A TEMPORARY MATTER

Jhumpa Lahiri
-LITERARY ANALYSIS-

STUDENT: VLĂDUCEANU (BURADEL) ANDREEA-LILIANA

 A Temporary Matter was originally published in the New Yorker in April 1998 and then
became part of the collection Interpreter of Maladies. This collection was very well received by
American critics. In other parts of the world we cannot speak of the same type of response as critics
in Asia and other non-Western countries had a different, more disapproving reaction to it.
The work of Lahiri was perceived differently as the opinions of critics vary from finding
her stories “inauthentic” ( (Huang 2009) because they rely on stereotypes to believing that “her
plots are as elegantly constructed as a fine proof in mathematics” (Crain 1999). Crain compares
Lahiri to Raymond Carver and Ernst Hemingway and believes her success to have been attained
not by accident, but well deserved. David Kipen, on the other hand, compares her to Philip Roth
and Lan Samantha Chang and is delighted by the fact that she uses “simple, familiar tools—subtle
characterization, meaningful but never portentous detail." (Kipen 1999). Candyce Norvell, an
independent educational writer also discusses Lahiri’s work in one of his essays and believes that
the dynamic behind the story in A Temporary Matter is an interaction between an “active woman
and a passive man”. (Candyce 2004)
Marriage and guilt is a recurrent theme in Jhumpa Lahiri’s writings. In A Temporary
Matter, Lahiri stays true to her strategy of presenting familiar characters and situations in the
context of uncomfortable ethical issues. To that end, this short story is built upon feelings of grief,
inability to communicate but also, as the title states, we are made aware of the temporariness of
everything. The incident that triggers everything is the fact that Sheba and Shukumar’s son was
born dead. What is presented in this short story is the couple’s struggle to cope with this loss and
also the temporariness of the emotional and social bonds. Swiss-American psychologist Elizabeth
Kübler-Ross introduced the Kübler-Ross Model in 1969 in her book On Death and Dying. The
model presents grief as a process consisting of five stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression,
and Acceptance. The basic idea of Kübler-Ross’s “stages” is that the journey from grief to
acceptance is a multi-step process.
The lack of electricity will only last 5 days - this is the first information that the reader is
given. The reaction of Shoba to the notice they got is :”It’s good of them to warn us” (Lahiri 1998).
This may be in reference to the later description that Shukumar provides for his wife: she was
always prepared. Shoba feels safe when she knows what to expect. Unfortunatelly, the memorable
incident presented in this short story is not one for which you can ever be prepared. The troubles
in their marriage are caused by a miscarriage. Although, towards the end of the book Shoba
concludes it was “noboy’s fault”, the story is centered on the attempts of the couple to figure out
their responsability in this matter and the bitter conclusion that they had “disappointed …
themselves” (Lahiri 1998).
Their inability to communicate after they lose thier son is only resolved when they are left
in the dark. Darkness is a symbol of comfort and it soon becomes a safe reality in which the two
are able to speak again. Shoba was not prepared to lose her child, as she was also not prepared for
the electricity to be cut out. When Shukumar looks for candles to light for their first night in the
dark, he is shocked that his wife could have been unprepared for this type of situation. Two very
different situations in terms of impact on one’s life (not having electricity for an hour is such a
trivial matter compared to losing your child) are somehow connected through this lack of
preparation. The couple needs this temporary matter of darkness to start telling things. They both
say things in the dark and confession seems to offer some sort of relief up until they both realise
that they need to acknowledge death: the death of love, marriage and child. As we were warned
from the beginning, it is a temporary matter – so the bond that Shoba and Shukumar seem to repair
at some point during their conversations in the dark is not a sign of healing, it is just something
that cannot last. As soon as electricity is no longer an issue, they go back to the previous status of
their relationship.
The innability to communicate is very clear and visible to the reader in the images of Shoba
who hides behind a barrier of files but also her husband who chooses to isolate himself and use the
room designated for the baby as his desk. Even after they start speaking again, the only time their
words match is when they refuse the invite they get from their neighbours – the reader is made
aware of the fact that this was surprising for both of them. When they do speak to eachother they
disclose a lot of secrets that each of them carried and the reader is soon able to see that the distance
between them was not only caused by the loss of their baby. They started drifting apart before that,
they have lied and deceived one another and are only able to admit doing so in the comfort offered
by darkness.
Shoba and Shukumar are a second-generation Indian American couple who, to the opinion
of some reviewers, illustrate the stereotype of the woman in America, and therefore free to make
her own choices but also that of man as the weaker partner, as Indian men are often regarded as
effemiate. Each of the main characters asume a different role in their unsustainable marriage.
Shoba is the active particle – as she tries to figure out her responsability in losing their child she is
the one who starts the game of saying things in the dark, she decides to look for a different
apartment. Shukumar, on the other hand, has a passive role. He is engaged with neither the present
nor the future. In fact, he is paralyzed. Shoba channels her energy towards changing the situation
in which she is: she goes to work, she initiates the confession game, she plans to remove herself
from the marriage. Her husband only reacts to her acts.
During the last night when electricity should have been shut off, Shoba decides to tell her
husband the decision she had made about moving out. She turns on the lights and only then does
she admit her true intentions. Shukumar, on the other hand, responds to this by telling her
something he promised he never would, “because he still loved her then“ (Lahiri 1998). He tells
her that their child was a boy. By reavealing this devastating secret, he hurts his wife but this comes
only as an impulsive act, only a reaction to the shock that she decided to leave him. It seems that
they are both able to admit and address the tragedy out loud. They are no longer in their shallow
game of confessions, they are no longer in the darkness, now they see matters as they really are,
because the light was turned back on sooner that they expected.
Lahiri’s story is more concerned with the gender issue than with cultural issues. Because
traditional gender roles in India are completely different from the ones presented here, the story
has a strong feeling of modernity imprinted in its characters. The core of the story has nothing to
do with culture conflicts or power struggles between the genders.
 Bibliography

1. Lahiri, Jhumpa. “A Temporary Matter.” The Vintage Book of American Women

Writers.
Ed. Elaine Showalter. New York: Vintage Books, 2011.
2. Huang, Guiyou. Greenwood Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature.
Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2009.
3. Rajan, Gita. “Ethical Responsibility in Intersubjective Spaces. Reading Jhumpa
Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and ‘A Temporary Matter’.” Transnational Asian
American Literature. Sites and Transits. Eds. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, John Blair
Gamber, Stephen Hong Sohn, and Gina Valentino. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2006.
4. https://www.encyclopedia.com/
5. Kipen, David, "Interpreting Indian Culture with Stories," in the San
Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 1999, p. E-1.
6. Crain, Caleb, "Subcontinental Drift," in New York Times Book Review, July 11,
1999.