Transgression And Empowerment—A Study On Mobility In Monica Ali’s Brick Lane

This thesis focuses on the British Bangladeshi female author Monika Ali(1971-),and her novel Brick Lane as the research subject.The aim is to analyze the physical and psychological trauma experienced by the Bangladeshi diaspora in the novel due to gender,ethnicity and family.Through this analysis,the thesis seeks to explore the process by which these characters achieve psychological breakthroughs and gradually establish their immigrant discourse power.The thesis interprets Brick Lane from two perspectives:the content of the story and the narrative style.First,on the content level,the thesis focuses on the multiple dilemmas encountered by the Bengali diaspora in Brick Lane in London,England,and explores the coping strategies they adopt in the face of these dilemmas.Taking the significance of mobility in gender and political spaces as the starting point,the thesis explains the resistance of the characters’ bodies,ideologies,and cultural identities to various hegemonies in the context of the social contexts in which mobility is produced in the novel.Secondly,at the formal level,the thesis explores the mobility of the text’s narrative strategies and deciphers the identity positioning and discursive construction of the Bengali diaspora in the Western multiculturalism as revealed in the mobility of the narrative in the postcolonial diasporic context.The first chapter of the thesis reveals the multiple dilemmas faced by Bangladeshi diaspora,represented by Nazneen and Chanu after emigrating to Britain.First,the thesis explores the physical and mental plight of the Bangladeshi female diaspora.Among them,the female diaspora represented by Nazneen suffered from physical difficulties,which were manifested as being deprived of the right to walk freely in the public space,and her mental difficulties were derived from the doubts of themselves and the outside world brought by the physical difficulties.Secondly,the thesis also focuses on the alienation of gender relations in the Bangladeshi diaspora family.Under the influence of the new environment,new ideas,and mobility,each family is affected to a greater or lesser extent,and the traditional tone inside the family is incompatible with the modern background color outside.In the face of irreconcilable contradictions,the ethical framework of Bangladeshi diaspora family collapses,and the traditional order disintegrates.Finally,the thesis focuses on the plight of Bangladeshi male diaspora in the novel,pointing out that although Chanu and other males have not faced physical difficulties,they encounter psychological challenges brought about by racial discrimination and identity crises that cannot be resolved.Meanwhile,this chapter also attempts to expound on the reasons for the personal and family dilemmas faced by diaspora.The second chapter of the thesis takes the significance of mobility in gender space and political space as the starting point to reveal how the Bangladeshi diaspora can break through their own difficulties.This chapter points out that the Bangladeshi female diaspora finally achieved self-empowerment and cultural identity transformation through a series of mobile transgressions.Firstly,the thesis analyzes how Nazneen,as a representative of postcolonial female diaspora,challenges and confronts various forms of hegemony through the important medium of the body.By tracing Nazneen’s experiences of mobility in the city of London,the chapter analyzes the process of Nazneen’s transformation from a traditional Bangladeshi woman confined to the domestic space,to a "fl(?)neur" of postcolonial female identity who freely walks on the streets of London.Secondly,this chapter explains how Nazneen further controls her own body and activates her gender consciousness at a deeper level by subverting ethnic and religious taboos through her adulterous behavior,thus completing her liberation from the domestic space.Finally,by examining the mobility of identity in Nazneen,this chapter shows how the Bangladeshi woman diaspora can view the traditional Bangladeshi culture and London culture with an open mind and deal with the cultural differences in a "negotiated" way,finally finding a balance between East and West and achieving cultural identity.The third chapter focuses on the narrative strategies employed in the novel,revealing the characteristics of mobility in both the narrative perspective and voice.Firstly,in terms of narrative perspective,the novel’s viewpoint continually shifts between the omniscient narrator and the novel’s characters.When the plot involves buildings that symbolize imperial authority,the perspective switches to Nazneen,allowing her to gaze upon people and objects within the empire.This approach,according to the thesis,enables Nazneen to break free from the traditional mechanism of being gazed upon,thus establishing her own identity and authority,subverting the traditional mode in which colonized people are only objects of the colonizer’s gaze,constructing a new dialogic relationship between the colonized and the colonizers.Secondly,in terms of narrative voice,the thesis examines the first-person plural narrative employed by the subcultural groups in the novel,namely the Bengali ethnic group and the opposite white London ethnic group to explore the ideological issues behind the voice of "we".The thesis argues that the author endows the narrative authority to both the "Bengal Tigers" who uphold traditional Bengali characters and the "Lion Hearts" who adhere to traditional English characters,allowing the plural narrative voice to constantly shift between them.This allows the plural first-person narration to constantly shift between the two,resulting in a textual portrayal of the uncertainty and ambiguity of the narrative voice.This dissolves the legitimacy of the two subcultural groups’ respective national cultures that they uphold.This thesis,drawing on the relevant research achievements at home and abroad,provides a detailed interpretation of some aspects of Brick Lane that have not been deeply explored by scholars or even have not been touched upon yet.On the one hand,it focuses on the content level of the novel,including gender issues,racial issues,and religious issues.At the same time,it takes the emerging interdisciplinary theory of"mobility" as the main analytical entry point,and combines post-colonialism,identity studies,body studies,feminism,and spatial criticism as auxiliary perspectives tomake the research methods more flexible and diverse,revealing mobility from this perspective has positive implications for a range of transgressive behaviors and the generation of power by diaspora.On the other hand,there is a lack of research on the formal level of Brick Lane both at domestic and abroad.This thesis pays full attention to the formal level of the novel,starting from the narrative strategies reflected in the novel,using the relevant theories of post-classical narrative,and analyzing thesignificance of the perspectives and voices used in the novel for Bangladeshi diaspora to establish discourse authority.