love laws" embedded in local, regional and Indian cultures. national, formed both separately and interactively with waves of religious and colonial interaction (Friedman 118).functioning member of society are deeply intertwined with the heritage of a country and a family. The God of Small Things makes it clear how strong existing boundaries are and how difficult it is to rebel against a society that forces everyone to conform. Gender is a forced role for the characters in The God of Small Things, and exists simply as a definition of the social construct. The actual gender of the characters is invented, because the characters in the novel would be expelled from Indian society if they acted in a different way than what is expected of them. The women in the novel are forced to remain true to femininity in Indian society, otherwise the consequences will be unacceptably harsh. Judith Butler writes that gender is a performance, and Roy describes gender as a performance flawlessly through her female characters, along with the consequences that affect when the characters stray from the ideal path laid out for them. The older generation in The God of Small Things focuses on the relationship between Mammachi and Pappachi. Mammachi was a very talented violinist who married Pappachi. When Mammachi's violin teacher mentioned one day that Mammachi was extremely talented and had incredible potential and the possibility of becoming a famous violinist, Pappachi immediately made Mammachi stop her lessons. In this case, Pappachi was afraid of Mammachi earning more of herself than Pappachi of himself, so this results in the first case of male domination in Mammachi's marriage to Pappachi. Mammachi suffered years of physical abuse from Pappalchi. One day, their son, Chacko, stood up to Pappachi and that was the day the abuse stopped. From then on Mammachi adored Chacko more than anyone else and he became the center of her universe. He would allow Chacko to take women of a different class in and out of a door he had specially installed for Chacko's sexual needs to be satisfied night after night. But the double standard continued to be evident not only in Indian society, but in the Ipe family home, where Ammu, Mammachi's daughter, was treated unfairly compared to her brother Chacko, whom Mammachi idolized. The abuse Mammachi suffered from her husband affected her in strange ways: “At Pappachi's funeral, Mammachi cried until her contact lenses slipped into her eyes. Ammu told the twins that Mammachi cried more because she was used to him than because she loved him. (Roy 49) The static nature of Mammachi's life is evident, making it obvious that she hated the idea of ​​change, even if that change was the death of her abusive husband. Mammachi plays a woman who lost her loving husband at his funeral simply because she was used to her role as a submissive woman who stooped to accept her husband's demeaning nature towards her for the entire marriage. Mammachi finally had the opportunity to begin a life that would not be controlled by her husband, but she would never truly escape the abuse inflicted on her mentally by Pappachi's physical beatings and the end he put to her career as a violinist. . The tears Mammachi cried at Pappachi's funeral were tears of emptiness simply because she felt bound to him by the love they should have felt for each other since marriage. If there was anyone who ever observed Mammachi and saw the reality of her life, it was Ammu, who was considered second in her mother's eyes, allowing her to have a bird's eye view of her mother's complete personality . Mammachi's identity was established through Pappachi, and there would never be enough time or help to make Mammachi feel likewas something more than a woman submissive to her power-hungry husband. Ammu could never measure up to Chacko in Mammachi's eyes because Chacko was the reason she was saved from her husband's years of abuse. Once Mammachi is no longer controlled by Pappachi, she subconsciously lets herself be controlled by Chacko by doing everything in her power to make him happy. Mammachi is by far the most submissive female character in the novel because she feels she needs to worship a male figure in her life, whether that male figure is her husband or her son, Mammachi made sure to make her life revolve around the their pleasure and happiness. . Ammu ended up marrying a drunk and having twins with him, but ultimately leaving him because he was a violent drunk. The character of Ammu seems to be inspired by Roy's mother. This portrayal of Ammu is similar to that of Roy's mother who left her husband “in a love marriage” and returned to her hometown, Kerala. (Freidman 118) Unlike Mammachi, Ammu learned not to be abused by a man who was her husband, but she still accepted the oppression that Indian society imposed on women, simply because she had no control over the Indian government, but Ammu made sure to make him test the limits of love laws in India. Ammu spent the first years of her life playing the role of the woman her Indian culture wanted her to be, but once she showed her dominance in her relationship with her abusive husband, she began to rebel against patriarchal norms for women. Her performance was changing slightly allowing Ammu to distance herself from Indian society in a dangerous way. Ammu spent her life on the family's Pickle Preserve, spending time with the people the family worked for. One man in particular, Velutha, grew up working for the family in the pickle business, and even though he belonged to a different social caste, they treated him more like one of their own than a member of the untouchable society: "Here the talented and kind Velutha breaks the boundaries of untouchability by running the factory, supervising lower caste workers resentful of his uncaste authority, acting as a surrogate father to the twins (Friedman 118) As Ammu and Velutha grew older they fell in love and they defied the love laws that the Indian government had established when they had sex to satisfy the love they had for each other. Since Velutha belonged to the untouchable caste and Ammu to the touchable caste, this was unheard of and unheard of. it ended well. Velutha was betrayed by Estha and Rahel and was beaten, almost to death, by the police, and died soon after. Velutha, belonging to a different caste in Indian society, ended up losing his life because he was less than one woman in Indian society, and therefore oppressed more than Ammu. Ammu's rebellion against the patriarchy results in her own death when she is sent away after sleeping with Velutha and her family's name is tarnished by her actions. However, the difference between generations here is important in describing the evolution of binary oppositions within the novel. Mammachi endures years of abuse from Pappachi, where Ammu leaves her abusive drunken husband and raises the twins alone, and takes it. on herself to rebel against patriarchy. However, Rahel, the twin, takes over her life when she has the chance, but by then it is too late for her to live a simple life because her innocence has been taken away and destroyed. Growing up, Rahel had no place in society except with her brother. Rahel and Estha were very close growing up and this created a bond that has continued to grow over the years. Rachelshe grows up to be a free woman because she was not raised like any of the previous generations. Rahel grew up along with her upper caste brother and was able to roam freely and do whatever she wanted. She was only raised by her mother and this allowed her to never truly be influenced by the patriarchy because she was raised to be equal to her brother and was not raised by a father. Ammu provided the twins with everything they needed, and her different attitude from Mammachi is evident in her children's upbringing. Ammu also lived in a house where the double standard was evident, as it was okay for Chacko to bring women of different castes in and out of the house they lived in because Mammachi wanted Chacko to be pleased in every way because he had saved her from Pappachi . However, the reader sees the difference between Chacko and Ammu when Ammu is severely punished for sleeping with Velutha. Rahel grows up and ends up estranged after the horrible death of her mother and the beating death of Velutha, who she considered a girl.father figure her entire life. She moved away and started a life of her own, making her the freest of all the women in the novel. Rahel is by far the freest, but Ammu died for her freedom and was instrumental in creating the individual Rahel grew up to be. However, Rahel is not completely free from her oppression, and the reader sees this in her violation of the laws of love with her brother Estha. The last scene written by Roy, in which Rahel and Estha, portrays the two having sex, in the most poetic way incest can be portrayed. Estha and Rahel lost their innocence at a young age: “By now Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways to break men, they already knew the smell, sweetish. Like old roses in the breeze” and the only person they could turn to for comfort was each other. (Roy 15) The foreshadowing in the novel begins in the first chapter when Roy writes that they were already familiar with the other ways of breaking men, referring to the love between Velutha and Ammu. The twins saw how man could be destroyed with the two people they were closest to besides themselves. But, before learning the fate of Velutha and Ammu, Estha learned one of the world's harsh realities on a day that should have been magical for him and Rahel. Estha lost his innocence when the orange and lemon man molested him, and Rahel also lost her innocence that day when she learned that something terrible and unspeakable had happened to her brother. If the harassment wasn't enough, the twins were also present at Sophie Mol's death. In the final moments the audience sees Rahel and Estha together, the incestuous act is not seen as entirely negative because it is obvious that it is the only true one. moment in twins' lives when they feel complete. They found completion within each other, but this could not be done without breaking the laws of love. The greatest performance in the novel is between the two queer figures in the novel, namely Rahel and Estha. The entire novel transforms the characters of the twins into the two figures who play the role of a male and a female in Indian society in a more distorted sense than any other character in the novel. Roy portrays them favorably, making it easy to sympathize with these characters. The empathy that Roy makes the reader feel for Estha and Rahel makes it easy to find the flaws in Indian society and hope for change to occur and alter the unacceptable harshness conveyed through the image of Indian society that Roy explicitly describes. Ammu was never able to defeat oppression and her life, after finally being fulfilled by her one true love, ended, but it opened thepath for his children to take a step forward towards the removal of society's binary oppositions. As for Rahel and Estha, the reader does not know what happens to them after the last moments mentioned in the book, but it shows that the only way to completely overcome the difficulties that life throws at them is to break the most important social laws to find happiness within yourself. The happiness they bring to themselves also provides happiness to the other party, but it usually doesn't end well. Going against social taboos is a major theme for Roy in his novel, but it also demonstrates the importance of the strength with which relationships develop with others with whom friendship is acceptable but relationships are not acceptable to exist. The novel about the violation of what Roy calls the "laws of love" occurs in the theater, when Estha is molested by the orange and lemon man. This assault results in the “separation of twins with two eggs into destinies of different genders.” (Freidman 121) Another instance in the novel where the “laws of love” are broken occurs this time with both twins. Twins break the “laws of love” when they engage in incestuous relationships in the “connection of souls”.figured in the anguish of touch”. (Freidman 121) After living in pain, the twins finally reunite in a way that connects them on a level that defies the laws that society has put in place over time, but it is the only moment in the novel where the twins they feel complete. The only way the twins could find themselves whole was to engage in a sexual act that defied all standards of society, because all their lives they had been beaten down by the consequences of social norms. Friedman writes As soon as I live to suffer the consequences of his transgression in seeing the child he befriended disown him and the family he enriched denounce him. But not long enough to see the woman he loved stand by him, dooming herself to exile and a slow death, a modern-day immolation of the woman with the "dangerous spot." (Friedman 122) Velutha and Ammu met a tragic end, simply because they could no longer resist the urge to love each other, and this resulted in the disastrous end of both their lives, and symbolically ended the lives of Estha and Rahel who they both admired. Velutha and Ammu unconditionally. After the deaths of Velutha and Ammu, the twins never again found comfort in any aspect of their lives. When Ammu, Rahel, and Estha shared a moment together after Veluthra's death “Estha nodded at Ammu's face tilted toward the train window. To Rahel, small and dirty with dirt of the station. All three were linked by the certain and separate awareness of having loved a man until death. (Roy 306) Ammu was not the only one in love with Velutha. The twins looked up to Velutha and her father's figure in their life was monumental and he transformed them into the individuals they had been up to that point in their life. His influence would live on in their lives for the rest of time, making it difficult for them to lose the love they had for the man who always had time for them. Velutha's death showed the twins the evil ways the world betrays and its merciless nature. The twins' identities have been greatly influenced by the world of cruel nature that ultimately also controls the patriarchy. Velutha's death was a death no one imagined, but the reader needed to see to understand the dynamics of the cruel world that shaped and delineated the future of Ammu, Rahel, and Estha. Rahel walked away and Estha stopped talking and lost the last glimmer of innocence he had. The only time after these horrific events the twins felt comfortable in their cruel world was whenthey were able to have sexual intercourse together. Ultimately, they were able to find comfort in a world that had only brought them heartbreak and revealed to them what was truly wrong with human nature and society's view on love. The deaths of Ammu and Velutha crushed Rahel and Estha, making it simply impossible to get over such a terrible end to the two people they loved most. Judith Butler strongly argues that gender differences are considered arbitrary and that all people should be treated with equality. “If the internal truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy established and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genres can be neither true nor false, but are produced only as truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity". (Butler 583) For Butler, gender is simply established by society and a specific gender, according to society, is too often inflicted on the sex it is primarily associated with. For example, masculinity is automatically a masculine quality, even if some women gain masculine traits. Women are automatically associated with feminine characteristics, and if either gender strays from one or the other, they are seen as others who do not follow the heterosexual norm put in place by society. As Butler also writes, "Acts, gestures and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but they produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of significant absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organized principle of 'identity as cause. Such acts, gestures, representations, generally interpreted, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity they otherwise purport to express are fabrications fabricated and sustained through bodily signs and other discursive means" (Butler 583) Gender identity should come from the acts and gestures a person chooses to perform, not based on the sex they were biologically assigned at birth. In The God of Small Things, it is easy to see that Roy believes the overarching theme in his book is the lack of identity for Estha e. Rachel. Roy writes: “In those early amorphous years when memory was just beginning, when life was full of beginnings and without endings, and everything was forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as I, and separately, individually, like us or us. as if they were a rare breed of conjoined twins who were physically separated, but had common identities. (Roy 29) The significance of Rahel and Estha being dizygotic twins, meaning two separated, is emphasized, but in some cases they look like Siamese twins, attached at the hip, like two beings who move as one until their innocence is lost until the day of Estha's molestation, Rahel and Estha were almost identically the same person. The day the loss of innocence occurred, separate individualized identities. In Margaret Homan's essay "Women of Color," she refers to Butler frequently and agrees with him on many occasions. statements made by Butler about gender identity and feminism. Homan agrees with Butler that there should not be an identity imposed on a person, rather the identity should be arbitrary. Homans points out that Butler also argues that “Identity” is a category that imposes false coercion. unity, white only, middle class, Western feminism itself has been accused of imposing an interpretive friend on the multiplicity of female life by privileging the category “woman” over those of race, ethnicity, class, nationality, age, and so on. Identity, like some types of white feminism, must be eliminated because of what it excludes. (Homans 679) There should be no identity found only in being a unity. The identityit should be on an individualized basis and should be inclusive and non-exclusive. The only characters in The God of Small Things who didn't experience this gender labeling were Rahel and Estha because they were one and the same. The twins lived through each other and it didn't matter that one was male and the other female, in the end there were no gender boundaries between the two of them. Ammu never made them feel obligated to act a certain way because of the gender that is automatically assigned to their biological sex. In Luce Irigaray's essay “The Blind Spot of an Old Dream,” the main question that arises is: why do we assign a specific gender to a specific sex? The issue for Irigaray goes back to Frued and her theory that even when women hold the role of power holders, they do not enjoy that power and do so simply to keep nature flowing. For example, Irirgaray attacks Frued's belief that breastfeeding women cannot find pleasure in feeding another human being of their own making by saying, "Any consideration of pleasure in breastfeeding seems here to be excluded, misunderstood, under a silence prohibition". (Irigaray 647) A woman is the vessel that creates new life and nourishes that life until she is ready to enter the world. Those who create new life live an extremely active role, and the woman is the one who gives life to the next patriarchy. Being active in this role is certainly not a role that women take on and find pleasure in. Freud argues: "The point is that man is the procreator, that sexual production-reproduction is referable only to his "Activity", exclusively to his "project". Woman is nothing other than the receptacle that passively welcomes his produced, although sometimes, through the manifestation of her passively aimed instincts, she pleaded, facilitated, even demanded that it be placed within her" (Irigaray 647). However, Irigaray does not agree with this way of thinking under any circumstances. Irigaray proceeds to argue that a gender cannot be defined by a person's activity or passivity. Creating a human being needs a strong person, and the person who creates human beings is the woman who raises the child inside her for nine long months. To Freud this seems like a passive role, but during those nine months the woman is expected to continue her duties as she would if she were not pregnant, while a parasite that sucks nutrients from her body grows inside her. There is no correct measurement of activity and passivity in any gender, but rather in the person himself. A man can be very active and have many masculine qualities, but a woman can also be just as active and have feminine qualities. These feminine qualities do not make a woman less active simply because it is associated with femininity. In The God of Small Things, Ammu enjoys her role as the twins' mother even when they test her. Ammu takes pride in her duty as a mother because she saves her children from their abusive father and gives them a better life than they would have had if they had continued to live with him. Ammu's active nature in her children's lives appeals to her because she holds all the power in their lives and has chosen to hold power for the pleasure of being able to watch her children grow up. Ammu is the woman Freud pretended didn't exist. Ammu was extremely active in her children's lives and this did not detract from her feminine qualities. From a different perspective, Mammachi loves her role as a mother, at least being Chacko's mother because she has created a life that is symbolic of patriarchy and holds enough power to control his life and those around him. Mammachi was not an active female character, she fit very well into the gender role assigned to women because she lether husband did what he wanted with her and with her life. For Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement, gender is a label that must be completely rejected. These two women manifest their refusal through dual hierarchical oppositions. In their examples of binary oppositions, each set listed demonstrates how the masculine is always first in the pair and the feminine is second. For example: “Activity/passivity, Sun/moon, Culture/nature, Day/night, Father/Mother, Head/Heart”. (Cixious and Clement 654) The words associated with masculinity in these pairs always come first, however, the rejection of these ideas that society has paired together shows that they should be contested and that masculinity and femininity should not be divided into separate spheres. Roy prefers the queer figure in the novel and appreciates their differences. Straight is not privileged in Roy's eyes because it describes the differences that exist in the world and how unfair they are. Cixious and Clement disagree with binary oppositions. There are different qualities and there will always be an opposite for each term, but one should not be favored over the other. Roy favors the incestuous relationship between Rahel and Estha, and she fosters the union of a touchable and an untouchable through her portrayal of Ammu and Velutha. Mammachi's conformist nature provides the reader with a good starting point for understanding how these binary oppositions are addressed in the novel. The irony found in the novel regarding gender differences is extremely influential. The differences that existed between Chacko and Ammu were unfair, and having grown up in a home where unfair treatment was evident, Ammu raised her twins differently. Ammu raised Rahel and Estha equally, never favoring one over the other, as her mother did with her and Chacko. Chacko is the ultimate symbol of patriarchy within the Ipe family. However, to Ammu, her power was unrecognizable, except to herself and her children who she raised to be equal, something she never had with Chacko. Since Chacko ruled the Ipe house, he symbolized patriarchy. The patriarchy is free to do what it wants, but when someone under the control of the patriarchy goes against the demands of the patriarchy they are severely punished. Unfortunately, the double standard that existed in the Ipe house, also existed in Indian society and Ammu suffered not only under the rule of her house, but also under the rule of her government because she was a woman. Ammu slept with a man from a different caste and was sent into exile, which resulted in her death, while Chacko slept with many women belonging to a different caste and was only rewarded with more women to use only for his sexual desire. Ammu's love with Velutha meant nothing because she had relations with a man of a different caste, and Chacko's sexual desires were described in the Ipe house as more of a necessity than the love Ammu and Velutha shared. Roy has covered a number of social taboos in his novel, and chooses Ammu as his strong female character. Ammu faces many challenges and her character is so strong that she is the reason the novel is being tried for obscenity. Ammu is the first generation of women in the novel to be independent and not submit to the demands of a male figure in the novel. Ammu chooses to follow her heart and ultimately her strong will will lead to her death. Ammu's dominant woman figure does not end well for her character because her actions challenge the patriarchy which was unacceptable in India at the time, although the double standard existed, Ammu was unable to escape the wrath of the patriarchy. However, Ammu's influence on her daughter Rahel is evident in Rahel's decision to.