ABSTRACT
Against a backdrop of post-9/11 suspicion towards Muslims, Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane has been celebrated for opening up a “hidden” world of the British Bangladeshi community in London. Indeed, most of the novel’s action takes place within the intimate spaces of the home of its protagonist Nazneen and her husband Chanu, giving the reader a sensation of trespassing into spaces not normally accessible to the mainstream British public. On one level, Brick Lane seems to confirm suspicions about the toxic nature of Muslim home life, as it follows a well-worn trajectory of female submission to patriarchal regulation towards increased liberation through contact with British public spaces where you can do “whatever you want”. However, on closer inspection, Ali’s novel also includes elements that work against this reading. Through its narratorial strategies and detailed descriptions of domestic spaces and activities, the novel exposes the performance involved in Nazneen’s maintenance of the home as a static space of cultural reproduction. Given the association between woman and place/home found in human geography, Nazneen’s performative qualities work to unsettle the male characters’ investment in home as a space of comfort and familiarity. Second, through its attention to the mundane activities of everyday life set against the performative image maintenance of “Banglatown”, Brick Lane works to frustrate readers’ desire to uncover an exotic or sensational world to consume within the private spaces of Muslim life. Rather, its portrayal of the family’s home life suggests a hybridized domesticity marked by complex negotiations and improvisations.
