The Portrayal of Faces in Zadie Smith’s NW & White Teeth

                                  “There will be time, there will be time

                                   To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” (Eliot 14).



        The face is astoundingly brave part of the human body. Unless being altered, covered or masked, it stands naked in the face of the Other, expressing itself autonomously without representations. The autonomy of the face is slightly different in fiction than in reality. Inasmuch as we cannot see the characters’ faces, we rely solely on the narrator’s representation of the face through the narrator’s or the character’s voice.
The face in reality, as Levinas argues, “is present in its refusal to be contained”, and therefore “it cannot be comprehended, that is, encompassed” (194). The face as uncontainable thing, Levinas notes, “cannot become a content” (86), it is significant and meaningful all by itself, without being correlated with something else. When the face speaks to the Other, the discourse (I and you) is established via language; and that is why the relation with the Other is maintained mainly through speech not silence. Silent faces are detached, but once they speak, Levinas proposes, all discourse begins, and more specifically, “response or responsibility” with the Other. In this manner, the language constitutes what Levinas calls “the ethical relationship” with the other, whereby the very access to the face becomes “straightway ethical” (85). It is language, I would argue, what brings such “ethicality” into literature, resulting in the long-lived intersections between literature and ethics.

          Despite the critics and theorists’ debate on what constitutes the “ethical” in “literary representations and the reading experience”, Maragou and Tsimpouki propose that there are two main stands in this regard: First, “(neo-)humanist” or “neo-Aristotelian” narrative ethics,” (3) which center around the works of Wayne Booth and Martha Nussbaum that deploy “the Aristotelian model” to examine how literature and ethics affect the readers’ moral values and beliefs. Second,  deconstructive, “Levinasian” ethics, also referred to by Dorothy Hale as “new” ethics” (3), in which scholars like J. Hillis Miller, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler, Derek Attridge, among many others, perceive ethics through the lens of  Levinas and his notion of respecting “the otherness of the other.” In this sense, Maragou and Tsimpouki conclude that the advocates of the Levinasian camp believe that  the text is perceived as an “other” by the author and the reader alike, which gives the act of writing and reading an ethical approach that is worthy of consideration.  


In her article “Love, Actually,” the English writer Zadie Smith dwells on how the “ethical realm” in her narratives exists “in the consequence of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.” The ethical approach in literature takes an internal dimension on the one hand, where the characters’ actions raise the question of moral values– the good and the bad, and an external dimension on the other hand, whereby the readers become involved, through empathy, in the “otherness of the Other.” Smith falls in between the Aristotelian and the Levinasian ethics throughout her works. Whereas White Teeth shows her Aristotelian’s tendency in the realistic, yet, simplistic style, Smith’s ethical approach in NW tends to be more Levinasian, by being aware of the discursive feature of literary language and the multi-dimensional ethics embedded in the textual face-to-face encounter with the other.  

          By slightly distinguishing herself from “Nussbaum’s strong Aristotelian claims” about literature as the place where “we can have truly altruistic instinct”, Smith raises her flag: “When we read with fine attention, we find ourselves caring about people who are various, muddled, uncertain and not quite like us (and this is good)”. Following the steps of E.M. Forster, “who shows us how hard it is to will oneself into a meaningful relationship with the world,” Smith creates characters quite different and similar to herself at the same time, put them through the ethical muddle, and watch them fall, struggle, and try to raise themselves  continuously in an attempt to fulfilling their cryptic cosmopolitan duty towards each other. In a massive metropolis like London, where the face-to-face encounter with strangers is deliberately avoidable, it is a nasty business to be “involved”. Yet, Smith diligently focuses on the characters’ involvement with each other, which varies from love relationships and deep friendships to random encounters with strangers in public places.


In WT, for instance, the friendship of Archie and Samad leads to another one between their wives, Clara and Alsana, and a third one between their kids, Irie and the twins Millat and Magid. Later on, the kids’ fight with one of their English schoolmates– Joshua, opens up a new friendship with the Chalfens– a Jewish – Catholic intellectual family who gets involved with Irie and the twins, by providing them with “proper English education.”  In this manner, these social circles that Smith develops enable her to examine multiple characters, human relationships and how they intertwine with each other. “Involved,” as Smith points out in WT, reflecting on Alsana and Joyce’s conversation, “is neither good, nor bad. It’s just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other’s pockets… one becomes involved and it is along trek to being uninvolved” (439). The long social history of human involvement is not what really matters;  rather, it is the consequences of it, how people live and deal with each other, and it’s the ethicality of their actions and reactions what Smith negotiates in her fiction.  Similarly, in NW, the lives of the four Londoners that Smith depicts intersect, resulting in this cryptic responsibility they feel towards each other. Following the lives of Leah, Keisha/ Natalie, Nathan, and Felix, and the way they get involved with each other and with other minor characters (Leah with Shar, Felix with Anne, for examples), such encounters, Shaw points out, “interrogate the feasibility of practising cosmopolitan empathy in a contemporary urban environment” (6).
Yet, Smith addresses the complexity of this empathy towards the stranger others, as it might be problematic sometimes, especially when it’s confused with naivety, exaggerated by empathisers, and misunderstood by those whom they empathise with.

            By applying Levinas’ approach to the ethical relationship between the self and the Other that manifests itself in the face, the aim of this essay is to examine how Smith creates face-to-face relationships between her protagonists and the stranger Other, and the ethical dimension of such. As I briefly discuss the idea of shamefacedness (the way characters hide their faces out of shame), I will use this essay to reflect upon what Levinas calls “the essential poverty in the face” which “one tries to mask […] by putting on poses, by taking on a countenance” (86). What do Smith’s characters seek to mask behind their naked, destitute faces when addressing each other? How is the ethical approach of these encounters established and on what grounds? 

Knockin’ on Strangers’ Doors 

 ”Could having a face be such an important requirement? Was being seen the cost of the right to see?” (Abe)

       The opening scene of NW captures Leah “in the garden of a basement –flat. Fenced in, on all sides” (3), in Willesden– an area located in North-West London. This portrayal of the fenced garden draws an imagery of the isolation “on all sides” that people feel in London. Yet, Leah’s indulgence in solitude does not stop her from opening the door to the complete stranger- Shar, who stands at her door crying and asking for help: “I’ve been to every fuckin door- Please” (5). Right from the start, Smith introduces the empathetic, compassionate side of Leah, highlighting the cosmopolitan ethical ideals that render her responsible for the community she belongs to:  

Leah is as faithful in her allegiance to this two-mile square of the city as other people are to their families, or their countries. She knows the way people speak around here, that fuckin, around here, is only a rhythm in a sentence. She arranges her face to signify compassion. Shar closes her eyes, nods. She makes quick movements with her mouth, inaudible, speaking to herself. To Leah she says
– You’re so good. (5-6)

  This face-to-face encounter between Leah and Shar is intense and poignant on the face of it, yet, there seems to be a sense of phoniness underneath. Leah, being aware of Shar’s destitute face and her desperate need, is put into question, judged, and obliged to react, therefore, “she arranges her face to signify compassion.” The arrangement of face is, thereby, ensued from Shar’s face, and it precipitates Shar’s comment on Leah’s goodness in return.  Likewise, Shar is aware of Leah’s face —the ethical mask she puts on for the occasion. Such mask, I would argue, doesn’t necessarily mean that Leah’s facial expressions are fabricated or unauthentic, rather, it is no longer naked in the Levinasian terms — it is masked with Shar’s feelings and replicated by empathy. In other words, Leah’s perception of Shar’s face is dominated by Shar, and as she hears Shar’s “destitution which cries out for justice” (Levinas 215), she posits herself as responsible for this misery. Shar, who seems to be aware of this, thereby repeats: “you are so good, you are so good– until the thread of the pleasure that runs through that phrase is broken” (6). Ironically, “for Leah there is a little pleasure” (6), for her goodness is recognised by someone else, and hence, it is given a meaning. Smith, hereby, elaborates more on this face-to-face relationship, as she moves from the random faces of Londoners on the streets to Shar’s face in particular, shifting between Leah’s inner voice and Shar’s:

         The face is familiar. Leah has seen this face many times in these streets.
        A peculiarity of London villages: faces without names. The eyes are memorable, around the deep brown clear white is visible, above and below. An air of avidity, of  consuming what she sees. Long lashes. Babies look like this. Leah Smiles. The  smile offered back is blank, without recognition. Sweetly crooked. Leah is only the good stranger who opened the door and did not close it again. (6)      

The familiarity of the faces that Smith delineates here is a peculiar scene in London. Albeit countless and nameless, a cryptic face-to-face relationship is constantly established between the strangers once they care enough to make eye-contact. Shar’s face is familiar to Leah, but Leah is just a “good stranger” in Shar’s eyes. Smith’s voice, seems to speak over Leah’s; her foreknowledge as an omniscient narrator foreshadows Shar’s manipulation and warns us that Shar’s poor face is masked by “white” around the eyes, indicating “avidity.” Yet, Shar’s greediness is invisible to Leah, as she perceives Shar’s face as that of a baby. Leah smiles at the presumed innocence of Shar’s face, and once again, we are warned that Shar’s smile is “crooked.” How does Shar think of Leah? As “the good stranger who opened the door,” and since openness and hospitality are rarely seen in Willesden, she shouldn’t miss out on them. Being completely oblivious to Shar’s manipulation, Leah believes the made-up story about Shar’s ill mother at the hospital. “A shade of pity in Shar’s face” (12) appears later as Leah offers her money, which is ironically caused by reversed empathy this time. Shar’s face is no longer naked and destitute in the Levinasian terms; rather, it is masked with pity, rendering her responsible for Leah’s “meekness”. 

          Before they part, Shar “uses her scarf to blot the sweat on her face, and will not look at Leah” (13). Arguably, Shar might be feeling guilty internally for fooling Leah, but it is shame what comes over her externally, and hence, the need to cover it up. Responding to Levinas’s notion of shame*, Tudor notes, “a recurring theme in discussions of shame is the sense of one’s being exposed to others […]. Something is ‘exposed’ only if it is preferably covered up or concealed” (167). Since being exposed to the Other connotes seeing and being seen, Shar tries to conceal her face with the scarf, avoiding any eye-contact with Leah. Through this face-to-face encounter, Smith paradoxically captures solidarity between people in London and its consequences. Soon enough, Leah’s mother and her husband start criticising her for being naïve and soft with strangers, which urges Leah to doubt herself, and as she feels unable to escape or hide her empathetic side – “ I AM SO FULL OF EMPATHY” (29), Leah is left in a state of shame.

The imagery of the apple tree that Smith draws on in the following pages conjures vivid connotations of Adam and Eve’s sense of shame, coming face-to-face with nakedness for the first time, as soon as they ate from the tree. Commenting on this story from the Old Testament and the need to escape shame, Levinas notes, “shame arises each time we are unable to make others forget out basic nudity. It is related to everything we would like to hide and that we cannot bury or cover up” (64). In this sense, the attempt to escape shame is made into a mask, covering the nakedness of the face. 

               Reversely, the poor stranger is sought and approached by the protagonists in WT suggesting a different perspective of solidarity in London. For example, Irie and the twins go to visit Mr. Hamilton, offering him some food as part of the “God’s harvest” and “helping the local community” (170). Standing on his doorsteps, carrying the foodstuffs in their hands in an attempt to “surprise Mr. J.P. Hamilton with the extent of their charity,” Mr. Hamilton is “duly surprised” by the sight of the “three dark-skinned children”(168). Hence, Smith doesn’t only turn the tables in capturing black children helping a “white Englishman,” but she comically changes roles in this face-to-face relationship with the poor stranger. As Mr. Hamilton mistakes the children for door-to-door sales-children, he closes the door in their faces. Ironically, after realising that they are at his door-step to help, he is disappointed to find that all the foodstuffs are of no use due to his teeth problems. Smith comically mocks the lack of solidarity and help among the local community as help is provided to those who need it less, while those who are in bad need are left behind, with their intimidating, aggressive faces.

The portrayal of different “mad” faces that the “city breeds” and the Londoners constantly recognise, yet deliberately avoid, is shown with particular colours. The children have seen “Mr. White-Face, an Indian who walks the streets of Willesden with his face painted white,” and they know “Mad Merry, a black voodoo woman with a red face whose territory stretches from Kilburn to Oxford Street,” and “Mr. Toupee who has no eyebrows and wears a toupee not on his head but a string around his neck” (174). Mr. White-Face, whose face is painted white, might seek to cover his black skin as an Indian, while the redness of Mad Mary’s face emphasises her anger and madness. Interestingly, Smith reflects on the face-to-face relationship that these faces aim at establishing by using “their schizophrenic talent […] to strip you down, to tell you who you are” (174). Such madness forces Londoners into a state of nakedness when confronted by the ugly truth of where they live. “We are not appreciative of these people” Smith notes, [our] gut instinct is that they intend to embarrass us, that they’re out to shame us” (175). Once again, the sense of shame springs from the truth they wish to hide or cover up. Londoners are aware that looking at those people means facing their shame, and that’s why they “have learnt not to look, never to look, to avoid eyes all the times so that the dreaded question ‘What you looking at?’ and its pitiful, gutless, useless answer– ‘Nothing’- might be avoided” (175). Samad, for example, knows all this, “eye-contact and the danger of making it” (175), but that day when he was walking and holding Poppy’s hand (his children’s teacher), felt “guilty and vulnerable” and “he couldn’t face Mad Marry and her vicious truth-telling” (175). Those people are naked with their madness, have no shame to hide, and therefore, they become reflective just like a mirror. Desperate for face-to-face communication, those people try their awkward talents to draw attention; yet, Londoners have learnt how to cope with this demanding city and its “mad” strangers and chosen not to get involved.

The portrayal of the face-to- face encounters with strangers
in both novels highlights the complexity of achieving the cosmopolitan ideals in urban life, whereby saving yourself from the stranger other comes first; perhaps before losing yourself in empathy and getting involved. Yet, here comes Mad Mary’s question to Sama: “WHAT’S DE SOULUTION, BLACK MAN?”(177) Is it closing the door in others’ faces and never open it again? 

            Paradoxically, Leah and Felix, albeit portrayed as empathetic, open, and good- natured, are severely punished due to their goodness. Leah’s husband, Michel gets involved in a brutal fight with the man that Leah saw him with Shar, and as the man starts beating her husband, Leah feels helpless and starts to cry: “she observes a young white couple in suits crossing the road to avoid them. No one will help” (71). Once again, Smith captures the Londoners’ attitude towards street fights — avoidance. Eventually, Leah’s dog- Olive is also brutally beaten by the man, causing her death. Leah, who is portrayed as “generous, wide, open to the entire world,” (157) feels disappointed and afraid when there’s no one to help her. The decaying cosmopolitan ideals that Smith depicts are constantly experienced in the urban life, especially “when you’ve really gone out of your way to help somebody and they just throw it back in your face” (77). Sadly, Leah’s help to Shar was not only thrown back in her face but was also turned against her. 
       

           Likewise, Felix’s help to the woman on the underground tube gets him killed cold-bloodedly. Smith’s narrative of Felix’s story starts and ends in the second section “Guest,” emphasising Felix’s role as a guest only, arriving and leaving very soon.  Felix, a former drug-dealer and a recovering addict, visits Annie, an ageing white drug- addict, to finish his relationship with her. Feeling abandoned and lonely, she taunts him for being a good person: “Felix, what is this pathological need of yours to be the good guy? It’s very dull,” highlighting the purposelessness of his goodness: “We don’t need you to ride in on a white horse. You’re nobody’s saviour” (140). Yet, Felix’s empathy renders him aware of “what it was like to be Annie at this moment” (140), and it is the same empathy that urges him to help the pregnant woman on the underground tube later that day: “Felix saw how badly she was shaking, and that her eyes were watery” (146). Before giving her his seat, Felix gets involved in an argument with two black passengers, whom the woman mistakenly thinks that they are his friends because of his skin-colour. Smith’s choice of the underground tube to capture this face-to-face encounter between Felix and the other strangers is not arbitrary. The underground tube scene is highly significant in London, not only because it’s an urban labyrinth that only Londoners know how to find their way there without checking the maps, but it is also an opportunity to come face-to-face with various people from different origins and social classes, to sit side by side, or stand shoulder-to- shoulder, looking, “glaring,” or – for your own safety- avoiding any eye- contact whatsoever.


In one of her comments on BBC radio 4 programme Woman’s Hour, Smith reflects on the underground tube experience: “I’m sad when I see people glaring at each other on the Tube.” This comment was made as an attempt to clarify what she said earlier to New York Magazine about England as “disgusting” and full of “vulgarity” and “stupidity.” The vulgarity of the Tube that Smith describes is captured in her fiction through this trivial incident between Felix and the two men, which leads to his murder eventually. The rude, rough, and vulgar attitude of Londoners masks their faces and deepens their sense of self- estrangement. Felix’s sense of alienation, I would say, urges him to “ [look] at a tube map like a tourist, taking a moment to convince himself of details no life-long Londoner should need to check” (103).

The mechanicalised voice comes out: “Mind the gap” (103) –a recurring announcement that life-long Londoners become used to it as well. But where is the gap? Perhaps it’s the gap between people despite the unavoidable closeness between their bodies on the crowded Tube. The look and the touch mean nothing; they are cautiously avoided and followed by a careless “Sorry” or a cold “Thank You”! This arrogance, this fake politeness and coldness deepen the sense of alienation and highlight the limitation of cosmopolitan ideals. The gap, therefore, is not between the door and the station’s floor; rather, it’s cultural, social, and ethical. People grow apart, while the mechanicalised voice repeats: “Please stand clear of the door,” and watch it close in somebody else’s face. 

Thou Shalt Not Kill
                                     “Violence has a human face” (Bronowski).  

        Despite the fact that Smith tackles the theme of WWII in WT, her comic tone renders the novel less aggressive as opposed to the violent street fighting and killing incidents in NW. Repeatedly, Smith concentrates on the face-to-face relationship between the characters in such contexts, observing the human actions and their ethical responsibility towards each other. By employing Levinas’ idea on the face as “exposed, menaced, as if inviting us to an act of violence,” and how “at the same time [it] forbids us to kill” (86), I will analyse Archie’s story with the German Doctor as opposed to Felix’s story with the two men, highlighting Smith’s portrayal of the face in both. 

       Although Archie’s story with the Doctor takes place in The Root Canal section, we don’t get to know its details until the end – at the Future Mouse Conference. By doing so, Smith shockingly connects Archie’s story in the past with the present, highlighting his goodness as he saves “the same man twice and with no more reason or rhyme than the first time” (540). Thus, this “messy business, this saving people lark” that Smith delineates here has no explanation: 

Because he wanted to see evil, pure evil; the moment of the great recognition, he needed to see it – and then he could proceed as previously arranged. But the doctor was stooping badly and he looked weak. His face was covered in pale red blood as if the deed had already been done. Archie’d never seen a man so crumbled, so completely vanquished. It kind of took the wind out of his sails. He was tempted to say You look like I feel. (534)

Archie examines the Doctor’s face looking for evil, the pure evil that will urge him to kill. On the contrary, what Archie sees in the Doctor’s face is fear, and the blood that covers it renders him dead already. Archie’s empathy makes him feel with the man, and therefore, the Doctor’s face reflects Archie’s feelings just like a mirror. Hadn’t he looked at his face; it could have been easier to kill him. Yet, if young Archie’s indecisiveness makes him flip a coin to make a decision the first time, it is the mere goodness of old Archie that urges him to save the Doctor’s life, without any hesitance this time. 

         Perhaps the older novelist Smith has become tends to be more pessimistic, or even more realistic. In NW, when Felix leaves the train, the two men attack him from behind. Looking at their familiar faces, he realises that they are local. Obviously, the two men are not only interested in his money, but it is also his ego what they want to wound. Felix, being aware of this ridiculous masculine business, has pity for them because it doesn’t matter to be the “big man” anymore. As Felix hands away everything he has, “The kid [gives] him a dead-eyed look, face set in a violent pout. It [is] necessary mask without which he could not do what he was doing” (148). This act of masking, Smith claims, renders the kid capable of wrongdoing; otherwise, his face would look more naked, vulnerable and humane. By masking his face, the kid covers his shame unconsciously, and therefore, the look in his eyes becomes dead, blocking his vision of Felix’s face.


It is “the face,” argues Levinas, “what one cannot kill or at least it is that whose meaning consists in saying: “thou shalt not kill” (87). Yet, dismissing the humanity of Felix’s face, they kill him cold -bloodedly as he refuses to hand them the “treasured zirconias, a present from Grace” (148). Ironically, Felix spends his last moments in life trying to say “what had been done to him, what was being done to him, he tried to say it, he said nothing. Grace!” (148) Paradoxically, Smith’s novel depicts the cruelty of the community, its dis-involvement, as she ends the violent chapter with a Kafkaesque scene: “a young girl in a yellow summer dress” getting on the bus, turning her back to the insignificant death of the other, facing life, while letting “the doors fold neatly behind her” (148), shutting in Felix’s face.   

        As Smith captures the growing empathy of Archie over the novel as opposed to Felix’s in one section, one could see the change in style from long, classic narratives into intense, modernised ones. Between the Aristotelian’s ethical approach in WT and the Levinasian one in NW, the ethical approach of empathy is proved to be self-destructive, considering the miserable destiny that the empathisers face at the end. Smith negotiates the characters’ responsibility towards each other by creating these face-to-face encounters, whereby the mask is put on whenever the characters seek to hide their fear, shame, or violence. 

 *See Critchley& Dianda’s The Problem with Levinas. Levinas as “a thinker of Shame,”  has a nuanced approach to shame and guilt , and albeit used interchangeably in some contexts, there is a phenomenological difference between them. Whereas guilt is experienced internally, shame comes from the outside and as a result of one’s being exposed to the other.