“Nations themselves are narrations. The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism…” so begins Edward Said’s, Culture and Imperialism which has a direct correlation with the representation of gender, culture and self in Monica Ali’s debut novel, Brick Lane, published by Doubleday in 2003. Ali has become somewhat of a literary celebrity in London since Granta voted her one of the Best Young British Novelists, before her novel was even published. The popular success of Ali’s novel is in her ability to take the post-colonial situation from struggle to chic, which she does through an exploration of the mind-body interconnectivity of her heroine, Nazneen. What makes Brick Lane, noteworthy is that it provides an exotic variation on the themes of rebirth and sexual awakening. The striking appeal of this book is highly marketable to western audiences weary of post-modern representations of these subjects in popular literary texts.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, Ali’s book is about gaining what cognitive scientist; Antonio Domasio would call “strategic social intelligence.” In the novel the main character’s process of self-discovery relates to what “cognitive scientist’s describe as ‘the self as a form of narration.’ That is, as the heroine grows, and learns how to “understand, predict, and manipulate the behavior of others” she is in a sense forming her own narration, finding her own voice and as a result her new found “strategic” social intelligence is what allows her to overcome her economic, and sexual repression and social isolation, the precarious condition that women in post-colonial situations often find themselves in. The main character’s eventual awareness of and responses to her selfhood mark her emancipation.
In the novel, the protagonist’s consciousness is at the heart of the story. Nazneen’s growth as a woman is represented through her interactions and observations with the external and internal world and at last by her ability to adapt her behavior to her surroundings. The character’s emotional growth is what guides her release from the struggles of post-colonialism by the resolution of the plot. This effect does contribute considerably to the book’s appeal to Western readers seeking to have their feelings validated. Some may see it as homage to Oprah’s ‘remembering the spirit’ season from a few years back. Others, will make the connection with, Dimasio’s, The Feeling of What Happens, which explores, charts, and define the nature of human consciousness. In Ali’s book, as her main character grows from a teen bride into a wife and mother, the reader witnesses how her perceptions and emotions slowly begin to interact. The deeper the protagonist looks into her self, as her perceptions and emotions mingle, she becomes more able to “evaluate external perceptual information” and unchain the manacles of post-colonial oppression.
Throughout the book the main character is defined by being Bangladeshi years after she has left. Nazneen is born into a world where one accepts their fate, and she is taught early on “to be still in her heart and mind, to accept the Grace of God, to treat life with the same indifference with which it would treat her.” It is with this mindset, the young protagonist accepts her arranged marriage by the end of the first chapter to a man, “ with a face like a frog” As she accepts this fate she observes, the men of a neighboring village who are clearing up after a tornado: "burying their dead and looking for bodies. Dark spots moved through the far fields. Men doing whatever they could in this world". And what could Nazneen do, but accept that it was her fate to be married to a man she did not wish to be with. Thus, the first obstacle she has to overcome is the hurdle of being taught passivity as a virtue. Her passivity is more of a hindrance than she is able to realize. By not reacting and allowing herself to acknowledge what she feels, the protagonist is incapable of forming a rational thought. In Domasio’s terms her perceptions are not yet interacting with her emotions. The method Ali employs to sharpen the character of Nazneen is the strife of losing her first born and indirectly witnessing the appalling treatment her younger sister Hasina is subjected to back in their native Bangladesh.
Depictions of gender conflict are central to the plot of Brick Lane. Gender repression is what brings the still teenaged Nazneen to London via the marriage arranged by her father to the much older Chanu, who is some twenty years, her senior. Here, the character’s tacit acceptance of her fate is evidence of the victimization of the feminine subject in the post-colonial setting. Her subjugation it could be argued is the result of her unwillingness to accept the vital role emotions play in forming rational thought. Ages gone by, Enlightenment thinkers viewed emotions as antithetical to rational thought. This is a mark of European colonialism, which still pervades her consciousness; rendering her a colonized subject. Unable to speak but two words of English, “sorry” and “thank you”, Nazneen is brought to London as is, situated as an outsider and according to Ali, what has facilitated this are her Bangladeshi roots which have taught her to be subservient in her marriage. Again, since Nazneen does not acknowledge her feelings of being married to a man does not love she is incapable of rationally perceiving the situation that she is in. In isolation the heroine first begins to observes the new world she inhabits: “where the poor could be fat, and people might choose to make themselves more ugly than was necessary, where privacy is hoarded to the point of imprisonment and acquisition is everything. Everyone in their boxes counting their possessions". It is through these initial tactical observations of her new environment the young uneducated village girl will eventually be transformed into a sharply perceptive woman with a strategic outlook of her surroundings. With this new awareness of self and others, Ali’s protagonist overcomes her gender conflict by observing and then out-maneuvering her male counterparts in the novel.
Nazneen’s reflections of her past especially growing up with her younger, recalcitrant sister, Hasina, allows Ali to form a narrative for her protagonist. The sister’s correspondence marks the beginning of the heroine’s narrative within the story since it is the medium through which she finally gains a voice. Here, the reader sees how Nazneen, slowly begins to build a ‘self’ through a narrative about her life. Her actions in this instance are specifically centered on the construction of ‘self’. The fact that she omits details of her life to her sister reinforces Oliver Sacks theory that we construct and live our lives as a narrative. Over time Nazneen’s narrative changes, as does her identity.
In the letters, Ali’s choice of Pidgin English is used primarily to convey that the younger sister is mostly illiterate, and that Nazneen is also uneducated. A post-colonial/ feminist interpretation of this strategy might argue that their dialogue illustrates the repression endured by both women by culture and gender. Ali may be highlighting the double plight of immigrant women who are subordinated in their native rural communities by their male counterparts dominance and then because of this further disadvantaged in a newer, cosmopolitan setting. Because the education of women is not encouraged in native settings, it becomes twice as difficult for women to communicate (grammatically correct) in a second language. Yet through their very basic exchanges, they demonstrate a fundamental need for literature or narrative as a means of gaining selfhood, and ultimately, representation in society. This is also the way that Ali’s protagonist begins to defy her imperialistic husband who does not recognize her need to learn English, which symbolically “…is the blocking of other narratives from forming…”according to Said. Ultimately, her husband does unwittingly accelerate her selfhood by garnering her work to be done from the confines of their home.
Ali’s heroine takes her final steps towards self-realization through her encounters with a young radical that brings the clothes she works on for a local manufacturer. Tailoring, a physical action leads to another physical action, an affair that finally triggers the protagonist’s, to use Domasio’s term, ‘somatic marker mechanism’. Nazneen’s relationship with Karim, allows her to become symbolically aware of her body. This is the culminating act that propels her from being a detached observer to an active participant in life.
By the end of the novel Ali has an provided us with an answer to one of early musings of her protagonist from the window of her flat, "You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth beneath your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks ?", pick them up and pave a brick lane to take you where you wish to go to.