Bharati Mukherjee is a writer who explores through her fiction the meaning of life. Issues related to women are central to the vision of Mukherjee in her novels. She deals with the problems of the Indian immigrants mainly, women. She writes about the struggles and problems faced by Indian women. The problem of cross-cultural crisis and the ultimate search for identity is also one of her important themes. Her novels also reflect the temperament and mood of the present American Society as experienced by the Indian immigrants in America.
Bharati Mukherjee takes up the problem of adjustment that the Indians in the West have to face. Her novels express the impulse of Indians, who, in their search for a better life, face the problems of adaptation and survival. Bharati Mukherjee also depicts the cultural clash between the East and the West. When a person leaves her own culture and enters into another culture, her original culture comes into conflict with the new one she finds in the alien land. This cultural transplant leads to a crisis of identity. As the immigrants are torn between two different cultures; quest for identity becomes very important and a must in their life.
Jasmine’s Quest for Identity
In the novel Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee takes up the theme of search for identity. She writes how the female protagonist tries to tackle the problem of loss of culture and endeavours to assume a new identity in the U.S. The protagonist Jasmine leaves her country to fulfill her wishes. On reaching the U.S., she begins to search for self-independence. She struggles hard to achieve it and at last she realises that self independence is not to be an Indian or American but to be at peace with herself.
In Jasmine, the main protagonist’s search for identity and her true self began from the day she was born. She was born as Jyoti in the village of Hasnapur in Jullandhar district of Punjab eighteen years after the Partition Riots. She was an unwanted child to the family because she was the fifth daughter and the seventh of nine children. Her mother wanted her to be killed when she was born because she did not want her daughter to suffer the pains of a dowryless bride. But she survived that attack.
Jasmine never gave up her childhood memories. She always remembered them. In fact, her childhood memories became the instrument in her fight against fate and her search for self-identity. She was predicted of widowhood and exile by an astrologer when she was only seven years old. She was not dismayed by fate. She always tried to raise herself above blind beliefs and superstition. Even in childhood, she knew that she had the potential to fight, win all battles and establish a strong identity.
From Jyoti to Jasmine: Marriage and Transformation
But the outburst of her father to comply with rules did not discourage Jyoti from expressing a small part of her dream or ambition. She achieved a small part of her dream by falling in love and marrying Prakash, a very young and ambitious engineer. He wanted Jyoti to shed off her past and make a new kind of woman. Prakash “wanted to break down the Jyoti I’d been in Hasnapur and make me a new kind of city woman. To break off the past, he gave me a new name: Jasmine.” And this was the beginning of a new journey for her.
Renamed as Jasmine, she was looking forward to going to America with her husband to pursue his further education. But her husband Prakash was killed by the fundamentalists — the Khalsa terrorists on the eve of their departure. This made Jasmine grief-stricken and frustrated. Instead of spending the rest of her life as a helpless widow at Hasnapur, she decided to go to America and commit Sati after reaching the campus of the University where her husband was supposed to study.
The American Journey: Trauma and Rebirth
Then Jasmine went to America on a forged passport. She was raped by Half-Face who had “lost an eye and ear and most of his cheek in a paddy field in Vietnam.” But after the rape she did not kill herself as she felt that her mission was not yet over. And she killed Half-Face by becoming Kali personified, the Goddess of Destruction. She also performed a kind of death for her by burning her dishonored clothes symbolically. It was the death of her old self and the birth of a new self. Jasmine was reborn not by killing herself but by killing Half-Face.
Jasmine met Lilian Gordon who entered into her life as a hope. It was Mrs. Gordon who educated her, made her free from her past memories and strengthened her will to survive. After a short time, Jasmine worked in the house of Tylor and Wylie Hayes in Manhattan as a care giver to their little daughter Duff. There her name was changed from Jasmine to Jase. She absorbed the alien culture rather greedily. At this phase of her life, Jasmine had been able to gain a personality and became very confident about her personality.
Jane in Iowa: New Identity, New Conflicts
Another phase of Jasmine’s life was when she left Taylor and Duff in fear and terror because of the presence of Sukhawinder, the Khalsa terrorist who killed Prakash in India. Then she went to Iowa and met another benefactor Mrs. Ripplemayer. There she got a job in Iowa’s bank. She also made a place in the heart of the banker Bud Ripplemayer. There she assumed a new identity and she became “Jane” from “Jase”. Violence struck her life again after a disgruntled farmer shot Bud from a point blank range which left him crippled waist downwards. Jane served him lovingly and caringly after he was crippled.
Jane had fully accepted the American family but she was waiting for real love. Then suddenly she got a letter from Taylor informing her that he would shortly come to take her. Then she walked out of Bud’s life and agreed to go with Taylor and Duff. Her two remarks, “The moment I have dreamed a thousand times finally arrives” and “I am not choosing between two men. I am caught between the promise of America and old-world dutifulness,” reveal a clear response to her courage. She did not feel any guilt. She only did what she thought was right for her.
Conclusion
Hence Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine is the movement of Jasmine’s life towards achieving true identity. Her journey to America is a process of her quest of true self. Even when the protagonist goes through the worst experiences of her life, she is able to come through the obstacles and attains self-awareness and a new identity and overthrows her past life. Jasmine realizes that the true identity of a person does not lie in being an Indian or an American but it lies in the inner spirit of the person to be at peace with her. Bharati Mukherjee has employed metamorphosis transformations in the life of Jasmine in the process of her search of her true identity.
Works Cited
- Indira, S. 1996. “Jasmine: An Odyssey of Unhousement and Enhousement” in The Fiction of Bharati Mukherjee. R.K. Dhawan (ed.), New Delhi: Prestige Books.
- Mukherjee, Bharati. 1990. Jasmine. New Delhi: Viking, Penguin India.
- Roy, Sumita. 1996. Jasmine: Exile as Spiritual Quest in The Fiction of Bharati Mukherjee. R.K. Dhawan (ed.), New Delhi: Prestige Books.
- Piciucco, Pier Paolo (ed.). 2004. A Companion to Indian Fiction in English. Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributers.