Sample Student Paper
Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
THEME: Gender Roles and Challenges for Women
“God’s cruel, my mother complained, to waste brains on a girl. And God’s still more cruel, she said, to make a fifth daughter beautiful instead of the first. By the time my turn to marry came around, there would be no dowry money left to give me the groom I deserved. I was seven then, a reader, a counter, a picture drawer to whom Masterji, the oldest and sourest teacher in our school (B.A. Patiala, failed), lent his own books. I was a wiz in Punjabi and Urdu, and the first likely female candidate for English books, some from the British Council Library, some with USIS stickers. 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” (Mukherjee 40-41).
This quotation gives insight into the gender biased culture that Jasmine was raised in. Although she is a highly intelligent human being, her intellect is considered a waste because it is possessed by a female. At age seven, she is recognized by her teachers and given English books to read and further educate herself. While her mother has few kind words for her talents, her teachers see her promise—learning English in many cultures has long been perceived as the first step in procuring a better life for oneself. In addition to being intelligent, she is beautiful. Her culture values beautiful females, but her mother cynically degrades this fortunate characteristic because she is not born at a time when finances would allow for a socially elite arranged marriage. In American culture, beauty and intellect are two of the most admired human traits. However, in America, gender biases have been greatly pacified which has allowed for females to gain equal praise for having culturally favorable characteristics. It is also interesting to note that anything that is considered bad in Hindu culture is attributed to God being cruel.
Jasmine begins her life in India, where strict cultural boundaries limit her. Her destination to the and around the United States brings her into a culture where women are given equal rights with men. While she is often perceived as an outsider in the Iowan frontier region, I see her as a avant-garde woman because of her journey to get to America. A central theme throughout the literature that we have read thus far in this course is the path of assimilation immigrants take when coming to America. Jasmine is no exceptions to the difficulties that arise when immigrating to America.
Reflection: I found Jasmine’s journey to America and these beginnings very intriguing because her single story may be representative but it is also unique and difficult to imagine for those of us raised in the U.S. She has little chances to “escape” from the proscribed roles in India, but in American she may find other challenges, but we have a sense from early in the novel that she will triumph over her difficult circumstances.