Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
"Jasmine" by Bharati Mukherjee is a novel that follows the journey of a young Indian woman, Jasmine, as she navigates her aspirations in the United States after leaving Trinidad. Driven by ambition and the belief that Trinidad is too small for her dreams, Jasmine smuggles herself into the U.S. and begins her new life in Detroit. Initially working as a chambermaid and bookkeeper at a motel run by Trinidadian Indians, Jasmine feels a sense of superiority due to her background as a physician's daughter, yet she is soon drawn to the possibilities of a more fulfilling life.
After attending a West Indian Students' Association bash, she is inspired to seek higher education and a better future. Jasmine finds work as a live-in housekeeper for an American family, the Moffitts, which allows her to embrace a new identity and chase the American Dream. As she becomes more integrated into this new life, her past begins to fade, and her relationships evolve, particularly with Bill Moffitt. The narrative explores themes of identity, assimilation, and self-invention, capturing Jasmine's tumultuous journey toward redefining herself in a foreign land while grappling with her ambitions and desires.
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Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
First published: 1988
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of work: The 1980's
Locale: Southfield and Ann Arbor, Michigan
Principal Characters:
Jasmine , an ambitious young Indian woman from TrinidadThe Daboos , a family of Trinidadian Indians living in MichiganBill Moffitt , a professor of molecular biology at the University of MichiganLara Hatch-Moffitt , Bill's wife, a performance artist
The Story
Jasmine, a vivacious, starry-eyed, young Indian woman from Trinidad who believes that Trinidad is too small for a girl with ambition, has herself smuggled into the United States to find a well-employed husband and forge a new life. She enters Detroit from the Canadian border while hidden in the back of a mattress truck. With her daddy's admonition that opportunity comes only once resounding in her ears, she challenges herself to use her wits and to refashion her destiny.
Being an illegal alien, Jasmine spends her first few months working as a chambermaid and bookkeeper, in exchange for meager board and lodging, at the Plantation Motel in Southfield, run by the Daboos, a family of Trinidadian Indians who helped her get there. Conscious of her social status as a physician's daughter in Port-of-Spain, she feels superior to the Daboos, thinking of them as country bumpkins who were nobodies back home. She decides to leave them soon.
The central action of the story begins when Loretta and Viola, the Daboo girls, prevail on Jasmine to go with them to Ann Arbor to the big bash of the West Indian Students' Association. The music, the dance, and the company of boys who talked with confidence about their futures in the United States stir her desires and ambition, and she decides not to return to the life of drudgery at the Plantation Motel. Instead, she thinks of trying her luck in pursuing higher studies in Ann Arbor, which seems to her the magic place to be. The next evening, she lands a job as a live-in housekeeper, cook, and baby-sitter for an easygoing American family: Bill Moffitt, a biology professor; his wife, Lara, a performance artist; and their little girl, Muffin. They do not even ask about her legal status or her social security number. She considers herself lucky to have found a nice American family like the Moffitts to build her new life around.
Jasmine's well-paying job with the Moffitts gives her a new sense of emancipation, and she starts living the American Dream. After her initiation into the American way of life, she feels she has become her own person. Even her parents become a distant memory, as she tries hard to break with her past. Her proximity to Bill Moffitt provides her subliminal stimulation. She begins to think of Bill, Muffin, and herself almost like a family, and wishes Lara were miles away.
After a few months, Lara goes on the road with her performing group. Jasmine has become more and more attracted toward Bill and his world of comfort and ease. One night, while dancing closely with Bill, she feels aroused and is half-willingly seduced by him. Her desire to assimilate into U.S. society is so overpowering that when Bill, passionately caught in the act of undressing himself and Jasmine, calls her "flower of Trinidad," she immediately retorts, "Flower of Ann Arbor, not Trinidad." As they make love in front of the fireplace, the narrator playfully and ironically describes Jasmine as thinking of herself as "a bright, pretty girl with no visa, no papers, and no birth certificate. No nothing other than what she wanted to invent and tell. She was a girl rushing wildly into the future."
Bibliography
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