Caste and Class Differences

The entire society around the Ipe family is obsessed with caste and class differences. The English are still an oppressive colonial ghost in the form of self-hatred. Everything English is still seen as brighter and higher class than anything produced by India. The whiter one’s skin, the closer one is to cleanliness and good. The children are painfully aware of this at all times, especially when watching The Sound of Music. Chacko repeatedly reminds the children that the family are Anglophiles. They prefer to speak English, and Chacko goes to English to get a high-class education. He marries an Englishwoman, though she is treated as little better than a prostitute by Mammachi. Mammachi is both jealous of her, and also dissatisfied with her working class background. Not to mention the fact that any Englishwoman who would marry a brown-skinned Indian must have...