- Jyoti reads Jane Eyre while studying English with Masterji. At seven, she is his star pupil, "a reader, a counter, a picture drawer to whom Masterji [...] lent his own books" (40). She continues: "I remember a thin one, Shane, about an American village much like Punjab, and Alice in Wonderland, which gave me nightmares. The British books were thick, with more long words per page. I remember Great Expectations and Jane Eyre, both of which I was forced to abandon because they were too difficult" (40-41).
The fact that she was "forced to abandon" Jane Eyre highlights the linguistic and cultural barriers between young Jyoti and the classic novel. But Jane Eyre and Jasmine are similar in many ways: they are both Bildungsromans, or coming-of-age narratives, and they are both profoundly concerned with gender and, in particular, how women struggle to balance their own desires and voices with those of the men in their lives. Thus, while Mukherjee puts Jyoti slightly at odds with Jane Eyre in this passage, she is also letting us know that she is using Jane Eyre as a subtext throughout the novel. - One of Jasmine's names is Jane, and Bud = Rochester. Bud, her disabled banker almost-husband, names her Jane: "Bud calls me Jane. Me Bud, you Jane. I didn't get it at first. He kids. Calamity Jane. Jane as in Jane Russell, not Jane as in Plain Jane. But Plain Jane is all I want to be" (26).
Multiple "Janes" are explicitly alluded to in this passage--Tarzan's Jane; the cross-dressing, sharp-shooting cowgirl Calamity Jane; and Jane Russell, the sexpot actress. But "Plain Jane," it can be argued, is an implicit allusion to Jane Eyre, Brontë's "plain," intelligent governess. Jane Ripplemeyer shares much in common with Jane Eyre: she is smart, for example, and she is a caregiver to others, first as Duff's "day mummy" or au pair (like Jane Eyre, who is a governess), and then as Bud's lover (like Jane Eyre, who also has a disabled and much older lover in Rochester). Thus the narrator states "I think maybe I am Jane with my very own Rochester, and maybe it'll be okay for us to go to Missouri where the rules are looser and yield to the impulse in a drive-in chapel" (236). - Jasmine is haunted by the legacy of colonial Britain and the traumatic history of the "West's" relationship with the mysterious "East." This point is more subtle, but also fascinating. In Jane Eyre, the British colonial legacy is expressed most forcefully in Bertha Mason's character, the Creole madwoman in the attic who haunts the other characters (including Jane) and finally burns Rochester's house to the ground. In Jasmine, this colonial legacy is expressed in Jyoti's family--particularly her father, who is profoundly undone by the Partition--as well as in the death of Prakash, her first husband.
But Jasmine herself is a "tornado," a violent and destructive/creative force. Like Bertha Mason, she is a "third world" woman and therefore represents, for some Americans, the exotic, irrational, and bodily. Despite her intelligence, she is seen, and loved, primarily for her beauty and exciting difference (with the important exceptions, I would argue, of Taylor and Du). Like Bertha, she has a destructive effect on Bud's life, even as she also serves as his caregiver for years.
Ultimately, Jasmine is like both Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason. Like Shiva, she is simultaneously creative and destructive. She doesn't stay with her "very own Rochester" (236), as Jane Eyre does, but she does choose to follow her own desires, even if they prove more destructive than creative. This is why the last paragraph of Jasmine is perfect: "Time will tell if I am a tornado, rubble-maker, arising from nowhere and disappearing into a cloud. I am out the door and in the potholed and rutted driveway, scrambling ahead of Taylor, greedy with wants and reckless from hope" (241; my emphasis). I love how this passage captures the creative and destructive force of love and hope.
Watch her reposition the stars! :)
Dr. K.
