Two sisters track the opposed costs of obedience and defiance in Brick Lane

Evidence

The story opens in 1985 with Nazneen, an eighteen-year-old woman from rural Bangladesh, finding herself married to a much older man and brought halfway around the world to live on a dilapidated council estate in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. She has been taught always to accept the will of fate—a lesson confirmed by the difficult circumstances of her birth, which strikes the keynote of a tale about the cost and the limits of following traditional strictures regarding female passivity and endurance. At first, Nazneen accepts this dogma wholeheartedly, in contrast to her beautiful and daring sister, Hasina, who defies her parents to marry for love and whose subsequent misfortunes back in Bangladesh—relayed in letter form—offer a counterpoint to Nazneen’s own experiences and an extended lesson in the gender double standards of the traditional society to which she belongs. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 188

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Brick Lane weighs women’s empowerment against social ostracism and finds gains outweigh losses — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 191; In Brick Lane entrepreneurial individualism replaces community as the route to autonomy — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 148; Female liberation in Brick Lane is yoked to post-Thatcherite enterprise ideology
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Brick Lane weighs women’s empowerment against social ostracism and finds gains outweigh losses — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 191; In Brick Lane entrepreneurial individualism replaces community as the route to autonomy — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 148; Female liberation in Brick Lane is yoked to post-Thatcherite enterprise ideology

Broader Connections

• Female liberation in Brick Lane is yoked to post-Thatcherite enterprise ideology #complicates (0.75)
• In Brick Lane entrepreneurial individualism replaces community as the route to autonomy #complicates (0.72) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 148