Part 3 Section 11 Summary

The date is March 20th. In the last few days, the narrator and Inder Lal's mother have become friends: she bullies the merchants in the bazaar into getting the narrator the best vegetables at the best prices. The narrator likes it best when Inder Lal's mother speaks of herself: she is about 50 and healthy; she is proud that her son works in an office unlike his now dead father who sat in a stall; she and her friends laugh and gossip (while their daughters-in-law trudge wearily behind); one day she takes the narrator to the suttee shrine, for widows who had thrown themselves on their husbands' burning funeral pyres. The practice had been outlawed in 1829 but was practiced through Olivia's time in India.

Part 3 Section 11 Analysis

When the narrator was in Satipur, widowed women in their 50s had more freedom and...