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Dara Miller

Dr. Laura Dawkins

ENG 615

21 March 2011

Satisfaction and Subversion: The Ambiguity of Love Laws in The Handmaid’s Tale and The

God of Small Things

Throughout the annals of literary history, love has been hailed as the great ideal as the

ultimate source of redemption and unification. However, in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s

Tale and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, love is portrayed as ambiguous force. It

both enriches and destroys; it both propels mankind forward and yet holds him back. In the

futuristic society of The Handmaid’s Tale, love is a regulated commodity that is only to be

enjoyed by the elite few, and only within the boundaries of carefully monitored familial

structures. The Handmaids of Gilead are expected to live a life without love or emotion, merely

serving as vessels for the children of the country’s future; according to the novel’s protagonist,

Offred, this expected denial of human affection recreates the Handmaids as “missing person[s]”

by removing the associative identity humanity forms through bonds of love. Similarly, in The

God of Small Things, love is restricted by the intricacies of caste and community. As Esta and

Rahel notice through their childish eyes, life is governed by the “Love Laws” of who one can

love and how much; it is through their family’s subversion of these “Love Laws” that they are

both fulfilled and torn apart. In both novels, the complexity of the romance plot creates a

multifaceted view of love as force that can be simultaneously socially subversive and personally

destructive.

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In Atwood’s work, Offred states that “I wish this story were different...I wish it were

about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life” (Atwood 247); however, in

many ways it is exactly that. Throughout the novel, Offred is bolstered through the mundane

traumas of her new existence as a Handmaid by the memory of her love for her daughter and

husband. Her interspersed memories of Luke provide some of her only comforts, even as she

believes he is most likely dead, and her desire for her daughter leads her to the only thing she can

request - just a photo of her - when Serena Joy offers her a favor. In Offred’s conversation with

the Commander, she cites love, falling in love, as what has been “overlooked” in the creation of

Gilead (Atwood 220). Indeed, she finds her only happiness in the novel through her affair with

Nick, as she is able to tell him her “real name, and feel therefore that [she is] known” (Atwood

270). According to a more positive interpretation of the romance plot, love is the subversive

force that inspires Offred to eventual self-reclamation and rebellion: “...love is indeed the point

for Offred...it is through Offred’s affair with Nick, as through her friendships with other

Handmaids, that her re-created self desires and rebels” (Feuer 86).

However, for Offred love is not entirely “the point.” Although she finds small happiness

in her affair with Nick, her relationship with him also is the cause for her almost acceptance of

her role in the Gilead society. Furthermore, it is this very relationship that deteriorates her

“friendship with other Handmaids” to the point where she “hardly listens” and “no longer

credits” her subversive relationship with Oflgen (Atwood 270). Through this romance, Offred

becomes complacent with small happiness, so much so that she states that “The fact is that I no

longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom. I want to be here with Nick, where I

can get at him” (Atwood 271). This rationalization of the life she has made for herself not only

undermines any inclination towards active rebellion that she had harbored in her friendship with

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Ofglen, but also inherently undermines her relationship with Nick as well; although her fate is

left ambiguous at the novel’s end, the implication that Nick is also an undercover member of

Mayday prompts the reader to question whether or not he could remain satisfied in a relationship

with a woman who was not willing to fight for herself.

This perspective of the romance plot as both enlightening and damaging is echoed in the

“small things” of Roy’s novel as well. Throughout the work, it is the love woven through the

minor differences between caste and social status that bring about the major conflicts of the

novel. In the fragmented timeframe of the novel, the strains of love gone wrong began not only

when Sophie Mol arrived, but also at the very beginning of time, “...when the Love Laws were

made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much,” (Roy 33). This

theme of who, how, and how much runs throughout the troubled family history, and is especially

evident in the “unmixable mix” of the mother, Ammu.

As an act of rebellion against her traditional family life, Ammu begins her exploration in

love by marrying outside of her community. Although her actual marriage is short-lived, the

effects of this love last throughout her life; what she initially saw as a step towards freedom

becomes, after her divorce, an added stigma that only keeps her further entrenched in the

clutches of the community she so desperately tries to break free from, leaving her an outcast in

the only place that will still even accept her. The general opinion of the community is echoed in

Baby Kochamma’s thoughts: “As for a divorced daughter from an intercommunity love marriage

- Baby Kochamma chose to remain quiveringly silent on the subject” (Roy 45). In this play for

the freedom of love, however, Ammu establishes herself as an individual in her own right, and as

one of the few characters who is not afraid to pursue her passions. The redemptive power of her

love also manifests itself through her relationship with Velutha, the god of small things, who

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throughout the novels stands as the one character who truly epitomizes the healing and affirming

power of love. Even in the wake of the inevitable tragedy of a relationship their society could not

handle, Ammu and Velutha end the novel on love’s hope for “tomorrow” (Roy 321).

In her relationship with her children, however, Ammu uses love almost as a weapon;

although her children, particularly Rahel, crave their mother’s affection, Ammu’s treatment of

them vacillates between passionate tenderness and scathing honesty. In one of her most

memorable interactions with Rahel, Ammu unsparingly warns her: “D’you know what happened

when you hurt people? When you hurt people, they begin to hurt you a little less. That’s what

careless words do. They make people love you a little less,” (Roy 107). Despite this warning, it

is Ammu that ultimately drives Rahel and Esta away with her own “careless words” as she

blames the children for her captivity after her affair with Velutha is discovered. Ultimately, the

“cost of living,” or in Ammu’s case, loving, was hardly a “Small Price to Pay,” as it not only led

to Velutha’s death, but also the loss of “Two children’s childhoods” (Roy 318). Her “two-egg

twins,” were left in the aftermath of her love’s destructive power. For Rahel, the trauma of this

devastating episode left her to grow up primarily friendless, and to repeat the pattern of her

mother’s failed love marriage, while Esta’s scars ran even deeper. Forced to choose between his

love for his mother and his love for Velutha, Esta chooses to save Ammu; a choice she repays by

“Returning” him to his father, where he suffers lifetime of guilt masked in silence. Ammu’s

rebellion against the Love Laws, while inspiring hope for the future of inter-caste love

relationships in the aftermath of Velutha’s martyrdom, ultimately leads to an abrupt and

miserable end of her own life. In addition to her own fate, her actions also add to a personal

trauma for her two children that is so intense it manifests itself in their own breaking of the Love

Laws in sharing what “was not happiness, but hideous grief” (Roy 311).

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In both The Handmaid’s Tale and The God of Small Things, the extreme power of love is

evident. The romance plots conceived in both novels are not contrived lessons of love

overcoming all obstacles, but rather an exploration of love as a mutable and often destructive

force. Although it can serve as an impetus for change, the nature of love is volatile and

contingent upon not only passions of the people involved, but also often the passions of an entire

society. Thus, Offred’s love for Nick is dulled by her complacency with a small happiness, and

Ammu’s love for Velutha is not powerful enough to withstand the prejudice of Ayemenem or

pure enough to extend to her own children’s well-being. The force of love is not a stable or

stationary thing; it is rather a journey, as Offred states, “into the darkness within; or else the

light” (Atwood 295).

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Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Anchor Books, 1986. Print.

Feuer, Lois. “The Calculus of Love and Nightmare: The Handmaid’s Tale and Dystopian

Tradition.” Critique 38 (1997): 86. Web. 18 May 2011.

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Random House, 2008. Print.