Literary Wives is an on-line book group that examines the meaning and role of wife in different books. Every other month, we post and discuss a book with this question in mind: What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?
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Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
I have to begin this review by admitting that I am not usually a short story reader. I have always gravitated towards novels, I think I just tend to prefer to spend a bit more time inside one story. It gives me more of an escape from the day-to-day and a place to still my otherwise very busy mind. That's the good thing about this book club, though - it consistently pushes me outside my usual reading habits.
Before I get into what Interpreter of Maladies says about wives I thought I would start I would start with some reflections on the collection as a whole. The collection centres largely on Bengali and Indian characters who are often living between cultures, and it explores the relationships between characters who usually share a marriage or a family, but seem unable to truly communicate with one another. Even though some of the stories are quite short Lahiri is still able to portray marriages, family histories, disappointments, migrations, betrayals, and entire emotional lives so acutely and pignantly it's not wonder that the collection won the Pulitzer Prize.
The story that has stayed with me most is probably A Temporary Matter. Shoba and Shukumar are a married couple whose relationship has been devastated by the stillbirth of their baby. During a series of planned evening blackouts, they begin telling one another secrets in the dark. At first it feels as though the confessions might bring them closer together, but it becomes clear that the grief they have felt has irreparably kept them apart from each other and they are reflecting on what has been at it's end. It is a heartbreaking story, and one that felt particularly relevant to the Literary Wives theme because it asks whether love alone is enough when two people are grieving differently.
Another story that seems directly connected to the idea of wives is Interpreter of Maladies itself. Mrs Das initially appears to be a modern and confident wife travelling through India with her husband and children. Yet as the story unfolds we learn how dissatisfied Mrs Das is with her life. She confesses of her infedility to their tour driver, not so much for advice but jstu to connect with someone. Eventhough she is surrounded by her family on a wonderful holiday, she is desperately lonely.
Loneliness is something that recurs throughout the collection. In The Blessed House, newlyweds clash over a series of Christian objects discovered in their new home. It's funny but it's also two people who have entered marriage without really knowing or understanding each other. Sanjeev spends much of the story frustrated by his wife and also fascinated by her. Rather than them having come to know each other and embarking on their life with each other in a partnership, they are still getting to know each other, a risky way to start a marriage perhaps.
Overall, Lahiri rarely presents marriage as a place of certainty or fulfilment. Her married characters often seem to be negotiating misunderstandings, disappointments, cultural expectations, private regrets. Essentially I think Intepreter of Maladies is trying to portray to the difficulty of truly knowing another person, a common theme in the books we have read for the Literary Wives Book Club.
So what does Interpreter of Maladies say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?
For me, the strongest theme was invisibility. Often the wives appear to be carrying emotional burdens that their husbands either cannot see or do not fully understand. Some are lonely. Some are homesick. Some are disappointed by the reality of their lives. Some are living with secrets. Some are trapped in their grief. Yet very few feel able to express those feelings openly within their marriages. The couples rarely communicate honestly with each other. It's fascinating to see so many people who have committed to sharing their lives with one another, many of whom would have done so from a place of deep love, and yet they are so far apart from each other.
For someone who does not usually read short story collections, I found this surprisingly rewarding. Not every story resonated equally with me, but by the end, I understood why Lahiri's work is so highly regarded. She had an extraordinary ability to capture entire relationships in just a handful of pages per story.
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