Sexy

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