Significance of a Name- an Identity?

What could be the first step in the process of framing your life? What is that initial aspect that supplies structure to who we are--to our identity? Is it our appearance, our family, socio-economic class, ethnicity, religion, or is it a combination of everything? How about the simple name that is granted to us at birth? Your name is your first sense of ownership and identity. The significance of one's name can be very strong. A name can subsequently form an identity. A name can create a personality that lives amongst many others, in which no two are identical. This however beggs the question of whether or not we own our name, or do we allow it to own us?

Most people are given one name that remains permanent throughout the course of their life (with occasional nicknames.) But in the novel, "Jasmine" by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character, Jasmine, experiences many name-changes; each time shifting her position in life to meet new roles for different people. Each name change led to almost an entirely new identity.

In the beginning of the novel, we knew her as Jyotie. This name was given to her by her grandmother at birth. As Jyotie she lived in India, as a member of a large family of siblings, holding her dreams of becoming an American inside her. We later new her as Jasmine thanks to her husband. As Jasmine, she was the rape victim, the widow, and city-women. After meeting Lillian Gordon, she became Jazzy; she was the hopeful refugee on her way to New York. There, she became Jase, where she filled the role of a care-giver in Taylor and Wylie's family. Also throughout this chronologically juxtapose novel, we knew Jane. At this time, she was a pregnant fiance of Bud in Iowa. The main character, whatever her name may be at the time, filled many different roles and formed many different identities throughout the novel.

Jasmine told us on page 140 that as "Vijh and Wife" (other names she went under) "she was built on hope." The identity of Vijh and Wife was the hopeful immigrant to become an American, and meet that American Dream cliche. As "Jase" on page 170, she tells us, "I wanted to become the person they thought they saw: humorous, intelligent, refined, affectionate. Not illegal, not murderer, widowed, raped, destitute, fearful." All these descriptive traits she was, but had to shift her identity to meet what she perceived the people in her life expected of her. Illegal, widowed, and raped were all part of what formed her identity, but Jasmine elected to hide those aspects, and create a new one. Jasmine does not own her name, she allows it to own her. She runs away from her old self, and repeatedly moves towards a new one.

On page 176, she informs us that "Jasmine lives for the future" and that Jyotie was "burned in a trash can." Again, she moves from one identity to the next, with different visions and goals for her purpose in life. Later on 186, she shifts back to the "adventurous Jase." Jasmine even had a different love for each of her identities. On 197 she lists, "Prakash for Jasmine, Taylor for Jase, and Jane for Bud." It's clear that she's very aware of her identity swaps. Instead of embracing the parts of her past, Jasmine seems to be rather ashamed of her identity. As a result, we witnessed all these identity changes.

Jasmine allowed her name to own her. Her name, whatever one was given to her, formed a new person that we as the reader had to become acquainted with. Jyotie was the beginning of what could have been a single identity that could grow and progress, but instead got left in the past. We came to know many different identities, and had to watch an immigrant from India abandon her old self, and move towards a new one. Some may say this is bad, others may disagree. But when the first gift granted to you at birth is abandoned, that can't be good.