Global and Local: 21st-Century British Fiction.: Adulthood in Brick Lane

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Adulthood in Brick Lane

Despite the fact most Brick Lane mostly explores Nazneen’s experiences from age 18 up, I don’t think she ever had the chance to “grow up”. She is sent to be married off in a foreign country at an age when many people still live with their parents or are in school, and she is mostly on her own to figure out her place in London. Nazneen doesn’t get a time to learn, explore, take risks and discover who she is as a person and wants to do with her life. She expresses interest in learning English and going to college but is shut down by Chanu “You’re going to be a mother…Will that not keep you busy enough? And you can’t take a baby to college” (57). Not only does is she responsible for a baby at a very young age, which strips away more of her time to be a child herself, but she is unable to pursue her curiosities about the world around her.

When Karim comes into Nazneen’s life, I think this is the first time she can truly act like a teenager. Even though she has even more responsibilities with two children and her sewing, Karim is the outlet for rebellion and sexual desire she didn’t get to express during her teenage years. After her affair starts, it also seems like Nazneen is more present and an active participant in their family life “She spent more time talking to her daughters….She served her husband and found that he was a caring husband…She did her work and she discovered that work in itself, performed with a desire for perfection was capable of giving satisfaction” (248).

While I don’t think her affair is the source of Nazneen’s new attitude, I think it sparked something inside of her that made her realize the control she could take on her life “It was as if the conflagration of her bouts with Karim had cast a special light on everything, a dawn light after a life lived in twilight” (248). Nazneen’s newfound sense of independence is something she missed out on when she first arrived in London, and despite being in her 30s, she still is taking advantage of it. Even if she is growing up 15 or so years too late, the journey Nazneen starts to adulthood and discovering what she wants is essential to her decisions at the end of the book. Karim may have sparked this self-discovery, but it was up to Nazneen to stand up to Mrs. Islam and Chanu and make decisions that are best for her.

2 comments:

UnknownApril 13, 2015 at 12:52 AM
I absolutely agree with your point, but I think another facet, which adds to the thrill of the affair, is the fact that she is stepping outside of her gender experiences and expectations. Like you mentioned, she is expected to dedicate herself wholeheartedly to marriage and children before she is even able to live her life. She is truly under the impression, in the beginning pf the novel that “If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men” (80). This also goes along with the idea that fate has decided her future, because God would have made her man had he wanted her to experience life to the fullest. However, she obviously rebels against this by questioning her marriage and her feelings for Chanu. She also comes to the realization near the end of the novel that “while she neither wanted to look to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had mourned together, so she realized” (395). She realizes that her life began and ended in vastly different ways, depending on the amount of restriction she had due to her gender. Her childhood was taken away, but she comes to understand that this fate of marriage can be converged with her will to reclaim that rightful part of her life, which is so often denied women, by having the affair with Karmin.
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Dan HaagApril 13, 2015 at 8:58 PM
I agree with your idea as well. It seems that the entire experience of growing up is a luxury that Nazneen does not get to experience early on in the novel due to the gender roles of her culture and religion. One of the clearest instances of Nazneen adhering to this limitation is early in the book when she and Chanu have a discussion about her not being allowed to go out on her own. Even though she desires to go out on her own, she “[n]ever said anything to [Chanu]…she carried on with her chores…she razored away …and did not let the razor slip” (30). As her immersion into the culture of London continues, she begins to move towards rebelling and pursuing her own interests. In order to personally prove she can rebel against Chanu’s wishes, she goes out and explores the streets to the point where she gets lost (45). While it is clear by the end of the novel that Nazneen has gained the ability to stick up for her own desires, I also think it is worth recognizing that her daughter Shahana’s life is a key representation of what life could have been like for Nazneen without the instilled gender roles of her home country. “Shahana did not want to listen to Bengali classical music. Her written Bengali was shocking. She wanted to wear jeans. She hated her kameez” (144). Even though Nazneen doesn’t acknowledge her similar desires, such as when she tries on the sequin vest and looks at her legs, it seems that she ultimately sides with her daughters and their immersion into western culture.
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