Geometry a la Jasmine

You walk into a room and, all at once, you’re surrounded by a dozen versions of yourself - none of which you recognize. One might be shorter and rounder than you were upon entering; one might be taller and needle-thin; one may have a really enormous head and an itty-bitty body. I have always hated funhouse mirrors. There’s only one way out, and it’s somewhere among or after all the mirrors. I’ve taken to just walking straight through without paying attention to the shapes staring back at me - it’s better not to look.

It seems that this sentiment is shared by the title character of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, or Jyoti, as she was claimed upon birth. As her life goes its course, she assumes different names - different versions of herself - and for each name she has a different life. Throughout the novel, she looks back on each woman she has been expected to be; this is where she takes an active role in her story. As she calls on various parts of her life, she has the power to piecemeal her experiences, to filter through and insert them into her recollection as she sees fit. She does not run to or from any identity, but floats through day after day, allowing an identity to be tacked onto her, making no effort to control or alter it. The “new geometry” proposed in the epigraph allows Jyoti to take control and make sense of her ever-changing identity in the way that it gives her choice; she chooses what she tells the reader, what she takes away from each identity. When she is acting a part, fulfilling someone’s expectations of her, Jyoti is “linear” - she can only go forward; after she is no longer playing a specific part, she can warp it, tangle it, and pock it to make it fit her.

Each of Jyoti’s “characters” participates in a separate life. It is as if she is being constantly brought back to life without actually dying herself - each of her names disappears when the husband linked to that part of her is no longer in her life. Jyoti observes, “I have had a husband for each of the women I have been. Prakash for Jasmine, Taylor for Jase, Bud for Jane” (197). Deeper than this, it is the husbands who determine the woman she is, the woman they want her to be, wither by expressing their desires verbally, or in their actions and way of “handling” her.

For Prakash, Jyoti was “Jasmine.” He dubbed her this in an attempt to turn her into “a new kind of city woman,” outlining her as “small and sweet and heady” (77). He even had a mission for her: “Jasmine…help me be a better person” (79). When Prakash was killed, she immediately ceased being Jasmine. Even as she was yelling at the police, it wasn’t “Jasmine’s terrible scream” or “my terrible scream” - it was “a woman’s terrible scream” (94). It was as if she no longer knew who she was.

For Bud Ripplemeyer, Jyoti was “Jane”: “Me Bud, you Jane…He kids. Calamity Jane. Jane as in Jane Russell, not Jane as in Plain Jane” (26). Talk about high expectations - Jane Russell was a Hollywood bombshell who, among other films, worked alongside Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Looking at a picture of Jane Russell, it is impossible to imagine a middle-aged woman from Punjab, India being able to fulfill the Barbie-esque shoes of a 1950’s California actress. Jyoti’s take on “Jane” was completely different from the idea coveted by her husband. She claims, “Plain Jane is all I want to be…My genuine foreignness frightens him. I don’t hold that against him. It frightens me, too” (26). Here, the reader is given a glimpse into the label the protagonist holds for herself, and there is a sense of sacrifice in her willingness to tone down her “foreignness”; but “he is happy. And [Jane is] happy enough” (21). The disappointment and hesitation in her tone takes away the surprise when she leaves for California with Taylor.

For Taylor, Jyoti first was “Jasmine,” and finally “Jase.” “[She] fell in love with [Taylor’s] world, its ease, its careless confidence and graceful self-absorption. [She] wanted to become the person they thought they saw: humorous, intelligent, refined, affectionate” (171). This is a solid instance where we see her striving toward a specific identity; in the role of wife to the other men, she didn’t really see herself outside their shadow. Of course, we don’t get to witness the life that “Jase” takes up with Taylor, so my solid evidence ends here, but one can speculate from the insight w are given to the various discussions that Jasmine had with Taylor before they were together that he is much more interested in her life in India and her beliefs and worldview than Bud was.

The woman we follow throughout the novel is steered by the various lovers in her life. Her interactions with them are tinged with their expectations and opinions of her; her voice comes through only in the scenes themselves - she chose these specific interactions and conversations for a reason, and from that, we get the woman “behind the scenes” - the real woman in front of all the funhouse mirrors.