A House for Mr. Biswas

In many ways, Shama is a mirror of her husband. She never planned on marrying Mr. Biswas but was cajoled into the arrangement by Seth and Mrs. Tulsi because Mr. Biswas was deemed a good match due to his caste. While Mr. Biswas showed that he was attracted to her, however, and while he was given the opportunity to decline the marriage, Shama was not. She is thrust into the marriage with even less agency than Mr. Biswas and, in that decision, the course of her life is set. Mr. Biswas spends long parts of the novel complaining about the unfair treatment given to him and the way in which his marriage into the Tulsi family has ruined his life, but he does not stop to consider that his wife is similarly affected. This dynamic—in which Mr. Biswas complains, ignoring his own wife's feelings on the matter—continues for the rest of their lives. He is the protagonist and the point of view character; the lack of care and attention he pays her is illustrated by the lack of care and attention the narrative pays to Shama's own feelings.

The key difference between Shama and Mr. Biswas is their relationship to the Tulsi family. Mr. Biswas resents the Tulsi family for decades. He complains that they inhibit his independence and manipulate him frequently. He hates the Tulsi family. Shama, however, is a Tulsi. She cannot help but love her family and sympathize with them, even as her husband rages. This tension places Shama in an awkward position. Her loyalty is torn between two worlds: to her extended family who will always support her or to her immediate family, whose fortunes are beholden to the whims of Mr. Biswas. She often sides with her husband but pines for her family. When he abuses her, she exits the violent situation and returns to the Tulsis, often for months at a time. This opportunity for escape gives her power in the marriage. Knowing that the Tulsi family will always support her empowers her to leave Mr. Biswas if needed. However, the tension with regards to her identity is never quite resolved. Shama's heart is split between Biswas and Tulsi, unable to ever commit to one or abandon the other.

Shama is a figure of strength. She is one of the only people who is willing to stand up to Mr. Biswas's absurd ideas without dismissing him entirely. They frequently trade insults, and she often comes out on top. Her teasing is just as stinging as his. Even in the patriarchal society she inhabits, she follows in her family's tradition and carves out a female sphere of power and influence within the marriage. Her word and her ability to leave Mr. Biswas and return to the Tulsi family give her a powerful say in the way that the children are raised, for example, and she is not perturbed by Mr. Biswas's threat to deny her money or a home. Shama is also the victim of domestic abuse, but she does not let this define her. Each time she feels threatened or she is attacked, she returns to the Tulsi family and waits for her husband to apologize. When they reunite, they do so on her terms, even if she ultimately surrenders many of the decisions to her husband. Shama's role in the novel is to show the constant tension in the search for identity, within the social gender roles, within the loyalty to past or present family members, and within the context of her own sense of powerlessness, like that of her husband.

Anand is the oldest son of Mr. Biswas and Shama. Throughout the novel, he struggles to step out of his father's shadow. This is not because his father is such a towering figure, but because Anand is invested with so many of his father's ambitions. He feels less like a son than a vehicle for his father's dreams. Mr. Biswas's attempt to live vicariously through his son puts a huge amount of pressure on Anand. When he does express himself along his father's lines, such as when he writes a story about nearly drowning, the mocking response from his classmates makes him hate what he has become. His momentary hesitation in describing this to his father enrages Mr. Biswas and earns Anand a beating, illustrating the very real and painful consequences that Anand suffers for trying to establish his own identity, separate from his father. Anand wants to define himself on his own terms but cannot do so when he is the vessel for another person's ambition.

Anand is clever and he succeeds in school, to the point where he places third in an island-wide school competition that earns him a scholarship. He attends college and, later, he is sent abroad to study, following in Owad's illustrious footsteps. This achievement comes at a cost, however. He suffers from the fear of failing his parents and he fears another physical beating if his parents' investment in his education is not borne out by academic success. Anand is placed under a huge amount of pressure from a young age and, much to his own surprise, he manages to succeed under this pressure. He exceeds beyond his father's expectations and, in doing so, this is enough to distinguish him from his father. He will not be doomed to the same ceiling of employment which has limited his father for so long. While this might be his father's dreams, Anand also wants this for himself. He does not want to be like his father and, to distinguish himself from his father, he must embrace his father's ambition. In doing so, however, he is given a tragic realization of his father's own limitations in how quickly he surpasses his father's achievements.

In the end, Anand is pushed too far. Mr. Biswas spends so long impressing on his son the importance of education and success over family that, at the end of Mr. Biswas's life, Anand is defined by his absence. He has grown apart from the father who did not show him enough love and he shows no desire to return home from his studying abroad, nor much other than the compulsory care and attention he can give to his father. Mr. Biswas spent so long turning Anand into a vessel for his ambition that he forgot to foster the paternal bond with his son. Eventually, Anand is a living ghost at his father's death bed, away achieving the education which was so important to Mr. Biswas. By achieving his father's ambitions, he drives himself further away from his father.

Mrs. Tulsi is a towering figure and the closest the novel has to an antagonist. She is the head of the Tulsi family, and she frequently shows herself to be a masterful manipulator and a shrewd political operator, building her family's fortunes and providing living space and jobs for the sprawling Tulsi family. Mrs. Tulsi has a keen eye for improving her family's status and is ruthless in the pursuit of this success, pursuing business deals and bargaining with workers in a way that challenges the patriarchal domination of the society. An example of this is the way in which she marries her daughter to Mr. Biswas without having to provide a dowry and by framing the decision so that he has no real way in which to escape. Mr. Biswas is a foolish teenager, but she has no hesitation in joining him to Shama for the rest of their lives. Following on from the marriage, she spends decades manipulating Mr. Biswas and ensuring that he is dependent on her for accommodation and work, making him resent how much he needs her. Mrs. Tulsi's authority is evident in the way everyone responds to her instructions. While Mr. Biswas is one of the few naysayers, everyone else in the family does everything immediately. Her word is law, more so than the actual law.

The strength of Mrs. Tulsi at the beginning of the novel contrasts with her weakness as the story draws to a close. For all her power and authority, she cannot fight against the ravages of time. As she grows older, she is decimated by the emotional toil of her fight with Seth, as well as the deaths of numerous children. These losses and the harshness of her living conditions accelerate her decline. The orders she issues begin to become less and less profitable, while she focuses on tangents and whims that do nothing to help the family. Each strange order erodes her authority and, while each order is still followed, her reign as the head of the family is one in which she now oversees the decline of the family's fortunes. Despite this, her authority rarely falters and very few people openly question her. Power transitions to her son, Owad, and she retires from her position, her respect intact.