“Mrs. Sen’s” depicts a relationship between two lonely and isolated people: Mrs. Sen (a woman who has immigrated to the U.S. from India for her husband’s job) and Eliot, the American boy she cares for after school. Outside of each other, Eliot and Mrs. Sen lack community and connection. Mrs. Sen knows few people in America; her husband Mr. Sen works constantly, and the only other person she speaks to regularly is the man who sells her fish. As the only child of a single mother with a demanding job, Eliot also seems to be without friends or family. Although Eliot and Mrs. Sen enjoy each other’s company as a respite from isolation, the two never grow close in the months they spend together—and in the end, they part ways forever. By showing Mrs. Sen and Eliot failing to diminish each other’s isolation, the story suggests that loneliness is a natural condition from which a person can never expect relief.
Throughout the story, Lahiri emphasizes the characters’ near-total isolation. Aside from each other, Eliot and Mrs. Sen are connected to almost nobody. Eliot has his mother, but she works long hours, and Mrs. Sen has Mr. Sen, who is likewise rarely home. Both Mr. Sen and Eliot’s mother seem emotionally distant. Beyond their personal lives, Eliot and Mrs. Sen lack community where they live—and with the tourist season over, their seaside town is mostly empty. Lahiri repeatedly emphasizes how isolating this is: the bus has few passengers, many stores are closed for winter, and all of the children have left the beach where Eliot lives. The only sense of community exists among people with whom Eliot and Mrs. Sen have no connection, such as college students and elderly residents of nursing homes. Mrs. Sen contrasts the loneliness of America with the community she had in Calcutta. She describes Indian women preparing food together and talking late into the night. In America, she finds it difficult to sleep “in so much silence.”
While Eliot and Mrs. Sen’s friendship somewhat relieves their loneliness, they never become close, indicating that their isolation is entrenched. Eliot and Mrs. Sen enjoy spending time together while she’s looking after him. Eliot finds his mother’s beach house cold, and the beach is “barren and dull to play on alone.” He’s glad to go to Mrs. Sen’s warm apartment, where he enjoys watching her cut vegetables and talking with her. Mrs. Sen also likes having Eliot as a companion, and she looks forward to seeing him each weekday. When she picks Eliot up from his bus stop, he always senses that she’s “been waiting for some time, as if eager to greet a person she hadn't seen in years.” Despite these indications that Mrs. Sen and Eliot enjoy their companionship, they never fully connect with or understand each other. Eliot notices that Mrs. Sen is lonely and misses home, but he doesn’t talk about it with her. When Mrs. Sen asks him, “Eliot, if I began to scream right now at the top of my lungs, would someone come?” he says, “They might call you […] But they might complain that you were making too much noise.” This is typical of his interactions with Mrs. Sen: her anguish is clear, but Eliot lacks the emotional maturity to respond to it. Likewise, Mrs. Sen intuits Eliot’s loneliness—at one point, she asks him, “Do you miss your mother, Eliot, these afternoons with me?”—but they never discuss his feelings or needs. Even though they see each other every day, Eliot and Mrs. Sen never connect enough to completely alleviate their mutual loneliness.
Throughout the story, Lahiri indicates that the future will be just as lonely as the present for Eliot and Mrs. Sen. Mrs. Sen believes that loneliness and separation are the conditions that she and Eliot must live in permanently. She thinks that Eliot’s isolated upbringing is preparing him for this future in a way that her social, community-filled childhood failed to prepare her. She tells him that “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.” The story implies that neither Eliot nor Mrs. Sen will have a more connected community or family in the future. Mrs. Sen forecasts a lonely end for Eliot when she asks if he would ever put his mother in a nursing home. Eliot replies that he might, but that he’d visit her every day. Mrs. Sen denies this possibility: “You say that now, but you will see […] 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.” This prediction indicates that Mrs. Sen thinks that distance and practicalities prevent people from connecting in the long term—and, because of this, loneliness is often permanent. It is, perhaps, an unavoidable aspect of the human experience, particularly in insular American towns like the one where the story is set (as opposed to the Sens’ more community-oriented culture in India).
Throughout the story, Mrs. Sen’s isolation is reinforced by her inability to drive. She’s afraid of driving with other cars on the road, and her lack of mobility means that she can’t connect with the outside world. The story concludes with her first attempt to drive by herself, during which she gets into a minor accident with Eliot in the car. Her failure at driving is emblematic of her inability to reach out to others and function socially in the U.S; Lahiri implies that Mrs. Sen won’t drive again, which means that she’ll never be able to form connections. And after the accident, Eliot stops going to Mrs. Sen’s and spends his afternoons alone instead. The severing of Mrs. Sen and Eliot’s relationship at the end of the story predicts their lonely futures, leaving them in the isolation—which Lahiri suggests is ultimately inescapable.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Isolation and Loneliness ThemeTracker
Isolation and Loneliness 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.”
“Eliot, if I began to scream right now at the top of my lungs, would someone come?”
"Mrs. Sen, what’s wrong?”
"Nothing. I am only asking if someone would come.”
Eliot shrugged. “Maybe.”
“At home that is all you have to do. Not everybody has a telephone. But just raise your voice a bit, or express grief or joy of any kind, and one whole neighborhood and half of another has come to share the news, to help with arrangements.” […]
“They might call you,” Eliot said eventually to Mrs. Sen. “But they might complain that you were making too much noise.”
"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."
"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.”
