“The truth of art signifies its power to imaginatively inscribe hitherto unknown dimensions of reality”. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things unfolds a unique dimension of reality in general and Indian reality in particular with ‘extraordinary linguistic inventiveness. Imbued with poetry, her narrative style dismisses the monopoly of ‘established reality’ to define what is real-in a way. Centering on an engaging tale of a cross-caste doomed love between a Paravan boy and a Syrian Christian girl, the novel develops a number of themes to present Indian reality from different perspectives. Apart from the dominant language discourse, socio-cultural and political discourses have been infused into the fabric of the novel to offer a successful rendering of Indian reality. This paper portrays specifically how women are relegated to the status of mere ‘females’ as opposed to ‘males’. Inhuman treatment of women is inbuilt into the standards of behaviour in a patriarchal society.
Keywords: Cross-Caste, Patriarchal Society, Socio-cultural
