Building female identity within immigrant background in Monica Ali's Brick Lane

This study examines the development of the Bildungsroman literary genre, which can be also described as a literary system and / or literary tradition, and its place in contemporary English literature. Bildungsroman, which reached its traditional form in Victorian English literature, is evaluated in this study through Monica Ali's novel: Brick Lane in terms of the new elements and principles the genre acquired in Modernism and Postmodernism. The focus in the study is on the identity formation of the main character, which is considered to be the central element in the Bildungsroman, and on her personal developmental process according to the Postcolonial context. Brick Lane is exemplary to the Bildungsroman literary genre in contemporary English literature when it is analysed with regard to the personal development of Nazneen, a woman who immigrated from Bangladesh to England. Monica Ali, who is also from Bangladesh and started living in England at an early age, narrates the physical, mental and social development of a woman who was born and raised in Bangladesh and immigrated to the United Kingdom when she married at a young age. In this context, it is possible to evaluate other characters besides Nazneen with their impact on the personal development of Nazneen and within their own personal and social development in respect to culture and identity. From this point of view, Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane is analysed within the context of the development of Bildungsroman literary genre in English literature and with regard to the Postcolonial literary theory on the effect of migration and culture on personality formation.