Sexy

The story “Sexy” follows Miranda in the exploration of her identity and growth as a young woman in a new environment. Miranda’s affair with Dev creates a plot device through which the story can examine Miranda’s sense of self and who she wants to be, as she is challenged to think in new ways about her moral, sexual, and cultural identity. The structural and thematic nature of the narrative creates a tension between a variety of opposing parallel forces, bringing them together to create the emotional climax of the story.

The story opens with the line “It was a wife’s worst nightmare” (83). This in fact refers to Laxmi’s anecdote about her cousin’s marital breakdown but could equally be applied to Miranda’s affair with Dev. From the very beginning, the story creates a parallel between the two affairs, one told from the perspective of the mistress and one concentrating on the wife and family. This theme of Perceptions of Infidelity is at the heart of the narrative. The emotional interest and tension is supplied by watching Miranda try to navigate and separate these two mutually exclusive perspectives until the scene with Rohin forces her to acknowledge that she must take a coherent moral position about her own behavior and responsibilities. The story traces the progression of Miranda’s self-awareness from prevaricating that “Somehow without the wife there it didn’t seem so wrong” (85), to thinking of herself as “a mistress” (96), to acknowledging “the things she had known all along: that it wasn’t fair to her, or his wife” (110). The development of Miranda’s character–from someone who can ignore the consequences of the moral dilemma she finds herself in into a person who has considered those consequences with empathy—traces her transition from a fantasy world to the acceptance of reality. The theme of Fantasy, Wealth, and Aspiration helps the story to explore Miranda’s naivete, the nature of seduction and (self-)deception, and the ways in which experimental experiences and mistakes form part of a young person’s journey in learning who they are and who they might become. Her involvement with a married man is presented compassionately by Lahiri, who places emphasis on Miranda’s lack of experience and loneliness as well as on the escapist temptations of an affair with a charismatic, urbane older man who woos her with wealth and tales of his, to her, fascinating and different background.

The theme of Identity: Difference and Engagement is essential to “Sexy,” as it is to so much of Lahiri’s work. The story experiments with ideas of cultural expectations and motivations through Miranda’s desire to engage with Indian and Bengali culture. At first, this desire seems motivated by curiosity and a longing for Dev when he is absent, perhaps shading into exoticism on Miranda’s part. Dev arguably plays on their cultural differences when he shows her The Economist, recounts his Indian childhood in lyrical terms, and takes her to the Mapparium: he seems to understand that Miranda’s attraction is partly due to how exciting new cultural experiences are for her, and to enjoy playing the part of the international sophisticate to her provincial ingenue. The attraction of these opposite roles forms part of the theme of Fantasy, Wealth, and Aspiration. They are also expressive of the imbalance between Dev and Miranda. While Dev shares his culture in a superficial way with Miranda, he remains a mystery to her. He is not interested in a true connection, nor in her attitudes towards his culture: she is largely irrelevant to his sense of self, and he is not invested in their relationship.

As the story progresses it is revealed that Miranda has a shameful memory of how she and her neighborhood behaved with prejudice towards an Indian family (the Dixits) when she was growing up, the “only Indians whom Miranda” has ever known apart from Laxmi and Dev (94). Her memory sits at the center of the story. While a line isn’t explicitly drawn between it and Miranda’s motivations in engaging so keenly with Laxmi, Dev, and aspects of Indian culture, its presence suggests that she is partly driven by guilt and a subconscious need to prove to herself and others that she is not prejudiced. The exploration of Identity: Difference and Engagement encompasses Miranda’s sense of identity and who she wishes to be. Paradoxically, Miranda’s need to expiate this cultural guilt leads her into a new moral quandary: her affair with Dev. The deep connection between these two shameful acts is hinted at when Dev tells Miranda that his wife looks like an actress called Madhuri Dixit. “For an instant, Miranda’s heart stopped. But no, the Dixit girl had been named something else” (100). The passage links the affair and the Dixit family and Miranda’s reaction is expressive of both shame and a lack of true empathy. She consoles herself that the actress is not “the Dixit girl”, as if this can make the other girl’s childhood experience of racism any less real. The girl’s experience still only exists for Miranda to the extent that it intersects with her own new sense of self.

As mentioned in the Context, Lahiri is fascinated by ideas of divided identity and in Miranda she creates a character who is split along a moral divide. Miranda seeks to reconcile the unreconcilable by distancing herself from feeling empathy for those hurt by affairs just like her own. She does so by leaning into her illusions about the nature and value of her relationship with Dev, keeping her from seeing herself and her life as they are. Perhaps, the story suggests, the other characters’ cultural identity enables Miranda’s lack of emotional identification with them. When her interaction with Rohin explodes these illusions, she is able to see that in fact her interests and the interests of others are aligned. Miranda’s identity split is resolved: while sad, her feelings and behavior are now coherent.