Bharati Mukherjees epic tale of life transformations, Jasmine, follows the story of a young girl searching for herself in strange, new lands. With a constant change of setting, time, and culture, Jasmine must constantly change herself as well. The reader follows Jasmine on her quest through India, Florida, New York, and Iowa. As the people around Jasmine change her name, the reader sees a shift in her personality.
The novel's opening phrase, Lifetimes ago... sets in motion the major theme, the recreation of one's self. Jasmine is seven years old. Under a banyan tree in Hasnpur, the small village where she grows up, an astrologer forecasts her eventual widowhood and exile. Given the traditional Hindu belief in the accuracy of such astrological forecasts, this is a grave moment in the young girl's life. It foreshadows her first husband's murder and her journey from India to Baden, Iowa.
Setting plays a large part in Jasmines transformation. In her village of Hasnpar, she is Jyoti; a young Indian girl living a feudal society. With her fathers death and her mothers reclusive personality, she begins to grow as a young woman and begins to yearn for life outside of Hasnpar. Hasnpar represents the feudal, third-world country where married women used only pronouns to address their husbands. Once married, she and Prakash move to Jullundhar, a city in North West India. Here, she leaves her feudalist past behind and begins her new life as a modern woman. After her husbands unexpected death, she travels to Florida with the intent on burning her husbands suit and killing herself with the flames. Once there, she is raped and forced to kill a man in order to save her own life. Florida represents the hardest time in jasmines life. Upon traveling to New York, she works for an academic family as a nanny. She now adopts the identity of Jazzy and begins to fall in love with her new American life. The man she works for renames her Jase and they begin a love affair. She soon realizes that she cant stay, for fear of breaking up the family that she works for. She flees to Iowa, a place that is for little old ladies in tennis shoes and for high school girls in trouble.. Iowas flat. Iowa is Jasmines safe place; a place that is related to her feudal and old-world dutifulness India. She becomes plain Jane and leaves all of her past lives and cultures behind. She tries to blend in with her surroundings, but it is impossible with the foreign looks that she possess. Her final destination is unknown, all the reader finds out is that she finally finds herself and the person she wants to be with the man from New York, and they ride off into the sunset.
Jyoti, Jasmines birth name given to her by her grandmother, is a Hindu name meaning light. Born into a Hindu family, one that survived the Partition Riots where Muslims destroyed houses and property, of 9 children. Born a girl, her birth was not celebrated as the birth of a boy would have. Once born, her mother had tried to choke her so that she would not have a doweryless life. Her name could be a figurative meaning of being the light in her fathers life. She was his favorite daughter. Literally, she is the only educated girl in her family beyond basic schooling. She stays in school longer than her sisters, and learns alongside her brothers. Therefore, she is the light in her family; light meaning educated.
Jasmine is her second name, given to her by her husband Prakash. Prakash is her brothers friend, and they didnt actually meet. One night, a discussion among her brothers, Prakash, and another unknown man erupted in Jasmines kitchen. While Jasmine was listening through the thin mud walls, she heard Prakashs voice, and she proclaimed I fell in love with that voice.I was prepared to marry whomever that voice belonged too. Prakash renamed her Jasmine, because he believed the name Jyoti was too old fashioned and feudal. His reasons were: He wanted to break down the Jyoti Id been in Hasnapur and make me a new kind of city woman. To break off the past, he gave me a new name: Jasmine. He said, You are small and sweet and heady, my Jasmine. Youll quicken the whole world with your perfume. He believed that she should leave her old life behind, he wanted her to become a modern woman who could stand up for herself, call her husband by his name, and live as modern women do. He believed getting rid of the name Jyoti would rid Jasmine of her feudal ways and thrust her into modern society. But ironically, Jasmine wished to stay in her old world. She became lost, Jyoti, Jasmine: I shuttled between two identities. She knew that she should agree and obey her husband, but there was a part of her that wanted the stability of what she was accustomed too. The modern world was clashing with the old world, and Jasmine was in the middle of it.
Jazzy and Jase are Jasmines next identities. Her name Jazzy is from Lillian Gordon, the woman who helped Jasmine after she had been raped. Lillian gave her clothes, food, and shelter for a couple months. Later, when Jasmine said that she would like to go to New York, she gave Jasmine her daughters number so that she could call her if she needed anything. Once in New York, Jasmine phones her daughter and she begins to work for her as a nanny. Her daughter, Duff, begins to think of Jasmine as a daytime mommy while her real mom is at work. Her husband, Taylor, begins to fall in love with Jasmine; who he affectionately calls Jase. However, Jasmine sees that she too is beginning to fall in love with Taylor. She decides that to avoid breaking up the family that helped her become an American, she moves west to Iowa. Taylor begs her to stay, and so does Duff; but Jasmine knows in her heart that she must leave Jase behind and she goes on to assume a new identity.
Her last identity, Jane Ripplemeyer, comes from Jasmine herself. She sees this name as plain and uses it to try and blend in with her surroundings. This is ironic, because she has striking, exotic looks that everybody notices in her new town in Iowa. She does everything but blend in. Each of the names represents a hybrid persona on her continuous journey from the colonial past to her immigrant future. But deeper than that, this is a novel shows a theme about naming your own destiny. Each of these names brings a shift in personality, and the power of naming is subtly examined with each shift.
Jasmine was born 18 years after India's Partition Riots, or approximately 1965, in a rural village called Hasnpur. The time of her Indian birth would have been one of political and social upheaval. Two wars between Pakistan and India were fought that year. The Partition Riots, which play such a key role in Jasmine's family's plight, were an attempt to create separate Muslim and Hindu States. More than 200,000 people died as Hindus entered their homes in Pakistan and Muslims theirs in India. The province of Punjab was divided between India and the newly-created Pakistan. It became the home to many Hindus.
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