International Journal of Language & Linguistics

The Woman and the Non- Human in Roy’s the God of Small Things
Dr U R Anusha

Abstract
In a patriarchal culture the re-presentation of images creates both the subjectification of men and the objectification of women. While the woman in the cultural world emerges as the object of the male gaze, the non human in the natural world emerges the object of the human gaze. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a green manifesto as well as a structural re- presentation of patriarchal cultural imagery. Roy’s text reflects the repressed images of nature. Roy concentrates on merging the fragile ecological network and the human world. She yokes culture and nature as two intimately interconnected systems thereby provoking prominent patriarchal cultural re-presentations. This paper seeks to focus on how the male gaze constructs re-presentations that define women and the non human alike. The paper also seeks the interconnections between Freud’s “return of the repressed” as reflected in Roy’s efforts to link the human and the natural world.

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