Ammu, Estha, and Rahel - GoST

So far in The God of Small Things, there is a central message about unrequited and complicated love. At the end of the first chapter, Arundhati Roy comments on many things that have "laws" in the minds of Rahel and Estha -- some of which are as simple and inconsequential as the classification of jam and jelly and some which are much more complex, such as love: "They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how" (31). Estha and Rahel, despite their unconditional care for their mother Ammu, have complicated feelings about how they love their mother. Ammu is a detached mother and has more feminist ideals than many other women of her time. She also sometimes has a temper which Roy refers to as an "Unsafe Edge" (44). Because of this, Estha and Rahel are confused about how they should feel about their mother, "Sometimes she was the most beautiful woman that Estha and Rahel had ever seen. And sometimes she wasn't" (44). However, Ammu's emotionally detached aura and independence doesn't mean she is indifferent about how her children are raised. In fact Ammu truly does care about Estha and Rahel but her complicated past (her toxic marriage to Baba) created an internal battle that Ammu has to fight everyday. Nonetheless, I've found that this "law" of love that Roy introduces in the first chapter is prevalent throughout the first few chapters of The God of Small Things."