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Morgan Tuscherer
Dr. Bertolini
Contemporary Women Writers
25 April, 2014
The Escape Narrative
In Bharati Mukherjees novel Jasmine a young woman seeks a better life for
herself when she moves from India to the United States. The novel Housekeeping,
by Marilynne Robinson, displays a similar trope in which a woman is searching to
escape her dull life in the similarly dull town she resides in. Both of these novels
follow the escape narrative successfully and although the characters do not have
conclusive endings told their stories seem to exhibit hopeful endings.
In Jasmine the title character spends the entire novel escaping various
places. It begins with Jasmine immediately running away from the fate an astrologer
gave to her when she says Youre a crazy old man. You dont know what my future
holds! (3). This sets up the rest of the novel as a very obvious story of running away.
Barely three pages later Jasmine is recalling her time with Taylor and says Taylor
didnt want me to run away to Iowa (6). The phrasing here, again, is setting up the
narrative very plainly for the reader to see. Jasmine travels first from Punjab to
Florida, then makes her way across the states to New York, Iowa, and eventually
California, with each of these moves being prompted by a man in her life. Her first
move comes after her husbands death when she decides the only way to pay her
respects to him is to commit suicide in his honour at a university he had planned on
attending. After arriving at that university, her plans change when a man she calls
Half-Face rapes her in a motel. She drastically changes her motivations at this point
and says I walked out the front drive of the motel to the highway and began my

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journey, travelling light (121). After this she goes to New York to stay with a man and
his wife, and after three months the mans secret wig business is what prompts
Jasmine to leave and work as a nanny for a young couple. On a day out with the
husband, Taylor, and his daughter Duff, Jasmine thinks she sees the man who killed
her husband in a park and as per usual she is promoted to escape. She runs then to
Iowa and has a family with an older man named Bud. It seems that for most of the
novel this was the end of Jasmines journey. She is pregnant with Buds child and
has a comfortable home with him, until the very end when Taylor come back and
whisks her off to California at a moments notice, which is then the end of the novel
and the conclusion of Jasmines escape.
I believe that Jasmine learns a lot on her journeys across the globe. She
begins her life being told that she is fated to be a certain way and to live a certain
life, and even though she denied the astrologer she still was determined to die for
her husband. The journey changes her mind, however, and she is able to see that
there is more to life then predetermined actions. While on her journey she went
through a lot of emotional and physical harm she ended up in a happy place with two
people she loved, Taylor and Duff, and I dont think there is any way she could have
reached that kind of happiness if she hadnt left Punjab in the first place.
In Housekeeping Sylvie is a character similar to Jasmine in that she is trying
to escape her familial bonds, though Sylvie tries to leave in more psychological
ways. On page 81 the girls find Sylvie standing on the bridge, looking into the lake as
if she wants to jump off and on the next page when Lucille is asking her about it she
says If you fell off everyone would think you did it on purpose", to which Sylvie
replies I suppose thats true. Sylvies complete lack of emotion her is a signal that
she wouldnt have minded if she fell into the water, not even if it meant distress on

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the girls parts. Later in the novel Sylvie drives Lucille away and out of the house due
to her complete inability to take care of the children, and this is presenting itself as
Sylvie escaping from her responsibilities as a caretaker. This is further exemplified
when she takes Ruth to the island, a literal escape from their responsibilities in town.
After they arrive Ruth finds herself alone and thinking, then realises Sylvie has
vanished; she says: Sylvie was gone. She had left without a word or a sound. I
thought she must be teasing, perhaps watching me from the woods. I pretended not
to know I was alone (153). Sylvie has left her duties as a caretaker again, and in a
very vulnerable situation as well. In the end she and Ruth end up leaving town on a
train, over the tracks that no one in the town has ever dared cross. This escape
seems to be the end to all problems for them.
I dont think that the escape Housekeeping was as successful for the
characters as it was in Jasmine. Sylvie tries so hard to abandon her duties in any
way possible and doesnt grow at all from what she learns. She is careless and
unconcerned, which creates a wreck of a person inside Ruth, who has been in her
care. Where Jasmine grows with each escape, Sylvie loses a part of herself that she
can never find again, no matter how much she tries to get away.
The escape narrative is present in both the novels Housekeeping and
Jasmine, and both of the leading female characters develop on their journeys.
Jasmine learns from her escapes to different cities and becomes the best she can be
because of them, while Sylvie loses bits and pieces every time she runs which
affects her greatly in the long run.

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Works Cited
Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine. New York: Grove Press, 1989. Print
Robinson, Marilynne. Housekeeping. New York: Picador, 1980. Print