White Teeth: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

The chapter begins with an excerpt from Joyce Chalfen’s book, The New Flower Power, which advocates for creating “gardens of diversity and interest” through cross-pollination. Joyce wrote the book in 1976, and it proved surprisingly popular; she had recently given birth to Joshua, and she was happily married to Marcus, whom she met at university (and whom she considers “her favorite genius”). Marcus was also writing a book in 1976, a study of “chimeric mice”: a biologist, Marcus works on genetic transformations, supported by “the firm belief in the perfectibility of all life, in the possibility of making it more efficient, more logical […] more effective, more Chalfenist in the way it proceeded.” Marcus is stubbornly rational, a trait handed down the Chalfen family for generations: “truth was truth to a Chalfen.”

Fifteen years later, Joyce and Marcus have four children and have produced many more books; their children are all extremely intelligent, despite the fact that they attend Glenard Oak (which is not a private school). The family attends regular therapy sessions, and they rarely argue or disagree; they also have no friends, since they don’t think they need other people. Still, as the century is drawing to a close, the Chalfens are bored by their own perfection and self-reliance. In particular, Joyce misses being the “linchpin of the Chalfen family”— as she was when she had to dress and breastfeed her children.

On the day that Irie and Millat walk “reluctantly” into Joyce’s life, she is in the back garden, thinking about “thrips”—minute insects that eat plants from within. Marcus calls Joyce into the house to greet the children, and Joyce is immediately struck by Millat’s appearances: “beauty where you would least suspect it,” in a “tall brown young man who should have been indistinguishable to Joyce from those she regularly bought milk and bread from.” Irie is immediately  interested in Joyce and Marcus, especially the way they include the children in conversation. Joyce asks the children where they are from originally, and Millat tells her that he is from Whitechapel. When Millat goes outside to smoke a cigarette, Joyce remarks that he “doesn’t seem at all like most Muslim children,” who she believes are “terribly meek.”

Irie realizes that she has never been “so close to this strange and beautiful thing, the middle class”: Joyce and Marcus are a happily married couple, a rare breed at Glenard Oak. Millat, though, only sees the family’s money—“money in need of a good cause that might as well be him.” Joyce believes that Irie and Millat are damaged: Irie lacks a father figure and has low self-esteem, while Millat has a seems to have a deep kind of pain that she hopes to fill with love. Observing Marcus and his children, Irie realizes that “there existed fathers who dealt in the present, who didn’t drag ancient history around like a ball and chain.”

The narrator notes that this century has been one giant experiment in immigration, and that the immigrant who hears about nationalists fearing “infection” laughs, since immigrants are fearful of their own dissolution or disappearance. Alsana is frightened that Millat will marry a white woman, “diluting” their “Bengaliness.” Clara, too, though she married a white man herself, is disappointed to see Irie worship white movie stars and surround herself with white friends. For this reason, Irie doesn’t mention her visits to the Chalfen house to her parents, though secretly, she wishes she could “merge” with the Chalfens.

Talking to Irie and Marcus during one visit, Joyce says that Millat needs plenty of support, since he is from a “very difficult background,” while Irie is “touchy about her weight” (though Irie insists she isn’t). Millat storms in with bloodshot eyes, and Joyce immediately tries to comfort him. Joshua is beginning to get annoyed about how attractive Millat is—to both Irie and his mother. Millat tells Joyce that Samad has kicked him out for using profanity, but Millat complains that he is a better Muslim than his father. Millat has begun to hang around KEVIN more and more, while Samad drinks and has no Muslim friends.

Marcus invites Irie upstairs, where he keeps his FutureMouse project. His study is outfitted with portraits of Einstein, Crick and Watson, and an anonymous old man, who Marcus identifies as his mentor, a Frenchman; there are also portraits of Marcus’s ancestors. Irie expresses her astonishment at the fact that the Chalfen family can trace their heritage back clearly, while the Bowden family history is more muddled. The narrator provides a vague family tree, tracing the Bowden line back in rough detail.

Marcus shows Irie photos of the mouse, its stomach covered in “little mushroomlike growths.” Marcus explains that its genome has been re-engineered so that specific cancers are “expressed in specific tissues at predetermined times in the mouse’s development,” so that “you’re no longer dealing with the random.” Marcus tells Irie that when “you eliminate the random, you rule the world.” He hires her to do his filing for 15 pounds a week, and Irie agrees, since she still wants to join the Chalfens and leave behind “the chaotic, random flesh of her own family.”

Alsana and Clara are not pleased that their children are visiting the Chalfen house so frequently—especially Alsana, who believes that Joyce is “bad-mouthing” her. The two meet with Neena at a movie theater to watch a French New Wave film; after, they discuss the Chalfens, who Alsana believes are taking her son away from her, “Englishifying him completely.” Neena says that Millat is using the Chalfens as a “refuge” from his own family and the war raging between him and Samad, and she also tells Alsana that she should be worried about Millat’s involvement with the KEVIN people, since they have “nothing to do with Islam proper.”

Clara asks Neena to go to the Chalfen house with Millat and Irie to see how the interactions there are playing out. When Neena turns up with Maxine, Joyce is dumbstruck by their lesbian relationship, since she can’t comprehend the idea of “women loving women”: she has “devoted her life to loving men.” Marcus Chalfen tells Neena that “a Chalfen man and an Iqbal woman would be a hell of a mix”: “Indian passion” mixed with Chalfen “sensibility,” and Neena is visibly offended. Inexplicably, Joyce asks Neena and Maxine if they use each other’s breasts for pillows.

Neena reports back to Alsana that the Chalfens are “crazy, nutso.” Nonetheless, Irie and Millat continue to immerse themselves in “Chalfenism,” and Samad begins to see his son as “neither one thing nor the other, this or that, Muslim or Christian, Englishman or Bengali.” After the children perform well in their exams, a joint Iqbal/Jones celebration barbecue is held at the Iqbal home; the Chalfens turn up, and Clara strikes up a conversation with Joyce about their family histories. Joyce asks “which side” Irie gets her brains from, the Jamaican or the English, and Clara answers tentatively: “I guess the English in my side,” thinking of her grandfather, Captain Charlie Durham. After Joyce leaves the party, though, Clara is frustrated at herself, since she knows that Captain Charlie Durham wasn’t intelligent at all: “he sacrificed a thousand people because he wanted to save one woman he never really knew.”