How Does Arundhati Roy Address Domestic Violence in The God of Small Things?
Arundhati Roy addresses domestic violence in The God of Small Things as a systemic and normalized form of patriarchal oppression that permeates multiple generations and destroys family relationships. The novel presents domestic violence not as isolated incidents but as an entrenched pattern of abuse enabled by cultural attitudes, economic dependency, and legal systems that offer women minimal protection. Roy depicts various forms of domestic violence including physical abuse (Pappachi’s beatings of Mammachi with a brass vase), emotional abuse (systematic belittling and control), economic abuse (withholding resources and opportunities), and psychological manipulation. The narrative reveals how domestic violence creates intergenerational trauma, with victims sometimes becoming perpetrators or enablers of abuse in subsequent relationships. Through characters like Mammachi, Ammu, and even the children Rahel and Estha who witness violence, Roy demonstrates that domestic abuse affects entire families and communities, creating cycles of dysfunction that persist across decades. The novel ultimately argues that domestic violence cannot be understood separately from broader systems of oppression including patriarchy, caste hierarchy, and colonialism that intersect to create conditions where violence against women is tolerated and even normalized.
What Forms of Domestic Violence Appear in the Novel?
Roy’s novel presents a comprehensive portrayal of domestic violence that extends beyond physical abuse to encompass emotional, psychological, economic, and sexual dimensions. The most explicitly depicted physical violence occurs in Pappachi’s systematic abuse of his wife Mammachi, where he regularly beats her with a brass flower vase until their son Chacko physically intervenes by breaking his father’s arm. This violence is not portrayed as occasional outbursts of anger but as a deliberate pattern of control and domination that spans years of marriage. Roy describes the brass vase as becoming a symbol of terror in the household, an everyday object transformed into a weapon that creates an atmosphere of constant fear. The physical abuse leaves lasting marks not only on Mammachi’s body but on the psychological landscape of the entire family, teaching children that violence is an acceptable response to frustration and that women’s bodies are appropriate targets for male aggression (Roy, 1997).
Beyond physical violence, the novel depicts subtle but equally damaging forms of emotional and psychological abuse that undermine women’s autonomy and self-worth. Pappachi’s refusal to fund Ammu’s education while supporting his son Chacko’s Oxford education represents economic violence that limits women’s opportunities and enforces dependency. Roy illustrates how Pappachi exercises control through withholding resources, isolating Mammachi by refusing to allow a telephone installation, and systematically belittling her achievements even as her pickle business becomes the family’s primary income source. Ammu’s marriage to an alcoholic who physically abuses her and attempts to prostitute her to his employer demonstrates another dimension of domestic violence, where economic desperation traps women in dangerous situations. The novel also addresses sexual violence and coercion, including Chacko’s exploitation of lower-caste factory workers and Ammu’s husband’s attempt to force her into a sexual arrangement with his boss. These varied depictions create a comprehensive picture of how domestic violence operates across multiple registers simultaneously, creating total systems of control that trap women in positions of vulnerability and subjugation.
How Does the Novel Portray the Cycle of Abuse?
Roy masterfully illustrates how domestic violence perpetuates across generations through learned behaviors, unresolved trauma, and systemic conditions that enable abuse. Mammachi’s experience as a victim of Pappachi’s violence directly shapes how she treats her own daughter Ammu, creating a chain of abuse that takes different forms in each generation. Rather than developing empathy from her suffering, Mammachi becomes emotionally cold, controlling, and punitive, particularly toward Ammu whom she blames for the family’s declining social status. Roy demonstrates that experiencing violence does not automatically create awareness or compassion; instead, unaddressed trauma can distort moral sensibility and perpetuate harm in new manifestations. Mammachi’s inability to protect her grandchildren from witnessing violence, her harsh discipline, and her enabling of Chacko’s inappropriate behavior all reflect how victimhood can transform into complicity in maintaining abusive family systems (Herman, 1992).
The cycle of abuse extends to Ammu, whose childhood experiences of witnessing her father’s violence and experiencing her mother’s emotional coldness leave her vulnerable to making destructive relationship choices. Her impulsive marriage to an abusive alcoholic represents an attempt to escape one abusive environment that leads directly into another, illustrating how domestic violence survivors often lack the psychological resources and social support necessary to recognize and avoid subsequent abusive relationships. Roy describes Ammu’s marriage as an “escape” that was actually “a kerosene-soaked shirt that kept her warm,” a powerful metaphor for how desperation born from abuse leads to dangerous choices that provide temporary relief while creating greater long-term harm (Roy, 1997, p. 39). When Ammu finally leaves her abusive husband, she returns to her mother’s house only to face different forms of abuse—social ostracism, economic control, and constant criticism. The novel suggests that breaking cycles of abuse requires not only individual courage but also social support systems and economic opportunities that were unavailable to women in 1960s Kerala, demonstrating how structural conditions perpetuate violence across generations.
What Role Does Patriarchy Play in Enabling Domestic Violence?
Roy’s novel presents patriarchy as the fundamental system that enables, normalizes, and perpetuates domestic violence by granting men unquestioned authority over women and children within family structures. The narrative reveals how patriarchal ideology constructs domestic violence not as criminal behavior but as a husband’s prerogative, a form of discipline or control that falls within acceptable bounds of male authority. This normalization is evident in how Mammachi’s abuse by Pappachi is treated as a private family matter requiring no external intervention, and in how the community offers no support or resources for women experiencing violence. Roy emphasizes that “in those days divorce was out of the question” and women had virtually no legal recourse against abusive husbands, highlighting how legal systems reinforced patriarchal control by denying women avenues for escape or justice (Roy, 1997, p. 47). The novel illustrates that domestic violence is not an aberration or failure of patriarchy but rather one of its core mechanisms for maintaining male dominance.
The intersection of patriarchy with other systems of oppression creates particular vulnerabilities for certain women while protecting certain men from accountability. Roy demonstrates how patriarchal family structures grant men like Pappachi and Chacko virtual immunity from consequences for their abusive behavior, while women who resist or transgress patriarchal norms face severe punishment. The dramatic contrast between how Chacko’s sexual exploitation of factory workers is dismissed as “Men’s Needs” while Ammu’s consensual relationship with Velutha provokes family and community outrage reveals the gendered double standards embedded in patriarchal morality (Roy, 1997, p. 168). Furthermore, the novel shows how patriarchy operates through women as well as men, with female characters like Mammachi and Baby Kochamma enforcing patriarchal norms and punishing other women who transgress boundaries. This analysis suggests that addressing domestic violence requires dismantling patriarchal structures and ideologies, not merely punishing individual perpetrators, because the violence is systematically produced and enabled by gender hierarchies that pervade institutions, laws, and cultural attitudes.
How Does Economic Dependency Trap Women in Abusive Relationships?
Economic factors play a crucial role in trapping women within abusive relationships in Roy’s novel, demonstrating how domestic violence cannot be understood separately from material conditions and women’s lack of economic independence. Ammu’s trajectory illustrates this dynamic clearly: denied education and professional opportunities by her father, she has limited options for economic survival outside marriage. Her desperate escape into marriage with an abusive man reflects how economic vulnerability makes even dangerous relationships appear preferable to continued dependency on abusive family members. When Ammu finally leaves her husband, her lack of education, work experience, and social support leaves her completely dependent on her mother’s household, where she faces different forms of control and abuse. Roy emphasizes that Ammu “had no Locusts Stand I, no 15 Indian streetlights, no long‐term plan,” highlighting how women without economic resources have no real freedom or ability to escape abusive situations (Roy, 1997, p. 42).
The novel reveals how economic systems and family structures work together to enforce women’s dependency and vulnerability to violence. Mammachi’s successful pickle business provides a fascinating counterpoint that ultimately reinforces rather than challenges these structures, as her economic productivity does not translate into genuine autonomy or protection from abuse. Despite being the primary breadwinner, Mammachi remains subject to Pappachi’s control during his lifetime and later becomes economically dependent on her son Chacko, who assumes ownership of the business and treats his mother as a subordinate employee. Roy describes how “Chacko told Mammachi that she was the proprietress and the factory was hers,” but “She allowed herself to be mollified,” revealing how women’s economic contributions are systematically appropriated by men who maintain ultimate control (Roy, 1997, p. 57). This pattern demonstrates that economic participation alone does not liberate women from patriarchal structures without corresponding legal rights, property ownership, and social recognition of women’s economic agency. The lack of economic opportunities for divorced women in particular creates conditions where women must choose between remaining in abusive marriages or facing poverty and social ostracism, effectively trapping them in violent situations with no viable alternatives.
What Is the Impact of Domestic Violence on Children?
Roy’s portrayal of domestic violence’s impact on children represents one of the novel’s most devastating dimensions, illustrating how witnessing abuse creates lasting psychological damage and perpetuates cycles of trauma. The twins Rahel and Estha grow up in a household saturated with violence, fear, and emotional dysfunction, experiencing what researchers term “adverse childhood experiences” that shape their development and future relationships. Although the children are not directly physically abused by family members, they witness violence, experience emotional neglect, live with constant tension and unpredictability, and lack secure attachment relationships with caregivers who are themselves traumatized and emotionally unavailable. Roy depicts the children’s hyper-vigilance and anxiety, their confusion about adult behavior, and their attempts to make sense of a world where people they love hurt each other and where arbitrary rules determine safety or danger (Van der Kolk, 2014).
The long-term consequences of childhood exposure to domestic violence manifest in the twins’ adult dysfunction and their inability to form healthy relationships or experience lasting happiness. Estha’s selective muteness represents a traumatic response to overwhelming experiences he cannot process or articulate, while Rahel’s emotional disconnection and difficulty maintaining relationships reflect attachment disorders stemming from childhood trauma. Roy’s narrative structure, which moves between the children’s perspective and their adult selves, emphasizes the continuity of trauma across time and the impossibility of escaping childhood wounds. The novel suggests that children who grow up with domestic violence learn distorted lessons about relationships, power, love, and safety that shape their entire lives. They may internalize the belief that violence is normal, that they are responsible for adult problems, that emotions are dangerous, or that the world is fundamentally unsafe. Research confirms that children exposed to domestic violence show higher rates of depression, anxiety, aggression, and post-traumatic stress symptoms, and are more likely to experience or perpetrate intimate partner violence in their own adult relationships (Holden, 2003). Roy’s portrayal thus illustrates that domestic violence is never contained between two individuals but radiates outward to damage entire families and communities across generations.
How Does Social Class Affect Experiences of Domestic Violence?
The novel demonstrates that while domestic violence crosses class boundaries, social class significantly affects how violence is experienced, perceived, and addressed. Upper-caste, upper-class families like the Kochammas can maintain privacy around domestic violence, controlling narratives and preventing external intervention through their social power and respectability. Pappachi’s abuse of Mammachi occurs behind closed doors and is treated as a private family matter, with the violence only stopping through internal family intervention rather than legal or community action. The family’s social status allows them to maintain a facade of respectability while concealing dysfunction, and their economic resources provide some material comfort even within abusive situations. Roy reveals how upper-class victims of domestic violence face particular pressures to maintain family honor and social standing, making them reluctant to seek help or acknowledge abuse publicly. This creates a form of isolation where victims cannot access support without risking their social position.
In contrast, lower-caste and lower-class women face different vulnerabilities and lack even the minimal protections that upper-class status provides. The novel depicts how factory workers are sexually exploited by Chacko with complete impunity, their lower social status rendering them unable to refuse or seek justice. These women lack the economic resources to leave abusive situations, have no access to legal protection, and face community indifference to their suffering. Roy demonstrates how caste and class hierarchies create situations where upper-class men can abuse lower-class women with virtually no consequences, while violence against upper-class women by lower-caste men provokes extreme retaliation and social outrage. The dramatic contrast between Chacko’s unpunished exploitation of workers and the murderous response to Velutha’s consensual relationship with Ammu illustrates how social hierarchies shape which violence is tolerated and which is punished. This analysis reveals that addressing domestic violence effectively requires confronting not only gender inequality but also class and caste hierarchies that create differential vulnerabilities and access to protection and justice.
What Does the Novel Reveal About Legal and Social Responses to Domestic Violence?
Roy’s portrayal of institutional responses to domestic violence reveals profound failures of legal, social, and religious systems that claim to protect women while actually reinforcing patriarchal control. The novel is set in a period when India’s legal framework offered minimal protection to women experiencing domestic violence, with divorce laws heavily biased against women and no specific domestic violence legislation. The legal system’s inadequacy is evident in Ammu’s complete lack of options when facing her husband’s abuse and exploitation—she can leave, but doing so makes her a social pariah with no economic support or legal protection. Roy emphasizes that women experiencing violence cannot turn to police, courts, or social services for meaningful help, as these institutions are controlled by men who share patriarchal assumptions about gender roles and family hierarchy. The few legal options available, such as divorce, carry such severe social and economic consequences that they provide no real remedy for abuse.
Social and religious institutions similarly fail to protect women or challenge domestic violence, instead often reinforcing attitudes that enable abuse. The Syrian Christian church that the family attends preaches values of forgiveness, submission, and family preservation that can trap women in abusive situations by framing endurance of suffering as virtue. Community responses to domestic violence range from willful ignorance to active complicity, with neighbors and extended family treating abuse as private matters requiring no intervention. Roy depicts how social stigma attached to divorced women creates additional barriers to leaving abusive marriages, as women who escape violence face ostracism, poverty, and being blamed for family breakdown. Baby Kochamma’s concern with social respectability and reputation illustrates how patriarchal values are enforced through women’s policing of other women, creating communities where victims of violence receive no support and considerable judgment. The novel suggests that meaningful change requires transformation not only of laws but also of cultural attitudes, religious teachings, community norms, and institutional practices that currently normalize and enable domestic violence while punishing victims who seek escape or justice.
How Does Roy Use Narrative Structure to Convey Trauma?
Roy’s non-linear narrative structure and fragmented storytelling technique serve as formal innovations that mirror the psychological experience of trauma and demonstrate how violence disrupts temporal coherence and narrative meaning. The novel moves back and forth between different time periods, circling around traumatic events rather than presenting them chronologically, reflecting how trauma survivors experience memory as intrusive, fragmented, and non-linear. This structure forces readers to piece together events gradually, creating an experience analogous to how trauma survivors must construct meaning from overwhelming experiences that initially resist comprehension or integration. Roy’s narrative strategy demonstrates that traumatic violence cannot be told straightforwardly because trauma disrupts the normal functioning of memory and language, creating gaps, repetitions, and dislocations in narrative (Caruth, 1996).
The novel’s use of foreshadowing, repetition, and circling back to traumatic moments emphasizes how violence haunts survivors across time, refusing to remain in the past. Roy repeatedly returns to key phrases and images—”the History House,” “the Love Laws,” “the God of Small Things”—creating a rhythmic structure that mirrors obsessive traumatic memory where certain moments replay endlessly. The narrative voice shifts between child and adult perspectives, showing how childhood experiences of violence are reinterpreted but never fully resolved in adulthood. This temporal fluidity suggests that trauma exists outside normal time, remaining perpetually present for survivors despite the passage of years. Furthermore, Roy’s fragmented structure resists providing easy explanations or moral lessons about violence, instead immersing readers in the confused, frightening experience of characters trapped in abusive systems. This narrative approach creates a more powerful indictment of domestic violence than straightforward realist narration could achieve, as it forces readers to experience something of the disorientation, fear, and meaning-disruption that violence produces. The novel’s form thus becomes inseparable from its content, with literary technique serving as a vehicle for conveying truths about trauma that conventional narrative structures cannot adequately represent.
Conclusion
Arundhati Roy’s treatment of domestic violence in The God of Small Things presents a comprehensive and devastating critique of patriarchal violence that operates across multiple generations and intersects with systems of caste, class, and colonial legacy. The novel reveals domestic violence not as isolated incidents of individual pathology but as systematic oppression enabled by legal frameworks, economic structures, cultural attitudes, and social institutions that grant men power over women and children. Through detailed portrayal of physical, emotional, economic, and psychological abuse, Roy demonstrates the multifaceted nature of domestic violence and its profound impact on survivors and witnesses, particularly children who carry trauma into adulthood.
The novel’s power lies in its refusal to offer redemptive narratives or simple solutions, instead showing how deeply embedded violence is within family structures and social systems. Roy illustrates that victims of domestic violence face impossible choices between enduring abuse or facing poverty, ostracism, and social death. The intergenerational transmission of trauma, the cycle of abuse where victims sometimes become perpetrators, and the failure of legal and social institutions to protect women create a bleak picture of systematic failure to address violence against women. However, by making domestic violence central to her narrative and refusing to normalize or minimize it, Roy creates literary witness that validates survivors’ experiences and challenges readers to recognize the urgency of transforming structures that enable violence. The novel ultimately argues that addressing domestic violence requires comprehensive social transformation including gender equality, economic opportunity for women, legal reform, cultural change, and community accountability—nothing less than dismantling patriarchal systems that have normalized violence against women for centuries.
References
Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.
Holden, G. W. (2003). Children exposed to domestic violence and child abuse: Terminology and taxonomy. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 6(3), 151-160.
Roy, A. (1997). The God of Small Things. Random House.
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.