Character Sketch: The Portrait of a Lady | English Class 11 PDF Download

Character Sketch of Narrator (Khushwant Singh)

Khushwant Singh, the narrator of the story ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ was a sensitive and observant person. Having been entirely brought up under his grandmother’s care, he displays a genteel sensitivity towards her. He cherished the memories of his association with his grandmother. He has beautifully described the details about many episodes from his past life that were related to his grandmother. His description of his grandmother’s old age, her movements, her religious beliefs, her association with sparrows reflect his ability to describe the common things with sensitive delicacy. He was a great author, grandson, and human being.

Character Sketch of 

Author’s grandmother
Author’s grandmother was a very old lady. And according to author she had been so since the first time when he saw her. She had a very strong character. By the passage  of time the relation between her and her grandson changed but her feelings and care for her grandson never changed and so did her religious thought.by religious, it is not meant that she was religious by name but by heart and soul. She murmured her prayer all the time and even sang prayers while bathing the author so that he could memorize it. She counted her beads of rosary from morning to evening. Her religious nature also changed her way of thinking about author’s city education life as she wanted the school to teach the students about religion and scripture.
One of her other characteristic feature was her habit of accepting anything that comes on. She accepted author not learning the prayers, his going to city school, and its unlikely curriculum (according to her) and then his going to foreign country for work. She never opposed openly any of the changes around her. She always accepted and shaped herself according to the surroundings.
She was energetic as well as headstrong. At such an old age, every morning in village she woke up early and took the author to school and from there to temple. In the city too when she was just some time away from death bed, she called the nearby women and started singing beating drums. She always did what she chose without caring about anyone’s words. Everyone insisted her to stop singing but she was going to die too she didn’t heard any one’s words and started praying.
There was a serene look in her face. Old age seems to have enhance her beauty. Her old charms grew her wiseness.
And the best part of her character was her kindness and caring nature. She loved and cared her grandson (author) very much. She took author to the village school. She was also kind to the creation of the nature. While taking author to school she fed the street dogs with chapatti. When in city she was very kind to sparrows and passed her time feeding them. Even when author was going away from her, her caring nature didn’t change and when he returned from foreign country, she hugged him and gave  the essence of her caring and kind nature.

Character Sketch of the Grandfather

The author’s grandfather’s portrait hung above the mantelpiece in the drawing room. In the picture, he wore a big turban and loose fitting clothes and also, had a long white beard which covered his best part of the chest. He had passed away a long time back. Khushwant Singh had never seen his grandfather. The author’s grandfather seemed to have the look of a man who neither had a wife nor children, only lots and lots of grandchildren because he looked that old.