Bruce 1
Hope Bruce
Agora Submission
Concepts of Consumption in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane
In Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, the complex relationship between sustenance
and sensuality is explored through the novel’s protagonist Nazneen.
At the age of
eighteen,...
More
Bruce 1
Hope Bruce
Agora Submission
Concepts of Consumption in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane
In Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, the complex relationship between sustenance
and sensuality is explored through the novel’s protagonist Nazneen.
At the age of
eighteen, Nazneen is placed in an arranged marriage to a man over twenty years
her senior with a “face like a frog” (Ali 6).
She, an “unspoiled” girl from a Bengali
village, migrates to London to begin her new life (11).
While Chanu is kind and
does not beat his young wife, he also does not provide the kind of love she had
foolishly imagined when accepting the hand of a much older man.
Trapped within
her existence, Nazneen uses food consumption to protest her marginalized status
within a marriage—with a partner—that does not fulfill her desire for sensuality or
allow for her to express personal agency.
However, she eventually fulfills both
these desires, first, in her relationship with her son Raqib and then with her lover
Karim.
By considerin
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