A Spivakian Reading of Louise Erdrich’s Track and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Abstract

The present article is the study of Louise Erdrich’s Tracks (1997) and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1988) in the light of postcolonial feminism theories of Spivak. Feminist discourse shares many similarities with post-colonial theory and for this reason the two fields have long been thought of as associative, even complimentary. “Subalternity” is a very important term in both post-colonial and feminist aspects. The word Subaltern describes the lower classes and the social groups who are at the margins of a society. Tracks and The God of Small Things depict the cultural background of their authors. Erdrich Native American culture and Roy's Indian heritage has helped them in creating certain types of female characters in their novels that still carry within themselves some features of their culture. In these novels Louise Erdrich and Roy's main focus is on the female protagonists and the specific roles they have within their communities. Although these novels depict two different cultures, there are many similarities that these two cultures share. Roy and Erdrich present several different female characters in their novels The God of Small Things and Tracks, all in different ways trapped in a system of oppression but also with a substantial degree of agency. From a postcolonial feminist perspective, Roy and Erdrich have contributed to make the representation of the subaltern women more diverse, through giving us various portraits of women that, despite their oppressed and marginalized status.