What is the role of Ammu in the God of Small Things?

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What is the role of Ammu in the God of Small Things?

Ammu plays a pivotal role in the novel and is presented as the original transgressor. She is the twins mother and also a daughter, niece, sister, wife and lover. Ammu’s story represents the main themes in the novel; through her character the reader is able to experience not just the cruelty and injustice of her world but also the happiness she experiences through her relationship with Estha and Rahel and also with Velutha. Velutha and Ammu’s romance provides a political and social context in order to view the social caste system and the Untouchables place in society.

        Ammu is presented throughout the novel as a repressed victim of prejudice against women within the society where she lives in Kerala. She was treated violently by her father, ‘bullied all their lives by Someone Big.’ Both Ammu and her mother ‘were beaten, humiliated and then made to suffer the envy of friends and relations.’  After she leaves her abusive husband and returns home she is tolerated, not welcomed by her own family and, as a divorced woman with children, has no rights in her own house and ‘had no claim to the property.’ Roy uses Ammu to demonstrate the injustice brought against women at the hands of men. She dies, young and alone, after her children are almost forced away from her. The fact that we learn about her death at ‘a viable die-able age’ before we learn anything else about her reinforces the hopelessness of her situation in society. The order in which the key aspect s of her life are revealed are telling; the small amount of happiness that she is able to experience is not revealed until the last chapters of the novel which suggests that her life was overridden with fear, cruelty and injustice which is impossible to escape. Roy makes clear to the reader the poignant sadness of the horrible events in her life, where the outcomes and punishment far outweigh the original cause.  

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        The entrenched feelings of male superiority in men and women are clearly shown through Ammu, in the treatment that she receives when she returns back to their father’s house after leaving her abusive husband. Even though her mother was also in an abusive relationship she has no sympathy when Ammu returns home. This is in stark contrast to the way in which she treats Chacko who has also been divorced. After he stops Pappachi one night from beating her, she devotes all her love to him. However, due to the entrenched values of this society it is unlikely that it was ...

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