Whatever You Do...Don't Tell Them Your Name

A name can be a powerful thing. Just a few letters from the alphabet, jumbled around in some kind of order until they make a word; a word that from then on represents a person. The individual letters have no power in themselves, but the meaning behind them can sometimes have the power to strike fear into men’s hearts. In the Judeo-Christian bible, the people of Israel knew the true name of God. But they would not speak it because the power behind it was so great that it could destroy them. So they used a derivative of the name: Yahweh—“I AM”. The meaning behind that name was the basis for more than one religion. In ancient stories and fables, to know someone’s name was to have power over that person. And to speak it three times in a row, would set the person free.

If you were out in public and a total stranger came up to you and called you by your name, you might at first be alarmed. How does this person know who I am?  What could they want from me? To give your name to someone is to give a part of yourself, to trust them with the power of knowing who you are. For a stranger to know your name without your permission could give them power that you don’t want them to have. The extreme version of this concept in our day and age is “identity theft”; the idea that someone can actually steal another person’s identity and use it for personal gain.

On the flip side of this concept, in our society to “create a name for your self” is to acquire a sort of power. You can choose a name that will completely change who you are, enable you to be someone else to the people who only know you by that name. This is part of the idea behind acting. To take on the persona of another person, either real or imaginary, and pretend to be that person down to the last fiber of your being. Those actors who do it well become celebrated in their craft. When we choose other names for ourselves, we do this to enable us to not be who we were; in a way, to try on another soul and see if that one fits better.

In the title of the novel “Jasmine” by Bharati Mukherjee, the author is already using this idea from the start. Her protagonist is a woman who cannot or will not accept her fate, and changes her name with every new life experience she encounters. It is hard to tell if Jasmine is a strong woman or a weak one. She bounces from place to place and from identity to identity, searching for something or someone that feels like the real her. She runs, but it is hard to tell if she is running toward her future or away from her past. As a little girl in Pakastan she is Jhoti, a female under the control of her culture and her families’ history. When she small, she rebels and fights against the subaltern identity she is born with. When she finally marries, her husband gives her the nickname Jasmine, and she clings to that name and all the meanings it holds about what her husband sees when he looks at her:

 “Pygmalion wasn’t a play I’d seen or read then, but I realize now how much of Professor Higgins there was in my husband. He wanted to break down the Jyoti I’d been in Hasnapur and make me a new kind of city woman. To break off the past, he gave me a new name: Jasmine. He said, ‘You are small and sweet and heady, my Jasmine. You’ll quicken the whole world with your perfume.’ Jyoti, Jasmine: I shuttled between identities.”

 Jasmine didn’t object to this changing of her identity. It seemed as if her husband was giving her the gift that she had wanted as a child; the gift of freedom from the oppressive cultural constraints she had been born under.

Why the author chose to use the name Jasmine in the title, instead of the other names that she eventually chooses for her character is an interesting question. Jasmine is not the last transformation that the character experiences. Later in the story, after Jyoti/Jasmine’s husband is killed by a terrorist bomb, she travels to the United States under the conviction that she will kill herself using the ancient sati method that her oppressive culture holds to be the right one for widows. Even though she has embraced Jasmine as the identity her husband gives her, Jyoti comes through in a time of extreme stress and grief, and it is Jyoti who directs Jasmine’s actions. When she reaches the U.S., she finds that she must fight for her survival and kill a man who takes advantage of her vulnerability. It is in this moment that Jyoti/Jasmine decides not to take her own life and becomes Kali, the goddess of destruction and revenge. She reaches down into the deep recesses of her people’s ancient cultural and religious identity and takes on the persona of a horrible and murderous female, a female with power. She does this without apparent effort when the time is right. And as she leaves the motel room and her terrible secret behind, she adds Kali to her list of names/identities that she conceives herself as. 

Jyoti/Jasmine/Kali keeps traveling forward in her life and finds herself sometime later in New York City, working as a nanny for the daughter of an upper middle class professional couple. This is her first experience in a true American home, and she is dazzled by the sights and sounds of the city and the warmth of the family. She especially falls for the father of her young charge. He is unlike any man she has ever met in her life so far, and she is taken in by the fact that “he was the only man I knew who didn’t mind getting caught looking silly.” He seems to like her very much too, but Jyoti/Jasmine/Kali is carrying around a lot of secrets and it is getting pretty crowded in there. She allows herself to become the quintessential immigrant, the woman who stays quiet and tries to do exactly what is expected of her. She goes out of her way to please, hoping very hard that the couple will want to make her part of their family. The husband eventually gives her the name Jase. She adopts it immediately: “I liked the name he gave me…Jase was a woman who bought herself spangled heels and silk chartreuse pants. On my day off I took my week’s salary…and blew too much of it in stores along Broadway and even in the big department stores.” Jyoti/Jasmine/Kali/Jase is now transformed into a woman who is becoming her own idea of an American. She revels in the culture of New York City and feels as though she is somewhere where she can merge with the population and safely work out who she wants to be. “I wanted to become the person they thought they saw: humorous, intelligent, refined, affectionate. Not illegal, not murderer, not widowed, raped, destitute, fearful.” This safety is short-lived though, because while at the park one day with her employer and his daughter, she sees the man responsible for killing her husband, and the cocoon of safety she has spun abruptly breaks.

Jyoti/Jasmine/Kali/Jase must now run again, to escape her past and her fear of possible repercussions. “In my life I have never dithered. God’s plans have always seemed clearly laid out. I said to him, ‘I’m going to Iowa’.” Why she chooses Iowa is never clear. She seems to see it as some kind of Midwest zone of protection, far enough away from New York City to perhaps outrun this dangerous man from her past. When she lands there, she eventually finds work at a bank, where she meets a man named Bud who can offer her safety and another place to hide. Bud does not know the real Jyoti/Jasmine/Kali/Jase, and does not ask. He is content to see her as his “Jane”, and gives up his wife and his settled and somewhat prosperous life to be with her. It is her foreignness and mystery that draws him, and Jyoti/Jasmine/Kali/Jase/Jane is glad to take on this new identity and become whatever it is that Bud needs. Iowa is dull and flat, but “dullness is a kind of luxury” for a woman looking for a hiding place. Eventually, Jyoti/Jasmine/etc. finds that running is an illusion. Even in the relative safety of a little town in Iowa, tragedy finds her and affects her life. Bud is shot by a disturbed man in the town and paralyzed. She finds that she is pregnant, but cannot bring herself to marry Bud, even though he pleads with her to say yes. Bud seems to instinctively know something about Jyoti/Jasmine/etc. that she does not acknowledge to herself. She is not going to stay. The Jane that she tries to be for Bud and his family and for Iowa, does not fit.

At the end of the story, Jyoti/Jasmine/Kali/Jase/Jane is offered another way out, and she takes it. But this time, even though she is running again, it seems different. She is running back this time to the man whose child she cared for in New York City. When he shows up at the little house in Iowa to take her away, she realizes that perhaps there is someone she can give her real name to, someone she can trust with that power. For her, Taylor was a man who “didn’t want to change me. He didn’t want to scour and sanitize the foreignness. My being different…didn’t scare him.” When she makes the decision to go, she practically runs toward the car and toward her future. It seems no different to the reader this time. She is running away as much as she is running toward. She muses, “Time will tell if I am a tornado, rubble-maker, arising from nowhere and disappearing into a cloud”.  

But will she choose her own name this time, or will it be chosen for her?