Esther's Freedom
Throughout The Bell Jar, I was struck by how there is no middle path for Esther to go down - she can either continue the cycle of being an academic overachiever and deriving validation from scholarships and awards or submit herself to a life of housewifery and being a suburban mom, effectively throwing her education aside. It's hard to disregard the fact that a significant reason for her predicament is her gender - her socioeconomic class means that she doesn't have the safety net that others at her elite schools do to make some mistakes and be able to bounce back but this is exacerbated by the fact that she is a woman. Esther has nowhere to go the summer after she returns from New York and feels trapped by the image of Dodo Conway walking outside the window with her Barnard degree and six (maybe seven?) kids.
Esther already has a few career options available to her and her mother is constantly on her case about learning shorthand, a skill that will help her get a dull but secure job as a secretary. She's asked multiple times in New York what she wants to be when she grows up and her 'script' in her mind seems to be collapsing, as she breaks down while doing the final photoshoot. It is in New York where for the first time, she starts to question everything her life has been so far - is she really the overachieving girl who will become a poet and travel and teach at elite institutions? It's both being in a high-pressure environment that holds academic and professional achievement over anything while being surrounded socially by people who she finds annoying (and in one case, violating her) that her breakdown seems to begin. I almost found that the bell jar that descended on Esther coincided simultaneously with the blinders she had on, of all the truths she had convinced herself that she wanted to see in her life. Her first instance of "freedom" occurs in New York but it is also where she is violated and all the freedom and possibility make her question everything that there is.
I will say that initially, I didn't get a sense of "closure" at the end of the book - I'm not saying that Esther was looking for closure, because the possibility is still there that the bell jar will descend once more but I think part of it was I was a bit confused about how shock therapy works. However, thinking more about the events of the book made me realize that it wasn't necessarily just the shock treatment that "cures" Esther but the freedom she gets - the freedom to make decisions over her own body, to have all the autonomy that a man has, that is part of her treatment and not a thing on the side. Again, gender plays a big role here - in every sphere of her life, Esther is tied down to a role or expectation, or some freedom is denied to her on account of her gender. However, for the first time, she is able to move around in society without the fear of being "marked" by a man. As women in the 1960s and 1970s would push not just for political rights and representation but for bodily autonomy as part of the Second Wave of Feminism, it's clear that Esther and Sylvia Plath were making these connections long before - they understood how tied up personal freedom and dignity were to the freedom of having control over one's body and not being vulnerable to anyone else.
I think this is really insightful; the total polarity of Esther's situation stood out to me too, because I think it feels like her only options are life under different bell jars. It's either the bell jar of mental illness + accompanying treatment or the bell jar of achievment and resulting observation or the bell jar (?) of life as a housewife, trapped/isolated in some domestic sphere.
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I agree that "closure" is not what Esther needs or wants at the end of the novel--the whole context is about her "reemerging" into society. There is the key question as to whether she's merely been "repaired" and is back where she left off, or whether her ordeal has transformed and strenghthened her in some way--but both of these have to do with her fitness to "reenter the race," hopefully with a less toxic attitude about the nature of the race and the need to "win."
ReplyDeleteMaybe her transformation has to do with her coming to see more than a simple binary of "two paths"--this could be partly a reflection of her condition distorting her perception, which turns everything into a zero-sum/win-lose prospect. The novel leaves us at a point of *potential*, and we don't see where Esther goes from here. But she is clear that her story is far from over--she crosses the threshold into the room with the panel who will decide her fitness, but after that, she's fully aware that it depends on her. If we read the ending optimistically, she does seem better prepared for the complexities of her world: one example might be her resolution of her issues with sexuality and virginity, as Nolan has kind of shown her a "middle path" where she can take some agency over her sexuality without dropping out of respectable society entirely. She is starting to see a broader range of possibilities for herself in all kinds of ways that are only hinted at in the end.
I agree, I think you make some really insightful points about her lack of freedom throughout the book. I agree that on one hand the mental institution provides some freedom for Esther in that she is no longer restricted to certain choices because she is a girl, but I find it interesting that in order to get this freedom, she had to give up a lot of other freedoms, such as leaving the mental hospital whenever she wants and going on walks whenever she wants.
ReplyDeleteThe end of the book isn't so much of an end as a beginning... the time in the asylum isn't much of a life; it's more of a break in life, really, as we don't even sense time flowing during that section of the book. So really, by the end of the book, she's starting again, not finishing anything. I'm well aware the two can coincide, but it would seem to miss the point to describe it that way.
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