The Novel Jasmine Written by Bharathi Mukherjee - Essay Example

Jasmine the Novel Jasmine is the protagonist of the Novel Jasmine written by Bharathi Mukherjee. The of the Book, a at the University of California at Berkeley was the first American citizen to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. She had authored many more books. Her husband Clark Blaise is also a writer in San Francisco. Born in Calcutta, India, Bharathi Mukherjee, who is settled in America vividly depicts the plight of immigrants, that too that of illegal immigrants. Cultural and emotional incompatibility of the immigrants are woven in a style that the reader would rather experience the hardships of illegal immigrants than realizing their plight. The basic quality needed for an Indian rustic woman to leave for America is well understood by the author and the character is well set beforehand in her motherland. Kanwar Sonali’s (2000) findings that recent women immigrants have been more successful in giving words to their feelings although they too experience the emotional upheaval and the accompanying ordeal of immigration.(Kanwar Sonali Jolly-Wadhwa, 2000) The lead role of the Novel, Jasmine wishes to get away from India to reach America wherein he wants to fulfill the desires of her late husband, Prakash. But her life in America is not as expected by her from her homeland. The force that made her to often change her identity becomes the way of her life abroad. Her relationship with men in America facilitated her to switch from one identity to another. Her identity as Jyoti, as named by her parents, had been squeezed almost to nil by her will. Her husband Prakash called her Jasmine. On landing at America she became Jase and then Jane. Finally, after her relation ship with one Bud, who impregnates her, the novel had been brought to an end at which she leaves with Taylor an intellectual company. Throughout the novel Jasmine had been struggling to fix an imaginary identity which she had been chasing right from her youth. In the words of Anu Anejha, Jasmine abandons her promise of domestic security to be carried off. (Anu Aneja, 1993) Her vigor for controlling her fate sprouts from her early youth when a local rustic astrologer foretold her widowhood. The fury with which she refuted him reveals her strong will to win her fate. She simply shouted at him that he did not know her future. It was this vigor that sent her to America even after her widowhood in India. The impact of death on human beings is laid intelligently by the author as a stink that emerges at any time of its own will. The hallucinatory stink of a dog’s corpse felt by Jasmine chased her throughout her life when ever she happened to meet or face a death. Whenever the stink disturbed her she used to assert, “I know what I don’t want to become”. The sarcasm in her assertion is put in the way she spelt it after becoming what not to be. The chase of an imaginary or voluntarily fixed identity of her drove all the way from India to America. But in her home land she had been expected to lead a contended life of typical Indian women with children and husband. The fate really played at this point. Her Husband Prakash was the man whom Jyoti had dreamt. His base at US and his modern-thinking attracted her much and fuelled her inner urge to lead a modern life. Prakash’s encouraging her to study English made her think herself of an elite Lady. The real play of her fate took place at his sudden death. The assignment or mission on this earth for Prakash was as if to kindle Jyoti’s inner urge for modernization after which he is finished. This was the first turning point in her life. She had been well set mentally for a modern life, which normally does not permit protracted remorse for the death. In India she had been under the cover of her father, brothers before marriage that had been shifted wholly to her husband. The death of her life partner had broken the fetters around her legs and hands pushing her fast out of India. The gloom after Prakash’s death faded in her mind once she decided to leave India for America. Loss of Prakash was a loss of her life as far as Indian cultural sense is concerned. As such Jyoti felt she had lost her entire identity by losing her husband, which she wanted to overcome inherently. The love showered by Prakash was not aptly understood by Jyoti. She had been considering his love as an instrument or check to get her wishes and aspiration fulfilled. Bharathi Mukherjee had portrayed this misunderstanding of love in such a manner that the sequence of events distills the fact of misunderstanding. Through this presentation the author goes by the views of Indian Philosopher, J.Krishnamurthy. When we grow up, most people still cling to somebody, they continue to be dependant. Without some one to lean on, to give them a sense of comfort and security, they feel lonely, they feel all lost. This dependency on others is misconstrued as love. But this dependency is just fear and not the love. (J.Krishnamurthy, 2000.) Jyoti’s constant struggle for affixing an identity to her self emanated from within. By expressing this urge through Jyoti, the author Mukherjee explains the philosophical note of E.Norman Pearson (1994). To find our way successfully through many difficulties and illusions of life, we always be aware of the fundamental fact, in the words of an ancient scripture, “I am the Self; that Self am I”(E.Norman Pearson, 1994,). Assuming the name Jasmine, instead of Jyoti, is the beginning whether in right direction or not, of the character’s thirst for an identity. Was Jyoti dead? No. Physically never. Jasmine was born and it was put as rebirth. In fact, it was an ineffectual murder committed by Jasmine. A playful expression of saying, ‘I will suicide you’ was carried out by the lead character. The author’s intention of naming the continuous change of identity as rebirths is an issue of literary convenience. On reaching America, the strange and cruel experience of rape by Half-Face and subsequent murder of the perpetrator by Jasmine might have been penned by the author to place the character in a role that did not yearn for sex, although the ground for such violence on her part is legitimized. But sex can not be simply under weighed, since a girl on becoming woman in India is usually expected to know a few about sex despite being expected to maintain her virginity. Western view on sex can not be taken as a measure of Indian views on sex. The dubious pleasure of sexual intercourse with her (Nora’s mother) husband (Peter Costello, 1992.)can never even be thought of by an Indian girl. The culture has taught Indian women that the physical pleasure derived from the husband is the right one. They are forced to come up through in such environment even if their biological yearnings are not satisfied. Adultery is considered as the most serious offence and the womenfolk are generally penalized, though male counterparts, who are let off, share equal part in sex. Such Indian cultural inhibition against women’s lib is slowly being diluted by the postcolonial writers like Bharathi Mukherjee. By crushing or keeping them ever subservient, women in India had been hindered to reveal even a tinge of their latent militant nature. The hidden tree of violence in them is thus pruned by men folk of India. The phenomenologists’ view on violence that it is the rejection of powerlessness (S.C.Malik, 1995) could not be altogether accepted in case of Indian women showing violence. Jasmine murdering Half-Face is laid as the emergence of a violent Jasmine adding one more to her rebirth count. The artistic way of showing the psychic damage in the form of violence was elegantly pictured by Bharathi Mukherjee. The quest for an identity and attempts for assuming different identities by Jyoti to Jane via Jasmine and Jase is depicted as the course followed by Jyoti in tune with her fate. Although she had a strong will to win her fate, Jasmine ended in a debacle. Globally, the natural end of femininity is landing on perfect motherhood. Bharathi Mukherjee in her novel Jasmine has made the protagonist to traverse a path full of joy and sorrow to land on motherhood. Jasmine was driven by the wind of ambition, passion in search of an identity, which she had lost in her motherland. She might have become a mother in the native land perhaps with some yearnings still remaining in her heart. But the path selected by Jasmine to return home – the tranquility – lays the entire responsibility of her life on fate, destiny. The Great poet of TamilNadu, South India, Kannadassan wrote: No one knows where begins the life and how it ends; Alas, many are unaware of the journey itself with so many bends Tracks before us go on change abruptly finishing us Accepting the change alone would place us in tranquility free of fuss. Giving up an identity and assuming a fresh identity has been portrayed as rebirth in succession by the author. Losing a previous identity was obligatory throughout her life so that her new identity is believed to have been accepted by her environment. Every time she looses an identity, she is thrown to assume a fresh identity. The role of fate plays here too a technical and crucial part. At each time of loosing an identity Jasmine had been forced to assume an identity in her near proximity. Thus she had been assuming multiple identities, which the author says ‘searching’ an identity. Presentation of event sequences in the Novel is made in such a manner that the protagonist is cornered every time to assume the available identity. When all these sequences are analyzed in toto, it can be deducted that Jasmine was incapable of having a strong idea of her identity. She was weak in calculating which identity would suit her best. As such, she had gone with the wind, whether it was a breeze or hurricane. Her mode of accepting the changes too marks the place of her in the Novel. At the outset of every change in her life—rebirth—she considered the change was nice which often turned out to be an unpleasant one. Fate established its part in this issue too. Good and bad are not bestowed. They are fetched. Relations interacting with Jasmine were portrayed in the Novel either as too good to give her complete comfort and security or as too bad to mismatch her taste. The way Jasmine viewed these environmental characters and accepting them became the lifestyle of her. Laying the responsibility of the changes over fate can be admitted partly in as far as the true definition of fate is accepted. That is, fate is nothing predetermined but pre laying a track by way of actions of the present. Jasmine was made to reap so many unpleasant fruits which she had sown by her own attitude and actions. That was the real fate. She had been feeling lost when ever her relationship with her male company is shattered. She felt losing her identity and entire life. Assuming a fresh identity and a new male company although had been portrayed as rebirths, in effect it was self-deception. Where can she run on this earth when she deceives her own self laying the responsibility on the environment and fate? Laying faith on her husband Prakash was proved to be futile by the death of him. Laying faith on her new companions at America too went in vain by way of her incompatibility. This makes the reader to assume that faith throughout her life came along with its other side—the distrust. Had she been laying faith on her own self and nurtured self-confidence as expected by her husband, the novel would have taken a different dimension. Author Bharathi Mukherjee’s admittance that she became so involved in the skin of the character that the scenes were written by themselves discloses the intention of the author. The author’s main intention would have been making public the plight of illegal immigrants into America. Unlike legal immigrants, who too face several hardships, illegal immigrants were to take certainly a zig zag route in their life. Thus the author had transformed into Jasmine whose entire life was full of thorns with a very few flowers like Prakash and an adopted Vietnamese son. Rearing a baby without a male life partner may be practical in American or western culture. But in Indian style it is quite unimaginable. Can Jyoti uproot her Indian identity from the depth of her heart? Can she make her own self to believe that Jasmine, Jase and Jane were not emanated from Jyoti? Jasmine’s quest for identity is nothing but searching a comfortable shelter for the self. This selfishness had made her to take wrong decisions at right time and right decisions at wrong time, which threw her away from India to America where the soil was quite unsuitable for improper decision makers. Had she been altruistic by nature, the death of her husband would have changed her life style in a different manner. The final scene of becoming mother to an adopted son would have taken place at India itself crushing the Novel at its seed bed, which was not the intention of the author. Thanks to Bharathi Mukherjee for bringing a Novel full of realism surrounding an Indian woman whose psyche was plucked away from her mother soil and replanting in an alien soil. Reference list – Anu Aneja, 1993, “Jasmine, The Sweet scent of Exile”, pp 72-80, Pacific Coast Philology, Vol.28:1 J.Krishnamurthy, 2000, “Life Ahead”, pp75-76, Krishnamurthy Foundation of India, Chennai, India. Kanwar Sonali Jolly-Wadhwa, 2000, “Gender: A Cross Cultural Perspective”, pp 132, Gyan publishing House, new Delhi, India. E.Norman Pearson, 1994, “Space, Time and Self”, pp 167, The Theosophical Publishing House, Illinois, USA Peter Costello, 1992, “James Joyce, The Years of Growth”, pp237, Kyle Cathe Ltd, London. S.C.Malik, 1995, “Reconceptualising the Sciences and Humanities”, pp209, Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, India. Read More