The Exhibition of 'She' in 'Mrs Sen's by Jhumpa Lahiri: An Existential Study (original) (raw)

The Exhibition of ‘She’ in 'Mrs Sen’s ‘Intepreter of Maladies’ by JhumpaLahiri: An Existential Study Sushree Smita Raj

Research Scholar,MSCBD UniversityMayubrhanj, Odisha

Abstract

Mrs Sen is one of the striking stories in the collection of 'Interpreter of Maladies’by prominent fiction writer JhumpaLahiri. The text is significant in the post-colonial and diaspora canon in literature.Eliot, an eleven-year-old boy, tells an even more detailed and provocative story in the background of Lahiri’s convoluted narrative. This paper aims at evaluating the character of Mrs Sen through the lenses of Existentialism. Mrs Sensettling into the new environment was challenging, especially in the early stages of the migration.Women who immigrate to America after getting married discover that they are doubly alone in their new home contrary to the man. Woman doesn’t have the choice to stay in the home country while husband makes decision to relocate in another country. Mrs Sen remain alienated and isolated in the new home. She was constantly long for her cultural roots and never gave up Indian practices in a western country. The dilemma of accepting the new ways of life leaving the past life created existential crisis.

Keywords- Post Colonial studies, Existentialism, Crisis, Rootlessness, Immigration Narratives

Interpreter of Maladies (1999) isthe collection of stories deal with the human predicament. Each short story explores the character’s journey is close observation of their psyche and actions.Though the expressions may be ordinary but it is a great significance as far as the individual’s life is concerned. The versatile characters of the novel hail from different stages of life but yet the common threat that binds them all is the feeling of alienation and meaninglessness. In the introduction to the volume Lahiri says, ‘stories tell of the lives of Indians in exile, of people navigating between the strict traditions they have inherited and the baffling new world they must encounter every day.’ (3)

There are nine versatile stories in the collection and the story ‘Mrs Sen’s’ is about a “Professor’s wife, responsible and kind”(124).Mrs Sen is a thirty year old woman lives in Boston area inside the university campus where Mr Sen is working as professor in Mathematics. She used to babysit an eleven year old boy named ‘Eliot’ whose mother goes out for work to a distance place. She had the eleven year old boy as a

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companion throughout the day. She cooks Indian food for meals all the time just to remind about her homeland. Mrs Sen often get nostalgic about her native country. Eliot learns after observing her that she gets delighted whenever she receives any letter from India or when she gets fresh fish from the seashore market. The only source of happiness is anything that is related to her roots. Mrs Sen was selective about different kind of fish. She always looks for fresh fish and the frozen fish at the supermarket never satisfied her. She thinks that the fish available at the little market on the beach side is perfect for cooking. She constantly compares the situations in the new land with scenario of her mother land and turns nostalgic.

Eliot watches Mrs Sen every day and he compares her with his mother. Eliot always seen his mother the wearing sleeves but when he sees her in Mrs Sen’s in her Indian clothes in her drawing room he feels that she looks odd. ‘It was his mother earlier thought, in her curved, bade sorts and her rope soled shoes who looked odd. Her cropped hair, is shade similar to shots, seemed to lank and sensible and in that room where all things were so carefully covered, her shaved knees and thighs too exposed’.(Lahiri 112)

The story is partly autobiographical because Lahiri herself admits in an interview that Mrs Sen is based on my mother who used to baby sat in our home ‘I saw her one way but imagined that an American child may see her differently, reacting with curiosity, fascination or fear of things I took for granted’. Mrs Sen loneliness was due to the Indian and American social ethical ways and manners that were beyond her Imagination. As an immigrant, she remains in the cultural dilemma. The young Elliot could observe that her husband does not care for Mrs Sen as much as his father cares for his mother. The alienation in the new land and the neglected relationship created a resonating existence for Mrs Sen. Mrs Sen remained close to her roots by making culinary efforts. Eliot watches her the way she chops vegetables. ‘His specially enjoyed watching Mrs Sen as she chopped things, seated all newspapers on the living room floor. Instead of a knife she used a blade that curved like the of a viking ship, sailing to battle in distant seas. The blade was hinged at one end to a narrow wooden base. The steel, more than silver, lacked a uniform polish, And had a serrated Crest, she told Eliot, for grating. Facing the sharp page without ever touching it, she took whole vegetables between her hands and hacked them apart cauliflower, cabbage, butternut squash. Things in half, then quarters, speedily producing florets, cubes, slices and shreds. She could peel a potato in seconds.’(Lahiri 114) Angelo

Monaco observes in his research Neurosis as Resilience in JhumpaLahiri’sDiasporic Short Fictions in that-
"Cooking Indian food is the only way of reconnecting with her past, but it also triggers an automatic and unconscious neurotic mechanism against anxiety: even if the recreation of these past experiences generates wounds, it enables, as Freud explains in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” to recover “an initial state from which the living entity has at one time or other departed and to which it is striving to return”. (Monaco 164)

Indian food evoked Mrs Sen’s memory of her homeland. The food helps to recover from the anxieties from home sickness. Mrs Sen memories make her isolated and gloomy. She remembered the celebration and festivals they observed in West Bengal but there is no such celebration in the host country. She could not accept the new culture of the west.Mrs Sen’s narrative is “not through writing but through the food she prepares, cooks, serves and eats. This is the space she calls her own. Here she gains agency and asserts her own. On an emotional and psychological level, she connects with her maternal ancestors and her cultural traditions even as she alters, modifies or adds to their narrative.” (Maimi 159).

Mrs Sen was not inclined to give up her one culture because of her relocation. She loved to cook fish. The way she cuts the fish and prepares the dishes is the happiest moment as she feels closeness to her country.JhumpaLahiri descried the important job of the home maker with details that-
‘And inspected her treasures who stop one by one she drew them from the paper wrappings, Wrinkled and pinged with blood. She stroked the tales, prodded the bellies, create a part the gutted flesh. With a pair of scissors she claimed the fence she talked her finger under the gills, rate so bright that made her vermillion seem pale. She grasped the body, lined with inky strikes, at either end, and notched it at intervals against the blade’.(Lahiri 127)

Eliot watches all her actions with attention and can contrast to her mother’s life. Mrs Sen constantly feels that she is living in exile. Even her attempts to learn driving seemed to be a total failure even though she tries too hard. She asked Eliot for his opinion about her driving. The personal experience of Mrs Sen is essentially far removed from the social experience of other immigrants but yet she has to live within that alien society where she needed to adapt to the new culture. In America is a

country where the boiling pot metaphor is repeatedly used, Mrs Sencontinues to be the eternal outsider and her attempts turn into a fiasco. Mrs Sen always longed for little connection with near and dear ones lived in her homeland whenever she gets any letter from her family she became extremely happy. ‘It was her custom to cheque the mailbox after driving practise. Should unlock the box but she would ask earlier to reach inside, telling him what to look for, and then sued shut her eyes and sealed them with her hands while he suffered through the bills and magazines that came in Mr Sen’s name.’ (Lahiri 123)

Her painful experiences and her loneliness in the new land reduced only when she receives any letter from her family. Till the end of the story, Mr Sen remains poised between the two walls the one she left behind and the other she is struggling with. Tears and loneliness become the prominent features of her life. She is living an alienated life and her only companion is the loneliness.

One of the prominent existentialist Jean Paul Sartre pointed out that ‘Russell’s notion of the subject as transcendental ego and distinguishes between pre reflective and reflective consciousness in the slightly earlier the transcendence of the ego’ (Sartre 197). The reflective consciousness intends to the objects other than itself. The very fact of having something is it subject means the consciousness is separate from its object incapable of distinguishing itself from it, their images is space between thinking subject and what is perceived on (Warnock 2019) the pre reflective consciousness is not only neverness of the objects other than itself but also a neverness of itself perceiving these objects as its consequence, pre reflective consciousness is simultaneously consciousness of an object other than itself and known positionally selfaware. The claim is that consciousness is accompanied by internal consciousness or the self-awareness and the subjectivity is spontaneous reflectivity of consciousness when it is directed towards something other than itself.

Mrs Sen’s consciousness is attached to the ways of life in the homeland. She kept her sarees like a treasure; she looks for the perfect fish to cook like she ate in India, her happiness after receiving letters from her shows that she wanted to experience familiarity of her life in her homeland in a different country. She failed to distinguish between her past life and the reality. Her pre reflective consciousness never made her realise that a new country will change her life style and she will be affected by new surroundings and objects. She failed to recognise and distinguish between her pre conceived notions and the reality she was

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experiencing. Her reality was that she was alienated. She resistliving such alienated life so unconsciously searching for her reflective consciousness in several objects related to her.

Mrs Sen lobby brings out the picture of static nature. Lahiri puts it this way, ‘inside intersecting shadows left by a vacuum cleaner where frozen on the surface of a plus spear coloured carpet’ (112). The term frozen symbolises Mrs Sen mental status which is frozen by the time. The way she tries to recreate a mini Indian kitchen in America but using all kind of native flavours and with cutting blade. She refused to use a knife. To Eliot’s mother she says quote it is very frustrating, to leave so close to the ocean and not to have much fish (123). The uneasiness in living in a new country can be evident from the life of Mrs Sen. She refused to accept the new circumstances and she tries to create a familiar surroundings in the home. She failed in learning the car driving suggests that see rejected the life in the new country. She disgustedly says ‘I hate it. I hate driving. I won’t go on’(126). She was unable to manage the traffic and she failed miserably add the end. All these aspects of her life souls the anxiety and the desperate attempts to feel like home in a new setting.

Soren Kierkegaard described solitude of human life in the middle of society with is keen observation that the repeated activities and lack of passion in life. Due to lack of understanding about the world, human being lives in full of uneasiness. Man navigate through their lives is the lack. So they do not exist. The repetitive lifestyle brings its state of despair. According Kierkegaard, and individual starts to realise his own despair and faces the feeling of despair over oneself. The existential angst refers to the awareness of despair in life. And despair is constant element in life is human being can’t escape from circumstances. Further Kierkegaard claims that the best person with all his powers seeks to break the despair by himself and by himself alone. He is still in despair and all with all his presumed effort only works himself all the deeper into deeper despair. (Kierkegaard 14)

A human has to feel secure and his life should anchor to happiness. But in reality modern man has no freedom is life is always changing. In the case of Mrs Sen, she has to relocate and loneliness, she was in despair. She was living a lonely life in are unfamiliar surroundings. So she became a loner and went deeper into despair and hopelessness. The guard further adds quote he may try to keep himself in the dark about his state through diversions and in other ways, for example, through work and busyness as diversionary means, yet in such a

way that he doesn’t entirely realise why he is doing it, that it is to keep himself in dark on quote 48 . This is so because such individual desperately lacks quote a deeper, existential basis, related to the deep explorations and, yes fears and doubts of the individual a desire permeated by passion.(Lahiri13) MrsSen was only passionate about her past. She refused to accept the new country and culture. The existence of Mrs Sen was paradoxical.Psychologist Robert C. Ciampi points out in his article that ‘Existential angst not only derives from the human inability to think, feel, and act in the world or experience a love for life, but also from the fear of the possibility of nonexistence and/or death. It can be lonely, isolating, and outright terrifying if one’s very existence is in question.’ Human filled with dread, anxiety, anguish, angst and nausea if the hopes and expectations don’t translated into reality.

JhumpaLahiri captured the trapped life of a homemaker in the story. Mrs Sen was lost the meaning of life between self (her roots) and theother (the external world). Her repressed sense of belongingness reduced her to a helpless cook. There was no source of fulfilment for Mrs Sen in the new land on the other hand Mr Sen never comes in the scene showing weakness towards the culture and surrounding of the new land. The dominant picture of the story is presenting the rootlessness. Lahiri didn’t portray Mr Sen with vulnerability or as a victim of alienation. The story ends with failed transformation of Mrs Sen who went to get fish to the market by driving the car and she met with an accident. The skill of driving symbolically presented as acceptance of western progressive culture. Mrs Sen struggled to forget her cultural practice and adopt the new way of life is the subject of the story.

References:

1. Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1999. Print.
2. Maimi, Irma. The Politics of Home and Food in JhumpaLahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. The Indian Family in Transition: Reading Literary and Cultural Texts.
3. Monaco, Angelo. “Neurosis as Resilience in JhumpaLahiri’sDiasporic Short Fictions.” A Poetics of Neurosis: Narratives of Normalcy and Disorder in Cultural and Literary Texts, edited by Elena Furlanetto and DietmarMeinel, Transcript Verlag,

Bielefeld,2018,pp.159-178.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv6zdbtz. 10

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1. S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1987, 20.
2. Warnock, Mary. The Philosophy of Sartre.Routledge, 2019.
3. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1957) Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, Translated by Hazel Bemes, Philosophical Library, New York.pp 98.