Bangladeshi Women in Bricklane Essay Example for Free

Bangl fruit drinkshi Women in Bricklane EssayI al federal agencys said I provide non marry and be sent far away. I will go no farther than these paddy fields. But our mother told us we must not run from our fate. What cannot be changed must be borne. The test of life is to endure.Through such representation of gender and focus on history and dislocation, Monica Ali has extended the unsettled voice in British fiction. In her stunningly accomplished de precisely fresh Brick street (2003) which as well as got adapted in a photo quaternion years later, Ali tries to reconstitute the traditional Bangladeshi culture in a capital of the United Kingdom East End setting. She uses her characters to explore the positioning of Bangladeshi women inside Britain, as the novel focuses on their mixer relations inside and bulgeside the home.This paper aims to explore whether Monica Alis novel Brick Lane (2003) and Sarah Gavrons controersial screen fitting of the same name (2007) can ope n up avenues to discuss a new, if problematic, inclusion of Bangladeshi women in the international world and also to gauze the equivalentities and dissimilarities within the both. twain the novel and the blast created a controversy among the Bangladeshi society life history in London because they found problems with Monica Alis negative portrayal of their community members as being illiterate and backward, which they considered insulting. They claimed that the novel encour suppurated pro-racist, anti-social stereotypes.Brick Lane is the story of the Bangladeshi Muslim community living in the East End of London and in particular, that of Nazneen, her husband Chanu and Hasina, Nazneens good looking sister, who resides in Bangladesh and who was dis birthed by her family for flouting the traditional staged marriage system which she did by eloping with her lover and marrying him at the age of sixteen. Hasinas chaotic day to day life in Dhaka is revealed to us through with(predic ate) a series of regular, candid and some propagation terribly heartbroken letters sent to her sister in London in pidgin English.Nazneen often reminisces about her happy, innocent and c atomic number 18free childhood in her little village in the countryside of Bangladesh with her younger sister Hasina, which now stemmas with her despairing life in her dingy flat in a tall block in the hulk Hamlets. aft(prenominal) an arranged marriage with Chanu, who is already established in London and who is unattractive and twice her age, Nazneen arrives in London at the age of seventeen. The women moving to London and Tower Hamlets in particular had to adapt coming from a rural peasant society to a hostile urban culture. What Brick Lane does is show this transition and the concussion migration has on womens lives. Monica Alis novel shows how, after migration, the position of women in families and in the wider community undergoes a considerable transformation. What Nazneen refuses to do is to encounter herself and her culture as inferior or alien. Here ethnicity becomes a denotation of positivity rather than stigmatised identity.The high rates of poverty characteristic of Bangladeshi households ar shown in the novel, match with the overwhelming sense of isolation faced by the female characters and their reliance on their male counterparts. Consequently, the overall context of the novel presents a picture of deficiency and tall(prenominal)ships for Bangladeshis in Britain. Nazneen who cant speak English has to adapt to her new life in a foreign country with a husband who, although fundamentally kind-hearted, is disheartened for not being able to fulfil his dreams and carry his plans to completion. He believes himself to be above most of the Bangladeshi community members who are uneducated and wanting a great deal of elegance.Chanu scorns the attitude of his superiors who fail to recognise his talent and genius. He keeps a high opinion of himself which makes him a conceited, funny character in spite of his lucidity and his awareness of the conflict surrounded by the first and second generation immigrant, which, to his horror, was portrayed by his eldest daughter Shahana and which make him decide to repatriate his good family to Bangladesh.The novel is challenging in an overwhelming way the strong element of fate. Nazneen and Hasina are two characters through which Ali explores two images of femininity. Nazneen has been the good daughter who sure an arranged marriage and her younger rebellious sister Hasina was the bad daughter who takes her fate into her own hands by eloping with the man she loved and was consequently disowned by her father. Nazneen accepted her fate yet Hasina rebelled to create her own. Hasinas western-style attempt at romantic freedom, contradicts the traditional structures of Bangladeshi society within which she lives and within which her sister is immersed in the Diaspora. Both the sisters face problems settling wi th their husbands, and ultimately both mystify relationships with younger men.Though Nazneen carried out small rebellious acts at the beginning of her marriage, her aspiration for liberty started with her standoff to the handsome, young political enthusiast, Karim, which evolved into a physical and financial in reckonence and the discovery of her freedom of choice in a patriarchal community. Nazneen is plain not beautiful, notwithstanding not so ugly either and in contrast her sister Hasina is beautiful and feisty. (Ali 17). Hasina defines herself in contrast to the activities around her and Nazneen defines herself against the talkativeness of her husband. Through these transnational links, Nazneen and Hasina become embodiments of womanhood in two different but connected locations.Monica Ali endeavours to explore the impact of migration for those within the Bangladeshi Diaspora. Ali seems to suggest that within the context of Diaspora women are more than Bangladeshi than the Ban gladeshis in Bangladesh. We learn how those in Britain replicate the social practices and norms of Bangladesh so that the culture also migrates to Britain with the people through the open window, drifted wafts of music and snatches of currymain meals were cooked at all times of the day and night. (Ali 189).Yet in contrast, those who remain in Bangladesh are adapting to the changes occurring in society. Hasina acts as if she is the person who has shifted geographically to another country. She appears more modern in her thinking in contrast to her sister, who appears more traditional. The two women placed within the two different localities also enable Ali to show how social practices and social relations change in the two locations. Within the context of Britain, Nazneen witnesses changes in the images of Bangladeshi femininity among her friends, who become more westernised.The seventeen-year old, once subdued and conformable wife, matures into a forthright independent woman. She di scovers her own force and will power, something she was unaware of. She decides that she will no more be controlled by fate, she will take her own decisions, like not pursuit her husband by going back to their homeland. She will remain in London, she will work and look after herself and her two daughters.She takes this decision because her daughters are way too comfortable in London, and they dont want to go back home to Bangladesh. London is home for them, and thats when Nazneen realized that she was seventeen when she came here and now shes thirty-four, so she has lived half of her life here. This is home, and this is where her daughters want to be. This is where she found her independence and her voice in her own ways. She wears her sari. She has not started wearing trousers or cut her hair short. In her very own way, she has found a voice and she is comfortable with that here. Nazneen thus starts to believe in herself and realizes that she is suitable of taking charge of her o wn destiny.The Bangladesh Nazneen refers to is different to other Bangladesh Hasina writes about in her letters. The contrasts between Tower hamlets and Bangladesh are shown, for example by the fact that Nazneen comes from an idyllic, warm, green surroundings quite unlike the England of dead grass, broken paving st sensations and net curtains. Hasinas letters dispel the myth that Bangladesh is still rural. Rather it is now urban and violent. A more dangerous Bangladesh with corrupt politicians dominates the letters.Hasina describes to her sister how the garment girls have become branded as sexually immoral due to their working in boney proximity to men. The patriarchal world of Bangladesh mirrors the patriarchy practiced within Britain, but is stronger. For example, Hasina, left without the protection of a husband, is raped, consequently forced to become a slander to survive and her friend (Monju) is murdered by her husband drenching her in acid. While Hasina works within a fact ory as a machinist, her sister, in the liberated surroundings of the West, also resorts to working as a machinist, but in purdah within the environs of home.For Nazneen, Britain is loaded with negativity, and it fails to accumulate the warmth and security measures she experienced in Bangladesh. Nazneen treats her loneliness through anti-depressants which baffles her sister I do not know what kind of pill can cure disease of sorrowfulness. (Ali 143). Nazneen is disappointed with Britain and recollects Bangladesh with fondness, a nostalgia that provides the framework within which the story is located.Monica Ali uses the cluttered room where Nazneen lives as a metaphor for her protagonists state of mind. It becomes even more cluttered over the course of the novel. When Bangladesh is presented it is done so with space however, the restrictiveness of England is stressed through the feelings of claustrophobia. Nazneens perception of Britain for much(prenominal) of the novel is not onl y contained within the environment of her flat, but also when she gazes out of her window. Her London is restricted to her locality outside her window she sees dead grass and broken paving stones (Ali 12), cycle racks which no one was foolhardy enough to use, and round the corner is a playground that has shrunk to one decrepit roundabout. Nazneen evokes an image of Britain which is dark and grey and congested a golden metal army tearing up the road (Ali 33).The poverty in Tower Hamlets is also emphasised if not exaggerated by Nazneen as she ventures out of the home, and stepped over an empty cigarette carton, a brick and a syringe (Ali 380). Although Nazneens husband Chanu has a degree from Dhaka University, they live in a awful tower block in Tower Hamlets, where the paint flakes off the eczema-ridden walls. Poverty, socio-economic deprivation, dominates the social fabric of Alis Bangladeshi society in Tower Hamlets. This deprivation is also evoked through Nazneen smelling the ov erflowing communal bins (Ali 13).All the more, the Bangladesh that is reflected in British society angers Chanu, Nazneens husband, as it perpetuates a derogatory image of Bangladesh through education. He despairs over what his children are taught about Bangladesh all she knows is about flood and famine. Whole bloody country is just a bloody basket case to her (Ali 151). Even the image that Shahana has of Bangladesh is old and traditional. As she tells her sister, just wait until youre in Bangladeshyoull be married off in no timeyour husband will keep you locked up in a little smelly room and make you weave carpets all day long (Ali 329). In Bangladesh youll have to drag your teeth with a twig. They dont have toothbrushes(Ali 331).Brick Lane is a contemporary, and humane story, the characters are shown with all their complexities and are described realistically and in point in time whether its Mrs Islam, the hypochondriac, evil and manipulative usurer, or Razia the friendly and st rong will-powered neighbour, or Shahana, the refractory, provocative and westernised teenage-daughter, or the sweet second daughter, little Bibi who is even tempered, quiet and hard working. It is a post-colonial novel written with a great deal of compassion and optimistic hope.Sarah Gavrons convey that was screened in 2007 is closely related to the book in terms of important aspects like mould, themes and plot. A long shot shows the central protagonist Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) disappearing behind one of the many front doors dotting the monolithic faade of a public housing block in East Central London. This concludes a seven-minute prologue in which director Sarah Gavron condenses the first hundred pages and more of Monica Alis 2003 source novel. digitally colorized shots of 1970s and 1980s Bangladesh indicate the extent to which Nazneen has idealized her memories of growing up in that time and place, her close relationship with younger sister Hasina (Zafreen) an especial s ource of reverie. A rural Bangladeshi childhood remembered as idyll ends, however, with the suicide of the girls mother.Consequently, their father arranges marriage between Nazneen, now a teenager, and the significantly older Chanu (Satish Kaushik), an immigrant living in London and a man she has never met. Some fifteen years later, thirty-something Nazneen is shown walking through and around Brick Lane, one of the most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in the United Kingdom. Ghosting through a multicultural urban milieu radically different from that she was born into, she speaks to no one, slips ever further from the following camera, and disappears finally behind the front door of a flat as cramped and constricting as her monotonous existencedutiful wife, mother, and nothing more.She is shown as raising two daughters Shahana and Bibi. Bibi (Lana Rahman) is still young, sweet, and compliant, but Shahana (Naeema Begum) is a teenager with raging hormones and a sharp tongue.Nazneen an d Chanus ossified marriage is changed irrevocably when the former buys a fix machine. She does so through necessity as much as choice, driven by the need to financially support her family, husband, and daughters Shahana and Bibi , after Chanu resigns his job, disillusioned by his inflexible failure to win promotion. Yet a purchase which seems initially to confirm Nazneens domestic incarceration yet furthernot working from home but home as workbrings her into contact with British-born Karim (Christopher Simpson), the young man who delivers garments to her flat for finishing. She begins an subprogram with him, and the emotional and physical self-confidence this engenders allows Nazneen to assert, eventually, her presence and identity within the straightaway family unit.Yet the seemingly clear-cut contrast between Karim and Chanu and the divergent futures they seem to promise Nazneen become more complicated as Brick Lane progresses. Karim comes to seem slight attractive than at fir st, Chanu more so. The formers marked physical and cultural differences from the latter (young, fit, second-generation, British-Bangladeshi vs. old, fat, first-generation, Bangladeshi-British) cannot disguise the fact that he is equally inclined to idealize Nazneen as airplane pilot not individual. Its Chanu who valorizes her as a living example of the girl from the village in the beforehand(predicate) pages of Alis novel. Crucially, however, theres no interpretative violence in transferring those words to Karims sing in Gavrons film.Meanwhile, Chanu is shown to possess significant redeeming qualities obscured by his complacent, corpulent exterior. He loves his family deeply and is horrified equally by the rise of Western anti-Muslim and Muslim anti-Western position in the wake of 9/11. Chanu is able to view this process with far more humanistic caution and historical context than Karim can or will. Ultimately, Nazneen ends her affair with Karim, while Chanu agrees to return to Bangladesh on his own. Liberated, albeit not in the sense that Brick Lane seems initially to promise, Nazneen stays behind in London with her two daughters.Wider contextthe instal of 9/11 on Western Muslims, the changing role and self-image of immigrant communities within contemporary British society, the ongoing, intergenerational debates about tradition, gender and religious identity within those groupsare all glimpsed fleetingly from Nazneens perspective. The main effect, though, is to impress upon viewers just how cloistered her vantage point is. Ultimately, Brick Lane temporarily im prisons the world-view of all who watch it behind bars made from net curtain. This is so even while the film ostensibly supports Nazneens quiet attempts to break free from something approaching a state of psychological house arrest.Brick Lane is a real place, and its been the centre of the British garment district ever since Huguenot refugees brought their looms from France in the early 18th centur y, followed by waves of poor Irishmen and Ashkenazi Jews. Brick Lane was however, shoot in the financial district that is synonymous with the books real location. The novel as compared to the film sets up the location more exotically like a mini rendering of Bangladesh, with the smells of spicy food, colourful fashions and emphasis on religion. For the film, one was expected to picture a colourful setting that transported the reader to another world. Though Brick Lane in the film does create its own world, it lacks the lustre brought out in the novel, and definitely was not reflecting any part of South Asia.The scenes in Bangladesh gave more of a contrast to London life, unlike the book, where Nazneen seems to still be tied to her homeland. The book documents her memories as if she had not left the village. For example, Nazneen does not leave the house, allowing her to limit her exposure to English culture. The film demonstrates a sharper contrast of her surroundings mostly throug h the addition of Nazneen leaving the flat to do the shopping. The shopping allows her more freedom and thus, more selective information is acquired about England.The film effectively provided the atmosphere of Chanu and Nazneens flat. In the novel, Bangladesh provided richer local descriptions compared to London, because Nazneen did not dwell on the details of her flat. She only mentions some decorations. The film gives the opportunity to see the living arrangement in London from the complex she lives in with Chanu. The film emphasizes the close quarters and the weather to portray a cold representation of London, differing a lot from the vibrant frolicking in the lush and long Bangladeshi grass of the two sisters. Even at the end of the film, Nazneen is shown making snow angels with her daughters, as if she has conquered the cold.The casting was terrific. Chanu, Shahana and Bibi gave compelling performances that mirrored the characters in the book. Chanu especially is exactly the way one visualizes him on the basis of the novel. To understand Nazneen one had to make sure to read the novel because then one would know the thoughts in her head that she did not always say. Tannishtha Chatterjee, the actress who starred as Nazneen, faced a challenge in this role, because so much of the character was about not saying anything. Silence also played a big role in the film, which sometimes contributed to the action and other times made the movie too slow.The novel captivates the reader by the sensory details, mystical connections to Bangladesh, and curiosities about English culture. The film uses lock in to provoke the audiences response to the acute scenes in Bangladesh while also building up to the climax. Though the climax is not surprising to the reader or film goer, the novel was more effective in showing Nazneens struggle and confrontation with disaster. The novel created tensions leading up to Nazneens inability to react. The film on the other hand, relied t oo much on silence for plot points to emerge. The reader tends to miss Nazneens rebellion since its all done in silence.Overall, rebellion and freedom are downplayed in the film likely to emphasize the idea of fate. Hasina, Nazneens sister is the source of scandal in the novel and could have been more present in the film. She acts almost as a ghostly figure, sometimes only mentioned through voice, when Nazneen pictures her whispering in her ear. The film also glamorizes her experience in Bangladesh, as if she has the freedom to fall in love. The letters in the novel describe the opposite with violence to women and hard work conditions. In the film, Hasinas true situation is exposed by Chanu, who hears from his cousin that she has become a prostitute. However, then Nazneen falls ill, and the audience is left in confusing hallucinations, wondering if Chanu was trying to be mean to his wife or was actually speaking the truth.This inconsistency between reality and fantasy is evident i n both the book and the film. Chanu glorifies Bangladesh in both the mediums. Nazneen reflects on her memories from her childhood in Bangladesh, but is grounded in the reality of London. For example, she cannot depend on Chanu to be responsible, when he cannot hold down a job and continues to insist that they will return to Dhaka. She does not point out his failures, the same way she does not point out Karims, but acknowledges her realistic priorities. Some include the disaster that Shahana would encounter in Bangladesh, and another would be breaking up with Karim and needing to be on her own. The American trailer of the film also illustrates this dichotomy, advertising the movie as more dramatic and scandalous. Perhaps the closeness of the text to the film fitting is another way to enhance the themes of the original story.Much of Brick Lane takes place within Nazneens cluttered, unremarkable home, but this is rendered a fascinating, richly expressive setting through accomplished, considered use of technique by director Sarah Gavron and her key colleagues. Carefully calibrated expressionistic exaggerations of colour abound to communicate Nazneens largely unspoken inner life. commonalty sequins on a girls top reflect on her face to show her initial entrancement with Karim sunlight filtered through gauzy red curtains turns the dingy prison of her marital bedroom into a boudoir when he occupies it with her. Likewise, Gavrons movement of camera and attention to framing are evocative and subtle in equal measure.If, as illustrious at the outset, one of the first shots in Brick Lane can be seen to sum up both the films project and a range of possible responses to it, something similar can be said of the movies final image. With Chanu back in Bangladesh, it is now winter in London. Nazneen and her daughters play joyfully in the snow-covered square at the front of their apartment block, inhabitants of a climate, and by extension a culture, diametrically opposed to t he monsoon conditions the teenaged Nazneen and Hasina frolic in at the films early moments. A birds-eye aerial shot of mother and daughters lying on the ground, waving their arms and legs, cuts to a medium shot of Nazneen on her own.The reader capacity abbreviate the impression here that Nazneens unassuming victory is also Brick Lanes. She extricates herself from the oppressive expectations placed upon her by virtue of the body and respective cultures she was born and migrated into. So too the film respectfully declines the received agenda of responsibilities imposed upon it in light of its British Asian subject matter and cultural provenance. Brick Lane is not a film finely crafted and beautifully performed in order to mask or compensate for its evasion of inarguable ethno-political duties. Rather, its sensuous pleasures and humane insights expand the range of what the political might be, and rethink the relative scale on which it might be expected to loom, within an important tr adition of contemporary British film.Thus, both the mediums, reciprocating each other, have successfully rendered the portrayal of Bangladeshi women in the transnational world with a subtlety and expertise that is seldom to be seen.WORKS CITEDAli, Monica. Brick Lane. Black Swan. Great Britain. (2003). Print.Brick Lane. Dir. Sarah Gavron. Perf. Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik and Christopher Simpson. cherry-red Films.(2007). Film.Lea, Richard and Lewis, Paul. Local protests over Brick Lane film. Gaurdian. (Monday 17 July,2006). Web.http//www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul/17/film.ukHussain, Yasmin. Writing Diaspora South Asian Women, Culture and Ethnicity. Ashgate Publishing Ltd. England. (2005). Print.McLeod, John. The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial Studies. Routledge. London. (2007). Print.Mukherjee, Meenakshi and Trivedi, Harish. Interrogating Post-Colonialism Theory, Text and Context. Indian base of Advanced Study. Shimla. (1989). Print.Sinha, Sunita. Post-Colonial Wo men Writers New Perspectives. Atlantic Publishers Distributors (P) Ltd. New Delhi. (2008). Print.