24th Annual Student Research Conference
Of All Things Female: The Écriture Féminine in The God of Small Things
Amanda L. Williams
Dr. Hena Ahmad, Faculty Mentor
Arundhati Roy's employment of ecofeminist semiotics throughout The God of Small Things shows how gender and class exploitation by one group of another underpins their organic connection. For example, Roy artistically reveals how human abuse of the earth mirrors the patriarchal subjugation of the female identity. By doing so, Roy ends the silence of the oppressed within her novel, creating an open dialogue with her audience and current social discourse. More specifically, Roy's écriture féminine, a concept created by French feminist Helene Cixous, expressing the distinct style, language, tone and feeling of literature when describing the mother and mother-child relationship before the child acquires a patriarchal language of convention, subverts the construction of the traditional logic of language to express a new meaning in language and social relationships.
Keywords: Arundhati Roy, Asian Literature, English, The God of Small Things, Literary Criticism, Feminist criticism, écriture féminine
Topic(s):English
Asian Studies
Women's and Gender Studies
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 14-4
Location: VH 1236
Time: 10:15