A Study On The Construction Of The Heroine’s Cultural Identity In Brick Lane From The Perspective Of Postcolonial Feminism

Monica Ali is a distinguished female writer of British literature,whose first novel Brick Lane reproduces the real life of Bangladeshi immigrants.Once published,Brick Lane has received unanimous praise and has aroused concern of scholars at home and abroad.The novel,describing a Bangladeshi girl Nazneen who encounters difficulties in London,shows the real living conditions of Bangladeshi women to the readers.As Ali is a British female immigrant writer born in Bangladesh,she incorporates a large amount of Bangladeshi culture,emphasizing the living conditions and the cultural identity of Bangladeshi immigrants in the mainstream countries,especially focusing on the plights of female immigrants in other countries.Taking the complicated British society as the background,Brick Lane reflects a series of problems such as racial discrimination,class oppression and religious oppression in British society of the postcolonial era.Through contrasting modernized London with backward Bangladesh,Ali shows the collision and friction between the East and the West in politics,economy and culture.Bangladeshi immigrants have to find their own cultural identity because of being marginalized by mainstream culture.From the perspective of postcolonial feminism,the thesis,focusing on heroine’s construction of cultural identity,explores how the postcolonial female get out of the predicament step by step and successfully construct their own cultural identity when they face crisis of cultural identification.The thesis is divided into six parts to discuss.Chapter One mainly introduces the life of Monica Ali and her literary works,the research on Brick Lane,significance and structure of the thesis.Chapter Two is related to the concepts of postcolonial feminism,which is used to provide theoretical support for the thesis.Based on the text,Chapter Three analyzes the crisis of cultural identification encountered by the heroine Nazneen.In corrupt Bangladesh,she is subjected to gender discrimination and religious oppression.After immigrating to the UK,oppressed by racial discrimination,she has difficulty in communicating with British people in English,which can cause her to have a sense of rootless in culture.As a woman,she is confronted with multiple oppression such as gender,race and religion.It is difficult for Nazneen to find her own cultural identity under the conflict of politics,economy and culture between the East and the West.Chapter Four analyzes that Nazneen makes efforts to seek cultural identity after experiencing cultural crisis.Cultural identity with mobility consists of many factors,including race,environment,language,interpersonal relationship,self-awareness and so on.In order to survive in Britain,Nazneen has made three efforts:the reconstruction of female consciousness by achieving the economic and spiritual independence,the rebuilding of ideal home through shattering the illusion of Bangladesh and actively integrating into Britain and the reestablishment of interpersonal relationship by building up the equal relation with lover and making friends to seek for help.Chapter Five is about the result of Nazneen’s seeking for cultural identity.Nazneen finally constructs hybrid cultural identity in the Third Space where she gradually changes from silence to voice and from other to self.Chapter Six is conclusion.The continuous circulation of capital and commodities will inevitably accelerate the process of economic globalization,which will lead to the mobility of population.The migration of population will bring about the problems on cultural identity of immigrants.Compared with male immigrants,female immigrants have more difficulty in constructing cultural identity.Postcolonial female face multiple oppression,such as gender oppression,racial oppression and religious oppression.Therefore,through the study of Ali’s Brick Lane,the thesis concludes that constructing hybrid cultural identity is an effective way for postcolonial female to face the crisis of cultural identity.As an immigrant writer in the postcolonial era,Ali opens up the Third Space for us with literary creation.Today,we should advocate the cultural diversity and promote a harmonious world with cultural integration.