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 10-12 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Chapter 10 introduces the reader to the slow but inevitable class and cultural violence that worked its way through India, even into the little village of Hasnapur. After her father’s death, Jasmine’s older brothers quit college to return home, take care of the family, and sell the 30 acres of land their father had owned. They open a scooter-repair shop and resign themselves to living in the village.
The new owner of their father’s former land is Canadian—a foreigner—and Jasmine feels “robbed” (48) and “disconnected” (48) whenever she sees the man walking on the paths that her father had once often traveled.
Her brothers entertain male guests at their home, and Jasmine enjoys listening to their theoretical talk of violence and politics. The violence is growing in India, where there are reports each day of bombs exploding, and innocent people hijacked and executed. One guest, a baptized Sikh named Sukhwinder, becomes increasingly more agitated and radical, advocating exile and violence against Hindus. Jasmine’s brothers brush off the man’s statements as foolish talk, but Jasmine is not so sure; she believes this man has “unforgiving eyes” (49). Sukhwinder follows Sant Bhindranwale, a militant Sikh leader, and firmly believes that all Hindus are “bent on the genocide of the Sikh nation” (50).
When a new friend of her brothers speaks out in defense of a peaceful way of life, an India for all citizens, Jasmine, without even seeing the man, falls in love with him. His name is Prakash, and she is impressed with the conviction in his voice. Jasmine believes that he is a man who cannot be fooled by Sukhwinder’s radicalized point of view. She says that this manner of falling in love is the “Hasnapuri way” (51), loving someone for who he is before seeing him.
Chapter 11 Summary
Jasmine tries to casually ask her brothers about Prakash, hoping to learn more about him without alerting them to her interest. She finds out that he speaks English, so she sets about teaching herself because she wants to impress him. Jasmine determinedly goes about her days trying not to act as if she is in love with someone she does not even know.
When her brother Hari-prar places three movie tickets in her hand, Jasmine believes they mean to take her to the movie theater and Prakash will meet them there. She spends the night thinking of her future while hugging her forlorn mother by the only window in their home.
In preparing for the movies the next night, Jasmine takes time to dress up, choosing a Lahore sari to wear, and decorating her hair with a Jasmine wreath. She has no mirror to examine her reflection, only the broken remnant of a rearview mirror that one of her brothers had taken from a broken-down UN Jeep. Despite the lack of a mirror, Jasmine says, “a goddess couldn’t have been surer” (53) of her worth and beauty.
The three siblings arrive at the movies too early, and they go to a nearby teashop to wait. The owner of the shop flirts with Jasmine, causing her to worry that her brothers went to all this trouble to introduce her to a man she has no interest in. But when they get in line to enter the theater, Jasmine sees a man walk past and look at her. He stumbles when the people in line bump into him, but Jasmine has already seen what she wants: a man with “dignity, kindness, intelligence. Maybe even humor” (54). He speaks softly to her, impressed with her empathy for the well-being of a stranger who stumbled in a crowd.
Chapter 12 Summary
Two weeks later, Jasmine and Prakash Vijh marry, but their marriage is not without tension, specifically between Jasmine’s traditional upbringing and Prakash’s more modern outlook on life. Their wedding is not traditional, merely a ceremony at the registry office with no guests; instead of living with Prakash’s uncle as is traditional, they live in a rented apartment. Jasmine admires her husband’s emphasis on “independence, self-reliance” (55) but she also confesses to feeling “suspended between worlds” (55)—between the traditional and the modern.
Prakash wants his wife to be an independent person, telling her to call him by his first name, something that takes her time to feel comfortable doing and about which he teases her. Jasmine compares Prakash to Professor Higgins in Pygmalion, a man determined to rid Eliza of her backward-thinking upbringing and make her a new, modern woman. Prakash even gives his wife a new name, spurning her given name Jyoti for Jasmine because “You’ll quicken the whole world with your perfume” (56).
The married couple frequently argues about Jasmine’s desire to have a child. Prakash feels that 14-year-old Jasmine could have a more productive future, calling her naïve for thinking that her social and religious upbringing is sacrosanct. Although he never hits her, Prakash does hold the upper hand over Jasmine due to his experience in college. He encourages them to keep arguing because they should not enter into any new phase of life without both agreeing to it.
Unhappy with his job and his culture, Prakash wants to teach in America, to leave behind the “backward, corrupt, mediocre fools” (57). At first, Jasmine misunderstands her husband, thinking she must stay behind, but then she realizes he wants her to go with him. His accountant job for a crooked shop owner has demoralized Prakash, and he looks to a fresh start in a new country. She eventually agrees to go to America with him.
Jasmine’s teacher dies after a group of Sikh boys on scooters attacks and humiliates him. Interrupting one of his lessons, they call him names, hack off his hair and beard, and empty more than thirty bullets into his body.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
Caught between traditional order and a modern world, Jasmine feels torn between two lives. Her traditional world is increasingly subject to violence and religious radicalism, while the modern world dominates her husband’s thoughts and desires.
Fueled by her victory in getting to continue her education, Jasmine falls in love with a man based on his intellect—she wants to marry Prakash after hearing him speak out against the sectarian violence tearing their country apart. Still, she is taken aback by Prakash’s secular and modern ideas about marriage: Prakash rejects traditional Indian standards, from their low-key wedding, to the apartment they rent, to his desire for his wife to talk to him as an equal would. Most prominently, Prakash rejects Jasmine’s assumption that they would have children right away—the most traditional way for her to fulfill her role as a wife. Prakash would rather she put her mind to use.
These chapters also introduce the idea of globalization and a larger scope for Jasmine’s understanding of the world. Her brothers must sell their land to a Canadian buyer, whose presence unnerves Jasmine. Soon, however, she and Parakash are discussing his desire to move to America to study technology at a university. In the meantime, the violent winds of change move closer to their village. Jasmine’s beloved teacher, Masterji, is beaten, tortured, and then shot to death by a group of young men on scooters—probably members of the Khalsa Lions, people who denounce Masterji as a traitor to his religion and culture. Jasmine’s small-town perspective expands dramatically, as she considers the ways cultures, religions, and countries intersect and connect.
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