Culture Clash in A Waiter's Wife

A Waiter's Wife is a story about a Husband and Wife's immigration to, and experience in London. In this story, we see the values of Bangladesh society (as represented in Alsana and Samad) clash with the values of their new society. Here, Zadie Smith presents a complex situation that takes on problems of sexism within Bangladesh and the capitalistic dehumanization of England.

In Alsana, we see a character that is largely oppressed by the culture she was brought up in. She seems to be imprisoned in a relationship with someone who she desires not to know, because knowing him makes her dislike him more. This is a relationship that was not of her choice, but one arranged for her. This comes into conflict with the society that she has immigrated to -- one in which a woman can read Greer and Jong. The title of the story, in turn, reinforces this oppression. Alsana isn’t a person on her own, but merely the Waiter’s Wife.

With Samad, you see a highly educated man forced to work a miserable menial job to provide for his family. In this job it seems to be a lot more profitable to wiggle your ass for tips than engage the people you’re serving in conversation. Here we also see the title come into play. While Samad continuously tries to convince himself that he is more than a mere waiter, while his boss reassures him of this, in the end in this society that is what he is confined to being. So it is the Waiter’s Wife not Samad’s Wife, as in this society he is dehumanized as well. (Here we might also consider that this story is placed in the 70s, during the collapse of Social Democracy and the rise of Thatcherism -- which has dominated British politics ever since.)

What does all of this say about national identity? I find it hard to say, but I think you get more about the national identity of England than you do about Bangladesh. Here is a society in which women can read about female liberation but that the economic basis of society is based on oppressive wage labor. We have a national identity that is socially progressive but economically abusive. (Of course one can question whether the latter contradicts the former... and whether Alsana's relationship and the historical placement of the story undermines it as being even socially progressive in a feminist sense.)