51 pages • 1 hour read
Bharati MukherjeeJasmine
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
Two years into their marriage, Prakash is still frustrated by his employment circumstances. He encourages Jasmine to brush up on her English by reading electronics magazines and manuals, as he believes that electronics are the wave of the future, even in India. Prakash even gives Jasmine a future to imagine—an electronics store that they both run equally.
But outside their fantasy for the future is the reality of the changing times in India. Now the Khalsa Lions blend in with the rest of the populace, identifiable only by a steel bracelet. Jasmine and Prakash look at people’s wrists first before engaging with them.
Prakash brings Jasmine news that he has been accepted to the Florida Institute of Technology. They will have to lie on her visa that she is 18, not 16, to get her into the United States. Prakash will go first to America, and then send for Jasmine. Jasmine declares to her husband, “I can’t live without you” (91), somewhat surprised that she means it.
As a gift to Jasmine, Prakash takes her into town to a high-priced sari shop to purchase her an exquisite wedding sari as a gift. Jasmine is proud: “I felt rich, prized, a queen” (92)—“It was the beginning of the real life we wanted, needed, to live (92). However, as Prakash takes out his money, Jasmine notices two Lions carrying a music box, standing in the doorway of the shop. Behind them, Jasmine recognizes a man on a scooter: Sukhwinder.
The Lions leave the music box on the floor and take off just as the bomb goes off. Jasmine hears Sukhwinder’s voice scream, “Prostitutes! Whores!” (65), as he speeds away. She and her husband are thrown to the floor. Prakash’s dead body protects Jasmine from the fall.
Despite Jasmine’s pleas that she knows the man responsible for Prakash’s death, the police seem only concerned about her husband’s watch and what procedures will be followed for the disbursement of her dowry and personal belongings to other family members. She screams in grief and frustration.
Chapter 14 Summary
Jasmine grieves the loss of her husband and their future. She imagines his ghost telling her not to go back to being Jyoti, not to go back to old, feudalistic traditions. There is no place for her in Hasnapur anyway: Her sisters live out of town, her brothers are busy with their business, her friends have abandoned her because they think she is bad luck, and Jasmine does not fit in with her mother and other, older widows.
Jasmine goes to a swami for spiritual guidance and is told, “Our highest mission […] is to create new life” (97), which only brings more grief to Jasmine, as she and Prakash never had children. But she reconsiders this position—they did create a new life, Jasmine’s life. She decides she will carry out her husband’s dream to go to America. Her brothers are dumbfounded at her plans, but she counters with Prakash’s dream: “I told them I had sworn it before God. A matter of duty and honor” (97). However, she cannot tell her mother what she plans to do.
Jasmine’s paternal grandmother, Dida lectures her that it was her fault that Prakash was killed. After all, they were at a shop to buy something they could not afford to celebrate her husband’s separation from his wife by traveling to America. Dida says that if Jasmine had married any of the men she had offered, she would be much better off. Jasmine fires back that “if God sent Sukkhi to kill my husband, then I renounce God” (98).
Jasmine’s brother, Hari-prar, works to secure her illegally adjusted visa. It takes months, but eventually, Jasmine has the paperwork she needs to leave for America.
Chapter 15 Summary
Jasmine begins her worldwide trip to America, starting with a stop in Bahrain and then onto Hamburg. She is overwhelmed by the many different people she encounters. At one checkpoint, the police stop her to look at her passport but eventually let her go, making Jasmine especially thankful for the trouble her brother went to in securing such a well-made fake visa.
When she arrives in Amsterdam, Jasmine finds a railway porter who speaks some Hindi. He puts her in contact with a trawler captain who smuggles contraband and who can get her to the United States.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
The wild ups and downs of Jasmine’s life in these chapters allow her to wield the conservative religion she grew up with as a tool for convincing those around her to do what she wants. After Prakash’s murder, Jasmine once again comes back to the Hindi concept that death, no matter how sudden, happens according to God’s plan. This philosophy serves as her justification for leaving India for America and as a way to convince her brothers to help her get fake documents. But repudiating this way of thinking allows Jasmine to free herself once and for all from her grandmother’s hurtful diatribes. Because she can put herself outside the culture she’s been raised in, she can alter her message to fit its audience.
Jasmine’s newfound ability to question the patriarchal strictures around her comes from not so much from the tragedy of Prakash’s death, but from its aftermath. After a bomb set by Sukhwinder and two of his fellow Lions detonates in the doorway of the sari shop, killing Prakash, the police completely ignore her cries that she knows the man responsible for the terror attack. She is a woman without status—and thus, a woman whose testimony is easy to disregard for men who are more concerned with distributing Prakash’s belongings.
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