The Position of Women in Arundhati Roy’s the God of Small Things and Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day

Abstract

In these novels Clear Light of Day and The God of Small Things Anita Desai and Arundhati Roy portrays Indian women as marginalized facing challenges and burdens imposed by patriarchal society. They resemble colonial subjects whose lives are fractured. Among the female characters Bim, Tara, their mother and Aunt Mira, all are subordinated by a male-dominant culture which underestimates female subjectivity.The women in The God of Small Things are mostly confronted with marital and family problems. Estha and Rahel’s mother, Ammu, marries Babu in a beautiful ceremony; however, her husband turns out to be an alcoholic and even urges her to sleep with his boss, Mr. Hollick, after which Ammu leaves him and returns with the twins, Estha and Rahel, to Ayemenem. Then she has a secret love affair with Velutha, an untouchable, and so she isbanished from her home and dies in another place. Her situation could represent the typicalproblems an Indian woman who is dependent on her husband can face.These papers illustrate how these women manage their precarious situation and stand up to a society controlled by men. This study reflects on these women’s lives to see how they find different ways to assert their existence. One way in which these female characters survive is by entering male dominated society and adopting their language and culture. As these women are unable to improve their circumstances, they struggle to establish their own identity using theoppressor’s language and culture.