Will -vs- Destiny

I often hope that an opportunity will come to me, magically, after I graduate college. A wonderful opportunity, of which would include a chance to make a lovely lump of cash, lovely and homey neighborhood, nice people, perfect weather. I often wonder what is beyond California, since I’ve never experienced anything beyond the west coast (and Reno doesn’t count for anything). What if there is a place more beautiful than my one-and-only California; a place I can call my own and bring new and exciting experiences into my world. I often hope of an opportunity of which would allow me to fly my friends and family with me along for the journey.

As you can tell, I couldn’t run away from my life here in California. Not permanently, at least. Not beginning able to jump in the car and drive home to the East Bay for a weekend, or have the parental units come to Chico to help me garden and fix up my house, that being states away would really break my heart. As for the Character, Jasmine, in Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, this is exactly what she doesn’t want; she wants to run away from all experiences in her past life.

Growing up in an Indian culture girls were looked upon as inferior. Having a baby girl meant the mother had done something bad in her life or former live(s). Jasmine was the fifth of seven girls, of nine children all together. She was quite smart and wanted to stay in school and become a doctor. This was obviously ridiculous in their culture’s eyes because she must be married off and become a housewife.

Since being with Bud, she has become the housewife. He basically controls her, yet she doesn’t really seem to express that she minds it. She knows what Bud like and wants from her and she will do it without complaints.

Since the beginning of the book, Jasmine has been controlled and manipulated. After she was told how she would live her widowhood and exile, she tried to deny such negativity and the next thing she knew, she has fallen, cut her tongue and created a huge scar in the middle of her forehead. A scar like that would affect her chances of being married off.

Bud just adds to this dilemma. He never cares to find out about Jasmine’s life and/or culture. “My genuine foreignness frightens him. I don’t hold it against him. It frightens me, too.” Jasmine’s culture has made Bud’s lack of care seem normal. It seems as if whatever and however Bud feels, it manipulates Jasmine’s mind. She has lost a part of her self and is hardly a person.

Maybe she is trying to create her own self, or at least recreate one. She touches briefly on her past experience, “For me, experience must be forgotten, or else it will kill.” (Jasmine, 33) I think she believes she has come such a long way from what women of her culture grow up to become and where they go. She believes she has created some dignity and self-will and her past of growing up in a culture that puts women at an inferior level is an experience that she does not want to remember; she wants to block it past of her life out of her memory, or else it could take over her self. Jasmine states as well, “…but I had a past that I was still fleeing. Perhaps still am.” (Jasmine, 34)

So far in the novel we see Jasmine as a passive object, yet a person with thoughts, feelings, and the knowledge for what she doesn’t want to be. From her past of growing up in an Indian culture, she has lost her sense of “self” and has always been told who she can and can’t be. Her relationship with Bud only seems to keep this feeling of selflessness alive.