Identity has been one of the key issues in social sciences’ debates in the past decades. Because of the amount of discussions and critiques around the concept of “identity”, it is perhaps the most transparent but also the most ambiguous notion in contemporary cultural studies, literary criticism and social theory. Different definitions have been given and disagreements have risen among researchers. Trying to figure out the correct definition is helpless, because different critics have contributed to give different meanings to the place of identity. Even though the concept has different meanings and interpretations, there is one thing to be sure about: ‘identity becomes an issue when it is in crisis’(ibid.), as phrased by the critic Kobena Mercer. The discussions around identity emphasise the importance of the notion as belonging to all spheres of individuals’ lives, leading them to explore their sense of belonging and many aspects of establishing their existence and others’.
This research tries to explore the way identity is approached, constructed and defined through the analysis of selected fictional works from contemporary British women writers. It will seek to determine identity not as a stable concept yet agreeing on the fact that it is a combination of different constituents such as gender, ethnic, social and individual which are fractured and unstable and thus cannot be identified as a stable entity (Hall, 1996: 4). This thesis attempts to find out about the construction of contemporary social and individual identities within the British literary production with particular emphasis on the novels of Alys Einion’s Ash (2018) and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2000) both of which can be described as novels of transformation.
As Mark Stein argues: “Many novels of transformation can also be charted as a quest for an outlook on life which accommodates the protagonists’ own identity, and which is shaped by a struggle with the parental generations, and one’s peers and society at large.” (Stein, 2004: 25). Both works can be introduced as a study of identity construction with the characters’ link between where they live and where they come from, emphasizing on movement and the sense of belonging. The different backgrounds of the authors offer a broader approach to identity by taking the discussion to a new level. It can indeed be observed in the selected works that identity is plural and fluid for these writers.
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Literature has an important role in reflecting on the cultural, historical and political processes of migration and its results. Literary representations do not only reflect the events on the past or comment on them; they can also affect the way their audiences perceive the situations in the past and today. Representation can be very deceptive depending on the way it is used. As Stuart Hall claims, “[…] while not wanting to expand the territorial claims of the discursive infinitely, how things are represented and the ‘machineries’ and regimes of representation in a culture do play a constitutive, and not merely a reflexive, after-the-event, role.” (Hall, 1989: 443) Thus, literary representations can both carry meanings and construct them as well.
British literature has always had the class problem as one of its central themes, whereas quest for identity has nevertheless remained central in American literature, reflecting the outcomes of immigration. However, towards the end of the twentieth century, with the rise of immigrant waves from the former British colonies, along with feminist movements and minorities’ attempts to become more visible, identity as a theme became prominent in British literature too. Migration under the conditions of contemporary globalization and the rising racial and ethnic diversity have become important issues in contemporary societies. A vast number of contemporary British novels have started to explore the identity question in the context of migration. They question what happens when people from different regions, ethnicities, regions, age and gender live together in the UK.
Novels of migration can represent the different aspects of contemporary British society in realist texts. There has been a dominance of literary productions shaped around multiculturalism in the UK, focussing mostly on British Asian and Black British characters. The novel became the most popular genre for this direction and novels narrating the stories of multiple cultures started to win several literary prizes and receive a lot of attention in the literary field. In addition to that, women writers especially started to add new perspectives on the topics of culture, migration, alienation, and violence. New researches and ideas in social sciences have started to find their way into the literary productions more often, by means of which they could attain new meanings.
Since the beginning of the 1980s, there has been a lot of research exploring meanings, expressions, and conflicts linked to the movements of individuals and certain groups. A number of scholars such as Kobena Mercer, Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau and Judith Butler have tried to explore how individuals represent themselves using different elements that constitute their identity, and how these elements are chosen and differentiated from each other. Notably because of the rich literature from the aforementioned scholars, it is almost impossible to share all the definitions and contributions.
For this reason, this research tries to limit the discussions of identity formation and transformation within the influence and results of migration. Notwithstanding, because a single perspective would not allow an overview of the contradictory phenomena, several ideas and scholars will be studied throughout the research. Through the close reading of the primary sources, I will address the following issues: space and its relation to identity; the sense of belonging as a significant aspect of identity; how one’s identity is constructed and transformed for different generations from different ethnic groups; and the processes of identification. The methods of close reading, comparison and textual analysis will be used throughout the research.
The main theoretical part of my analysis is based on cultural and postcolonial studies focusing on the work of theorists such as Homi Bhabha (1994) and Stuart Hall (1996) on identity and ethnicity, which I find essential for this study. This thesis will bring attention to the prominent role of space in identity construction and transformation, identification and agency in the selected female Bildungsromans.
The first part of this research will develop the theories around identity addressing different theorists from Cultural Studies, feminist Criticism and literary criticism. Additionally, space and movement’s contribution to and influence on the identity construction for migrants will be tried to explain. A brief introduction of Bildungsroman as a genre in contemporary British Literature with emphasis on Mark Stein’s work Black British Literature: novels of Transformation (2004) will be given in the end of the chapter. In Chapter II, Alys Einion’s novel Ash will be analysed with the theories explained in the first chapter. Chapter III will provide an analysis of Brick Lane. In conclusion, the analysis of the two works will be compared and the findings will be shared.
