An Archetypal Reading of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine: Instinctive Agency and the Individuation Process

Abstract This article presents an archetypal reading of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine that foregrounds the narrator’s agency in her sequential transformations in the narrative. The critic starts from a broader conception of the term agency that encapsulates those instinctive types of actions in which the protagonist, and people in everyday life, find themselves implicated. In other words, the term agency should not be limited to fully conscious and deliberate acts, hence the concept “instinctive agency.” Other scholars have seen that the denomination factor in Jasmine, i.e. the fact that every characterological transformation the narrator experiences coincides with a name given to her by a male partner, is a clear sign of her diminishing subjectivity and lack of agency. This study refutes this claim by foregrounding the agentive role of her personal history, and by presenting a thorough psychological and archetypal analysis of the male partners with whom she relates. This article also refutes Mukherjee’s claim that complete abnegation of the old self is required for transformation to occur. By highlighting the ways in which the protagonist’s old Indian self comes to the surface time and again throughout her journey, the article evidences that the author’s views regarding self-transformation are psychologically unrealistic. The article concludes with the perspective that it is inaccurate to regard Jasmine as a sheer receptacle of male power and postcolonial influence, and that a deeper psychological reading substantiates her agency and subjectivity in the postmodern world in which her narrative of self-transformation unfolds.