{"title":"“So Cute, I Could Eat Him Up”: Maternal Hungers in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane","authors":"M. Dietz","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2022.0031","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper analyzes the formal occurrence of the edible child in Monica Ali’s 2003 novel Brick Lane, language which crystalizes stereotypical identity markers of the immigrant Bengali woman: food preparation and child-rearing. I both identify the strides Ali’s novel makes and temper them, refusing a dichotomic understanding of the text as either participating in the exoticization of Bengali women, largely through cuisine, or representing an ethos of independent womanhood, but rather arguing for the interdependence of such readings. Ultimately, I find that Nazneen’s linguistic connection between food and children, focalized through the close, third-person narrator, signifies her relationship to both eating and motherhood, casting each as a coping mechanism to quell her worsening depression, even as she begins to find independence romantically and economically.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"54 1","pages":"410 - 425"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2022.0031","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
Abstract:This paper analyzes the formal occurrence of the edible child in Monica Ali’s 2003 novel Brick Lane, language which crystalizes stereotypical identity markers of the immigrant Bengali woman: food preparation and child-rearing. I both identify the strides Ali’s novel makes and temper them, refusing a dichotomic understanding of the text as either participating in the exoticization of Bengali women, largely through cuisine, or representing an ethos of independent womanhood, but rather arguing for the interdependence of such readings. Ultimately, I find that Nazneen’s linguistic connection between food and children, focalized through the close, third-person narrator, signifies her relationship to both eating and motherhood, casting each as a coping mechanism to quell her worsening depression, even as she begins to find independence romantically and economically.
期刊介绍：
From its inception, Studies in the Novel has been dedicated to building a scholarly community around the world-making potentialities of the novel. Studies in the Novel started as an idea among several members of the English Department of the University of North Texas during the summer of 1965. They determined that there was a need for a journal “devoted to publishing critical and scholarly articles on the novel with no restrictions on either chronology or nationality of the novelists studied.” The founding editor, University of North Texas professor of contemporary literature James W. Lee, envisioned a journal of international scope and influence. Since then, Studies in the Novel has staked its reputation upon publishing incisive scholarship on the canon-forming and cutting-edge novelists that have shaped the genre’s rich history. The journal continues to break new ground by promoting new theoretical approaches, a broader international scope, and an engagement with the contemporary novel as a form of social critique.
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