英文摘要 |
Reading Monica Ali’s Brick Lane in the context of South Asian diaspora in England, this paper attempts to analyze how the main protagonist, Nazneen, gains self-empowerment through her several “walking” experiences in the city. Via a comparison of the everyday practices adopted by Nazneen and her husband, Chanu, especially their respective walking in the city, my study argues that Monica Ali represents an alternative image of a “diasporic flâneuse,” Nazneen, who, despite most of her daily life being spent in the cloistered council estate, still participates in a gender-and-race conscious flânerie, and whose perceptive vision of the city not only yields a new reading of the cityscapes but also initiates her journey of self-emancipation. In the first section, I will investigate Nazneen’s experience of walking on the ethnic enclave of Brick Lane street. Via this tour, Nazneen starts to witness the suppression of female agency in the form of a semi-omnipresent, ethno-religious gaze. Despite limitations on her body, Nazneen has learned to step out of Brick Lane and articulate her agency. The second part of my paper therefore will discuss how diasporic agency and transnational imagination is manifested in her first venture in East London. Such initial emancipation of migrant knowledge also contributes to Nazneen’s sexual and political awakening when she begins an illicit affair with a Muslim youth, Karim. Based on her renewed agency and illumination, the third section of this paper will focus on Nazneen’s emancipation from the patriarchal, ideological rules by charting her courage in searching for her daughter Shahana on Brick Lane and her resolve to break with Chanu and Karim. Nazneen’s dream of ice-skating in a sari at the end of the novel, my study suggests, reveals a symbolic gesture of moving towards female freedom, insinuating the possibility of South Asian immigrant women’s achieving a new found self-empowerment in the global city. |