A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul

First published: 1961

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Autobiographical

Time of plot: Early through mid-twentieth century

Locale: Trinidad

Principal characters

• Mr. Biswas, a third-generation East Indian seeking a root in colonial Trinidad
• Shama, his wife
• Anand, ,
• Savi, ,
• Myna, and
• Kamla, their children
• Mrs. Tulsi, Shama’s mother
• Seth, Mrs. Tulsi’s brother-in-law
• Shekhar and Owad, Shama’s brothers
• Hari, ,
• Govind, and
• W. C. Tuttle, the husbands of Shama’s sisters
• Mr. Burnett, editor of the Trinidad Sentinel and Mr. Biswas’s employer
• Tara, Mr. Biswas’s maternal aunt
• Ajodha, Tara’s wealthy husband
• Pratap and Prasad, Mr. Biswas’s brothers
• Dehuti, Mr. Biswas’s sister
• Bipti, Mr. Biswas’s mother
• Raghu, Mr. Biswas’s father

The Story:

Mr. Biswas has been fired from his job as a reporter for the Trinidad Sentinel at a time when he can ill afford such a misfortune. He has been sick with a protracted illness and is without money. A huge loan that he took out to buy his present home has to be paid back. Two of his children are still in school; two are abroad on scholarship. His wife, Shama, may need to seek help from her family, the Tulsi clan.

The narrative shifts to the birth of Mr. Biswas. Dire predictions follow the inauspicious event. Mr. Biswas—his first name, Mohun, is never used, even in his childhood—is born with six fingers and in the wrong way. The midwife declares that he will devour his parents, meaning utter ruination for the family. In keeping with Hindu tradition, a pundit is invited to compose the baby’s astrological chart: He foretells that the boy will have good teeth but with gaps in between, a sign of lechery, extravagance, and lying.

Bipti, Mr. Biswas’s mother, is warned to keep him away from water in its natural form. Mr. Biswas’s sneezes, the pundit tells her with strange relish, will spell doom. The pundit says that evil surrounds the boy; however, much of it will be assuaged if his father does not see him for twenty-one days. The family observes this injunction; Raghu is turned away when he comes to see the newborn child. Of the ominous possibilities that the pundit and others predict, many are averted. A few, on the other hand, are strangely fulfilled in Mr. Biswas’s childhood. Raghu drowns when he dives into a pond because he fears that Mr. Biswas has drowned in it. Mr. Biswas, meanwhile, has been hiding because he has lost a neighbor’s calf entrusted to his care with a little sum of money. He shows up by the pond and sneezes just when Raghu’s lifeless body is being retrieved.

With no means of support, Bipti sells the little hut and land that Raghu left behind and moves her family of three boys and a daughter from South Trinidad to Pagotes, under the protection of her wealthy sister Tara. Years later, when Mr. Biswas visits the area, he sees no trace of his former dwelling. Oil has been discovered on the land that Bipti sold so cheaply, and the area is bustling with drilling activity.

The family splits up in Pagotes. Mr. Biswas’s two older brothers are sent to live with a distant relation and work in sugar estates. Mr. Biswas lives with Bipti and goes to a local school for six years. His sister Dehuti, whom he rarely sees, works as a servant for Tara. Tara decides to make a pundit out of Mr. Biswas and sends him to Jairam to receive the appropriate training, which Mr. Biswas does not enjoy at all. When he eats two bananas without asking permission, Mr. Biswas is punished by Jairam. The pundit tells him to eat all the bananas in the big bunch, but Mr. Biswas manages to eat only seven with serious discomfort. The result is prolonged constipation with unpredictable bowel movements. Mr. Biswas soils himself one night because he is afraid to go to the outhouse in the dark. He tries to eliminate the evidence by collecting it in a handkerchief and throwing it as far as he can, but it lands not too far from the window. The following morning, Jairam discovers the deed and promptly expels him.

Mr. Biswas returns to his mother and receives a cold welcome. For a time, he works in the rum shop of Tara’s husband, Ajodha; the shop is run by Ajodha’s brother. Soon, Mr. Biswas looks for a job on his own. He learns sign painting, and it is sign painting that brings him to the storefront of the Tulsis in Arwacas.

Hired to paint the Tulsi store sign, Mr. Biswas shows only a fleeting interest in Shama, one of fourteen Tulsi daughters, but the event leads Mrs. Tulsi and Seth, Shama’s mother and uncle, to arrange a marriage between them. Their interest in Mr. Biswas is largely a matter of caste—he is a Brahmin, as they are. Another subtle reason for the marriage is Mr. Biswas’s depressed social position. The Tulsis want a son-in-law who is submissive and poses no threat to themselves. They allow their married daughters to live with their husbands and children in the Tulsi house, known as Hanuman House. The husbands are expected to contribute to the Tulsis’ wealth in whatever ways they can; in return, they are given room, board, and small sums of money.

Mr. Biswas fails to meet the conventional Tulsi expectation. It does not take him long to rebel, as he keeps questioning the authority of Mrs. Tulsi and Seth, the privileged status of the two Tulsi boys Shekhar and Owad, and the abilities of the other husbands. His financial situation does not permit him to be independent of the Tulsis, but he dislikes them thoroughly and is quite unabashed in voicing his indelicate opinions.

For the next two decades or so, Mr. Biswas makes several attempts to break free of his Tulsi dependence, but circumstance does not allow him to succeed until the very end of his life. He departs from Hanuman House a few times, but only for brief periods. Even during these periods, he works for the Tulsis, either as the manager of a Tulsi store in another region or as a suboverseer of a Tulsi sugar estate. He builds two houses that are barely habitable, but he has to build them on Tulsi land; when circumstances dictate, he has to abandon these houses for other prospects.

Even when in appalling circumstances, Mr. Biswas reads profusely and writes occasionally, growing in mind and developing psychological mechanisms to cope with the many stresses of his life. Not surprisingly, two of his favorite authors are Aurelius and Epictetus, stoic philosophers of ancient Greece. Gradually, his attempt to become self-supporting becomes a reality. He establishes his own career as a journalist for the Trinidad Sentinel, a profession that immensely satisfies his writerly interests, and he buys a house on Sikkim Street in Port of Spain. Duped by an unscrupulous seller, a solicitor’s clerk, Mr. Biswas spends a fortune on the jerry-built house, but he derives solace from the fact that it is on a well-sized lot in a good neighborhood and has the potential for improvements.

While Mr. Biswas is recovering from the long illness that cost him his job, his daughter Savi returns to Trinidad after completing her studies abroad. Savi takes up the responsibilities of the family, bringing them a measure of security. However, just when Mr. Biswas feels with certainty that the loan on the house will eventually be repaid and he will spend his remaining days in economic security, he dies of a heart attack.

Bibliography

Cudjoe, Selwyn R. V. S. Naipaul: A Materialist Reading. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Uses contemporary critical techniques to read Naipaul; treats his Caribbean roots; analyzes the effect of Hindu philosophy on his ideas.

Dooley, Gillian. V. S. Naipaul: Man and Writer. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006. Traces Naipaul’s growth as a writer and defends him from his critics.

Feder, Lillian. Naipaul’s Truth: The Making of a Writer. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Of particular interest is the chapter “Autobiography,” which examines the early influence on Naipaul, focusing on Seepersad Naipaul.

French, Patrick. The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Disturbing account of Naipaul’s life that reveals many unsavory details, such as the author’s views on race and his treatment of the women in his life.

Hayward, Helen. The Enigma of V. S. Naipaul. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Treats the personal, social, and literary contexts of Naipaul’s work. The chapter “Sons and Brothers” includes a discussion of A House for Mr. Biswas and reveals the continuities of themes and ideas in Naipaul’s early fiction.

Naipaul, V. S. Conversations with V. S. Naipaul. Edited by Feroza Jussawalla. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997. Reprints interviews with Naipaul from 1960 through 1995 from a variety of publications; includes many retrospective comments on A House for Mr. Biswas.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Finding the Center: Two Narratives. New York: Knopf, 1984. Nonfiction. “Prologue to an Autobiography” describes the author’s Trinidad days and recollects Seepersad Naipaul.

Nixon, Rob. London Calling: V. S. Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Offers an unflattering critique of Naipaul’s travel writing. Attacks him for propagating Western stereotypes about developing nations.