White Teeth Chapters 11 & 12 Summary & Analysis

Irie 1990, 1907

Chapters 11 & 12

Summary: Chapter 11, The Miseducation of Irie Jones

At fifteen, Irie Jones is a big girl with light brown skin and eyes who wears a large Afro hairstyle. Irie is obsessed with her weight and general appearance, mostly because she is also obsessed with Millat Iqbal. Unfortunately for Irie, Millat regards her as his most important friend, and nothing more. To attract Millat, Irie gets her hair straightened and dyed red, an experiment that ends with most of her hair falling out and Irie having to buy expensive extensions.

All Irie’s efforts are in vain. Millat isn’t even home when Irie goes to the Iqbal house. Alsana’s cousin Neena is there instead, along with her lover Maxine. The two women sympathize with Irie over her hair loss but urge her to stop pursuing Millat. Irie notices that Samad is sad. Alsana explains that they have received a letter from Magid in Bangladesh. Magid has become completely pro-British in his opinions. Samad and Alsana begin another argument about Magid, and Irie slips away to avoid the fight.

At school, Irie finds Millat smoking a joint with Hifan, a young man from the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, or KEVIN. Millat passes the joint to Irie, who passes it on to Joshua Chalfen, the class nerd who is playing a game of Goblins and Gorgons. At that moment, a party of parents, led by Irie’s dad Archie, descends and catches them in the act of marijuana consumption. As punishment, Millat and Irie are assigned to a study group, to be held at the home of Joyce and Marcus Chalfen, Joshua’s parents.

Summary: Chapter 12, Canines: The Ripping Teeth

Joyce and Marcus Chalfen are intellectuals. Joyce writes books about gardening, and Marcus is a well-known geneticist. They are proud of their achievements, their happy marriage, and their perfect family of four boys. The Chalfens are so mentally and emotionally stable that they don’t need outside friends.

Joyce needs to be needed. So, when Irie and Millat enter her life, Joyce gladly rushes in to help them. (Irie and Millat get tutoring from the Chalfens as their punishment for using marijuana at school.) Joyce is especially anxious to help Millat, with whom she is instantly infatuated. Marcus is openly appreciative of Irie’s full figure. Irie is fascinated by the Chalfen family and wants to be like them. Millat sees the Chalfens as a source of money, and he manages to charm Joyce out of hundreds of pounds. Joshua, the Chalfen’s oldest son, becomes jealous of the attention his mother gives to Millat. Meanwhile, Marcus discovers that Irie has a natural affinity for science. He takes Irie up to his study and introduces her to his FutureMouse, the subject of his genetic research. Marcus also hires Irie to help keep his office organized.

After a few months, Alsana and Clara grow concerned about the Chalfens’ relationship with their children. Alsana fears that the Chalfens are taking Millat away from her. Neena visits the Chalfens to check out the situation. She reports that the Chalfens are crazy but thinks that the Iqbals should be more worried about Millat’s association with KEVIN. Clara visits Joyce Chalfen and looks at the portraits of Chalfen's ancestors. She attributes Irie’s scientific brain to her English ancestor and then feels shame because all the Bowdens are much smarter than Captain Charlie Durham.

Analysis: Chapters 11 & 12

In the third section of White Teeth, the narrator’s attention shifts to the next generation, and the tone of the writing reflects this shift. The new principal character, Irie Jones, is the daughter of Clara Bowden and Archie Jones and is now fifteen years old. The tone of the writing is more intimate and empathetic than in previous sections. The details reveal the experience of adolescence in multicultural London in 1990. Multiculturalism itself is the target of much wry humor and satire. For example, the reader follows Irie through her hair treatment at a salon that has Arab, Mexican, and Jamaican customers and on to a store where an overweight Indian woman sells her extensions made from the hair of Asian immigrants.

Irie Jones is a native-born British citizen but must undergo the pains of assimilation and the burdens of racism as well as the usual anxieties of puberty and adolescence. Irie is a big girl, acutely self-conscious about her weight, her buckteeth, and her big Afro hair. Everything about her feels wrong. Fortunately, Irie has a strong all-female support system, consisting of her mother, Clara, her mother’s friend Alsana, Alsana’s niece Neena, and Neena’s lover Maxine. The conversations among these women reveal how feminism has begun to reshape the lives of the women in the story. The Iqbal women assure Irie she is beautiful, and they warn her away from Millat, the gorgeous bad boy, speaking frankly about sex in a manner that goes against their proper religious upbringing.

Meanwhile, the men in the story get even more caught up in issues of masculinity, cultural purity, and success. The narrator’s tone expresses the irony of Samad’s life. Magid, the son he sent back to Bangladesh for a traditional upbringing, is now enthusiastically pro-British, while Millat has moved from wanting to become a gangster to being a flat-out Islamic extremist. Samad and Alsana argue all the time about their sons, with Alsana accusing her husband of trying to control everything and urging him to let their sons go. The dynamic of the Iqbal marriage is continuing to change, with Samad losing power and Alsana gaining strength and influence.

The narrator gets in some strong satiric stabs against the liberal educational establishment in the accounts of events at school. For example, after Irie and Millat are detained for smoking marijuana, the headmaster talks about working toward constructive conduct management rather than behavior chastisement. He also interlaces this jargon with unconscious racism, assuming that Irie and Millat come from unstable families because they are Jamaican and Bengali.

Irie’s relationship with Marcus and Joyce Chalfen amplifies the themes of racism, patriarchy, and the search for meaning and identity. Marcus and Joyce think of themselves as benevolent toward the lower classes, but their race, class, and gender prejudices are obvious. Joyce’s need to reform Millat is transparently both racial and sexual. Millat is Joyce’s fantasy lover, a beautiful youth with an attractive nasty streak, like a sheik or a pirate. The narrator slyly lists the multiple advantages that Millat gains from Joyce’s preconceptions. Marcus uses his happy, open marriage as an excuse to make constant sexual comments and draws Irie into his scientific work for the pleasure of having a big Jamaican girl in his office. However, Irie gains an important advantage: the discovery of her natural aptitude for science.

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