Allen Reid

11/24/09

Jasmine: A Story of Self-Evolution

            When I first read Jasmine I did not like the ending. It seemed to me that Bud Ripplemeyer was an ok guy, and Jasmine should have stayed with him, especially since they were going to have a baby together. However, after doing research and thinking about the text I have come to the conclusion that the ending suits the novel. The novel is full of oppressors who want to control people like Jasmine in such a way that is symbolic of colonialism. Jasmine is the typical colonial or postcolonial subject. Some of the oppressors in the text are obvious, such as Sukhwinder. Others are harder to detect and appear benevolent, such as Prakash and Bud. Throughout the book Jasmine must struggle to keep from being categorized because if she falls into a certain category, i.e., rural Indian girl, modern city Indian girl, or a small town Iowan wife she becomes stuck. She is unable to move forward, it is like dying in a lot of ways. She must fight against traditions that seek to hold her back. To avoid this travesty she must be always changing.  In her Hindu religion one’s actions in life determine what or who they will become in their next life. However, Jasmine is reborn into several people in this life through her actions. She is like technology that is always present in the novel, like technology she can adapt and change.

            In the beginning of the story her destiny seems dim; “a lifetime ago, under a banyan tree in the Village of Hasnapur, an astrologer cupped his ears and foretold my widowhood and exile” (Mukherjee3). The astrologer tells her that she cannot out run her fate. This is the first stage in her life, as Joyti. Her first life as Joyti in the feudalist village and her destiny is as dim as the astrologer has said, if not worse. It is full of oppressors. It is the duty of women here to marry very young and have many children. In order to escape this life she must change. “Her survival depends upon a flexible strategy of appropriation and transformation” (Ruppel 3). She must die and be reborn into another person. She must be like the electronics that Du makes. “I have altered the gene pool. I have spliced the gene of a Black & Decker paint sprayer onto the gear drive of a repaired Mixmaster. I have created a multi use super air blower with a variable speed drive” (Mukherjee 156). In order for the postcolonial subject to survive they have to mutate as such. The first change she makes is marring Prakash.

            Prakash seem very benevolent and only concerned for what is good for Jasmine. However, he only seeks to oppress her. It starts by him giving her the name Jasmine. By marring Prakash she is forced to become a modern city wife. She wants to do her duty and have children, but Prakash wish is not so. Therefore, she must submit. Although Prakash is controlling, there is a benefit in her marriage to him. “Her transformation from Jyoti to Jasmine represents her ability to escape from a social order that had gone on untouched for thousands of years” (Ruppel 3).  Hence, the change from Joyti to Jasmine is evolutionary. It is an escape from the horrible life back in the feudal village, a life so horrible that her mother almost killed her at birth in order to save her from such misery. Prakash in a sense is emblematic of the mindset of a colonizer. It is as if he sees her in a bad situation, in a place that is underdeveloped and has no future, and saves her. In doing so she is now his, and no matter how he treats her it is better than the life she had. Therefore, she best be thankful. “Big-city men prefer us village girls because we are brought up to be caring and have no minds of our own. Village girls are like cattle, whichever way you lead them, that is the way they go” (Muherjee 46). Jasmine must once again die and be reborn; she must rearrange herself into a new person like technology. She does escape the controlling grip of Prakash, but not on her on. This time she is forced to change.

            The change is forced upon her by a religious fundamental group lead by Sukhwinder. His gang places a bomb inside a radio that kills Prakash. However, the bomb was meant for her. As the bomb ignites they yell “prostitute and whore” (Mukherjee 85).  

The bomb is meant for Jasmine, who becomes a political target because her aspirations pose a threat to the social order built on women’s subjection. Like Jasmine’s father, and later Professor Devinder Vahera, Sukhwinder and his cohorts desire to return to an imagined, timeless, and seemless moment that, to them reflects the natural order. (Ruppel 4)

The change that Prakash forced upon her was in opposition to Sukhwinder’s beliefs. Sukhwinder believes in the old feudal system that Prakash so desperately desires to escape. Prakash does not want to live like peasants. However, Prakesh and Sukhwinder do have something in common: a belief in the patriarchal system and the male domination of females. Both seek to make Jasmine the person that they think she should be.

            With her husband’s death Jasmine’s future once again looks dim. As a widow leaving in Hasnapur, her life will be regressive. “Jasmine’s widowhood cancels her right to material fulfillment. It entails a life of isolation in the widow hut, on the margins of society” (Leard 116). In her culture a women cannot remarry, her future is set. There is no chance of social mobility. For her to stay in India is to imprison herself. To escape this prison she must break the outer shell and be reborn into a new person, and escape to a new place. “The little girl’s refusal to accept the astrologer’s prophecy changes into the adult narrator’s unwillingness to imprison herself within traditional, predetermined codes of femininity” (Leard 115). Like Joyti defied the astrologer, she now prepares to defy the patriarchal codes of a society that is thousands of years old. Whether it is the universe or traditions set by mankind, Jasmine will not be defined. She refuses to be with her mother and be “two widows shopping and cooking for each other, keeping the shrines of their husbands alive” (98). Her mind is made up; she plans to go to America and commit ritualistic suicide on the college campus that Prakash had planned to attend.

            Her first experience in America transforms her once again. She is raped by her smuggler. Half Face is the epitome of the colonizer. He is called Half Face because half of his face was blown off in the Vietnam War. Half Face has preconceived notions about Asians from his “riffle toting days.” This allows him to easily place all Asians into this category of preconceived notions. He represents another patriarchal order here in America. Automatically to him Jasmine is available. She is “one prime piece” and nothing else. When Jasmine’s makes the comment that her husband had been a TV repair man he becomes angry and repeatedly slams her head into the television set and tells her not to lie to him about having husbands and televisions. “His violence enacts his dream of the other, in which he will be the one to painfully introduce the native to the requirements and perquisites of culture, assuming as he does that culture itself is unknown to her” (Sanborn 588). Whereas in Prakash’s death her rebirth was forced upon her this time her rebirth is taken into her hands.

            After the rape she takes a shower. Here we have the idea of her old identity being washed away. She is being purified.

refusing to balance her defilement with her death a traditional ending for most rape victims in orthodox Indian society, Jasmine, infused with the destructive energy of the goddess Kali, murders the man who symbolizes the underworld of evil and begins a new journey. (Leard 116)

By not killing herself and instead becoming the destroyer goddess Kali, she does two things: she breaks free from traditional Indian culture and breaks traditional patriarchal control. Kali does not destroy simply to devastate, but to destroy so that rejuvenation may take place (Ruppel 6). The first interaction between them, he was on top of her penetrating her, expressing the power of patriarchal order and American ideology of superiority of her Asianness. However, in her embodiment of Kali, she takes control. She stands over him and takes the knife, a phallic symbol, and penetrates him in a symbolic overthrow of patriarchy. Hence, as Kali she destroys traditional Indian culture that calls for her own death and kills her rapist, thereby destroying the power of patriarchy over her. In a sense it is the postcolonial subject over throwing colonial order. Half Face’s days in Vietnam is representail of colonial and post colonial discourse. Whereas, America viewed the war as a struggle against communism, the North Vietnamese viewed it as a war with another colonial power, first the Chinese, then French, and then America. Half Face still carries the idea that the Asians are a postcolonial figure, which allows him to force his will upon them. “Half Face looked at me, amused. “So, you don’t mind ending up here with me instead of in the back of a cattle truck?” (110). This statement is emblematic of the colonial mindset of their subjects, that is, no matter what I do to you it is better than what you would have had without me. Half Face takes Jasmines things and goes through them, he even puts on her dead husband’s Jacket. There again this is typical of colonial ideology, where everything that belonged to the subjects, now belongs to the colonizers. This is the reason that Half Face is angered by the idea of her husband because she now belongs to him and not to her husband. Therefore, her killing Half Face is not only a form of destroying patriarchy, but also destroying colonial ideology, taking power away from the colonizer and empowering the postcolonial subject.

            After her initial stay in Tampa, Florida she goes to stay with Prakash’s old professor. However, this move is extremely regressive. Here too she feels the closing in, the inescapable stale environment of India. Jasmine says of her stay there “I’d come to America and lost my English” (161).  It is a stamen about her environment being more Indian than American. There at the house of the Professorji she was just a widow. Her destiny would be to be a care giver to professorji and his family. “They had kept a certain kind of Punjab alive, even if that Punjab no longer existed. They let nothing go, lest everything be lost” (Mukerjee 162).  The chance of Jasmine becoming anything other than their servant would have been a threat to their world. Hence, in order to not be controlled and categorized she must re invent herself.

            Her next identity is Jase. She is a day mummy for Duff the adopted child of Taylor and Wylie Hayes. The Hayes’ are different in a sense than other characters. They have a colonial mindset, but they do not seek to control Jasmine in the same way that other people have. “Taylor did not want to change me. He didn’t want to scour and sanitize the foreignness. My being different from Wylie or Kate didn’t scare him. I changed because I wanted to” (Mukherjee 185). At the Hayes household she is allowed to self develop in a way that she never could before. Taylor was not oppressive like the other men before him. However, there were things that connected the Hayes’ to colonialism and that ideology. “There were slave-auction posters from New Orleans in 1850, speaking of healthy wenches and strong bucks” (174). There is that heavy imagery of slavery that connects with the Hayes’ own child Duff. Duff’s adoption is strange to Jasmine.  “We could have gotten a child out of Paraguay. The Needhams on the six floor got their baby from Paraguay. The way that they described the whole thing made it sound awful, sort of like a direct sale” (170).  Jasmine maintains the identity of the day Mummy up until Wylie’s departure from the family. Then she soon realizes that she has become much more to Taylor.

            Taylor is in love with Jase and she is in love with him and her new family. Taylor longer views her as a care giver or day mummy, but now he looks at her like a lover. She even prays that Wylie and her new lover will stay in Europe for as long as they needed, so not to interrupt Jasmine caring for her new family (183). Jasmine also makes the comparison between Prakash and Taylor. When talking about Wylie’s love affair with Stuart and the way that Taylor responded she said: “Prakash would have slugged and raved. Prakesh would have been impossibly possessive. He would have put in new locks and bars on the outside of the front door to the apartment” (183). Taylor serves as a foil to the old patriarchal system that Prakash represented. Taylor is like a new man in a postcolonial land, where he has colonial ideas that are impressed upon him, but his genuine good character is transcendent. However, when the killer of her husband suddenly appears in New York, she must flee from her new family and assume a new identity in order to survive once more.

            She moves to Iowa-the state that Duff was born in. There she is the live in girl friend of Bud. She assumes the name Jane Ripplemeyer. “

To protect her new family, Jase escapes to Baden, Iowa. Here again she changes, exchanging Jase for Jane. The point to note here is that she is actively changing her name, rather than passively accepting a name as she had with Prakash. But this new role requires a regression, like going back to village life, a life of duty and devotion. (Rupple 7).  

Her life with Bud is self chosen and it does save her life. If she would have stayed in New York, she would have been killed, or even her new family could have been killed. And it was her decision to come to Iowa. After all she had come to Iowa against Taylor’s wishes. However, Iowa is a time warp, like that of India. “Bud courts me because I am alien. I am darkness, mystery, inscrutability. The East plugs me into instant vitality and wisdom. I rejuvenate him simply by being who I am” (Mukerjee 200). Bud’s attraction to Jasmine is purely exotic and reeks of colonialism. It is the west wanting to posses the East. In order not to become his property Jasmine does not marry Bud. As his live in girlfriend she is more like his caregiver as she was to Duff. Bud represents a cultural narrative; it is the exact thing that Jasmine must escape in order to live her life. Bud’s history is a straight line that follows the linear path of the American heartland, i.e., work hard on the farm and in the end everything will work out. Bud is symbolic of Jasmine’s father who held on to his wealth in Lahore, long after it was gone.

            Jasmine has many foils in the novel like Bud, but the biggest one is Darrel. Darrel is the typical Midwestern farmer. He has inherited his farm from his father like many other Midwesterners. However, times have changed since his father was farming the land. They are experiencing a drought and many farmers are losing their land. It is the perfect time to evolve and change or be destroyed by the future. There is no doubt as to what Jasmine would do in such a situation, however, Darrel is torn. On one side he wants to do something different, such as sell the farm to a golf company, but on the other side he his restrained by tradition.

He (Darrel) is following the path laid down by several over lapping narratives that bind him: Midwestern heartland mythology, broader American agrarian/ pastoral narratives, and the family history that is enforced by Bud, who functions as Darrel’s and the countries surrogate financial father. (Hoppe 150)

Darrel is like everyone else in Baden County, he is in debt and his farm is failing. If he is to stay in business, he must be dependent upon Bud once again. “I can’t make it here. It’s sucking my blood. And Bud’s the blood sucker” (Mukerjee 217). It is Bud’s linear history, the Midwestern farmer narrative that is killing Darrel. Even though he wants change, he wants to escape, he cannot. The Darrel narrative shows the danger of Bud and Baden County. Darrel’s suicide is a message of the danger that can happen to those who are not willing to take chances and break tradition. Darrel is a message to Jasmine that she must once again change, if she wants to continue to live. If she stays in Baden with Bud, it will be only to follow tradition, the narrative of being the responsible wife, and not living for herself.

            Returning back to the thought in my opening paragraph, which was my dislike of the novel upon my first reading, I did not like it because I thought that it was not right for Jasmine to leave Bud while carrying his baby. However, after doing research and writing the paper the truth is clear. “I am not choosing between men. I am caught between the promise of America and old world dutifulness” (Mukherjee 213-14). “Bud is equally clearly a representative of the dangers of tradition. He is in many ways analogous to Jyoti’s own father, the gentleman farmer who refuses to accept his own loss of power and status” (Hoppe 151). Hence for her to stay with Bud would be equivalent of her staying in India and accepting the astrologer’s prophecy. However, in the end she states: “Watch me re-position the stars, I whisper to the astrologer who floats cross-legged above my kitchen stove” (Mukherjee 240). We see here that Jasmine has taken an active role in her destiny; she is not just a victim. She has broken the chains of patriarchy, tradition, and devotion; instead she has chosen to make herself-to be an American. The last words of the novel say “I am out the door and in the potholed and rutted driveway, scrambling ahead of Taylor, greedy with wants and reckless from hope” (Mukerjee 241). Is not that what being an American is all about? From our pioneer days until now, Americans have always been scrambling ahead of ourselves reckless with greed and hope. I think that is what Jasmine done throughout the novel was be American. And in the end she warns us, a new country, not to be restrained by tradition like many countries older than us, and she shows us the dangers of what can happen, if we are afraid to change ourselves and not fit into the American narrative.

Bibliography

Hoppe, John. “The Technological Hybrid as Post-American: Cross-Cultural Genetics in Jasmine.”

                        Melus 24 (1999): 138-56.

Leard, Abha. “Mukherjee’s Jasmine.” Melus 27 (2000): 170-5.

Maxey, Ruth. “Who wants Pale, Thin, Pink Flesh?: Bharati Mukheerjee, whiteness, and South

                        Asian American Writing.” Texual Practice 20 (2006): 529-47.

Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine. New York: Grove Press, 1989.

Ruppel, Timothy. “Re-inventing Ourselves a Million Times: Narrative, Desire, Idenity, and

                        Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine.” College Literature 22 (1995): 181-91.

Stanborn, Kristen. “We Murder who We Were: Jasmine and the Violence of Identity.” American

                        Literature 66 (1994): 574-93.