Female Independence Theme Analysis

Set in the late 1980s and 1990s, White Teeth examines a cultural milieu in which women are able to grasp a kind of tenuous independence and power, though they are simultaneously inhibited by the system in which they live. Clara Jones and Alsana Iqbal—the novel’s main female characters—are portrayed as determined, intelligent, and driven, yet ultimately subject to forces of patriarchy, and resigned to precarious, marginalized positions in society. White Teeth charts these women’s trajectories over several years and generations, detailing their efforts to find and demonstrate their own independence, provide for their families, and understand their place in the world, all against the backdrop of a challenging, frequently sexist modern world. Through these two women’s struggles and triumphs, Smith suggests that the fight for female independence is a constant uphill battle, even in a modern world.

Clara Jones, born Clara Bowden, is the first female character introduced in the novel, and one who experiences conflicting desires—for both independence, free of male influence, as well as stability within patriarchy—that make it difficult for her to realize the potential of her own individuality. At the beginning of the novel, Clara defies her stringent religious upbringing to follow the rebellious path of her teenage crush, Ryan Topps. Yet while Ryan is shown to be only superficially rebellious—eventually devoting himself to the Jehovah’s Witness dogma Clara has abandoned—Clara is bold, adventurous, and headstrong. She develops an independent nature without his influence and embeds herself in a radically different world from the one in which she grew up. Interacting with Ryan’s “company of Hippies, Flakes, Freaks, and Funky Folk,” Clara makes friends: “a resourceful girl, she use[s] what she had to amuse and terrify” these radical types.

Yet Clara is also keenly aware that in order to live with some independence, separating herself from the influence of her strict, commanding mother Hortense and her religious teachings, she requires a safety net. Clara realizes that she needs a husband to provide for her and to bestow her with a fixed, determined social position: wife. Thus, Clara enters into a largely loveless marriage with Archie Jones, whom she finds uninteresting, though tolerable; she sacrifices much of her independent spirit in order to conform to a societally acceptable role.

Alsana Iqbal, born Alsana Begum, is similarly described as bold and ambitious, able to support her husband and family by working tirelessly as a seamstress, and unafraid of expressing her true opinions. Alsana admits that every time she learns something about Samad—with whom she had an arranged marriage—she likes him less: “so you see, we were better off the way we were,” before marriage, she declares. Though she calls herself a “barefoot country girl,” Alsana’s social status does not determine her knowledge of the world. She understands that her livelihood is circumscribed by her husband and his unsatisfactory ways, and that she lives a life confined by his desires and abilities.

Though both Clara and Alsana are limited by their marriages and overshadowed by their husbands, throughout White Teeth both women demonstrate self-reliance, individuality, and a propensity for independent thinking, even within the confines of domesticity. Though Clara has less of a presence in the latter half of the novel, it is mentioned that she enrolls in classes at a local university, and she and Alsana develop a friendship that rivals Archie and Samad’s. Clara also exercises control over Archie in their shared household: Archie fears “Clara’s wrath” when Samad instructs him to keep his daughter Irie home from the school’s fall festival. She maintains a garden of her own and develops a caring, though complicated, relationship with her daughter—while Archie grows relatively distant from Irie.

Similarly, Alsana asserts her own independence and strength as a mother, even within her own contentious household, troubled by frequent conflicts between Alsana, Samad, and their sons. When Samad decides to separate Magid and Millat in order to send Magid to Bangladesh, Alsana decides to “stop speaking directly to her husband” for eight years, forcing him “to live like she [does]” in Magid’s absence—“never knowing, never being sure,” since she is unable to know if Magid is safe in Bangladesh. Though Alsana, like Clara, is unable to free herself from the inhibiting binds of marriage—since marriage and family life provide both women with a definite place in society—she manages to preserve her own tempestuous, powerful spirit, defying Samad’s authority as a father and patriarch. In many ways, Alsana and Clara work harder at maintaining their families and careers than their husbands, who waste time drinking, gambling, and, in Samad’s case, having an affair. This effort is rarely acknowledged by other characters—including Alsana and Clara’s children, who are often resentful or distant from their mothers—yet it suggests their unflappable resilience in the face of marginalization.

Ultimately, however, White Teeth gestures toward a potentially different future for women. At the end of the novel, O’Connell’s Pub, the all-male den that Archie and Samad frequent, is opened up to women for the first time, and Alsana and Clara are able to visit it, along with their husbands. Moreover, Irie, Clara’s daughter, represents the next generation of women in British society, for whom social norms and gender expectations have changed. Unlike Alsana and Clara, she does not think of marriage as her only option for survival, and though she becomes pregnant at a young age, she ends up with a man (Joshua Chalfen) who is not her child’s father.

Alsana and Clara could be seen as characters who pave the way for Irie’s own assertions of independence, since they stridently demonstrate individuality and opinionated thinking, even as societal norms and boundaries constrain their own narratives and life paths. White Teeth does not always foreground women’s experiences—choosing to begin with Archie’s story, for example, and focusing heavily on Samad as a character—but it gives voice to complicated women, detailing the complexities, strengths, weaknesses, and potential opportunities that motherhood and womanhood encompassed in late 20th-century London.