Voices from the Margins- Subaltern Women’s Resistance and Counter-Hegemony in the Fiction of Arundhati Roy

  • Unique Paper ID: 189009
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 7
  • PageNo: 4356-4361
  • Abstract:
  • Arundhati Roy’s fiction offers a compelling literary interrogation of subaltern women’s lives within the intersecting structures of caste, patriarchy, religion, and state power in contemporary India. This paper examines The God of Small Things (1997) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) to analyse how Roy represents subaltern women not merely as victims of systemic injustice but as agents of resistance operating within restrictive socio-political frameworks. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Subaltern Studies and intersectional feminism—particularly the works of Antonio Gramsci, Ranajit Guha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Kimberlé Crenshaw—the study explores how resistance emerges in varied, context-specific forms. The analysis focuses on Ammu and Rahel in The God of Small Things and Anjum, Tilottama, and Revathy in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. It demonstrates that Roy articulates resistance through both overt acts of defiance and subtle strategies such as silence, withdrawal, ethical solidarity, and alternative community formation. Ammu’s transgression of caste and gender norms, Rahel’s emotional detachment, Anjum’s reimagining of inclusive social space, Tilottama’s political witnessing, and Revathy’s revolutionary consciousness collectively reveal the plurality of subaltern resistance. By situating individual narratives within broader historical and political contexts—ranging from caste oppression and domestic patriarchy to communal violence and state militarisation—Roy’s novels foreground the evolving nature of subaltern women’s agency. This study argues that Roy’s fiction redefines resistance as relational, intersectional, and deeply embedded in lived experience, thereby offering a nuanced counter-narrative to dominant representations of marginalised women in Indian literature.

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Copyright © 2025 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{189009,
        author = {Madhav Sundar and Dr. Joseph Mathew},
        title = {Voices from the Margins- Subaltern Women’s Resistance and Counter-Hegemony in the Fiction of Arundhati Roy},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {12},
        number = {7},
        pages = {4356-4361},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=189009},
        abstract = {Arundhati Roy’s fiction offers a compelling literary interrogation of subaltern women’s lives within the intersecting structures of caste, patriarchy, religion, and state power in contemporary India. This paper examines The God of Small Things (1997) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) to analyse how Roy represents subaltern women not merely as victims of systemic injustice but as agents of resistance operating within restrictive socio-political frameworks. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Subaltern Studies and intersectional feminism—particularly the works of Antonio Gramsci, Ranajit Guha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Kimberlé Crenshaw—the study explores how resistance emerges in varied, context-specific forms. The analysis focuses on Ammu and Rahel in The God of Small Things and Anjum, Tilottama, and Revathy in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. It demonstrates that Roy articulates resistance through both overt acts of defiance and subtle strategies such as silence, withdrawal, ethical solidarity, and alternative community formation. Ammu’s transgression of caste and gender norms, Rahel’s emotional detachment, Anjum’s reimagining of inclusive social space, Tilottama’s political witnessing, and Revathy’s revolutionary consciousness collectively reveal the plurality of subaltern resistance. By situating individual narratives within broader historical and political contexts—ranging from caste oppression and domestic patriarchy to communal violence and state militarisation—Roy’s novels foreground the evolving nature of subaltern women’s agency. This study argues that Roy’s fiction redefines resistance as relational, intersectional, and deeply embedded in lived experience, thereby offering a nuanced counter-narrative to dominant representations of marginalised women in Indian literature.},
        keywords = {Subaltern Women, Resistance, Intersectionality, Counter-Hegemony, Arundhati Roy.},
        month = {December},
        }

Cite This Article

  • ISSN: 2349-6002
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 7
  • PageNo: 4356-4361

Voices from the Margins- Subaltern Women’s Resistance and Counter-Hegemony in the Fiction of Arundhati Roy

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