Janie and Jasmine and Gender, Oh My
Gender and sexuality have become so deeply rooted into society that we apply them to most anything without ever giving it a second thought. The portrayals of gender in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine are prime examples of how gender identity crisis and sexual awakening happens to everyone regardless of culture. The main characters Janie and Jasmine both live in rural, less than ideal living conditions compared to others around them. Janie is a rather submissive character in a world of mostly misogynistic men. Jasmine grows up in a culture where women are treated as property of men. The experiences of these two women are similar. Tea Cake and Prakash, respectively, are both able to bring out the best qualities in their wives. Unfortunately, gender discrimination is something that will probably never go away. Still, women such as Janie and Jasmine are able to lower the intensity of the discrimination that they face by changing the spaces they are in and the people in which they decide to include in those spaces.
Janie, from Their Eyes Were Watching God, is perhaps the most aware about how certain spaces will have different impacts on how she is treated by men. Hurston relies heavily on the distinction between the back porch and the front porch (Pattison 12). The novel begins with Janie telling her life story to Pheoby on her back porch (Hurston 5). Janie also engages with a game of checkers with Tea Cake on the back porch (Hurston 95). The back porch has come to symbolize a space where Janie is not subject to gender discrimination and can just be herself. The front porch on the other hand is a space in which the men of Eatonville can interact and talk about masculine subject matter (Pattison, 12). Here, Janie is expected to be soft spoken and obedient to her husband Joe. She is not allowed to engage in meaningful conversation with the men and certainly is not allowed to express her opinions. This oppressive treatment by Joe is something that Janie had been forced to come to terms with and then later expel from her life. Janie finally realized that she had been mistreated when Joe was sick, which she clearly expressed to Joe moments before he died (Hurston 86). This epiphany for Janie offered a great sense of relief and liberation for her. Janie wore black to mourn although she was not really sad and she has gained so much leisure time to spend with Tea Cake. This relationship which develops into Janie’s third marriage acts as a turning point for the novel. Janie has successfully overcome the misogyny of both Logan and Joe. She is able to spend time with Tea Cake and do things that she truly wants to do, not ones which she feels obligated to do. Janie does not gripe about spending time on the muck or facing a hurricane, because she would rather be with Tea Cake than anyplace else on earth. Although Tea Cake does show a little bit of patricharcial authority of his own, the fact that Janie is able to overcome his assertive masculinity shows that Janie has gained power and autonomy as a woman.
These uses of gender can also be related to the ways in which gender is discussed regarding Jyoti in Jasmine. Although given the name Jyoti at birth, she has come to claim multiple identities including; Jasmine, Kali, Jazzy, Jane, and Jase. These identities portray her progression in becoming a self sufficient woman who is assimilated into Western culture. The difficulties cast onto her given her situation demonstrate her ability to overcome adversity and objectification. Jyoti was burdened with the foreshadowing of a future of widowhood and exile at the age of seven (Mukherjee 3). Although young, Jyoti refused to accept the fate predicted by the astrologer. She took this information with a grain of salt and decided to make the most of her young life without letting gender become an inhibitor of her goals and aspirations. Jyoti worked harder than her brothers in school and had ambitions of becoming a doctor. This caused an altercation to ensue with her father because he did not believe that women were capable of such professions (Mukherjee 51). However, this did not discourage Jyoti. Jasmine was born through Prakash’s high hopes for his young wife. He saw both beauty and potential in Jasmine that others in her life had failed to recognize. Prakash says, “You are small and sweet and heady, my Jasmine. You’ll quicken the whole world with your perfume” (Mukherjee 77). This becomes something that Jasmine will carry with her for life and she will try to live up to her late husband’s expectations of her. Kali comes to life following the scene in which Jasmine is raped in America by her companion Half Face. The rape is horrifically graphic and leaves Jasmine caught between suicide and revenge. Thankfully, she chose the latter option and performed her revenge in the most fear evoking way possible. Jasmine assumes the role of Kali, slices her tongue open with a knife, and drools blood onto Half Face immediately before stabbing him in the neck (Mukherjee 118). This act of murder shows that Jasmine was willing to do anything to protect herself and to cut oppressive men from her life. Jazzy is the persona created by Lillian Gordon in order to make Jasmine appear to be more American (Mukherjee 133). This is done be changing Jasmine’s attire to a tee shirt and a pair of running shoes in order to accomplish an American look. In order to create the attitude, Lillian takes Jazzy the the shopping mall and teaching her how to act and to ride an escalator for example (Mukherjee 139). Jane is born in Iowa and is married to Bud. The novel concludes with Jase leaving Bud and going to California. Critic Anu Aneja states, “Jasmine is a character constantly in the process of fabrication whose making involves the unmaking of the past” (73). With every new identity comes an increased awareness of her gender and her ability to succeed within a patriarchal society. In many regards, Jasmine has proved to the reader that she was able to overcome the trials and tribulations foretold to her as a young child.
The further that Jasmine moves westward, the intensity of gender discrimination that she faces becomes lower and lower. Dale Pattison of Texas A&M University describes Janie of Their Eyes Were Watching God as, “a figure of feminine empowerment” (9). She left an oppressive masculine space in favor of a simpler and less critical one on the muck and the back porch with Tea Cake. Aneja says that Jasmine, “is presented initially as an unformed mass of stereotypical values and beliefs. Through the multiple losses of her identity, or rather lack of one, she finally seems to obtain a sharper definition, and an identifiable personality” (75). This transition shows Jasmine’s movement from an object of society to a self sufficient subject. The moment when this becomes most evident is when Jane leaves Bud and assumes the identity of Jase and goes to California with Taylor. Jane describes this event, “I am not choosing between men. I am caught between the promise of America and old world dutifulness” (Mukherjee 240). This shows that Jasmine has come to put her own needs before those of any man in her life. As it has been made evident, Janie and Jasmine alike are both challenged with the circumstances of a gender identity crisis. This isn’t to say that they are having a difficult time acknowledging that they are both women. The crisis develops out of their confusion as to what role they play as women in their situations within the culture in which they find themselves. Janie has moved from a presumably racist Southern community to the entirely African American community of Eatonville. With this move, she had to learn how to better overcome misogyny within her race. Once she finally figured out her role in society, her world was shaken up once again when Joe died and she decided to leave with Tea Cake.
Jasmine struggled immensely with her role as a woman in India. She grow up in a household with Pitaji who believed that women were not capable of achieving greatness such as that of a doctor. She was comfortable with the bond that she formed with the other women in her village because they were all victims of the same circumstance. Jasmine believed that she finally had her role established with Prakash until he was taken from her in death and she found new purpose by seeking to carry out his legacy. Janie and Jasmine both were enlightened with the experiences of intense sexual awakenings. Janie often came back to the pear tree and her first sexual desires and curiosities being addressed. Janie talks about the time that she received her first kiss and how Nanny gave her a lecture about what it means to be a woman. Likewise, Jasmine recounted her sexual preservation and Prakash’s wishes to keep her pure, until this is spoiled by the rape that she is exposed to in America. No matter how badly Jasmine wanted to have a child with her husband, he thought that it would be better if she waited since she was so young. Unfortunately the sexual awakening that Jasmine faced was not ideal and this helped to shape the outcome of the novel.
Some of the events that took place in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jasmine occurred beyond Janie and Jasmine’s control. Janie could not manipulate the opinions of men within her society in regards to women. Jasmine did not have any means of preventing Prakash’s murder or the rape that she would endure in The United States. However, these women were both able to make the most of their troubling situations and find a way to achieve peace and happiness.Janie decided early that Logan Killicks was not the man that she was meant to marry. She refused to spend her life with him and be miserable. When Joe Starks came to town, he presented a new hope for Janie and she chose to run off with him. Janie took control and avoidable a terrible life with Logan for a tolerable life with Joe. Once Janie realized that Joe was more interested in his image rather than her, she decided to spend time alone in the store and eventually enjoy the company of Tea Cake. With Joe dead, Tea Cake offered a ray of sunshine that Janie could not resist. Similarly, once Prakash died, Jasmine decided that she could not bare to spend time in India any longer without her husband. She made a conscious decision to migrate to America and seek out a better life for herself. After being raped, she regained the upper hand by murdering her abuser. She stayed with Lillian and Professori temporarily, she decided to marry Bud, and then later decided to leave him for Taylor. Jasmine has very much found a way to maintain control of her own life.Janie and Jasmine were both aware of the discrimination that they were bound to face in their unfortunate situations. However, they both found ways to lower the intensity of the discrimination that they faced by choosing the spend time with less misogynistic men and more women who shared similar experiences. They decided to leave regions that were full of gender bias for areas that were more open minded and accepting of them. In these ways, both women were able to escape from their abusers through a simple change of locale and the associations that they held.
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