Brick Lane frames domestic submission as a suppression of self-expression rather than cultural conformity

Evidence

Nazneen at first opts for the life of a conventional Bangladeshi housewife, catering to the daily emotional and physical needs of her husband, Chanu, a frustrated dreamer puffed up with the bitterness of the perpetually disappointed. Yet she does so only through an effort of will, suppressing her own urge for self-expression, symbolized in her fascination with the sparkling, whirling ice skaters she sees on television. In these unpromising circumstances, Nazneen feels haunted by loneliness and thoughts of home—feelings compounded by the death of her baby son. It is only some years later, with the arrival of Karim, the intermediary who brings materials and orders to her for the dressmaking piecework she takes up, that those passions and longings she has hitherto kept private are turned loose. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 190

Categorization

Category: Connection Points

• XREF: Connects to The Namesake’s portrait of immigrant domesticity and suppressed selfhood — also to the reader’s framing of Naqvi’s Home Boy as evidence.

Related

• Brick Lane frames emancipation through consumerist and bodily appetites rather than collective identity. (similarity 0.83)