Duty Vs. Desire

Throughout Bharati Mukherjee's novel, Jasmine contemplates whether to give in to duty or desire. The Indian principles that she grew up with, concretized by Dida, advocates duty. The Western standards symbolized by Taylor and Wylie promotes desire. Jasmines life becomes very much a pursuit of freedom, as she undergoes individual transformations and metaphorical rebirths. She flees from the duties that society inflicted upon her as in the end her desire managed to subdue her duty. As early as when Jasmine is taken in by Professorji she has already “ accustomed [herself] to American clothes”. She goes onto say that “American clothes disguised my widowhood…I wanted to distance myself from everything Indian, everything Jyoti-like” (145). She begins her journey as a “speck of dust in the solar system”, in which her life had already been determined (3). In addition the structure of society in Punjab is far from being liberated. She says that she wants to “go away and have a real life. I’ve had it up to here with backward, corrupt, mediocre fools” (81). In my opinion, Jasmine’s pursuit for desire stems from her prejudiced and cruel background. Her transformations in America seem to be carried out in an effort to distance herself away from Hasnaspur and her previous life of duty. Her craving for adventure and discovery make her a woman of courage and admiration at a time in which young brides would quiver under the command of a groom’s mother. She felt that America gave purpose to her life. She says that “I felt lucky…America may be fluid and built on flimsy, invisible lines of weak gravity, but I was a dense object, I had landed and was getting rooted… everyday I was being paid for something new…” (179). Furthermore it was her desire to want a green card “more than anything else in the world, that a green card was freedom” (149) that seemed to signify her a person.

However with desire came disillusion, selfishness and loss of character. Throughout the novel Jasmine becomes different people, experiencing different things, and creating her own luck. She creates herself to be a very passive character jumping at every opportunity to escape. With Bud she seems unhappy compared to her life with Taylor. With Bud she constantly had to look after him. Her purpose in life was very much centered around the household. On the other hand the first day she saw Taylor she falls “in love with his world, its ease, its careless confidence and graceful self-absorption. I wanted to become the person they thought they saw: humorous, intelligent, refined, affectionate” (171). Her desire to put herself out their, to make the most of every opportunity she was given gave her “life a new fullness and chargedness to it. Everyday I made discoveries about the city, and in the evenings, when I listed my discoveries to Taylor he listened carefully as though I were describing an unmapped exotic metropolis” (184). She began to become increasingly more selfish and individualistic. She ran away from the duties that society inflicted upon her as in the end her desire managed to suppress her duty. Her desire for power, new experiences and happiness very much led to her alternations shifts in identity. When she decides to leave Bud she explains that “It isn’t guilt that I feel, it’s relief. I realize I have already stopped thinking of myself as Jane” (240). And her justification for such an impactful decision can be summarized in one line that I feel highlights her motivation throughout the novel: “I am not choosing between men. I am caught between the promise of America and old-world dutifulness” (240). And in the end Jasmine chooses desire, a choice that would have been admired by many women at the time. She gains freedom and has made the opportunity for prosperity and success available to her. She has managed to gain all this regardless of what her horoscope tells her, her social class and most of all her circumstances of birth. Although she can be viewed as many as a widow escaping her predetermined life of dutifulness through hurtful and selfish actions, she is very much a women to be admired because of her courage to submerge herself in a reality that is unknown to her in the promise and pursuit of opportunity and happiness.