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269344

From Arranged Marriage to Self-determination: An Interdisciplinary Reading of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003)

Article

Last updated: 03 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

العلوم الإنسانية

Abstract

Based on the assumptions of Self-determination Theory (SDT) with reference to Islamic feminist ideas, this paper investigates Bangladeshi women's quest for psychological growth and agency in Monica Ali's debut novel Brick Lane (2003). According to the psychological perspective of SDT, the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy reinforces intrinsic motivation and internalisation, leading to psychological well-being. Applying the SDT perspective to Ali's novel, the paper focuses on analysing the types of motivation triggering Bangladeshi women's actions and the relationship between these types of motivation and their psychological growth. SDT seeks to empower people by foregrounding motivation and internalization. Therefore, it is critically illuminating to wed SDT ideas with the feminist perspective since woman's empowerment and agency are pivotal tenets in feminism. In particular, this paper refers to Islamic feminist ideas since the novel's main subject is the status of Bangladeshi Muslim women. This research discusses how a Bangladeshi woman's life is dominated by extrinsic factors like fate, arranged marriage, and other patriarchal conditions that thwart her basic psychological needs. However, the novel offers an optimistic vision of the possibility of achieving psychological growth and empowerment for Bangladeshi women through processes of intrinsic motivation and internalisation.

DOI

10.21608/jssa.2022.269344

Keywords

Brick Lane, Monica Ali, Self-determination theory, Islamic feminism, Bangladeshi woman

Authors

First Name

Ashraf

Last Name

Kouta

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

قسم اللغة الانجليزية - کلية الآداب - جامعة دمياط - دمياط - مصر

Email

ashrafkouta@du.edu.eg

City

دمیاط

Orcid

0000-0001-5780-7372

Volume

23

Article Issue

7

Related Issue

37599

Issue Date

2022-10-01

Receive Date

2022-07-21

Publish Date

2022-10-01

Page Start

44

Page End

64

Print ISSN

2356-8321

Online ISSN

2356-833X

Link

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/article_269344.html

Detail API

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=269344

Order

3

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

653

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة البحث العلمي في الآداب

Publication Link

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

From Arranged Marriage to Self-determination: An Interdisciplinary Reading of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003)

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023