From Knowing Theory to Doing Theory: Reading The God of Small Things through Four Critical Lenses

 

Theory as method in The God of Small Things — a Literary Criticism and GenAI activity (Step 1)

From Knowing a Theory to Using One

Theory is easy to quote and harder to use. Most of us can say that Marxism concerns class, feminism concerns patriarchy, ecocriticism concerns nature and queer criticism concerns norms of sexuality. Fewer of us can say what a critic actually does with a paragraph of a novel. This post tries to show the doing.

My text is Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, set in Ayemenem, Kerala, a novel about family, caste, class, gender, politics, a river, and love that is not allowed. My primary reference is Dilip Barad’s article “On Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism.” Because theories are never as simple as slogans, I also separate two things throughout: what a theory generally investigates, and what one particular reading concludes.

Each lens gets the same four stops: 

A. what the critic looks for, 

B. what the critic does with the text,

C. one concrete illustration, and

D. one question a student can borrow. 

A warning in advance: the queer lens is the hardest fit for this novel, and I explain why when we reach it.

Lens 1: The Marxist Lens (Follow the Power)

A Marxist critic starts with a blunt question: who owns what, and who does the work?

A. What does the critic look for?

A Marxist critic reads a text as something made inside an economic and historical order, not above it. The critic looks for class relations and material conditions (who owns, who labours, who profits); for ideology, the system of ideas that makes inequality feel natural; for hegemony, the way dominant groups win consent through culture and institutions; and for the author’s social position and historical moment. With an Indian text, a further question arises: is class enough? B. R. Ambedkar argued that caste is not only a division of labour but a ranking of labourers, so a purely economic reading can miss it.

B. What does the critic DO with the text?

The critic situates the text in its economic and historical setting, then maps who owns, who works and who benefits. Next the critic compares what characters profess with how they behave, because ideology often shows up as the gap between the two. The critic then interrogates institutions (the family firm, the political party, the church) for the hierarchies they protect, and finally reinterprets an individual tragedy as the outcome of a system.

C. One concrete illustration

Velutha is a gifted carpenter and mechanic, yet the novel recalls how Paravans were once made to erase their own footprints, and how even converts to Christianity ended up with separate churches. Chacko, Oxford-educated and fond of calling himself a Marxist, depends on workers at Paradise Pickles while taking advantage of the women who work for him. Comrade Pillai, the local Party leader, stands by Velutha only while it suits the Party and then turns his back on him. A Marxist critic reads this as ideology working through a gap between professed values and practice: the Party’s language of class cannot make room for caste, so the old hierarchy survives inside the new politics.

The theory investigates: how class, ideology and material power shape a text. This reading concludes: that the novel exposes a political language blind to caste. Another critic could weigh the Party’s role more kindly.

D. A question this critic would ask

Try asking: Who profits from this arrangement, and which ideas make it look natural?

Lens 2: The Feminist Lens (Who Gets to Choose?)

A feminist critic begins by asking who gets to choose, and who pays when they do.

A. What does the critic look for?

Feminist criticism asks how texts represent, regulate and sometimes resist women’s position within patriarchal structures. The critic watches for women represented as the “Other” and for gender as a social construction, and for whose voices are heard or silenced. Contemporary feminist work adds intersectionality: gender is never lived alone but together with caste, class and religion, so Ammu’s gender cannot be separated from the caste line she crosses.

B. What does the critic DO with the text?

The critic examines who holds authority over property, marriage and reputation, and compares how the same behaviour is judged in men and women of one family. The critic identifies how patriarchy operates through institutions and also through women, questions how much agency each woman actually has, and reads the body as a site where social control is carried out. Finally the critic reinterprets “scandal” and “shame” as tools of discipline, not private failings.

C. One concrete illustration

Ammu returns to Ayemenem after a failed marriage and finds that, as a divorced daughter, she has no secure place or claim in her family’s house, while her brother Chacko enjoys property and a sexual freedom that the family tolerates; Mammachi even arranges a separate entrance to his room for his “needs.” The pattern runs through the older generation too: Pappachi beats Mammachi and, jealous of her talent, ends her violin training. When Ammu loves Velutha, the punishment is physical and public: a policeman humiliates her body and name, and she dies alone at thirty-one. A feminist critic reads these scenes as patriarchy working through law, family and even women, and not as isolated cruelty.

The theory investigates: gender inequality and patriarchal structures. This reading concludes: that Ammu’s ruin is structural, a conclusion that must be argued from scenes like these and that has to account for caste as well.

D. A question this critic would ask

Try asking: Whose desires and voices count in this text, and what happens to a woman who steps outside her assigned role?

Lens 3: The Ecocritical Lens (Listen to the River)

An ecocritic asks something easy to forget: what if the landscape isn’t just scenery?

A. What does the critic look for?

Ecocriticism asks how literature represents the non-human world and the human relationship to it, and it challenges anthropocentrism, the habit of treating nature as a resource or backdrop for human drama. It questions the nature/culture divide and, following Barad’s note on postcolonial and social perspectives, asks who bears ecological harm. Rob Nixon’s idea of “slow violence,” gradual environmental damage that falls on the poor, is a useful companion.

B. What does the critic DO with the text?

The critic traces nature imagery and setting through the text and asks whether the natural world acts in the story or only decorates it. The critic examines how development, agriculture and tourism turn nature into property or product, questions the human-centred assumptions the text shares or resists, and connects environmental change to economic and social power.

C. One concrete illustration

The Meenachal river is remembered as green and full of life, but in the narrative present it is sluggish and foul, damaged by agricultural chemicals and interrupted by a barrage. The History House across the river, where Ammu and Velutha meet, has become a hotel, and the “backwaters” are packaged for visitors. It is also the river in which Sophie Mol drowns, so the same water carries memory, love, death and commerce. An ecocritic reads the river as an active presence, not a backdrop, and sees development turning the landscape into a commodity while those who live beside it lose it.

The theory investigates: human–nature relations and the critique of anthropocentrism. This reading concludes: that the river’s decline mirrors the community’s, which is one reading among several that the approach allows.

D. A question this critic would ask

Try asking: Is nature an active presence in this text or only a backdrop, and who benefits from or suffers its damage?

Lens 4: The Queer Lens (Who Wrote the Rules of Love?)

Here I want to be careful, because an honest queer reading of this novel is not the one you might expect.

A. What does the critic look for?

Queer criticism challenges heteronormativity, the assumption that one kind of desire, family and gender is normal, and it looks for coded or non-normative desire beneath the surface of mainstream texts. Following Judith Butler, it treats gender as performative, enacted through repeated acts and not simply inherited. “Queer” can also work more broadly: David Halperin defines it as whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. That wider sense is what makes a queer reading of this novel possible, and also what makes it delicate.

B. What does the critic DO with the text?

The critic identifies what the text presents as normal desire and family, questions who enforces those norms and how, and uncovers subtext and coded relationships. Instead of hunting for a character to label, the critic interrogates how a society draws the line between acceptable and unacceptable love, and reinterprets the punished characters as exposing the limits of the norm, not as failures.

C. One concrete illustration

Roy’s “Love Laws” set out whom one may love, in what way, and to what degree. A queer critic reads these as rules people made, not facts of nature, and notices that every relationship that crosses them is punished or mourned: Ammu and Velutha, and, at the end, the twins. The family’s anxious policing of propriety also suggests womanhood and respectability as something rehearsed and enforced, which is where Butler’s idea of performance becomes useful. But the novel has no openly LGBTQ+ identity at its centre, and the twins’ union breaks family norms without being a queer identity. The reading is therefore a wider “queering” of how love is policed, and it has to be argued from the text, not claimed.

The theory investigates: sexuality, gender and the norms that regulate them. This reading concludes: a broader critique of regulated intimacy, which is more delicate here than in the other three lenses.

D. A question this critic would ask

Try asking: What does this text treat as normal love or family, who enforces that, and what does it reveal about how constructed that norm is?

One Place, Four Lenses: The History House

The lenses refuse to stay in their lanes, and that is what makes this novel such a good test. Take one place: the History House across the river, where Ammu and Velutha meet.

For a Marxist critic it is a space outside the rules of caste and class, which is why the social order cannot tolerate it. For a feminist critic it is a place where Ammu chooses for herself, and where the price of that choice begins to be set. An ecocritic notes that the river that carries Velutha there is later polluted and sold, and that the house itself ends up as a hotel. A queer critic sees the Love Laws broken in one place, with the cost of breaking them waiting just outside.

Same place, four ways of seeing. None cancels the others, and each makes visible something the others miss.

The Four Lenses Side by Side

The whole method on one page. The third column shows what each critic actually does. On a phone, scroll the table sideways.

Critical Lens	What does the critic look for?	What does the critic DO?	Illustration (The God of Small Things)	Question the critic asks
Marxist	Class relations and material conditions; ideology; hegemony; historical context and the author’s social position. Caste as more than class (Ambedkar).	Situates the text economically; maps who owns and works; compares profession with practice; interrogates family firm, Party and church; reads tragedy as system.	Velutha, a skilled Paravan carpenter, is bound by caste history even after Christian conversion; Chacko professes Marxism yet takes advantage of women workers; Comrade Pillai drops Velutha. Reading: a class language blind to caste preserves the old hierarchy.	Who profits from this arrangement, and which ideas make it look natural?
Feminist / Gender	Patriarchy; women as “Other”; gender as social construction; voice and silence; intersectionality.	Examines authority over property and reputation; compares judgments of men and women; identifies patriarchy working through women; reads the body; reinterprets “scandal.”	Ammu has no secure claim on the family home while Chacko’s freedom is tolerated; Pappachi’s violence and the police humiliation of Ammu. Reading: her ruin is structural, and shaped by caste too.	Whose desires and voices count here, and what happens to a woman who leaves her assigned role?
Ecocritical	Portrayal of nature; human–nature relations; anthropocentrism; unequal ecological harm (postcolonial, social).	Traces nature imagery; asks whether nature is agent or backdrop; examines nature as property or product; connects environmental change to social power.	The Meenachal, once green, is now foul and dammed; the History House becomes a hotel selling the “backwaters”; Sophie Mol drowns in the same river. Reading: nature is an active presence, and landscape becomes commodity.	Is nature an active presence or only a backdrop, and who benefits from or suffers its damage?
Queer	Heteronormativity; non-normative or coded desire; gender as performance (Butler); “queer” as at odds with the normal (Halperin).	Identifies what is treated as “normal”; questions who enforces it; uncovers subtext; interrogates how acceptable love is defined; reinterprets punished characters.	The Love Laws decide whom one may love and how; Ammu and Velutha, and the twins, cross them and are punished or mourned. Reading: a broader “queering” of regulated love, since no openly LGBTQ+ identity is central.	What does the text treat as normal love, who enforces it, and how constructed does that norm look?

So What Is the Difference Between Knowing a Theory and Using One?

Knowing a critical theory means being able to state its vocabulary: ideology, patriarchy, anthropocentrism, heteronormativity, performativity. Using it means turning that vocabulary into a procedure. The reader selects a scene, asks what the theory would have her notice (who profits, who is silenced, what the landscape does, what is naturalised as normal), and then tests the question against the language of the text. The result is an argument, not a verdict. Two critics using the same framework can disagree, and good criticism admits where the text resists the theory, as the queer lens does in Roy’s novel. That is why theory should not be applied like a stencil. It is closer to a lens that must be adjusted to its object. A student knows a theory when she can define it; she uses it when she can show, with evidence, what it makes visible.

From Reading the Story to Questioning It

After four lenses, I stopped asking only “What happens?” and began asking other questions. Why does it happen? Who holds power in this scene? Whose voice is missing? What is being treated as normal, and who decided that? Which structures make this suffering possible? That, more than any definition, is what theory gave me: a better set of questions, and the habit of going back to the text to answer them.

Where This Came From

The activity asks which parts of this post come from the source and which are my own, so here is the split.

Directly supported by Barad’s article: the focus of each approach (ideology, class struggle, historical context and hegemony; patriarchy, the representation of women and the social construction of gender, including women as “Other”; human–nature relations, anthropocentrism and unequal ecological harm in postcolonial and social perspectives; heteronormativity, queer representation and Butler’s idea of gender performativity). Barad’s reading list also names Gramsci, Althusser, Beauvoir, Showalter, Carson, Leopold and Butler.

My own synthesis and additional explanation: the step-by-step description of what each critic does; every illustration and question; the separation of what a theory investigates from what a reading concludes; and the extra theorists I brought in (Ambedkar on caste, Crenshaw on intersectionality, Nixon on slow violence, Halperin on “queer”). Barad’s own examples are Hard Times, The Yellow Wallpaper, Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray, so everything about The God of Small Things comes from my reading of Roy’s novel, not from the article.