30 pages • 1 hour read
Jhumpa LahiriSexy
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Anonymous Wife
One of the key symbols of “Sexy” is the figure of the anonymous wife. In the parallel extra-marital affairs that the story is built around, both wives remain nameless. This plays with the idea of the “other woman” in relation to Miranda’s personal perspective: Miranda is a “mistress” but, in her story, the “other woman” is Dev’s nameless, faceless wife. The anonymity of the story’s wife figures also represents the moral denial or negotiation that Miranda makes in sleeping with a married man. By not thinking of wives as full characters, Miranda can prioritize her own feelings. Lahiri withholding the name of Laxmi’s cousin creates a heightened link between the cousin and Dev’s wife, creating a symbolic “injured woman” figure whose experiences are potentially interchangeable. This symbolic conflation helps to enable Miranda’s reaction when confronted face-to-face with the consequences of infidelity in Rohin’s family. Whereas Miranda idly imagines Dev’s wife, guesses that she is “beautiful” and conflates her with the idealized images of women in Indian film, when she meets Laxmi’s cousin she notes that she has “a long face and […] dark circles under her eyes” as a result of her distress (94). Although Miranda has heard about this woman’s story from Laxmi, it is her reality which disturbs Miranda. The anonymity of the wives is reflective of Miranda’s ability to ignore them until this point.
Dislocation: Closeness and Distance
Lahiri creates a sense of dislocation which recurs throughout the story. In Miranda’s first flashback about Dev, she remembers that after he left her bed she turned to the magazine he’d shown her “hoping for a photograph of the city where Dev was born, but all she found were maps and grids” (84). She “stared at them, thinking the whole while about Dev, about how only fifteen minutes ago he’d propped her feet on top of his shoulders, and pressed her knees to her chest, and told her that he couldn’t get enough of her” (84). The magazine, at first a means for Dev to share his heritage, becomes a symbol of Miranda’s frustration once he has left. Her mind recalls the intense intimacy of the sex they’ve just had, while she simultaneously feels very separate from him, physically and culturally. In the Mapparium, this juxtaposition of closeness and distance recurs when, even though 30 feet apart, they can “hear each other whisper” (88). “She watched his lips forming the words; at the same time she heard them so clearly that she felt them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot” (88). The erotic charge of Miranda’s experience is created by the physical distance between her and Dev and the illusion of closeness which is “under her skin”. If they were in fact physically close, the sensory effect would be more mundane. Miranda’s experience of their illusory closeness here mirrors her memories and imaginations, in which she conjures Dev in her mind in order to feel connected to him while apart. The episodes where she imagines and remembers him are more lyrical and romantic than their interactions in the present moment, suggesting that, like in the Mapparium, it is the distance between them that gives rise to Miranda’s acute feelings of longing and infatuation.
Capital Cities
Global capital cities are a key motif in “Sexy.” They represent the themes of global connection and difference, insularity, and sophistication. They are also used to explore the changing attitude of Miranda towards Dev and their affair. The reader is first introduced to Dev when he shows Miranda a map of India, to point out where he and his family come from. He brings a copy of The Economist, “specially to her apartment, for she did not own an atlas, or any other […] maps” (83). When she asks why one of the cities “had a box around it,” “Dev rolled up the magazine, and said, “Nothing you’ll ever need to worry about,” and tapped her playfully on the head” (83). The answer he withholds is simple: the city is a regional or national capital and the box symbol is the British map convention, as opposed to the US star symbol. This exchange immediately establishes the relationship between Dev and Miranda where he is the elder, more sophisticated and, occasionally, patronizing partner. His response is dismissive and assumes that Miranda will never broaden her horizons. She owns no maps and so will never need to read them, he seems to assume. The subtext of his answer is also potentially expressive of a cultural truth: Miranda does not have to “worry” about understanding British cultural conventions in the way that a middle-aged member of the Indian global diaspora would.
Another use of this motif again indicates the sophistication of the Indian global community in terms of language skill, cultural knowledge, and travel, especially when compared to the insular Midwestern background of Miranda. Rohin is learning capital cities, expressive of an international education and focus. Laxmi and her cousin can test him with ease; by contrast, Miranda must look at his almanac because she knows less on this subject than 7-year-old Rohin. Again, capital cities are used to indicate a cultural gap between Miranda and her friends of Indian extraction.
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