Downton Abbey and Jasmine

I was watching the show Downton Abbey which takes place in 1914, where Lady Mary Crawley expressed that her sister, Sybil, who the family has just learned attended a suffragette canvasing, "is entitled to her opinions." In response, her grandmother, Violet Crawley, said something I found rather striking and quite relevant to Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine: "No, she isn't until she is married, then her husband will tell her what her opinions are." Pitaji's cousin seems to agree with Violet Crawley, saying "that big-city men prefer us village girls because we... have no minds of our own. Village girls are like cattle; whichever way you lead them, that is the way they will go" (46).

At first glance, Jane's opinions seem to be based purely on her husband's. Prakash expresses to Jane that he "wants for us to go away and have a real life" (81). Jane responds: "'All right,' I said, 'if you want me to have a real life I want it too'" (81). This shows Jane conforming to her husband's views very quickly. Like Violet Crawley said, Prakash "tell[s] her what her opinions are" and she accepts it.

Earlier on, Jane shows that she can form her own opinions. However, this is before her marriage to Prakash. She says, "I couldn't marry a man who didn't speak English, or at least who didn't want to speak English," an opinion that her mother, father, brothers, and sisters certainly did not force on her, as they do not share it (68). This statement disproves Violet Crawley's belief that a girl should not have her own opinion until "her husband... tell[s] her what her opinions are." It shows that Jane did have her own thoughts prior to her marriage to Prakash. It also shows women do not necessarily go "whichever way you lead them," but instead, they sometimes lead in their opinions (46).

Prakash's aunt shows that she does not agree with Violet Crawley's statement. When Jane and her husband do not live with his family, "his aunt wept, 'Your wife is so fancy that our place isn't good enough for her?'" (76). This shows that Prakash's aunt believes that Jane can form her own opinion about whether or not she would like to live with Prakash's family. She is, in fact, under the impression that the decision to live in an apartment instead of in Prakash's family home is not her nephew's but is, instead, Jane's.