A House for Mr Biswas

by

V. S. Naipaul

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on A House for Mr Biswas makes teaching easy.

Bipti Character Analysis

Mr Biswas’s selfless mother, Bipti, suffers immensely and seemingly insensibly throughout the book. After giving birth to the protagonist at her mother Bissoondaye’s hut, Bipti watches her husband, Raghu, die, her older boys go off to the cane fields, her daughter runs away with a yard boy, and her other son, Mr Biswas, struggle to find himself a job or wife. Her depression at this misfortune abates suddenly when Mr Biswas marries into the Tulsi clan, which she considered the last element of her life’s work. Although she believes she has nothing more to live for, she also finds a sense of peace and comfort for the rest of the novel, even though Mr Biswas is often reluctant to visit her. When she visits him at Shorthills, however, and develops a close relationship with his wife, Shama, Mr Biswas suddenly comes to respect his mother immensely. When Bipti dies, he mourns at length, even though he never appreciated her during her life.

Bipti Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas

The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Bipti or refer to Bipti. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Independence vs. Belonging Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Mr Biswas never went to work on the estates. Events which were to occur presently led him away from that. They did not lead him to riches, but made it possible for him to console himself in later life with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, while he rested on the Slumberking bed in the one room which contained most of his possessions.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Raghu, Pratap, Prasad
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

And so Mr Biswas came to leave the only house to which he had some right. For the next thirty-five years he was to be a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world of the Tulsis. For with his mother’s parents dead, his father dead, his brothers on the estate at Felicity, Dehuti as a servant in Tara’s house, and himself rapidly growing away from Bipti who, broken, became increasingly useless and impenetrable, it seemed to him that he was really quite alone.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Raghu, Dehuti
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 2 Quotes

In this way official notice was taken of Mr Biswas’s existence, and he entered the new world.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Lal , F.Z. Ghany
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 4 Quotes

Mr Biswas went past Dehuti to look at the body. Then he did not wish to see it again. But always, as he wandered about the yard among the mourners, he was aware of the body. He was oppressed by a sense of loss: not of present loss, but of something missed in the past. He would have liked to be alone, to commune with this feeling. But time was short, and always there was the sight of Shama and the children, alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him and called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged and was now to disappear.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Shama, Savi, Anand, Bipti, Dehuti
Page Number: 461
Explanation and Analysis:

The poem written, his selfconsciousness violated, he was whole again.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti
Page Number: 465
Explanation and Analysis:
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Bipti Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas

The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Bipti or refer to Bipti. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Independence vs. Belonging Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Mr Biswas never went to work on the estates. Events which were to occur presently led him away from that. They did not lead him to riches, but made it possible for him to console himself in later life with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, while he rested on the Slumberking bed in the one room which contained most of his possessions.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Raghu, Pratap, Prasad
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

And so Mr Biswas came to leave the only house to which he had some right. For the next thirty-five years he was to be a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world of the Tulsis. For with his mother’s parents dead, his father dead, his brothers on the estate at Felicity, Dehuti as a servant in Tara’s house, and himself rapidly growing away from Bipti who, broken, became increasingly useless and impenetrable, it seemed to him that he was really quite alone.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Raghu, Dehuti
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 2 Quotes

In this way official notice was taken of Mr Biswas’s existence, and he entered the new world.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Lal , F.Z. Ghany
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 4 Quotes

Mr Biswas went past Dehuti to look at the body. Then he did not wish to see it again. But always, as he wandered about the yard among the mourners, he was aware of the body. He was oppressed by a sense of loss: not of present loss, but of something missed in the past. He would have liked to be alone, to commune with this feeling. But time was short, and always there was the sight of Shama and the children, alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him and called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged and was now to disappear.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Shama, Savi, Anand, Bipti, Dehuti
Page Number: 461
Explanation and Analysis:

The poem written, his selfconsciousness violated, he was whole again.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti
Page Number: 465
Explanation and Analysis: