Brick Lane weighs women’s empowerment against social ostracism and finds gains outweigh losses

Evidence

As Nazneen strives to keep her infidelity secret, she watches the price extracted from those women who challenge their husbands, become “too Westernised,” or merely seek employment of their own. Such women are taken to have brought shame on themselves and their families, just as much as the “fallen” Hasina has. Brick Lane offers a sort of cost–benefit analysis of women’s self-determination, reckoning the social ostracism that comes from ignoring convention against the sense of empowerment and purpose that results. In the end, it seems to say, the gains outweigh the losses: Nazneen breaks off with Karim, understanding that each of them has been cherishing an unreal fantasy of the other; refuses to accompany Chanu back to Bangladesh; and enters into a business partnership with her friend Razia, designing and making bespoke women’s clothing. Just as Nazneen comes to realize that Hasina has opted for the road less traveled by Bangladeshi women because “she isn’t going to give up” (490), so she now recognizes her own earlier timidity as a product of a time “before I knew what I could do” (486). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 191

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘cost–benefit analysis of self-determination’ framework echoes Milgrom-style institutional incentive analysis and could carry into the reader’s Hamid/Naqvi evidence work.
• SEED: Essay angle: fiction itself as cost–benefit analysis — how novels systematize the tradeoffs of nonconformity.