Can I have your name??

In life, its hard to stay the same person. You are not the same person as you were five years ago, or even last year for that matter. The reality is that you are forced to reinvent yourself depending on circumstances that may arise. Moving away from home is a good example of that. Stepping out of your comfort zone allows you to gain a new identity and a new sense of self. You gain new friends, new ideas, and new experiences for you to learn. This can give someone an opportunity to be set free and start anew. Maybe the past back home wasn’t the most pleasant time of his or her life. This new area can allow the person to truly start over and make a good first impression. In Bharati Mukherjee’s novel, Jasmine, the main character goes through a transformation of identities. In fact, she goes through several changes.

The story follows Jasmine going through her life with four different names. Each name seems to define a certain point in her life, along with new gained ideas. Her birth name is Jyoti Vinh. She then is called Jasmine by Prakash, her first husband. She later goes on to become Jase and Jane, with each name bestowed upon her by Taylor and Bud Ripplemeyer respectively.

As Mukherjee is narrating the novel, she seemed to be distancing herself from her old identity, as it was apparent on page 98: “Dida, if God sent Sukkhi to kill my husband, then I renounce God. I spit on God.” In Jasmine‘s religion, it was custom for arranged marriages to be made. Jasmine went against the grain and married Prakash on her own free will. Her sister, Dida, argued that that was God’s way of punishing Jasmine for trying to get a divorce from Prakash. Seperation between a married couple is considered a sin in Jasmine’s religion.

Jasmine was never in control of her life. She has let these different men give her a name that they chose, rather than her. Not only that, but she is has no idea of the harm she has caused throughout the story. Even when Karin, Bud’s ex, calls Jasmine a gold digger, she doesn’t really deny the allegation. Karin has deep resentment for Jasmine because she feels that Jasmine took Bud away from her. Jasmine believes that “Bud courts me because I’m alien. I am darkness, mystery…” (page 200) Even after Bud admitted that he only hired her because she was pretty and different from the norm, Jasmine just feels that she played no part in their divorce. She was only a catalyst.

Jasmine through the novel has never stood on her own two feet. She enjoys pleasing others. And this has caused her to lose her identity and control over her own life. For every man that has become a part of her life, she reinvented herself to their liking.