“She Isn’t Going to Give Up”: Women’s Resilience in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane – A Feminist Reading

While Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane is most often analyzed from the vantage points of postcolonialism as a text dealing primarily with the plight of the Bangladeshi immigrant community in London, it is difficult, if not downright impossible, to overlook the crucial role women and feminine resilience (in the face of not only patriarchy, but also racism, religion and social unrest) play in the novel. In actual fact, the story can much easier be read as the plight of women in their quest for self-determination and identity than as a novel about cultural clashes in the multicultural metropolis. The present essay sets out to prove that feminism is actually at the forefront of Ali’s novel, and that the feminine characters in Brick Lane stand for a post-feminist reflection on the (still) gasping abyss between theoretical gender equality and real-life sexism.