Ideological Solidification and Hypostatization in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: An Ecofeminist Study.

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things portrays the connection between human and nature through the exploitation of women and nature justified by economic logic and hierarchical dualisms such as men vs women, touchables vs untouchables and big things vs small things that are created by the oppressive, patriarchal, capitalist society. The nonlinear narrative helps Roy depict the multi-dimensionality of oppression that had been hardcoded in the mundane affairs of human life, which escapes attention leading to misplaced faith in the established societal constructs of different domains.

The narrative highlights the exploitation of women under the themes of forbidden love and social injustice and the exploitation of the environment under a careful observation of the changes in the Meenachal River which has become a carrier of ‘shit’ and ‘pesticides’, which once was a source of water and food.

The paper details the ecofeminist principles in line with Anthropocene atrocities which can be mapped to the patriarchal oppression of women through the ‘earth/woman’ master trope, both of which are simple commodity fetishism. The act of commodification of women by the established patriarchal structures and of nature by the imperialized capitalist structures bears witness to the ideological solidification leading to hypostatization has been identified and brought out in this study.

Keywords: Ecofeminism, dualism, capitalism, patriarchy, commodification, commodity fetishism