In “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar,” Jhumpa Lahiri explores the different and complex relationships that disabled people, particularly disabled women, may have towards traditional gender roles. Through both Bibi’s own ideal of marriage and the responses of those around her to this dream, Lahiri questions the underlying assumptions that people make both about the power of marriage, its importance, and its unattainable status for disabled people.
At the start of the short story, the unnamed narrator, a friend of Bibi’s, notices that Bibi longs for a husband. She primarily expresses her desire in terms of gendered expectations: she wants to have the full experience of a wedding and married life, complete with the protection of a husband and the duties of a housewife. Bibi’s desires stand out because disabled people are often desexualized and infantilized, seen as perpetual children with no sexual, romantic, or social agency. She herself recognizes and laments that no one will ever take her out on a date or marry her. As a disabled woman, she is locked out of the same gendered expectations that stifle her able-bodied peers. The stress and pain of being cut off from such a common institution, of being seen as undesirable for marriage, leads to a worsening of her condition.
After one particularly harsh seizure, a doctor concludes that marriage will indeed cure Bibi. With the prospect of a man loving and marrying Bibi, the narrator suddenly begins to notice her beauty. She describes these new observations as “apprais[ing] the pleasures she could offer a man,” demonstrating that she views Bibi’s desirability through the lens of male gratification (Lahiri 162). The narrator’s attitude toward Bibi subtly shifts in another way alongside this newfound appreciation for her beauty; she and her friends begin teaching her in romance and marriage. Even though the narrator mostly refers to it as a way “to distract her” and doubts if anyone would actually marry her, this shift in treatment likely helped Bibi (Lahiri 165). With their coaching, Bibi is now more a part of her peer group, no longer lamenting her lack of prospects but actively seeking out a suitor and making herself desirable. The idea that Bibi may be a marriage prospect changes her self-perception and that of those around her, revealing how important it is for a woman to be seen as romantically and sexually appealing to receive respect and interest in a patriarchal society.
“The Treatment of Bibi Haldar” reveals an important member of intersectional feminism: the disabled woman who is prohibited from partaking in the same marriage and family life that her abled peers are pressured into. The experience of womanhood is not universal, and Bibi’s struggle for romantic fulfilment is both a product of a patriarchal society that devalues single women and the product of an ableist society that fails to see disabled people as romantic and sexual beings in their own right. It is impossible to speculate on how much of Bibi’s desire for a man is based on her society’s definition of a woman as a mother and homemaker, and how much of it is a genuine desire for romantic love.
Word Count: 524
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