The House and the Home: Gender in Diaspora in Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers

Résumé En

Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003) explore the difficulties of making a home in a diasporic situation. The two novels portray the family lives of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan and Bangladesh, respectively) and address the gendered representation of the home and the way it is related to the house, or physical place of dwelling in the new country. This article proposes to explore how spaces are appropriated and territorialised by women in Maps for Lost Lovers and Brick Lane. The female characters of both novels are often in a situation of unwanted migration, linguistic exclusion, and relative reclusion inside the house. However, the way they relate to the home and the house suggests that they take different paths, testifying to their attempts at reappropriating the space of the house, either by defining its contours or by defying them.