The Construction Of Hybrid Identity In British Novel Brick Lane

Brick Lane is the debut and representative of Monica Ali, a Bengali British female novelist. Through an ordinary Bengali immigrated woman, Nazneen’s daily life in Brick Lane, London, the novel not only reveals a panorama of Bengalis’ real life in Britain, but also shows conflicts between the West and East, and identity-blurred Muslim diasporas’ struggle in postcolonial West as "the other". This is the first novel which focuses on the living condition of Bengali immigrants in Britain. And for its skilled writing and deep thoughts, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize of 2003.Under the process of globalization, the issue of identity is a commonly discussed and an inevitable topic in postcolonial literature and culture studies. And hybrid identity becomes a frequently mentioned term among the field of postcolonialism. More importantly, since Brick Lane is a novel recording the real life of Bengali immigrants in postcolonial London under the post 9/11 background, it is suitable to analyze the novel from the view of identity construction.There appear many studies on this postcolonial reality work both abroad and at home since it was published in 2003. But there is still no paper to discuss the process of hybrid identity construction in Brick Lane at home. Hence, based on Homi Bhabha’s hybrid identity theory, this thesis will take a case study on the three protagonists’ different cultural identity constructions in this novel. Through the analysis and comparison, this paper aims to reveal their different hybrid identity constructions as well as the reasons causing these differences. The thesis consists of five parts:Chapter One gives an introduction to the whole thesis, including the significance of study, the research objects and structure of thesis. Chapter Two outlines the framework of thesis and the literature reviews on Brick Lane both abroad and at home. Chapter Three discusses the different hybrid identity constructing progresses of different characters—Nazneen, Chanu and Karim through the theory of hybridity. Chapter Four exhausts the reasons why they get different hybrid identity constructions. The last chapter serves as the conclusion, and the major findings and limitations are concluded here.