Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies



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Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts
Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature
Veronika Rázusová

The Malady of Marriage in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Work

Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis


Supervisor: Mgr. Martina Horáková, Ph.D.


2014


I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..

Author’s signature

Acknowledgement


Firstly, I would like to sincerely thank Mgr. Martina Horáková Ph.D. for her guidance and willingness to help.
Secondly, a word of thanks belongs to my parents and friends for their unconditional support.

Table of Contents:


1.Introduction 6

2.Jhumpa Lahiri and the Context of her Work 8

3.The Malady in “A Temporary Matter” 10

4.The Malady in “This Blessed House” 17

5.The Malady in “Interpreter of Maladies” 27

6.The Remedy in “The Third and Final Continent” 38

7.Conclusion: A Comparative Analysis 48

Works Cited 53

English Resume 56

Czech Resume 57




  1. Introduction


Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American author, who debuted with her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. In the short stories included in this collection Lahiri often addresses the topic of romantic relationships and marriages of Indian and Indian Americans, who are caught in a new culture. Despite the clash of cultures, the assimilation of characters in her short stories is not as important as the relationships themselves, because as Lahiri says in her interview with Bookforum: “They just represent human condition” (Lahiri, “Migration, Assimilation and Inebriation”). Romantic relationships and marriage particular is therefore at the forefront of the themes Lahiri deals within her prose.

This thesis seeks to explore the ways Jhumpa Lahiri portrays romantic relationships, in particular the institution of marriage. It is argued here that marriage is shown as a kind of malady with accompanying symptoms. The symptoms include breaking down of communication, alienation, isolation, repression of desire and lack of care for the relationship. The symptoms are introduced and presented through certain powerful symbols and rituals, namely that of cooking, food preparation its consumption and the attitude towards household. However, in some cases the malady can be cured when the symptoms are treated in a right way and in this case Lahiri also offers a remedy, functioning much as like the Indian interpreter of maladies in the short story of the same name. For the purposes of this thesis, I have chosen four short stories from the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Interpreter of Maladies (1999).

Firstly “A Temporary Matter” is a short story of Shoba and Shukumar whose marriage disintegrates in front of the reader’s eyes as the couple is unable to cope with the loss of their baby. Through alienation and inability to discuss their loss, Lahiri shows the fragility of the couple’s marriage and the cracks that the marriage as an institution cannot hold together. “This Blessed House” focuses on the newlywed couple Twinkle and Sanjeev. The importance of communication and its breaking down, which leads to mutual misunderstanding is visible through this couple, as both of them fail to meet each other’s expectation in marriage. “Interpreter of Maladies” is a short story of two couples trapped in loveless marriages, where the collapse of communication is a crucial symptom showing that marriage has become a malady for both couples. However, the younger couple’s marriage is crumbling not only because of the loss of communication and the isolation it has led to, but also from another important symptom and that is the repression of desire, which is visible in Mrs. Das’s feelings and her regrets of lost youth. The final short story of the collection, “The Third and Final Continent”, is an example of remedy which Lahiri offers to her characters so they could achieve a healthy marriage. The relationship of the narrator and Mala is at first disintegrating like the ones before, but after making an effort to treat the malady by communication and mutual acceptance, it becomes an example of a healthy marriage and finishes the short story collection on a positive note.

The thesis will be divided into six main chapters. The first one will introduce Jhumpa Lahiri and the context of her writing. Next four chapters are going to focus on the short stories from Lahiri’s collection Interpreter of Maladies. Each chapter will explore the ways in which Lahiri portrays the marriage as a malady with the help of textual evidence. The thesis will conclude with the last chapter, which is the overall comparison and assessment of the ways Lahiri approaches the marriage as the malady.



  1. Jhumpa Lahiri and the Context of her Work


Jhumpa Lahiri caused a sensation by winning Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000 with her debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. The critics applauded her not only because it is a rare achievement to win Pulitzer Prize with a debut work but also, because she was the first Indian American with such a success as media and critics continuously pointed out. “It is rare for a debut book, especially a short-story collection, to achieve international best-seller status and to win such major literary awards as the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies achieved these distinctions” (West 258). Lahiri was born in 1967 in the United Kingdom and grew up in America as the daughter of Indian immigrants. However, she struggled through her young age to find the place of homeland as she points out in her interview with Inskeep. Firstly, it was not important for her to categorize her homeland, because she saw herself as a writer and a citizen of the world, but now she feels her home is in America. “I grew up in Rhode Island and I live in New York, I went to school here, I’ve had my children living here and there are many reasons why I am proud to be American and be in America” (Lahiri, “Struggle to Feel American”). Lahiri’s searching for motherland and being constantly on the edge of two cultures, mirrors her characters’ train of thoughts in all her works. Lahiri earned three Masters Degrees and a Doctoral Degree from Boston University, where she has taught creative writing, and is currently on President Obama’s ‘Committee on the Arts and Humanities’. (“Obama Appoints Jhumpa Lahiri”). Interpreter of Maladies
is a collection of nine short stories. Her second novel The Namesake, was published in 2003 and has been adapted into a film of the same title, directed by Mira Nair, who is Indian American like Lahiri. In 2003, Lahiri published a second short story collection Unacustommed Earth, which was again a huge success: “Unaccustomed Earth, which—unprecedented for a short-story collection—debuted at number one on The New York Times best-seller list“ (West 259). Lahiri’s newest novel Lowland, was published in 2013 and shortly was placed on shortlist for Man Booker’s Prize 2013 (“Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Lowland’ on Booker shortlist”). All of the works mentioned above deal mainly with diaspora experiences from the first and second generation of Indian immigrants and these stories reflect to some point Lahiri’s own personal experiences. The interesting aspect of Lahiri’s writing is mainly her dedication to the simplicity of her language, which at the first sight can seem vague, but there is a precise choice of sentences, descriptions and even words as West points out: “Lahiri’s prose is both plain and yet simultaneously rich and evocative” (West 259). Lahiri speaks about her preference of plain prose to the interviewer Isaac Chotiner: “I like it to be plain. It appeals to me more. There’s form and there’s function and I have never been a fan of just form” (Lahiri, “Jhumpa Lahiri”). She experiments with various narrative voices in her work, what makes her works even more interesting, because of including a variety of genders, nationalities and ages. Moreover the narrators in Lahiri’s works have an important role of being the observers of situations around them. Readers find a revelation about the character of observer by his or her perception of the world. Furthermore, the topic of marriage is crucial and repeats in every Lahiri’s work. The interest in marriages comes from her cultural roots as she points out in interview with Patel. “As an Indian, the idea of marriage loomed large in my life. There was always an awareness of who had a ‘love’ marriage, who had a ‘negotiation’ marriage” (Lahiri, “Maladies of Belonging”). These ideas mirror in her short stories and novels, but mainly in the collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies, which is the key work for this thesis.


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