63 pages • 2 hours read
Jhumpa LahiriInterpreter of Maladies
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Story 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 6 Summary: “Mrs. Sen’s”
Eliot is an 11-year-old boy living in a small beach community who, for the past month, has been in the care of Mrs. Sen in the afternoons while his mother is at work. His mother usually has a sitter come to the house, but Mrs. Sen cannot drive a car and relies on her husband for transportation; he teaches math at the local university and is teaching her to drive.
Eliot enjoys his time in Mrs. Sen’s care; the Sens’ apartment is more comfortable in the colder months than his small beach house, and he likes to watch Mrs. Sen prepare the vegetables for dinner, as she sits on the floor and chops them skillfully with a curved blade. She notes that on wedding days in India, the women all do this work and stay up all night; in America, she struggles with isolation and silence. Eliot learns things about India from Mrs. Sen, including why she puts crushed vermillion in her scalp to denote her marriage, and comes to appreciate her, though his mother finds Mrs. Sen’s Indian identity (and the treats she serves every day) strange.
Every afternoon, Mrs. Sen waits for Eliot at the bus and they then practice driving in the apartment complex parking lot. She is eager but distracted, and she is terrified of turning out onto the road. After that, they check the mail, and if a letter arrives from India, Mrs. Sen is overjoyed and calls Mr. Sen to relay the contents of the letter.
One joy that Mrs. Sen has is fresh fish, and she regularly has Mr. Sen pick up a whole fish for her in the afternoon from a local fishmonger. When Mr. Sen tells her that he can’t do so anymore, she concurs, but then the fishmonger calls her; he has reserved a fish for her. When Mr. Sen refuses to go get it for her, she takes Eliot into her bedroom and shows him all of her nice saris that she never gets to wear, complaining that her family asks for pictures of her new life. Mr. Sen calls back and agrees to come home and get the fish. He tries to get Mrs. Sen to drive, but she refuses, using Eliot’s presence as an excuse. Together, they go and get the fish, which Mrs. Sen carefully portions out when they return home.
In November, Mrs. Sen’s mood changes—she refuses to drive, she does not prepare dinner or treats, and she is distracted while Eliot is there. Eventually, she plays a tape for him of her family members speaking in her language and points out everyone before revealing that her grandfather has just died.
The next week, Mr. Sen takes Mrs. Sen and Eliot to the seaside, where they buy fish and enjoy a late lunch of fried crab cakes. The couple is happy, and Eliot takes a picture of them on the beach, though he is surprised by how far apart they stand. When they leave, Mr. Sen insists that Mrs. Sen drive, but she becomes overwhelmed and pulls over, saying she won’t go on.
After that, she stops driving altogether and begins learning the bus schedule. She and Eliot take the bus to the fishmonger, but then, on the return bus, a passenger complains about the fish smell, leading to a racially tinged confrontation with the bus driver.
The next time the fishmonger calls, Mrs. Sen announces that they are going to drive without Mr. Sen. They have an accident, and though no one is hurt, Mrs. Sen takes to her room after Mr. Sen gets everyone home safely. Eliot can hear her crying. After Mr. Sen apologizes to Eliot’s mother and reimburses her, she is relieved: Eliot is getting too old for a babysitter anyway, and she is ready for him to stay by himself in the afternoons. This is the last time Eliot sees Mrs. Sen, and on the first day he stays home alone, he tells his mother that everything is fine.
Story 6 Analysis
Mrs. Sen is a tragic figure, grappling with loneliness and an inability to adapt to her new life in America. She clings to her old life, brightening whenever she can talk about India or when something reminds her of her time there, such as the access to fresh fish that she finds at the fish market. She feels displaced and distant from everything that matters to her. Mr. Sen, meanwhile, seems to be having no trouble, though the narrative leaves him opaque, suggesting that he and Mrs. Sen are not close in the way Eliot would expect a married couple to be.
Eliot is similarly lonely—his mother works, and their social life is nonexistent. He grows close to Mrs. Sen because her longing for family echoes his own isolation living in a beach house with a distracted parent. It’s notable that Eliot’s mother dislikes Mrs. Sen’s hospitality and generally sees Mrs. Sen as strange even as Eliot sympathizes with her and grows close to her; Eliot’s mother approaches Mrs. Sen with a typical incurious attitude toward an immigrant’s culture, and Eliot himself approaches Mrs. Sen on her own terms. Mrs. Sen sees a kindred spirit in Eliot, as he is already experiencing the kind of loneliness and disconnection from family that she’s going through.
Mrs. Sen’s desire for fresh fish represents a desire for the comforts of home, and when she gets one, she cuts it carefully to parcel it out over several meals. Mr. Sen knows this, which is why he takes her to the market after her grandfather dies. The day they have together at the beach with Eliot is the one moment in the story when Mrs. Sen seems happy, and the photo they take echoes her earlier complaint that she has no photos to send home because her life is so small. For a moment, it seems as though things will improve for her, but Mr. Sen’s assertion that she drive home breaks the spell.
Driving is a powerful symbol for assimilation in this story. Mr. Sen urges his wife to learn how to drive for practical reasons, but he is also eager to see her take a more active role in their lives in America, and he does not struggle with their life as immigrants in the same way that she does. The overwhelming feelings this pressure inspires in her echo the way she is overwhelmed by American life in general—her attempts to adjust and integrate are going poorly, and she does not feel like she belongs. When she gives up on the idea of driving and chooses to take the bus, she is confronted with a racist complaint about the smell of her fish; any attempts to avoid assimilation into American culture will only lead to more pain because of her difference. However, when Mrs. Sen tries to drive without her husband, she fails at that, too; it’s clear that Mrs. Sen’s struggle to assimilate will be a long, difficult path.
The closing image of the story echoes the earlier day at the beach—Eliot looks out at the waves, which are gray now, knowing that he won’t see Mrs. Sen again and that his new independence is not what he wanted. Eliot and Mrs. Sen were able to empathize with each other because they had the shared bond of loneliness. Neither of them is in a situation they can control, and neither of them has a support network. In making Eliot into a latchkey kid, Eliot’s mother is asking him to stop empathizing with others, to lean into the isolation that she sees as part of being an adult. The story suggests that this isolation is a central part of the American experience.
Related Titles
By Jhumpa Lahiri
