Jhumpa Lahiri's Sexy

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In Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “Sexy”, featured in her novel Interpreter of Maladies, she introduces the character of Miranda. Miranda is a 22- year old single American woman living alone in Boston. In the beginning of the story she meets an older man named Dev, who is married, but regardless the two become romantically involved. Although Miranda is aware that Dev is married, she still participates in an affair with him. Throughout her randevu with Dev, she developes a false reality for their relationship and allows her desire for love to cloud her judgement on whether or not the relationship is what she really believes it is, along with blinding her from Dev’s flaws and the way he treats her. Early in the story Miranda places Dev on a high pedestal in her mind, causing her to go to…show more content…
Weeks go by after after Miranda buys the silver cocktail dress, and it comes to the point where Dev does not even speak to her when they make love. “He carried her over to the bed [...] and entered her without a word” (Lahiri 93). This event does not alarm Miranda whatsoever, showing that she refuses to see him in any other way than perfect. After every time the two make love, Dev takes a twelve minute nap, everytime he does this Miranda lays in bed with him and counts the minutes till he wakes up. Lahiri uses Miranda’s description of Dev while asleep to depict the way she looks past his flaws. Miranda focuses on Dev’s details such as the way his “ribs were visible through his skin as he breathed” (Lahiri 94), and how she “thought him perfect” (Lahiri 94). After many more visits between Dev and Miranda, he still has not changed. Miranda starts to realize the way she is being treated, along with how bad participating in an affair can be. When she babysits the child of a wife who was left by her husband, she realizes how badly affected the child is because of the

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