Transcending Patriarchal and Cultural Borders in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine

Abstract

This paper offers a feminist reading of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine (1991). It aims at
underlining the empowerment mechanisms of the protagonist at home and abroad as well as
commenting on the different facets of subjugation that the protagonist triumphantly overcomes.
Respectively, this paper traces the protagonist’s racial and gendered performativity within the
borders of India and America. It touches upon the different episodes in Jasmine’s journey of
becomingness. Jasmine metamorphoses from the Hasnapuri Jyoti to Prakash’s Jasmine and from
Jase to Jane Ripplemeyer. Through these incarnations, she refutes the inflexibility of identity.
Jasmine is a story of rebirth, transformation, and reincarnation of the protagonist within the
borders of America. Jasmine’s Identity becomes a vehicle of subverting patriarchal and racial
fixity discourses and a means of self-becomingness.