The present paper explores Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things in the context of Ecofeminism. A large and growing body of literature on ecofeminist issues in the west relates gender and environment mainly in ideological terms. In our country however, growing protest against environmental destruction and struggles for survival and subsistence point the fact that caste, class and gender issues are deeply interlinked. The God of Small Things interrogates the ways such hierarchies operate through mechanism such as patriarchal ideology and apparently rational economic logic. Roy’s critique of environmental exploitation reveals the interconnectedness of ecological deterioration and operation based on gender class and race. Roy has highlighted the interconnection of feminist perspective along with nature and foregrounds the hierarchical dualism and rationalized economic logic that have been used to legitimize the exploitation of natural environment and subordinated people in Indian society. Roy successfully intermingled the exploitation of women and nature in the patriarchal Indian society. In The God of Small Things there are several instances which focus on the eco-feminist approaches adopted by Roy. She exposes the structural and ideological interconnectedness of Indian society’s oppressive systems which dominates small with the deplorable environmental surroundings.
P.G. Dept. of English Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
