56 pages • 1 hour read
Brick Lane
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Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Razia gets a job in a garment factory only to lose it when it closes down. Nazneen’s home cottage industry comes at a steep price, as Mrs. Islam arrives to demand payment. When she leaves, Nazneen confronts her husband directly about the debt, only to be told it isn’t her concern.
Karim, the middleman between Nazneen’s sewing and his uncle’s garment business, gradually takes over the space in Nazneen`s home during his frequent visits to deliver materials and pick up the finished product. Little by little, she crosses boundaries: first by making him tea, then allowing him to pray before her, which leads to them committing the sin of a woman joining a man in prayer. This intimacy extends to his inviting her to a planning meeting on the estate, declaring they need some older women.
The internal struggle between erotic love and morality is externalized in the Islamic war over the female body. Nazneen understands something huge is happening on the estate, but not having the political language, she only can speak of penetration of boundaries – “men are writing leaflets and pushing them through doors.” This metaphor for the nervy Karim thrusting his libido into her veiled life serves to connect the political/public sphere to the sexual/private realm. Repeated like a chant, the plot progresses when Nazneen “unveils” her sister from “the seclusion of her underwear drawer.”
On the street, she has a momentary reconciliation between the stoic indifference of fate and desire. Moreover, the refusal to meet fate with indifference would impact on her happiness. This is a telling passage as it reveals how women in Islamic cultures are not encouraged to think, but to simply follow and obey their husbands. Yet, Nazneen’s instinctual opposition to Chanu returning home foreshadows her transgression and brings up a major question: could her succumbing to fate actually be a disguise for an act of rebellion against her protected life?
The key symbol for this transition is Nazneen’s sighting of a woman with white hair accompanied by a swaggering young man carrying a black medicine bag just as Chanu is reciting Shakespeare words: “Oh rejoice...” They turn down a side street as if “by a mutual and unspoken plan.” This means the forces of fate have already been set in motion by means of Mrs. Islam’s loan; ironically, the tool of her economic liberation, the sewing machine, is the “iron fist” of fate demanding change in this relationship.
Hasina’s letter about a bank robbery she witnesses is a foreshadowing of the violence resulting from the struggle between the opposing gangs in London.
The war of leaflets between Karim’s extremist Bengal Tigers and the more moderate Lion Hearts reflects that the true battleground is the female body, with the Lion Hearts challenging HANDS OFF OUR BREASTS and Bengal Tigers retorting KEEP YOUR BREASTS TO YOURSELF. This is reflected at home with the secret Nazneen keeps from her husband: Karim is writing pamphlets on the family kitchen table even as Chanu warns his daughters to stay away from them.
Karim’s rhetoric of the struggle has a hidden meaning in the sexual: “We’re the ones who have to stand our ground.” Meanwhile, he has taken over Nazneen on her home turf, seductively picking up a handful of brass buttons from the box and placing them in the front pocket of his jeans. This triggers an electrical current in Nazneen. With Cupid’s arrow striking her growing awareness of her eroticized body, a crucial symbol marks the last boundary to cross: police dogs barricading a group of Lion Hearts. Chanu reacts to the heightened tension by brandishing a Lion’s Heart leaflet at his daughters and instructing them to wear trousers beneath their uniforms, for modesty.
Chapter 11 Summary
Nazneen has no conscious intention of attending the meeting. However, she is drawn there as if by a force. Not only does she have no husband to escort her, but discovers she is the only woman present. Indeed, her crossing the threshold guarded by the Questioner results in a bold new step in her autonomy. This is such a new experience that she doesn’t know where to position herself. Once she sits down, she is surprised to discover that she is participating in the discussion of a name and mission for the local group committed to Muslim rights and culture.
After this turning point, Karim feels free to bring his activist perspective and global news into Nazneen’s home along with materials to be stitched up. He marks his territory through the inflammatory political newsletters left behind.
Chapter 12 Summary
Dr. Azad pays a social visit. Despite her husband’s insistence that Mrs. Azad was a superb hostess, we learn that Chanu and Nazneen were not invited back again after their impromptu visit. Chanu is still driving a taxi and has lost hope in his petition for a mobile library, admitting he has had only seven new signatures this week. The men speak with immediate fear of the perils facing immigrants such as the drug epidemic that Chanu believes is caused by the government.
Chanu discovers Shahana reading “Multicultural Murder,” a pamphlet that accuses Muslim extremists of trying to turn “Britain into an Islamic republic.” He declares that all extra money will go to the “home fund.”
Chanu and Nazneen’s excursion down Brick Lane reveals how much new money has come to the Bengali community over the years. Nazneen has learned more of London life from Karim`s visits and his talk about his father. Now, when she catches a reflection of herself in a window, meekly following behind her husband, she feels conflicted: feelings of pride descend into weariness over her station. Confronted with a masculine attired woman with a camera, Nazneen is overcome with self-consciousness, like her entire life has been caught on camera. She has a revelation of her “good and evil angels recording her every action for Judgment Day” are suddenly multiplied into “the beating of a thousand angel wings.” This spiritual flight opens up an inner space separate from her stoic morality, thereby prompting recognition of her growing physical connection with Karim.
Hasina`s letter reveals these opposites by describing a bank robbery that she witnessed in which two robbers were set on fire. She is mirroring her sister’s political awakening by decrying the rampant corruption at home. Nazneen attempts to reply, but tosses the paper away in horror with the shock that she has admitted to falling in love. She hears Mrs. Islam in the hallway and crawls under the covers. This conscious avoidance of fate causes Nazneen to take a crucial step to freeing herself from the devil’s shackles. She rises to calculate the numbers of the “Islamic” debt.
Nazneen takes Bibi to see the doctor about her tonsillitis. The girl is captivated by his collection of snow globes. Dr. Azad comments that the settling of the white flakes into a peaceful arrangement is like life: “If you are strong, you withstand the storm.” In bed, she adds up the reasons for her newfound desire: the leaflet war, Mrs. Islam, Razia, Hasina, the insufficient Home Fund, the girls’ refusal to go home. Later, Karim simplifies the source: “It is because of me.”
As Karim and Nazneen become lovers, the leaflets begin to arrive at night, a metaphor for the illicit activity under Chanu’s roof. Meanwhile, the Muslim riots invade the living room through pictures on television.
Chapter 10-12 Analysis
When Nazneen confronts her husband about the loan, he insists it is not her concern, yet this shadow woman must be confronted if Nazneen is to transform her fate into destiny. Summoning the courage to confront her husband is Nazneen’s first step to resolving the problem of evil. Mrs. Islam represents the indirect feminine means of manipulation and drama and literally veiled expression to get what she wants. After this first initiation with evil, Nazneen has to take the steps that will enable her to confront her foe with logic and directness.
In her role of maintaining balance in her family, Nazneen is learning the inner art of self-mastery and putting it into daily practice with her inner reflections, prayer, and reading of the Koran. In this new space of balancing opposing energies, Nazneen finds herself centered enough to understand what is happening with her new boss, Karim, nephew of a sweatshop owner who replaces her husband as middleman.
The term middleman is apt for this relationship, because Karim, with his tight jeans and gold chains, is the erotic attractor who brings forth the tension of opposites that will force the evolution in Nazneen. The polarization is externalized in desire. For example, she is torn between wanting to inform her husband of her political education and wanting to keep her awakening a secret. The root of this conflict is that the political awakening and the sexual awakening are rooted in the same source: Karim. At first, she believes her passion is sourced in sorrow for the unfortunate of the world that Karim has opened her eyes to, but soon he will relate that he is the source.
He seduces her into erotic foreplay in the confined space of her home. The incendiary political material, along with the raw material for Nazneen to transform clothing through her stitching skills, are metaphors for the passage of Nazneen’s soul through the fire of transformation.
The shifting of boundaries with her boss in her own home results in doubletalk when he invites her to a planning meeting; by insisting they need older women, he is really communicating that he needs an older woman. By attending the meeting, Nazneen crosses over a new threshold her in steady evolution towards independence. This passage serves as a rite of initiation in which the protagonist utilizes both sides of the self, the masculine and feminine, to direct autonomous action into an uncertain outcome—the third path through the opposites.
Every proactive step made by Nazneen furthers this journey. She not only attends the meeting alone but is surprised to discover she is the only woman participating in a crucial discussion. This outer collaborative experience shifts the energy between Nazneen and Karim. She now sees him as a committed activist with leadership potential. Not only is his newfound power on display in the meeting, but this dramatic display makes it clear that he is drawing on the power he has received from his “older woman.”
Yet, it is also clear that Karim’s rise in the community stems from his ability to marshal their passion into political will. His impromptu mission statement that “we are against any group that opposes us” externally projects the inner sexual tension between the opposites. This dynamic is made into a universal symbol by the destruction of the World Trade Center.
When Dr. Azad pays a social visit, the shadow of the “love marriage” returns. With the passage of time and no invitations back into his home, it is now obvious that the doctor is ashamed of the woman he married. His wife facilitated his social elevation by having her family fund his education, and yet wields this power over him by embarrassing him before his friends. This social meeting reveals that Chanu has lost his youthful idealism over the years and is on the verge of becoming a cynic, acutely aware of the passage of time.
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