To cheer up a friend trapped in an arranged marriage, young Prem recounts his own story, as he and the film look back at his first year of marriage. Confronted by a wife he barely knows, and who refuses to play a submissive role, Prem turns for advice to friends and to his prying mother, with varying degrees of success. Adapted by Jhabvala from her fourth novel, The Householder follows two young people coming to know one another after they have been thrust into intimacy. Ivory and Jhabvala masterfully modulate between drama, satire and irony. Shashi Kapoor is convincing as the put-upon Prem, while Leela Naidu delights as his strongwilled wife.

This remarkable and rarely seen film mixes actual newsreel footage of the lives of the Indian maharajas with a fictional reunion between the daughter of a maharaja and her father's secretary. In the course of an hour-long conversation, the secretary's memories of cruelty and stultifying privilege confront the daughter's idealized image of her childhood and her father. The film became a favorite of both Ivory's and Jhabvala's, the latter using the project to prepare ideas that would recur in Heat and Dust.