Cultural Outsider

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In “Mrs. Sen’s”, Lahiri portrayed Mrs. Sen as a cultural outsider to the American society and a cultural insider in her microcosm, that apartment she decorated to resemble India. Interestingly, Lahiri portrayed Eliot as a cultural outsider to Mrs. Sen version of “little” India and a cultural insider of the American society. In other words, both Mrs. Sen and Eliot are mirror images of each other as they were going through a very similar transformation process from a cultural outsider to a cultural insider. While Eliot did a pretty great job in learning, discovering and assimilating himself in Mrs. Sen’s world of “little” India, Mrs. Sen, on the contrary, was in a state of denial and was having difficulty trying to assimilate, accept and even fit into the …show more content…

Mrs. Sen was forced to face the reality that she was no longer in India and her life was completely different from how it used to be whenever she was on the driver seat. It was something she did not need to do in India, she used to have a chauffeur to fetch her around in India. So, Mrs. Sen tried her best to avoid driving by coming up with lots of excuses. When Mr. Sen asked her the reason why she refused to drive, she used Eliot as an excuse to not to drive. Even when she was practicing driving with Eliot, Mrs. Sen shared with Eliot that Mr. Sen told her everything will improved once she gets her license. She, then, proceeded to fantasize about driving all the way back to Calcutta. In Mrs. Sen’s world, better means putting everything back in place, going back to where she truly belongs, India. On top of that, when Mr. Sen forced Mrs. Sen to drive, she chose to turn on the radio as an distraction to delude herself from facing the overwhelming reality. And, when Mr. Sen told her what to do and shut off her radio. Mrs. Sen snapped. She vowed to not driving anymore. Mrs. Sen just couldn’t bear living without her family around her. So, she chose not to move on but stuck in her past, and not to live in the

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