American lifestyle Essay

The novel â€Å"Jasmine† by Bharati Mukherjee provides frontier narratives and myths about Americanization and the Gold Rush. She presents Americanization from the Western viewpoint with all locales, hero lifestyles and mobility. Furthermore, the author pays special attention to the promise of American lifestyle, individualism and female freedom stressing that Eastern lands are characterized by strong cultural ties and women’s suppression and subordination. Women inequality isn’t struggled there. The central figure of the novel is Jasmine who comes from the Eastern world – India – to the United States of America, where women are provided with more rights and opportunities being historically more fluid. Firstly Jasmine is presented as a pioneering woman symbolizing the female role of women courage and self-reliance. The author shows that Jasmine changes both metaphorically and physically throughout the novel towards the western philosophy. Mukherjee involves frontier myths to illustrate Jasmine’s cultural and psychological transformation from oppressed woman to liberal personality. When moving from India to Florida and New York, then to the Midwest and California, the author shows metaphorically Jasmine’s transformation and notes that she becomes a real American â€Å"gold digger†. (145) Jasmine starts transformational process when becoming affected by the Gold Rush. Jasmine realizes she appears able to benefit and to profit from the unexhausted American state. Nevertheless, she is treated as an exotic newcomer disturbing moral equilibrium of the society, though her desire of independence and freedom makes her struggle with prejudices. Therefore, she is forced to change her core moral and ethical principles and values to be welcomed to new country. Jasmine settles with a disabled banker in Iowa creating in such a way a life similar to that of the earlier immigrants and their cultural assimilation. As it is mentioned Jasmine is rejected because of her non-European origin. However, with the novel progression we see that she manages to become absorbed into new culture and to become true American. When moving to California Jasmine hopes to become completely assimilated into the American culture, though she faces many borders and obstacles. The author defines these obstacles as both metaphorical and physical. With the help of wilderness legends, she shows Jasmine’s hesitations and fears about irrationality of the inner self and fear of being rejected. Then the author shows Jasmine’s moral adaptation to the American laws – she realizes that she is provided with more freedom and she should have less fear of oppression. Nevertheless, her views are undermined when her husband is killed. She becomes stronger morally and decided to travel to America because her husband has planned this trip originally. Firstly she wants to commit widow’s ritual immolation, but later being raped she decided to fight for better future. Instead of committing suicide, Jasmine turns on her violator and kills him showing she is able to fight for her life. This act of violence is that of the frontier outlaw who takes retribution into his own hands. Speaking about Jasmine’s transformation, it is necessary to outline that psychological issues of guilt and repression are inherent to her personality and these principles don’t change even in the end of the novel. , The West liberates her inner self so that a chaotic unconscious can be calmed. In the end we see that Jasmine finds new morality that enables her to make free her personal freedom. However, newly achieved freedom makes her relinquish her Indian roots and to follow the lifestyle of other wanderers and seekers. The feeling of guilt always haunts her. When she decides to leave town with her former lover she feels guilt for having abandoned a man who loves her. The ending of the novel is rather symbolic as well: Jasmine drives off with Taylor into the sunset, â€Å"greedy with wants and reckless from hope†. (241) In such way Bharati shows that Jasmine’s transformation from oppressed women into free American personality, who realizes her desires and demands, is over. References Mukherjee, Bharati. (1989). Jasmine. New York: Fawcett Crest.