The Treatment Of Bibi Haldar Sparknotes

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies traces the lives of Bengali people, mostly immigrants, living their lives with the hardships that they face. In the eighth story, “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar”, the wives of a village tell of Bibi Haldar, a young woman put into the most unfortunate of circumstances. The ailment she suffers from, the lack of a loving home, her disgraced ending, and, most of all, the ability to become victorious through these hardships makes Bibi the most sympathetic character in Lahiri’s short story collection.
Bibi suffers from seizure-like attacks, an ailment that she had lived with for her entire life: “For the greater number of her twenty-nine years, Bibi Haldar suffered from an ailment that baffled family, friends, priests, palmists, spinsters, gem therapists, prophets, and fools” (158). She was “treated” by every known thing that might cure her illness. No cure, potion, or remedy has helped Bibi live a normal life. Unfortunately, “Bibi’s life was an encounter with one fruitless antidote after another”(159). “The nature of her illness, which struck

The married ladies of the village found Bibi in the storage room: “She was about four months pregnant. She said she could not remember what had happened. She did not tell us who had done it” (172). The wives then help Bibi birth a son and give her the necessary supplies to take care of him. Using the money Haldar has left her, she started selling cosmetics out of her storage room:“In this manner she raised the boy and ran a business in the storage room…”(172). The women of the village never learned what happened of the man that has impregnated Bibi, leaving it a mystery for all: “For years afterward, we wondered who in our town had disgraced her” (172). However, to the wives knowledge, Bibi was cured of her dreaded