Female Resilience and
Patriarchal Power in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
Insha Jamil & Dr. Samrat Banerjee
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the portrayal of female resilience within male-dominated societies in the selected novels of Jane Austen and Arundhati Roy, specifically Pride and Prejudice (1813) and The God of Small Things (1997). Despite the differences in time, place, and cultural context, both authors expose the patriarchal structures that restrict women’s choices, desires, and socio-economic mobility. The study explores how women negotiate, resist, and sometimes unconsciously internalise male dominance within English and Indian societies. The paper critically analyses, through the lens of feminist literary theory, female characters such as Elizabeth Bennet and Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, and Ammu, Rahel, and Baby Kochamma in The God of Small Things. Austen represents resilience through intellectual independence and critical thinking, as her characters challenge social expectations through questioning, scepticism, analysis, and dialogue in order to resolve conflicts within the social framework. In contrast, Roy portrays resilience as fragile and transgressive, often resulting in punishment when women violate the rigid structures of caste and gender patriarchy. This paper highlights how the female characters of Austen and Roy in both novels struggle to gain identity and agency in a rigid society. Both novels highlight the emergence of female resilience in different timelines and cultures by comparing Austen as a subtle critique of gendered power to Roy as a representative of social and political oppression. This paper tries to gain the attention of the readers while portraying female resilience in a patriarchal society. This paper uses feminist literary criticism to highlight the oppression of female characters in the selected novels of Jane Austen and Arundhati Roy. Both authors tackle the same issue of female resilience under patriarchal power, irrespective of differences in timeline, cultural orientation and geographical setting.
Keywords: Female Resilience, Patriarchal Power, Feminist Literary Criticism, Female Agency, Comparative Literature
