In 1988 Gayatri Spivak published her essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in which she was talking about the plight of poor people in the world in general and of the lower castes of India's social strata in particular. Almost ten years later, in 1997, Arundathi Roy wrote The God of Small Things that talked about the trials and tribulations of its characters, including an untouchable named Velutha, who can be considered a good, if not direct, fit for the "subaltern" from Spivak's article. That state of affairs shows that "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is an important accessory when reading Roy's novel; however, it is not centrally so, and this essay will demonstrate that.
This raises a question: what is marginality, and how is it seen by both authors? In both cases it appears to be tied to the social status in society, especially to Hindu society. Yet neither author answers this question directly or straightforwardly, but instead puts it into the background; however, since the two texts are highly different from each other, this strategy produces two different results as well.
On the third page of Spivak's article we begin to learn about marginality in the Hindu society as it is, as it increases alongside the demographic difference between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the `elite'.(Spivak 26) This means that Spivak says in her article (although indirectly) that to her marginality is a social phenomenon, even though her essay is concerned mainly with the linguistic aspects of this social inequality (wherever there is marginality, there is also a basic mainstream movement and the elite centre of such a movement).
To Roy, in her book, marginality is a social phenomenon as well (that is to say she considers it to be such, just as Spivak does). However, as we will see, due to various differences (the authors' writing styles, essay vs. book approach, etc), this marginality is expressed even more vaguely, and in fact is often intertwined - or perhaps even passed over in favour of another topic: displacement, social displacement, like the one experienced by Ammu:
And in the background, the constant, high, whining mewl of local disapproval. (Roy 42)
On the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, everyone was a little wary of her. They sensed somehow that she lived in the penumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond their grasp of power. That a woman that they had already damned, now had little left to lose, and could therefore be dangerous.
(Roy 44)
This quotation shows Ammu's marginality in the local society, even before her affair with Velutha is uncovered. It also demonstrates how Roy connects marginality and displacement - and it also begins to show how the social interactions in Roy's society of Kerala function according to the social ladder presented in "Can the Subaltern Speak?", a fact that shows the importance, albeit a relative one, of the Spivak's essay to Roy's book.
Incidentally, Ammu's children share their mother's marginality, even if to a lesser extent. Although it is never said aloud, The God of Small Things never indicates that anyone (except for Sophie Mol and Velutha) outside of their immediate family had any real, let alone friendly, contact with the twins. Obviously, caste-wise, they are pariahs in Kerala, but other than that, they are not particularly favoured or even talked to: they are outsiders that live at the margins of the social system.
Finally, even Sophie Mol, Chacko's half-English daughter, can be considered as experiencing marginality because she does not fit in with the mainstream society (thought for different reasons than the others):
[...] she also revealed her to be human. One day the twins returned from a clandestine trip to the river (which had excluded Sophie Mol) and found her in the garden in tears, perched on the highest point of Baby Kochamma's Herb Curl, "Being Lonely," as she put it.
(Roy 180)
Sophie Mol's exclusion from her cohorts, such as her twin cousins, comes from privilege rather than otherwise, but it all amounts to the same thing - experience of marginality, of not fitting in with the others. Her situation is different mostly because of the viewpoint, from above rather than from below. In the society of Kerala, she is a social superior, not an inferior, but because she too lacks any peers (especially those of her age), Sophie Mol is alone, located at another margin of the society as well.
In addition, Sophie Mol's case helps to understand that Spivak's article may be important, but it is not central to understanding Roy's book. In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" the message is that it is only the lower-ring people who are marginalized or silenced. Sophie Mol's case demonstrates that it is not so, and people from higher classes of society (or castes) can be marginalized as much as those from the lower castes or classes.
It should be realized, however, that not all of Roy's main characters experience marginality immediately (the book's plot is not linear and in fact leaps back and forth from the beginning to the end all the way through it). For Roy "marginality" is also synonymous, or at least nearly so, with homelessness, displacement in space (and also time - the characters flicker between past and present throughout the book). For marginality of this sort, there are plenty of examples throughout the book, yet there is also a different marginality, one that is social, initially embodied in Velutha and his father, members of the Untouchables and it is the marginality of this kind to which Spivak's article relates.
Thus, the connotations between Spivak and Roy when it comes to social margins are clearly present, but where Spivak is concise and tends to fit every important point of her thesis in a paragraph, Roy often spreads it over several pages of her novel:
[...] the margins [...] among the illiterate peasantry, the tribals, the lowest strata of the urban subproletariat [...] under the standardization and regimentation of the socialized capital [...] the oppressed, if given the chance (the problem of representation cannot be bypassed here), and on the way to solidarity [...] (a Marxist thematic is at work here) can speak and know their conditions.
(Spivak 25)
The sound of a thousand voices spread over the frozen traffic like a Noise Umbrella. (Roy 63)
[...]
"Long live the Revolution!" they shouted. "Workers of the World Unite!" (Roy 64)
[...]
The Marxists worked from within the communal divides, never challenging them, never appearing not to.
[...]
They were also demanding that Untouchables no longer be addressed by their caste names. They demanded not to be addressed as Achoo Parayan, or Kelan Paravan, or Kuttan Pulayan, but just as Achoo, or Kelan or Kuttan. (Roy 67)
As one can see, the two quotations contain quite similar information, except for the `problem of representation' that Spivak mentions in brackets; Roy's turn will come when she talks about comrade Pillai and his representation of the common people (in face of their supposedly political enemies) in the face of Velutha; in other words, he fails to do so (and has no true regrets about it either):
Comrade Pillai told Inspector Thomas Mathew that he was acquainted with Velutha, but omitted to mention that Velutha was a member of the Communist Party, or that Velutha had knocked on his door late the previous night, which made Comrade Pillai the last person to have seen Velutha before he disappeared. Not, thought he knew it to be untrue, did Comrade Pillai refute the allegation of attempted rape in Baby Kochamma's First Information Report. He merely assured Inspector Thomas Mathew that as far as he was concerned Velutha did not have the patronage or the protection of the Communist Party. That he was on his own.
(248)
By Spivak's classification of social levels in relation to marginality, the Communist Party can be easily considered to be a `dominant indigenous group at the regional and local level' (26), and as such a one it is give particular attention by her regarding giving the subaltern a voice: "[...] on the level of a class or group action, `true correspondence to own being is as artificial or social as the patronymic" (27). Furthermore, Inspector Thomas Mathew and his police force can be also considered to be a "dominant foreign group" (at least the police inspector's name indicates that he is most likely not a Hindu), thus demonstrating even further the ties between Spivak's essay and The God of Small Things.
Here, however, lies the difference between being critical and being important, and in Spivak's case it is the latter. As everybody knows when a written work has a dire need of another written work to be understood, then that second work is critical. Conversely, when the original work does not need other works to be understood, yet they make the understanding easier all the same, such works are considered to be important, just as Spivak's essay in relation to The God of Small Things is.
In addition, there are significant thematic differences between "Can the Subaltern Speak?" and The God of Small Things. Spivak's essay talks about the oppression of India's poor, yet it is impersonal, detached, just like a professional essay is supposed to be. The God of Small Things, however, is obviously not an essay but a work of fiction, a very popular novel, and as such it is personal, and its main topic is love. Love between Ammu and Velutha, between an Untouchable and a high-born (by 20th century's standards) but also love between a Hindu and a European, between Chacko and Margaret, or Baby Kochamma's unrequited love for a handsome European minister: such relationships are too doomed to failure and misery perhaps, that is what Roy's novel is really about. (Of course, there is marginality in The God of Small Things, but as we have seen before, it is neither quite as important nor clear-cut as several other themes and topics in that novel.)
On the other hand, though, Spivak's essay has its own complexities, mainly that although she does undoubtedly speak about the plight of India's poor people, she is primarily concerned not with sociality, but with linguistics. Just like in Roy's book, the question of marginality and experiencing it is present, but only as a `veiled' part of the background. Since The God of Small Things is not concerned about linguistics, it is safe to say that essentially it is unrelated to "Can the Subaltern Speak?", and as such it can be useful to read the essay alongside the book, but it is by no means necessary.
In addition, it is obvious that the abovementioned statement must be kept in mind when one is reading The God of Small Things or a similar book and trying to match them up with essays such as "Can the Subaltern Speak?" and the like. If not kept in check, such reading strategies can backfire and confuse the reader instead of assisting.
Therefore, the main focus of Spivak's essay is on the socio-political inequality that still exists even in modern India. The main focus of Roy's book is on relationships between people as well as how various social laws, both official and unofficial, distort and destroy them. However, the similarities of the two works cannot be denied either, and as a minimum at a surface level Spivak's essay can be quite helpful in understanding the basic social dimension of the world described in Roy's book. Yet, The God of Small Things goes beyond the basic social (or rather, socio-economic) interactions, and instead goes deeper, to a more self-explanatory level. In spite of that fact, such a state of literary affairs does not diminish the importance of Spivak's article as it helps to illuminate as well as to explain the overall social conflict that goes through Roy's book and thus makes it easier to read.
Bibliography
Roy, Arundathi. The God of Small Things. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1997.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Postcolonial and Transnational Resources. Toronto: Print City, 2010