Monica Ali's Brick Lane

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Monica Ali’s 2003 novel Brick Lane recounts the story of Nazneen, a seventeen-year-old Bangladeshi woman who has an arranged marriage with a man twice her elder, Chanu. After moving to the East End of London, Nazneen struggles to learn to live with her husband, as well as assimilate into a new culture. The novel allows for an exploration of the South Asian diaspora in England, and illustrates journey of an immigrant achieving conventional attitudes towards success and social mobility. Nazneen’s rejection of her social, physical and spatial immobilities through an achievement of hybridity by the end of the novel is a reflection of her upward mobility and newfound agency. John Hutnyk discusses hybridity in the contest of diasporas in his essay in Chapter 9: Hybridity of the Diasporas text. Hutnyk sets up hybridity as “the contact point of a diaspora” (Hutnyk 59). The process of moving from assimilation to integration into the culture of a new place presents a cultural mixing that allows for a deeper examination of the…show more content…
Even though Nazneen and her daughters may visit Chanu in Bangladesh in the future, the choice is up to the women since Nazneen claims “Staying or going, it’s up to us three” (Ali 480). Nazneen is therefore able to achieve a hybridity between the two cultures through an increase in spatial mobility. Notably, in Hutnyk’s chapter on hybridity, the author argues for a creation of a “third space” that is a result of “hybridizing in new global conditions” (Hutnyk 60). Nazneen therefore has been able to create her version of a “third space” through hybridizing her Bangladeshi and English personas by the means of increasing her spatial mobility by leaving her apartment in Tower Hamlets and experiencing the
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    Brick Lane: Mirroring Nazneen’s Metamorphosis Dr. Hossain Al Mamun Associate Professor Department of English Shahjalal University of Science & Technology Sylhet, Bangladesh mamuneng_sust@yahoo.com +8801711987266 Abstract: Brick Lane (2003) unfolds a story of an immigrant woman—Nazneen, and her journey to Britain from Bangladesh and her all out struggle for getting freedom. Heraclitus comments in the beginning of the novel—“A man’s character is his fate”, but the story presents man’s supremacy

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