Names

We spend our lives wearing different hats, and changing these hats as we go along.  We are students, co-workers, presidents, mothers, sons, sisters, outsiders, enemies, and friends.  These are names and labels that help to classify aspects of our lives.  They sometimes change randomly, may follow a logical progression, and are sometimes even abandoned altogether, but these names along with the changes in our lives are always evolving.  It is these hats, these names, from which we draw in order to form our own true identities.  Who I am.  Myself.

In the novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character, Jasmine, is literally given new names that signify certain periods of her life and come to represent her current self.  She begins as Jyoti, a Punjabi village girl who is defiantly determined to create her own destiny after her “widowhood and exile” is foretold by an astrologer (p. 3).  Her new husband and true love, Prakash, insists that she become a modern woman, free from the rules and confines of Indian female tradition.  He chooses her next name, Jasmine, as a representation of her new life and the woman he believes she should become.  And so she becomes that modern woman.  She delays childbirth, takes a part-time job, and envisions the bright future of Vijh & Wife.

After Prakash’s sudden death, Jasmine chooses to move to America, chasing Prakash’s own dream of living there.  Through her encounter with Half-Face, the man who smuggles her into Florida, Jasmine metamorphosizes into Kali, the Hindu goddess of change and death.  She chooses this identity for herself after being raped and humiliated by him.  This is also a transition point for Jasmine.  As Kali, she murders Half-Face, and then puts to rest her husband’s suitcase of dreams.  Here she is borne anew and “traveling light,” without letting her own sad past weigh her down (p. 121).

Jasmine’s next identity is given to her by the kind philanthropist, Lillian Gordon.  She is named Jazzy and is taught how to walk, act, and live like an American.  Her full embrace of this identity empowers her and insures her survival in the new country.  In New York, as Jase, she becomes an integrate member of Taylor, Wylie and Duff’s family.  She begins to find true happiness and belonging to American culture while she performs her role of being Duff’s Day mummy, only to wrench herself away in a panic after seeing her husband’s murderer on a park outing. 

From then on, she lives an unfulfilled life in Iowa as the future wife and caretaker of Bud Ripplemeyer.  Bud names her Jane, and this becomes Jasmine’s generic American identity that she eventually decides she has to break away from.  In the end, Taylor offers her that chance and she embraces the identity of the new Jase—her own comfortable balance of all her past lives, and the representation of the “adventure, risk, and transformation” she still wishes to take on (p. 240). 

We are given the choice whether or not to assume a name that we are given.  If we buy into it, it is also our choice to control it or let it control us.  I believe that Jasmine is successful because she is able to find a good balance of control.  She constantly evolves and re-invents herself while still being able to reflect and improve upon her past selves.  It is through that method that in the end she is able to decide who she really wants to be.  “Watch me re-position the stars,” she says as she embraces the possibilities of her future-self (p. 240).