INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056
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Cultural Studies in V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas
Lily Pushpam B
Department of English (SSC), St. Mary’s College (Autonomous), Tuticorin.
Abstract-- A House for Mr. Biswas is a cross-cultural novel written by V. S. Naipaul whose works are the reflections of the conflicting personalities of which he is an amalgamation. The diasporic communities are the results of their disposal or mobility under specific historical conditions- political, economical, sociological, psychological and cultural. The constitutive of diaspora can be understood through three elements: ‘dispersion in space’, ‘orientation to a homeland’, and ‘boundary maintenance’. The voluntary or forcible movement of people from their homeland into new regions not only affects their culture but also results in the development of double consciousness. They struggle to choose between their own cultures. It has been common for the subaltern groups to adopt cultural elements from hegemonic groups. A variable that should be considered in any case of borrowing, lending, or imposing of cultural elements is the relative power, prestige and recognition of the groups involved. The article aims at investigating how cultural projects relate to wider systems of power associated with operating through social phenomena, such as ideology, class structure, national formations, sexual orientation, gender and generation. The quintessential aim of this research paper is to study their cultural phenomena, and investigate the way in which culture creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social reforms and power.
Key words-- Double Consciousness, Identity Crisis, Cultural Clash, Home, Self Identity.
A House for Mr. Biswas is a cross-cultural novel, noteworthy as V. S Naipaul’s first work to accomplish worldwide acclamation. Naipaul had acquired the seeds of diasporic inner ambivalence from his birth. He is a Trinidadian-British writer of Indian ancestry. He himself considers the mix of personalities he carries as very unsettling. He wrote from the perspective of the marginalised, from the point of view of somebody who grew up outside the privileged society, and applied that to India as well. India is the place of his ancestral origin, the country which his predecessors had left as bonded labourers in the 19th century, and where Naipaul, the modern Oxford-educated lad, felt an utterly anticlimactic sense of alienation. The inspiration for his 1961 novel A House for Mr. Biswas came from his childhood memories of his father.
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The literary texts produced by authors are often indicative of their response and reaction to the social dynamics of their time. A longing or nostalgia for the period gone by, or a vision of a utopian tomorrow are also found in their writings. Naipaul’s works are the reflections of the conflicting personalities of which he is an amalgamation. His work expounds and explicates how disparate cultures can reveal the mystery and beauty in each other. The novel starts blending sentimentality with the analysis of shades of malice in the Indian and Trinidadian culture especially with the host nations. Culture can quite easily be credited as the source of all art. Culture is capable of influencing and transforming discrete experience of individuals in the society. ‘There is no such thing as a human independent of culture’- Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.
The diasporic communities are the results of their disposal or mobility under specific historical conditions- political, economical, sociological, psychological and cultural. The constitutive of diaspora can be understood through three elements: ‘dispersion in space’, ‘orientation to a homeland’, and ‘boundary maintenance’. The voluntary or forcible movement of people from their homeland into new regions not only affects their culture but also results in the development of double consciousness. They struggle to choose between their own cultures. It has been common for the subaltern groups to adopt cultural elements from hegemonic groups. A variable that should be considered in any case of borrowing, lending, or imposing of cultural elements is the relative power, prestige and recognition of the groups involved.
The clash between the cultures has given rise to the identity crisis in the life of the protagonist in the novel. Like the author, the protagonist is also an outsider who wants to belong to a definite place. Their identity crisis springs from their agonising historical experience of slavery and their psychic encounter with people who constitute a forlorn and despondent culture. The prologue of the novel campaigns the truth of Mr. Biswas' life:
How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it: to have died among the Tulsis, amid the squalor of that large, disintegrating and different family; to have left Shama and children among them, in one room; worse, to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated. ( Prologue, A House for Mr. Biswas 8)
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Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home, but once he marries into the masterful Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous and endless struggle to weaken their hold over him, and buy a house of his own. The metaphoric Hanuman House of the Tulsis, allegorically delineated as ‘an alien white fortress’, wants total dilution of his identity in return of giving shelter. ‘Give up sign-painting? And my independence? No, boy. My motto is: paddle your own canoe?’ (107).
A House for Mr Biswas is a book for people who have struggled continually to figure out how to live their lives, people who have dealt with the opposing forces of obligation to family and the desire for independence. Naipaul’s primary aim is to depict the suffering of an individual for identity in culturally changed domain. It is a novel of cast disintegration, struggling and defeat to procure an escape from the chaos of life. To establish one’s own identity and make it evident is the driving force of the novel. It helps the readers to understand the ever-changing balance of power in families, the slight accidents that change lives forever, the hard-won tiny victories, the slight ratcheting up and down of expectations. Naipaul, despite shifting between the apparent neutrality and cutting criticism, is deeply compassionate about the character composition of Mr. Biswas. The characters in the novel are substantially immigrant Indian people spending their lives in the Creole society of Trinidad under the dominance of colonial power.
According to Raymond Williams, Cultural studies is a study of ‘a particular way of life, whether of people, or period, or a group.’ Assorted ideological theories such as Marxism, Communism, Decolonization, Eco-criticism, Feminism, Race, Caste, Gender, and so on have been brought into the domain of Cultural Studies. The house is seen as a central symbol for freedom from oppression or humiliation and a representation of desire for self-fulfillment and self- actualization. The image of the house is a central, unifying and integrating metaphor around which the life of Mr. Mohun Biswas revolves. Mr. Biswas made repeated attempts to build a house. For him the house was an emblem or token of his own identity. Deep down, he viewed the house as a place which gives solace, comfort and satisfaction to the dweller. In the book the house is symbolized as an embodiment of status and property. It is portrayed as a sign of success. In many cultures, owning a house is often related to a person’s success, and building or buying an own house is regarded as the emblem of success.
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In A House for Mr. Biswas, the story is portrayed through a series of homes which symbolize Mr. Biswas’ personal identity. After his father drowns, Mohun and his family have to live with their wealthy relatives, which emphasize the theme of loss of freedom and humiliation. He had been staying with people to work under them, who often ill-treated him. When he was beaten and abused by Bhandat for the false charge of stealing his money, he ran away from that place and decided that he is not going to work for anyone anymore. ‘I am going to get a job on my own. And I am going to get my own house too. I am finished with this. He waved his aching arm about the mud walls and the low, sooty thatch’ (66).
As the longing for a house is symbolical, the incompleteness of the house is also symbolical. Through his novel, Naipaul conveys that there many people like Mr. Biswas who want to build their own houses, but they remain incomplete due to various reasons. The incomplete house is the symbol of the incompleteness of their lives, with all their isolation, fears and futility. Again Mr. Biswas asks Seth for a piece of land at Green Vale to build a house. Though he starts the construction works, the house remains incomplete on account of the shortfall of money.
Mr. Biswas thought again of the price of new corrugated iron of the exposed frame of his house. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Send it’. Anand, who had been displaying more and more energy since his misadventure at school, said, ‘All right! Go ahead and but it and put it on your old house. I don’t care what it look like now!’ ‘Another little paddler?’ Seth said. ‘But Mr. Biswas felt as Anand. He too didn’t care what the house looked like now.(270)
In A House for Mr. Biswas, the story is depicted through a progression of homes. The protagonist spends his life traveling from one temporary family residence to another, fueling his desire for a house of his own. Determined to realize his ambition quickly, he tried so many times to build his own house, but failed miserably. Though he had failed many times in building a house of his own, Mr. Biswas never gave up till the end. Mr. Biswas was very much determined to get or build a house which he could claim as his own. He had always been saving money to build his own house. Irrespective of the amount of money he earned, he always saved more than the normal proportion. ‘At the end of the month he set aside fifteen of his twenty-five dollars for the house. This was extravagant; he was eventually left with ten’ (269).
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Naipaul presents a consistent image of social reality where the dispossessed people search their identity. Willie Chandran, the protagonist of his last fictional work Magic Seeds (2004), admits as much: ‘It is the one thing that I have worked at all my life, not being at home anywhere but looking at home.’ The protagonist of the novel, A House for Mr Biswas, represents the Indian man of lower middle class ambition to have a house of his own and to die peacefully under his own roof. The effort to achieve the ownership of the house becomes his passion and motive of life. In A House for Mr Biswas, the house also symbolizes the class status and financial standing. The protagonist’s sense of alienation from his many homes and partially-fulfilled desire to truly belong in a house of his own represent and symbolize colonized people’s struggle to translate places and systems of oppression, into places of proud belonging and systems that benefit the population as a whole. ‘House’ is always viewed as a symbol of self-identity.
The predilection of owning a house has started to play a vital role in many cultures, as people think that it helps them to establish their identity. People spend a lot of time and money on planning to build and on building their own house. Similar to Mr. Biswas, there are so many real life protagonists out there who spend their entire lives with the dream of acquiring their own home. The desire for a place to call home provides one of the strongest themes for authors, poets, and artists of all kinds to weave throughout their works. Thus the article investigates how cultural projects relate to wider systems of power associated with operating through social phenomena, such as ideology, class structure, national formations, sexual orientation, gender and generation.
Works Cited
Naipaul, V. S. A House for Mr. Biswas. London, Picador Classics. 2016.
Panwar, Purabi. V. S. Naipaul: An Anthology of Recent Criticism. Delhi, India. Pencraft International. 2003
Prasad, Amar Nath. Critical Response to V. S. Naipaul and Mulk Raj Anand. Delhi, India.
Sarup& Sons. 2003.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus. 1993.
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