He’s discontent because he wants to succeed. Her husband Chanu likes to read and to learn but isn’t really a man of action. She dares to act, to go against fate and her ingrained acceptance of others choosing her life for her. Progressively, she opens her mind, lets herself assess her husband, the community around her. She doesn’t know how to think by herself but her being left alone in her apartment in a foreign country forces her to. The prose of the early chapters reflects her struggle.

She has difficulties to process her thoughts. The whole novel is told through Nazneen’s eyes.

Her life really shifts when her children grow up enough to bring the outside world at home and when she starts sewing at home and earning money. She’s introduced to respectable women of her community. In Bangladesh it was no more possible to be both poor and fat than to be rich and starving. She tries to adjust to her new environment as best she can. She had no preparation for what she would find in London. She cooks, cleans the apartment, cuts Chanu’s hair, nails and corn. She’s a woman therefore she was born to serve her husband. She’s passive because that’s how she was educated. She barely knows how to read and write, she has no opening on the world, she’s a devout. The last one is Hasina’s life, back in Bangladesh.Īs I said before, Nazneen is a simple woman. The third one is the evolution of the neighbourhood, the Bengladeshi community and the children of the first immigrants. The second dimension is Chanu’s personal journey. The first dimension is the slow opening of Nazneen’s mind to her right to individuality. He’s educated and hopes for a promotion that never comes.īrick Lane is a four dimensional book. At the beginning, Chanu works for the council as a clerk and is dissatisfied with his job. She doesn’t speak English, her only contacts are with other Bengladeshi women in the apartment complex. Brick Lane relates Nazneen’s story, her slow adaptation to her new life and her new environment. She moves with him in an apartment in Tower Hamlets, near Brick Lane, London. Chanu is in his forties, he’s an old man to her. In 1985, when she’s eighteen, Nazneen is sent to London to marry Chanu, a Bangladeshi emigrant. Nazneen was born in a village and she and her sister Hasina hardly receive any education. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. This part is very important because it’s the crux of Nazneen’s education. Deliberately, her mother decided not to take action to save her but let Fate decide if her baby should survive or not. Nazneen was a premature baby born in 1967 in rural Bangladesh her survival was left to Fate. French title: Sept mers et treize rivières.

Brick lane monica ali analysis