1. Heather Sargent
4/5/15
Food and Food Culture as a Metaphor for Women’s Agency and Community in Jhumpa Lahiri’s
“A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sen’s”
Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sen’s” in her book
Interpreter of Maladies, through representations of food and food culture, spotlight deep cultural
issues, such as community and gender roles, with special focus on women’s agency and sense of
community in diasporic characters. Laura Ahn Williams argues “food is the means for the
characters to assert agency and subjectivity in ways that function as an alternative to the
dominant culture” (70). This assertion opened a new way of reading these two stories for me and
brought about a deeper understanding of Lahiri’s work in this book as a whole. For this reason, I
will use Williams’s article, “Foodways and Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of
Maladies” as a guideline for a conversation about food metaphors, community, and women’s
agency, specifically in “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sen’s”. The conversation will begin
with an appetizing sample of food culture representations and women’s agency before indulging
in the main course, which is connecting these representations to the two stories, followed by a
delectable dollop of what Lahiri accomplishes here as a conclusion. Now for the appetizer.
Food holds an important place in Lahiri’s stories and can often be seen as having multiple
meanings, many of which will be discussed throughout this paper. Speaking specifically about
Asian American literature, Williams asserts “food as a metaphor frequently constructs and
reflects relationships to racialized subjectivity” (70). The same argument can be made for
Lahiri’s stories, but more from a perspective of gendered subjectivity in that food constantly first
builds, then mirrors relationships in regard to gender roles. This is seen in “A Temporary Matter”

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by Shukumar and Shoba and their relationship with the pantry. Shoba was always the preparer of
the food, the nurturer, and Shukumar the consumer – a concept that will be discussed in greater
detail later. In “Mrs. Sen’s” the role is the same, she is the caretaker, the nurturer, yet she is
constantly frustrated by the lack of necessary ingredients to prepare the kind of sustenance she
desires to create. Williams goes on to say that the food metaphor “also addresses issues of
authenticity, assimilation, and desire” (70). Authenticity having to do with the mingling of
cultures from the country of origin with the new country and the ingredients found there, this
metaphor suggests perhaps an experience not entirely authentic in the hearts of characters who
struggle with assimilation, as does Mrs. Sen. Shukumar’s half-hearted desire to nurture his wife
during their period of mourning is wrapped up in food metaphor as well, he tries to feed her by
using her recipes, with her personal notes, and by consuming the ingredients she previously
purchased, thereby offering nothing original of himself other than the time and desire to have her
eat something besides cereal for dinner. Shoba’s desire is simply to be free of the emotional
consumption, which leads us to the topic of women’s agency.
The term “women’s agency” used throughout innumerable articles and essays ought to be
replaced simply with “agency,” so for the purposes of this paper they will be synonymous. If
“the notion of agency is defined as initiating an action by one’s own choice,” as is explained in
Shobhita Jain’s article, then the women characters in Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs.
Sen’s” show their agency in opposite ways with regard to food (2312). In “A Temporary Matter”
Shoba stops feeding her husband and therefore begins to take leave from her marriage before
being wholly consumed by her husband, Shukumar. In “Mrs. Sen’s” she, Mrs. Sen herself,
becomes a caregiver for young Eliot and her identity and agency can be found through the act of
her preparing food for her charge. An interesting note in these stories is the parallel of sustenance

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to the human body. In the first, the sustenance stops and as a result the relationship starves, in the
second, sustenance begins and therefore a relationship is built, an important metaphor when
considering food culture.
Women’s agency as much to do with socializing and the skills required to adequately
perform in social settings. Jain suggests that the difficulties of new situations, whether
celebrating the good or surviving the bad, leads women to continually build and nurture new
relationships, and that the woman’s “social competence in the various arenas of action over the
years keeps the cultural process of life-long learning alive” and that further by doing so they
“create the social fabric of everyday life” as “they respond to demands of building new
relationships in order to carry forward human sustenance;” to which she concludes is why we
have women’s agency in the open at all (2312). It is for that reason we can even recognize the
agency employed by Shoba and Mrs. Sen. Williams argues that these women, “wives of Indian
academics, all utilize foodways to construct their own unique racialized subjectivity and to
engender agency” (70). The term “foodways” refers to the space where food intersects culture,
history, and tradition. Different than food culture, it has similar connotations. Essentially the
women characters take hold of their gender role as it refers to food, and through their own
agency, make it their own and find some piece of themselves in doing so. With this tidbit in
mind, we move to the main course.
Abundance and Consumption in “A Temporary Matter”
The theme of abundance and consumption in “A Temporary Matter” is rife with food
metaphor. Even the fact that the story is told from the point of view of Shukumar, the consumer,
is evidence of this theme. It is Shoba’s foresight and planning that keeps their pantry and freezer
filled with food, more than they need – Shoba represents abundance. Her emotional abundance,

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or lack of, can be evidenced throughout the story by the pantry shelves (Williams 71). In the
beginning they are full, brimming, by the end they are nearly wholly consumed. Shoba shows her
“knowledge and agency outside her husband’s imagining” by her “knowledge of and relation to
food” (Williams 71). This is the agency that allows her to consider her own future. Shukumar
tries to feed Shoba, he devours the recipes in her book with her own notes and changes and
makes dinners for them. At first this may be seen as an act of abundance, yet he uses Shoba’s
resources to accomplish this task. Shukumar absorbs all the resources of the marriage, as is
reflected in the pantry, he devours everything in sight – just as the plague of locusts in Biblical
times, after which follows darkness.
Finding Identity through Food in “Mrs. Sen’s”
In “Mrs. Sen’s,” the story’s namesake identifies herself only as the professor’s wife,
many times adding that he teaches math. Once young Eliot comes into her care she begins
crafting an identity for herself through her preparation of food while telling Eliot of the
homeland she misses so much where food involved community in a way much more involved
than she finds in America. She misses the rooftop gatherings in India of women coming together
to prepare vegetables for a celebration the next day, a socializing event. Through food Eliot
becomes Mrs. Sen’s community. It is the preparation of food and the treks to get ingredients that
reveals Mrs. Sen’s agency, and she gains more confidence.
Her husband, Mr. Sen, however, wants her to drive so she can become independent and
free to find a community to which she can belong, or perhaps he’s just tired of the inconvenience
of driving her to the fish market. Mr. Sen becomes more and more insistent she learn to drive and
thereby forces her into doing something she is completely unprepared for and uncomfortable
with. He is under the impression this will solve his wife’s loneliness when in reality it causes her

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to withdraw back to where the story starts, losing all the agency she had gained during her time
as Eliot’s caregiver. This happens because she gets into a minor car accident which also has the
effect of removing Eliot from her care, and she loses her community again. At the end Mrs. Sen
gives Eliot a snack of peanut butter crackers and rather than offer him something herself if he is
still hungry, she instructs Mr. Sen to give him a popsicle in this case, “the poverty of
nourishment in the snacks,” explains Williams, “reflects a poverty of emotional nourishment for
Mrs. Sen as well” (74). It is important to note that she gives him one parting snack and refuses to
feed him anymore, if hunger is still present it is now Mr. Sen’s job to provide the nutritionally
devoid snack.
The Sweetness
Lahiri’s characters force the reader to care about them, creating a desire to see them find
happiness in the end. This does not really happen. Her stories are like a snippet of real life where
things don’t always work out or where there is still great pain and loneliness to overcome. They
become “slightly unsettling and difficult to swallow” as Williams states (78). It doesn’t end
there, however. Lahiri’s intricate food metaphors serve a greater purpose as they “open up spaces
in which marginalized identities generate a sense of agency and difference with transformative
and productive potential” (Williams 78). This means that while the reader may desire the happy
ending, Lahiri’s stories, particularly “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sen’s” create a space for
important conversations about immigrant experiences and agency paving the way for better
understanding of these very real experiences, and as a result, perhaps, better options for these
diasporic communities.

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Works Cited
Jain, Shobhita. “Women’s Agency in the Context of Family Networks in Indian Diaspora.”
Economic and Political Weekly 41.23 (2006): 2312-16. JSTOR. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcort, 1999. Kindle.
Williams, Laura Ahn. “Foodways and Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’.”
MELUS 32.4 (2007): 69-79. JSTOR. Web. 4 Apr. 2015.