Philosophical Feminism in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Abstract

In order to understand how Arundhati Roy's two novels, The God of Small Things (1997) and The Ministry of Utmost 
Happiness (2017), build and challenge gendered subjectivity within the Indian social order, this dissertation conducts 
a comparative feminist-philosophical reading of both works. The study contends that Roy's fiction stages resistance 
through endurance, transgression, and the rejection of imposed categories of identity rather than triumphant 
emancipation by examining her female and non-binary characters through the combined lenses of feminist philosophy, 
postcolonial critique, and gender performativity. The analysis uses Anjum, Tilo, and Revathy in the later work and 
Ammu, Rahel, Mammachi, and Baby Kochamma in the older one to show a persistent authorial focus with the 
penalties imposed on nonconformists by patriarchal, caste-based, and nationalist structures. The study places this 
reading in the context of previous Roy work and suggests future lines of inquiry for comparative postcolonial feminist 
research.