Mukherjee’s Jasmine on Ownership

When I was abroad in Cape Town, I met a woman who meant a great deal to me. Still, there was one thing I could not stand: she kept calling me a “hoarder.” At first, I rejected the term adamantly, but when I went to her place, I could see most of the white on the floors and walls and noticed very little of her own things taking up space. In her wardrobe closet, she could easily still have fit us both inside, whereas mine would’ve had to remove clothing or suffocate between the varying types on hangers to do the same. I understood that I, even as a traveler, had many more things with me. I even saved broken things thinking that maybe I could fix them, or use the pieces for a project, or reference a note for a future paper, or maybe this odd item might just help save me some money someday. Someday. Indeed, she used to laugh and tell me that those exact thoughts were what constituted a mindset of a hoarder. I protested to say my mother was much worse. Still, that did not negate the facts in her eyes--nor in mine, now.

I packed light compared to some of my peers, but still, I found myself agreeing. I recounted a story about the first time I left for college. I had packed every item that I wanted for the rest of my life, or to protect, including items that proved my identity and some accomplishments. She, on the other hand, told me stories of how her mother, despite the village they lived in, hated keeping water in the big plastic bins (not trusting their sanitation), so she continuously had to walk many kilometers to every so often carry water back almost daily.

I don’t know this life. We have been trained differently when it comes to how best to survive.


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Following our class discussions of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, I want to explore the notion of ownership throughout the novel as presented in the first-person perspective of the main character, who we will call Jasmine. Consider owning with regard to her own narrative, owning as implying an entitlement or right to (perhaps citizenship), or lastly, as referring to a literal owning of goods, which to Jasmine habitually means survival.


This idea of owning your own narrative is why I think it is important that Jasmine is told in the first-person, and that the character is able to obtain forged documents starting her acceptance of different names. After insult of a xenophobic beggar, and crying in the back of the taxi, Jasmine listens to the taxi driver who tells her his story: “The driver said, ‘In Kabul, I was a doctor. We have to be her living like dogs because they have taken everything from us’”(140). Jasmine immediately insists to the readers that despite the “greed, more people like [herself]” she saw on the streets (140), she would foster a different narrative, and not succumb to limiting expectations: “I would not immure myself as he had. Vijh & Wife was built on hope” (140). Jasmine sees “greed” in beggars eyes, which implies an overzealous wanting. And she offers an escape: hope and resilience in her self-determination of your path. Is she naive? Can she be without want, as it in her mind could potentially be fatal (141)? She proves to want to own something stronger: her story.


We first see her distinction that she is able to own, even as a woman, when she compares her former situation to the reality of her sisters. It is her partial ownership of the mission that comes out of her first marriage with Prakash that she is able to go independently on this journey. The message she takes from Prakash is “Don’t crawl back...That Jyoti is dead”(96), this informs her deep severing of her past: “we murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams” (29, emphasis added). The dreams were originally positioned within her reach from Prakash’s message. Jasmine reflects, “My sisters all were living in cities, with jealous, drunken men who wouldn’t part with a few rupees of bus or train fare… [Prakash and I] had created life. Prakash has created Jasmine, and Jasmine would complete the mission of Prakash. Vijh & Wife” (96). She feels as though she can make a claim to the life of hope that far surpasses the groveling she observes her sisters needing to do as women for basic access. Instead, she owned equally with Prakash, and now carries on alone the dream. Professor Vadhera (a friend of Parkash, mostly referred to as Professor), knows that part of her dream includes security (hence her wanting to be “Jane” and in this case a “green card”). She wants, telling Professorji “[she] wanted a green card more than anything else in the world, that a green card was freedom”(149), because without it ‘[she] felt immured” (148), the very thing she aspires to be able to escape and not be. She states, “If I had a green card, a job, a goal, happiness would appear out of the blue.” (148-149). She was willing to buy it on the black market for three thousand dollars/ fifty thousand rupees, anything to get out of limbo. The citizenship that she could prove, the belonging that owning the green card (even if fake) could provide is priceless, is freedom. Eventually, she comes to believe she can “walk and talk American,” because of the encouragement of others too, free from this particular wanting. She forms her belief of a fluid, dynamic American foundation (133-135), now allowing her to own her aliases, her next decisions, as any other woman in the US.

Now, consider the broader implication of the ownership of things: Mother Ripplemeyer, Jasmine (then Jane), and Du. Mother Ripplemeyer and Jasmine understood hoarding. While Jasmine notes that Mother Ripplemeyer may be slightly racist or unable to handle too extreme stories of poverty (16), she does say that Mother Ripplemeyer can relate to a certain degree to the need to collect, to save: “Even here [not Hasnapur but Baden, Iowa], I store water in orange juice jars...any container I can find...Mother doesn’t think that’s crazy. Depression turned her into a hoarder, too”(16). Hoarding becomes a stocking for the worst, an assurance of survival. Such is understood further when discussing the difference in Du’s hoarding: “He’s a materialist...his room is a warehouse. He’s hoarded things, big things like road signs...and little things like nail files...What he owns seems to matter to him less than owning itself. He needs to own. Owning is rebellion, it means not sharing, it means survival” (30, emphasis added). The point is drawn further when he proceeds to share the rhinestone ladybug pin instead of holding onto it for his own assured survival, which prior Jasmine thought he had, as he was the only person in his family to survive with the visa. Now, he’s hoarding things not for survival, but for curiosity, for life. Jasmine hints in the following lines that she thinks he needs to retain the survival instinct and “own” like she does. She understands the ability to own as rebellion, as making it, as exceeding expectations, but he is now willing to share. She owns practical and needed things, as Mother Ripplemeyer once did, too. He is willing to part with what he owns; instead prioritizes his relationship with Jasmine at this moment.


Towards the end, and final decision readers witness Jasmine take, she informs us of a moment of tangible goods being released: the items the Taylor presumes can now be returned, as she is leaving that life away. Mukherjee writes, “His hand [Taylor] printing a confident RETURN on packages of books, records, knife sets I’d thought I wanted... I am not choosing between men. I am caught between the promise of America and old-world dutifulness”(240). She finally releases from the past, releasing items as she had her past selves. She does not see these items to be vital to her survival. This moment can be understood to mark her putting her freedoms and relationships (with Taylor and Duff) beyond just continuing to survive (like Jyoti and other personas once did) or striving for simplicity, comfort, and security that being “Jane” provided.