Mother Mary Comes to Me

Mother Mary Comes to Me reveals how many autobiographical elements have informed Arundhati Roy’s approach to fiction, most notably in her debut novel, The God of Small Things (1997). In examining some of the key elements of The God of Small Things, the parallels between Roy’s fictional universe and her personal experiences become clearer.  

Set in Ayemenem in Roy’s home state of Kerala, The God of Small Things is a work of domestic fiction that follows fraternal twins Rahel and Estha as they navigate their fraught familial life against the backdrop of political instability in India. Estha and Rahel are fictionalized versions of Roy and her brother LKC, and their close relationship bears a marked similarity to Roy’s relationship with her brother. Estha and Rahel’s mother Ammu is based on Mary Roy; the comparison was so overt that Mary easily identified herself in the character.

Roy notes at the beginning of her memoir that writing The God of Small Things helped her to process much of the anger she felt over her mother’s abuse. Roy engages with Mary’s fraught past through her characterization of Ammu. Ammu suffers abuse at the hands of her father as a young girl. Marriage is her only means of escape, but her husband too becomes abusive. She leaves him at a time when divorce is not a respectable option for women in India and suffers both familial and societal alienation as a result. Still, she raises her children on her own and remains strong and resilient. Arundhati’s exploration of Ammu’s experiences allowed her to see her mother in a new light and to better understand a woman who—even though she would go on to repeat the cycle of abuse—did her best to persevere in a system meant to disempower her.

The novel also helped Roy to process the sexual abuse she endured as a child. She recounts in Mother Mary Comes to Me her molestation at the hands of one of her community’s most trusted adults, and also notes that she does not share the story with anyone, worried that it is somehow her fault. In the novel it is the male twin, Estha, who is molested, and he carries the pain and shame of the event all the way into adulthood, telling no one about it.

The novel is also suffused with Roy’s interest in class, caste, and the inherent inequality of India’s societal hierarchy. Communism is on the rise during the years depicted in the novel, and Chacko, the character based on G. Isaac, becomes caught up in Marxist fervor. He vows to modernize the family’s struggling business by introducing fairer labor standards and treating his workers with dignity. One of the novel’s other principal characters is Velutha, a young “untouchable” (i.e., member of the lowest caste) worker in the family’s factory. He, too, finds Marxism compelling and takes up the fight to improve conditions for working-class Indians. Due to his low-caste status, however, he becomes the scapegoat when a young woman is sexually assaulted, and he dies at the hands of local police. Velutha’s story echoes several key events that Roy observed in her own life, further reinforcing how her own experiences shape her fiction.