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Jasmine - Identity In Exile

Jermone Beaty and Paul Hunter in their book, New Worlds of Literature, say

Thinking of home is often accompanied by nostalgia the absence or loss of loved ones, the remoteness of the home place we are cut off from our childhood home are Exiles. And the rest of us can perhaps understand, that we are all "exiles" from our past, our childhood, that universal "home" (1)

The state of exile, a sense of loss, the pain of separation and disorientation makes Bharati Mukherjee’s novel "Jasmine" a quest for identity in an alien land. Jasmine, the protagonist of the novel, undergoes several transformations during her journey of life in America, from Jyoti to Jasmine to Jane, and often experiences a deep sense of estrangement resulting in a fluid state of identity. This journey becomes a tale of moral courage, a search for self-awareness and self-assertion. Uprooted from her native land India, Jyoti does her best to introduce herself into the new and alien society as an "immigrant"; the culmination finally indicated in Jasmine’s pregnancy with the child of a white man - Bud.

Born in Hasnapur in India, Jyoti has the distinction of being the most beautiful and clever in the family. Her life, like most Indian women, is controlled and dominated by her father and brothers,

"Village girls are like cattle, whichever way you lead them, that is the way they will go" (46)

However, Jyoti seeks a modern and educated husband who keeps no faith in dowries and traditions, and thus finds a US based modern-thinking man, Prakash. Prakash encourages Jyoti to study English, and symbolically gives Jyoti a new name Jasmine, and a new life. Jasmine’s happiness is short-lived. She is widowed and returns to India to her family. She has to now choose between the rigid traditions of her family and perform Sati, or continue to live the life of Jasmine in America. Jasmine sets off on an agonizing trip as an illegal immigrant to Florida, and thus begins her symbolic trip of transformations, displacement, and a search for identity.

Edward Said, in his essay Reflections on Exile, says,

"Exile is the unhealable rift between a human being and a native place, between the self and the true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted the achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever" (101).

Jasmine sways between the past and the present attempting to come to terms with the two worlds, one of "nativity" and the other as an "immigrant". Hailing from an oppressive and a rural family in India, Jyoti comes to America in search of a more fruitful life and to realize the dreams of her husband, Prakash, who renames her as "Jasmine". She, thus, begins her journey westward and her quest for a new self. She undergoes her first transformation from a dutiful Hindu wife when she meets the intellectual Taylor who calls her Jase, and then moves on to become Bud’s "Jane".

The author depicts this transformation and transition as a positive and an optimistic journey. Jasmine creates a new world consisting of new ideas and values, constantly unmasking her past. She tries to establish a new cultural identity by incorporating new desires, skills, and habits. This transition is defined not only in the changes in her attitude, but more significantly in her relationship with men.

In India, as Jyoti, she is seen against the backdrop of the rigid and patriarchical Indian society.

In America, her self-awareness is reflected in her relationships with Bud, Taylor, and Du. However, her first husband Prakash initiates her transformation from Jyothi to Jane. After her husband’s death, Jasmine tries to establish a new cultural identity and in exile, she essays to cultivate "new habits and expressions of life".

Thus, caught between the two cultures of the east and west, past and present, old and new, Jasmine constantly "shuttles" in search of a concrete identity. Bharati Mukherjee ends the book on a novel note, and re-emphasizes the complex and alternating nature of identity of a woman in exile,

"Then there is nothing I can do. Time will tell if I am a tornado, rubble-maker, arising from nowhere and disappearing into a cloud. I am out the door and in the potholed and rutted driveway, scrambling ahead of Taylor, greedy with wants and reckless from hope" (241).

John K Hoppe aptly says,

"Jasmine's postcolonial, ethnic characters are post-American, carving out new spaces for themselves from among a constellation of available cultural narratives, never remaining bound by any one, and always fluidly negotiating the boundaries of their past, present, and futures".

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

Information below taken from www.yahoo.com

Born in Calcutta and now a distinguished professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Bharati Mukherjee was the first naturalized American citizen to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. She is also the author of Leave It to Me, The Holder of the World, Darkness, The Tiger's Daughter, and Wife. Bharati Mukherjee lives with her husband, the writer Clark Blaise, in San Francisco.

Informative web sites:

http://archives.nytimes.com - Keyword Bharati Mukherjee

http://www.umiacs.umd.edu

http://voices.cla.umn.edu

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