Driving symbolizes American culture’s emphasis on independence—something that Mrs. Sen is afraid of and doesn’t want to accept. Mrs. Sen’s inability to drive is an issue, since it means she can’t drive to Eliot’s house to babysit him. Eliot’s mother is uncomfortable with this, but Mr. Sen reassures her that she’ll learn by December. Eliot’s mother, a single mom, is the epitome of an independent American woman. So to her, Mrs. Sen’s inability to drive herself around represents a lack of independence and agency—things that the story implies are necessary to function properly in American society.
Mr. Sen wants his wife to learn to drive so that she can be independent of him and do errands without his help. But the Sens led a much more communal and family-oriented lifestyle in India (they even had a chauffeur to drive Mrs. Sen around)—a way of life that Mrs. Sen misses dearly as a new immigrant. She is afraid whenever she practices driving, which indicates her disinterest in the isolation and independence that driving alone represents. Mrs. Sen would rather return to the close-knit community she had in India, where she wasn’t required to spend so much time alone. When Eliot suggests that driving might make her life better, because she can go wherever she wants, she asks, “Could I drive all the way to Calcutta?” The lonely Mrs. Sen would rather return to her life in India then gain the independence needed to live in America.
After many anxiety-ridden practice sessions, Mrs. Sen finally works up the courage to drive on the open road with Eliot in the car. But she gets into an accident almost immediately, which results in her losing her job as Eliot’s babysitter. It’s implied that she gives up on driving after this, which suggests that she’s also given up on trying to assimilate and mold herself into the independent person that American society expects her to be.
Driving Quotes in Mrs. Sen’s
“At home, you know, we have a driver.”
“You mean a chauffeur?”
Mrs. Sen glanced at Mr. Sen, who nodded.
Eliot’s mother nodded, too, looking around the room. “And that’s all…in India?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Sen replied. The mention of the word seemed to release something in her. She neatened the border of her sari where it rose diagonally across her chest. She, too, looked around the room, as if she noticed in the lampshades, in the teapot, in the shadows frozen on the carpet, something the rest of them could not. "Everything is there.”
“Whenever there is a wedding in the family,” she told Eliot one day, “or a large celebration of any kind, my mother sends out word in the evening for all the neighborhood women to bring blades just like this one, and then they sit in an enormous circle on the roof of our building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables through the night.” […] "It is impossible to fall asleep those nights, listening to their chatter.” She paused to look at a pine tree framed by the living room window. “Here, in this place where Mr. Sen has brought me, I cannot some times sleep in so much silence.”
“Mr. Sen says that once I receive my license, everything will improve. What do you think, Eliot? Will things improve?”
“You could go places,” Eliot suggested. “You could go any where.”
"Could I drive all the way to Calcutta? How long would that take, Eliot? Ten thousand miles, at fifty miles per hour?”
"My sister has had a baby girl. By the time I see her, depending if Mr. Sen gets his tenure, she will be three years old. Her own aunt will be a stranger. If we sit side by side on a train she will not know my face.” She put away the letter, then placed a hand on Eliot’s head. "Do you miss your mother, Eliot, these afternoons with me?”
The thought had never occurred to him.
"You must miss her. When I think of you, only a boy, separated from your mother for so much of the day, I am ashamed.”
“I see her at night.”
“When I was your age I was without knowing that one day I would be so far. You are wiser than that, Eliot. You already taste the way things must be."
In November came a series of days when Mrs. Sen refused to practice driving. The blade never emerged from the cupboard, newspapers were not spread on the floor. She did not call the fish store, nor did she thaw chicken.
"Eliot,” Mrs. Sen asked him while they were sitting on the bus, "will you put your mother in a nursing home when she is old?”
“Maybe,” he said. "But I would visit every day.”
“You say that now, but you will see, when you are a man your life will be in places you cannot know now.” She counted on her fingers: "You will have a wife, and children of your own, and they will want to be driven to different places at the same time. No matter how kind they are, one day they will complain about visiting your mother, and you will get tired of it too, Eliot. You will miss one day, and another, and then she will have to drag herself onto a bus just to get herself a bag of lozenges.”
After taking off her slippers and putting them on the book case, Mrs. Sen put away the blade that was still on the living room floor and threw the eggplant pieces and the newspapers into the garbage pail. […] Then she went into her bedroom and shut the door.
Driving Symbol Timeline in Mrs. Sen’s
