Class, Caste and Patriarchy in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Abstract

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) offers a powerful literary examination of the structures through which class, caste and patriarchy regulate intimate life in postcolonial India. Set largely in Ayemenem, Kerala, the novel places private desire, family conflict and childhood trauma within wider histories of caste exclusion, gender inequality, property, labour and social respectability. This article employs qualitative close reading and an intersectional socio-literary framework to examine how these structures operate not as separate forms of oppression but as mutually reinforcing systems. Particular attention is given to Ammu and Velutha, whose relationship violates the novel’s “Love Laws” and exposes the unequal consequences of crossing caste and gender boundaries. The analysis also considers Chacko’s male privilege, Mammachi’s contradictory participation in patriarchal authority, Baby Kochamma’s policing of respectability, and the institutional violence directed at Velutha. It argues that Roy connects domestic hierarchy with broader social and political power, showing how caste status, gender and economic location determine whose desire, labour and speech acquire legitimacy. The novel’s fragmented narrative and recurring images of smallness further foreground lives marginalized by dominant histories. Ultimately, The God of Small Things represents resistance as both necessary and perilous, revealing the persistence of inherited hierarchies within modern social institutions.