"I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus" (3).
"I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls like me all over American who wanted nothing more than to be tripping about in those same size-seven patent leather shoes I'd bought in Bloomingdale's one lunch hour with a black patent leather pocketbook to match" (2).
Sylvia Plath. She was played in a movie by Gwyneth Paltrow. People who have never read either her poetry or her novel are familiar with her tragic, romanticized life—and death. A storied college career at Smith College. Marries an older well-known British poet, Ted Hughes. Publishes two heralded poetry collections before her suicide at the age of 30. The Bell Jar published posthumously under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. She experienced a success after her death that she never had in her short 30 years of life. Her life becomes an example of the difficulties of being a modern woman and an artist in the years after World War Two. Here is a brief biography of her.
I admire The Bell Jar for many reasons—and I'm not alone. The writing is, in my opinion, gorgeous. Plath is known, rightly, for her rigorously crafted poetry. But she has crafted a tight narrative in this, her only novel, that manages to communicate the inner being of Esther Greenwood. Few books in my reading experience come close to this book in portraying the terror of, as Olivia Babuka Black termed it two years ago, "spiraling out." Esther's first person narrative puts us right in the middle of the tornado that is her life at this moment. We know that she will have a child in the future, and with that, the possible assurance that she has put her life back in order. But other than that detail, the narrative keeps us firmly in the moment. And the moment, given no commentary from the future Esther, leaves us living Esther's life with her as it teeters toward a terrible spiral.
So:
1. Reaction to the book so far? Like? Dislike? Neutral? What particular moment or line or scene stays with you? Quote from the novel in your answer (but avoid the quotes I've used above).
2. How do we see Esther struggling here in this first chapter? Pick one example of this—and how it shows her as a young woman struggling.
3. The fact is, as we will discover, Esther suffers from a mental illness. At the same time, Plath presents a world that Esther exists in that is terribly unhealthy, confusing, and destructive (I would argue) for her. From what we see in this chapter, how is this world conspiring against Esther? Name one way we see it as a unhealthy, confusing, or maybe even destructive force? And if you find yourself in agreement with someone else's assessment (perfectly possible), do your best to add to that classmate's argument. That would be the same for any of the questions above.
Below is Plath interviewing writer Elizabeth Bowen at the time in which The Bell Jar is set.
I really like the book so far. I read it when I was 13, and it’s pretty interesting to see what I did and did not pick up on when I was younger. What I particularly appreciate about the book is how well Plath explains the protagonist’s personality. Everything she says helps to create a sharp idea of who that character is and how she sees the world. A moment that illustrates this quality of the writing to me is when Plath writes, “I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all the time”. In this quote, Plath is somehow able to capture a somewhat complicated thought process that is very personal. It makes the character seem very real.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that Esther feels that she cannot control her own life. She says, “It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water”. She feels like she is supposed to do something great, and she carries the weight of people’s expectations. However, it seems that she feels unable to take control of her life and focus it on something that she wants to do. She feels lost and unsure, which is surprising because she often expresses strong opinions. She clearly has ideas and beliefs, but it seems like she might not yet know what to do with them yet.
The first unhealthy element of this world to jump out at me was how much Esther mentioned looks and beauty. The ideas about how someone should look and act generally come from the world and society around them, and image is something that can preoccupy thoughts in an unhealthy way. First, there is the more intangible part of image. Esther seems to feel a lot of pressure to be successful or to be having the time of her life because of the situation she has found herself in. She feels pressure to act and feel a certain way because others think that she is living a glamorous life. She also seems to try and act in certain ways because she deems them ‘normal’ or the way that other people act. The other part of image that seems to affect Esther is just looking attractive. She talks about Jay Cee’s and Doreen’s bodies as well as her own. In this particular chapter, Esther doesn’t seem extremely self conscious about her own looks, but she does seem to notice a lot about how she looks and how others look in comparison. She often seems to be comparing how she appears or acts to the way other people do. She says, “Ordinarily, I would have been nervous about my dress and my odd colors, but being with Doreen made me forget my worries”. While in this case, Esther feels comfortable, this quote shows that she feels a certain discomfort generally based on judgements from others. That could be normal, but if taken too far, that fear of how others perceive her could be unhealthy.
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ReplyDelete1. I think I like the book so far. The imagery is stunning, the main character is compelling and language so intricate and concise that the mood is palpable. I also really enjoy how the main character is shrouded in a little bit of mystery -- we can't really tell what's going on with her, or what she thinks -- and I don't know if we're supposed to. One part that really struck me was when Doreen talked to Esther about parties, and seems to change Esther's opinion of Buddy Willard (who seems to be a close friend) in a split second. Esther immediately backtracks on her previous impression, that he got "good marks" and managed to "have an affair with some awful waitress on the Cape" and changes her mind about him just because of a small comment Doreen made. "Now that [she] thought of it...he was stupid." She seems to believe Doreen more than she believes herself, claiming that Doreen's voice was like "a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones" (7). I feel like this reveals a definite malleability in Esther, and points, possibly, to how she values other's opinions more than her own.
ReplyDelete2. I think a major struggle Esther has is her battle with jealousy. As she describes the Amazon Hotel, she notes how the other rich girls make her "sick...so jealous [she] can't speak" (4). The trips, yachts, airplanes, skiing and Brazilian men are part of a world that she desperately yearns for. Furthermore, she constantly compares herself to Doreen, noting how she looks "terrific...curved in the middle and bulging out spectacularly above and below" while Esther looks "skinny as boy and barely rippled" (8). Even though she is supposed to be "the envy of a thousand other college girls like me" (2) she is still constantly preoccupied with how she is not living up to and cannot live up to the standard set forth by the other girls.
3. I think I agree with Mira that (as I said above, too) beauty standards and self-consciousness are extremely detrimental to Esther. Not only does she constantly undermine her self esteem, she actively prevents herself from enjoying situations by projecting societal norms onto it -- for all she knew, Frankie could have been her future husband but she was so swept up in societal expectations about height (and...blue?) that she rejected him without second thought. She seems to care only about the outside, and not what lies within. Yet second, I think another large factor actively oppressing Esther is the fifties economy itself. There is very little economic mobility shown for women; the only option for girls at the Amazon besides "getting married to some career man or other" is becoming "secretaries to executives and junior executives" (4). What is hard work, or learning anything worth, if you can't actually do something with your knowledge? If you will just be shunted to the corners of a company, disrespected and badly paid? Either way there is no room for creativity, no room for growth, just the same job for everyone. Maybe that is partly why Esther feels so constricted, and that her "big chance" is "running through her fingers like water" (4) -- she never had a chance in the first place.
I like it a lot so far. The writing is mostly what's drawing me in - the solidness of it; it feels like a diary. Two moments stayed with me. The first, her knowledge that what she has is what many people want contrasted with her comment about the bored rich girls. After saying herself that she's bored with parties and work in New York turns around and says that the other girls in the hotel looked, "bored as hell." She said, "I talked with one of them, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in airplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and board with the men in Brazil. Girls like that made me sick" 4. Is she being ignorant, a hypocrite? Or is this a way of saying she makes herself sick - that her disinterest with her position is disgusting to her? The second moment is the decision to step out of the taxi. It sets off all sorts of alarm bells in my head - wander away from the group to go wander an unfamiliar city at the behest of a strange man trying to buy you alcohol? Did she have any considerations apart from a dull interest in experiencing the city? "The laughter should have warned me" 8.
ReplyDeleteEsther seems like she's in a daze. It feels like life is happening to her, and she's not really feeling any of it, and then her attempt at remedying this disconnect is to break away from the group to see more of the city. Esther is young, and she wants to FEEL something, to find herself BEING someone she WANTS to be - she wants to stare so hard she never forgets. There's an incredible intensity to her that isn't being satisfied, and it seems almost like she wants something to really wake her up and give her something. She's numbly hunting for experiences without being careful about what she wishes for - I'm worried for her.
Right now she's in a safe, structured environment conductive to building high level connections - or, she's supposed to be. Instead of writing her interview to meet with an author, Doreen tells her to quit it - just for now - they wont even notice it's late. She listens to her. A man approaches her cab and asks the two girls, where are you going, he invites them for drinks, and she says yes. Friendly suggestions of slacking off sound like reason, invitations to wander from the group are just a better way to see the city - this world is giving her good opportunities and bad ones, but Esther seems to favor the latter. With her fascination with electrocution and pickled babies in jars, maybe she wants to see another wreck, even if this one's her.
1. I love this book so far. The writing style appeals to me both because it is poetic and because it is simple and clear. The writing at once moves the plot forward and lingers on important images. It strikes a lovely balance between, say, Candide and Heart of Darkness. I have never read this before, but I heard that it was semi-autobiographical, so I am interested to see where Esther and Sylvia Plath herself overlap and where they differ. A moment that stuck out to me was the description of the first time Esther saw a cadaver: “For weeks afterward, the cadaver’s head—or what there was left of it—floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and behind the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadaver’s head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.” (1-2). I was struck by the overlap of the everyday—breakfast—and the gruesome--a mutilated corpse. I get the sense that this juxtaposition of ordinary and absurdly extraordinary will be a recurring theme in this book.
ReplyDelete2. Esther struggles, as almost all young women do, with her image. She is very self-conscious, concerned about how she looks in her dress, how she appears to her friends and to men. She is always searching for approval from others, especially Doreen, whom she so looks up to. Esther worries about being too tall, so she shrinks herself down. She is worried about being too skinny and flat-chested and looking too pale in her dress. She wants to be wanted, to be desirable to both men and other women.
3. The world has set an impossible standard for Esther. She must be the smartest and the most beautiful, the most desirable in every way. Mira said that Ester looks to other women’s bodies as comparison to her own, and I agree—and think this is detrimental. She is constantly comparing herself to others. She cannot be happy with who she is because she is doing her best; she can only be happy with herself if she receives external affirmation of her own worth, her own status as equal to or above those around her. This standard will tear anyone apart—there will always be someone more smart and more beautiful and more successful and more wealthy and more happy.
1. I took the Sylvia Plath short-term class offered by Sarah Schiff when I was a sophomore, so it’s interesting to revisit this book two years later. Naturally, I now appreciate and enjoy this story in ways that I never could have as a young, naive sophomore. I think that this book, as a coming of age story, is perfect for rereading, though I doubt it will be much easier to deal with emotionally. As for the moment that stays with me, I was struck by her description of her somewhat voyeuristic tendencies. She states that “I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations,” and “I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all the time”(13). This is just such a candid self-description. I might somewhat recognize the same tendencies in myself, but I wouldn’t be able to articulate them so clearly and honestly. This type of candor is part of what makes this such a great novel. Nothing is sugarcoated or shielded; everything is presented and left for the reader to deal with.
ReplyDelete2. Esther struggles very visibly with self-confidence and self-assertion. The best example of this, in my opinion, is how she never corrected Doreen when Doreen kept referring to her as Elly. At first, she’s impressed by how quickly Doreen caught on to her alias as Elly Higginbottom, but then Doreen continues to call her Elly out of earshot of Lenny. She even calls her by the name of Elly when she returns to Esther’s hotel room. At this point, it’s not clear if Doreen ever even knew Esther’s real name, despite Esther practically idolizing Doreen. The fact that Esther just let this slide reveals a great insecurity and unwillingness to stand up for herself. Although, you could argue that Esther got her revenge by leaving Doreen passed out in a pool of her own vomit.
3. Esther seems to see the world in terms of privilege and absence of privilege. She’s somewhat obsessed with the bourgie girls from posh secretarial schools just waiting to marry rich: “Girls like that make me sick. I’m so jealous I can’t speak”(4). However, winning this contest has boosted her up into the ranks of the elite temporarily, yet she feels like she’s letting it all go to waste. Even when she’s presented with the kind of opportunities she’s always envied, she doesn’t know how to take them. As she describes it, “Nineteen years, and I hadn’t been out of New England except for this trip to New York. It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water”(4). In this sense, she feels like she can’t win, like she is powerless and conspired against by a society that caters to the wealthy.
1.So far so good. Plath gives beautifully detailed descriptions of everything, both physical and emotional things. She writes, “I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo” (3). Plath uses a bizarre comparison, but it’s effective. We understand exactly what she means. Plath uses language in a way that not only gets her point across, but also keeps us engaged.
ReplyDelete2. She is unable to choose things for herself. Esther looks to others for guidance. She follows Doreen’s example when she’s unsure of what to do. Esther has the life people have told her she’ll love all her life, and yet she is unhappy. She chooses what others tell her to do. Whether this is in following fashions, or in following her friend, or following a strange man she has never met, Esther is unable to lead herself where she wants to go.
3. Like I said before, Esther listens to others when making decisions. As a result, she is very affected by the culture and people around her. She has suddenly entered a culture of excess, overly concerned with appearances and sensations. Esther says that she “liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. [...] I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise in this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all along” (13). She is unsure herself about how to deal with crises, and is looking at others to see how they do. However, in this culture of carefree girls bored out their minds of yachts, Esther is unlikely to learn much about getting through “crucial situations.” She had better hope she doesn’t find herself in one.
I like the book so far. It's well written and clear. My favorite line comes from the end of the chapter, when Esther remarks that she “liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it” (13). For me, this quote gave me the sense that she was almost like a nonsexual voyeur. She chooses to follow Lenny and Doreen rather than find some other man at the bar, implying that she likes living through others, or at least watching others live, rather than living herself.
ReplyDeleteEsther, when she realizes that she was paired off with Frankie, remarks how when she's with a man shorter than her she is she has to “stoop over a bit and slouch my hips” (9), implicitly so as to not make the man feel uncomfortable or emasculated. She doesn't necessarily struggle with something like this, but the mention of this thought suggests that some societal norms are so ingrained in her that she does not even question them even when they are uncomfortable for her.
The world seems to be both offering Esther a promise of a successful career as a woman, yet at the same time urging her to conform to feminine standards. She wins a fashion writing competition and is given a job in New York for a month, which other girls perceive as a pinnacle of success, yet at the same time she has make up and other feminine gifts thrown at her this way and that. And on top of that, she is urged to attend parties almost as part of her job. The direction others want her to take in life seems incredibly ambiguous, and by extension, destructive, for it clouds much of Esther's own initiative.
1. I like the book so far because I think Plath has done a really good job of making an interesting main character. I liked the style she uses and the imagery. The scene that stayed with me was when Esther, Doreen, Lenny, and Frankie were in the bar. Esther seemed so helpless and desperate to have an experience that she could enjoy. I saw this hopelessness and desperation when she talked about what it’s like for her when she orders drinks. “Ordering drinks always floored me. I didn’t know whiskey from gin and never managed to get anything I really liked the taste of.” (10)
ReplyDelete2. Esther is frustrated because she is jealous of what other girls have and don’t seem to appreciate––the yachts, and airplanes, and skiing, and Brazilian men, and now when she finally is given the opportunity to live a life that can be compared to the lives of these girls, she finds that she is not taking her chance. She frequently goes back to how she grew up poor and got a scholarship to college, but now that she’s “made it” she can find nothing that she enjoys.
3. One of the unhealthy aspects of the world that Esther seems to be focusing on is the materialistic nature of her peers. She is constantly comparing herself (and the stuff she owns and does) to the other young women surrounding her who seem to place a high value on material possessions such as clothes. Constantly measuring herself up to this world where there are always going to be people that are more fashionable or wealthier than her is a main source of the jealousy that Esther seems completely consumed by. Esther seems to sense that being wealthy and having all the possessions you could want does not make any of the other women feel better about their lives because they are still very bored. A world where you can have everything you could want but still be bored seems to contradict logic in some way.
1. So far, I like it. The protagonist is a young woman who’s in a state I can somewhat relate to retrospectively. Of course, I’ve never been a big fish in a small pond who then goes to New York and is so rattled by her own mediocrity that she loses all sense of the world around her, but, yeah, I’ve been blue before. The thing Plath does so well here is that this “spiraling out”, this collapse of Esther’s world, it isn’t (at least so far) overly dramatized. It’s an internal sort of decline that consists mainly of her own progressive detachment with life. It isn’t life getting harder; it’s her relinquishing the control she has over life. She is a willing participant in her own downward trod as she is not actively resisting it. We cannot become passive to our own existence, otherwise, we risk slipping farther and farther down this gloomy path Esther seems inclined to follow. Aside from one of the quotes above, the quote that most captured this to me was near the end of chapter one: “I like looking on at other people in crucial situations…I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all the time” (13). She is living as though life is something that happens to other people, almost like she’s watching a movie, but what she doesn’t quite get here is that while she’s “looking on at other people” (13), her own life is going on all around her. She doesn’t have to rely on Doreen or anyone else to learn lessons about life.
ReplyDelete2. I agree with what Erin said. Esther is in this sort of daze. She, like Erin said, wants to feel something, and that’s a theme I’ve seen repeated in a lot of coming of age movies, and they always end in the main character learning a lesson the hard way. At this point in Esther’s life, however, I don’t see there being any other way for her to change than by experiencing something so jarring it shakes her to her core. That sounds rather cliché, I know, but beggars can’t be choosers and this is Esther’s plea for change, and if even a solo trip to the city can’t make her feel alive, then she’s left with no choice…something terrible has to happen. I think we see just how far gone she is when she mentions how she can’t learn any more from her boss. This is a woman who is the best in her business, someone who could really help Esther to work her way up the professional ladder, but Esther seems utterly unresponsive to her attempts at teaching. Esther has been on this upward journey for a while, and I think it’s time she fell down.
3. I didn’t really see the world as conspiring against Esther this chapter as much as I saw Esther’s inability to connect with the world. She is, at this point, the character we know the least about. I didn’t even know her name until it was mentioned in the prompt. I suppose that in and of itself could be a way she sees the world conspiring against her, though. Her anonymity is clearly not something to be envied. She’s not as beautiful or personality heavy as Doreen, nor is she as accomplished as Jay Cee. In a city full of Doreens and Jay Cees, it’s no wonder that Esther seems to disappear.
1. I like the book so far. What really got me were the amazing descriptions throughout the chapter. What struck out to me was actually the description of the cadaver she'd seen: “the cadaver’s head—or what there was left of it—floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and behind the face of Buddy Willard…and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadaver’s head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.” (1-2). I have never had the experience of seeing a cadaver everywhere I looked, but I'd imagine that I would feel the exact same way Esther did. I think her description was not only creative but also very real and believable.
ReplyDelete2. I think Esther is having a hard time figuring out who she is and what she wants her life to look like. I think she knows what others want from her, but she doesn't know what to do with her own wants and needs. She has all these opinions, but they're sort of misplaced because she should be using them on her behalf, but something stops her. There's something that is keeping her from being herself.
3. As many people have said, the beauty standards around are beyond toxic. It's not even a speculation that they may be seeping into her subconscious because we see it. We see her constantly feeling like she needs to change herself to fit the description of what she's supposed to be. An example of this is her height and how uncomfortable she is with it. She physically tries to “slouch over a bit” (9) to compensate for the height difference between her and men that are shorter than she is. With all of this going on around her p, how can she have a chance at figuring out who she is?
1. I'm really liking this book. I've never read anything by Plath but I've been meaning to so I'm excited for what's to come. I think I'm most attracted to her not knowing what she wants but still assuming a certain role anyway because if you don't then you feel even more lost. This is scene when she's laying in bed after deciding that she's not going to the luncheon when Jay Cee calls her: "I lay on my back in bed staring up at the blank, white ceiling the stillness seemed to grow bigger and bigger until I felt my eardrums would burst with it. Then the phone rang" (30). I like how she connects unrelated senses and feelings, like stillness and hearing. She writes an instance that's very easy to visualize and this moment wouldn't stop playing.
ReplyDelete2. Esther talks about how lonely she feels, yet she also talks about how she has no intention of getting married. She's craving some sort of attention or companionship while also not wanting this domesticated life the other girls are aspiring for. When she goes out with her friend Doreen we see her not very interested and withdrawn. After retiring for the night, Doreen arrives at her door and vomits on the floor. Not wanting this, Esther decides that's she's not going to interact with Doreen the same way, maybe in an attempt to distance her from another night with a man she has no interest in. But then later at the luncheon we see Esther wishing she had her friend by here side and that she was there to make funny jokes and lighten the mood. Esther maybe doesn't want dependence but also craves a relationship where she is not conforming to the needs of the other.
3. One pretty blatant example is when she feels the need to stoop over and elan to one side to make herself more attractive to shorter men. She's obviously uncomfortable and she finds herself doing this for a man that she's not even all that interested in. She's also going to luncheons and fur shows with people she doesn't really like. She's conforming and all these people are inhibiting on her life by forcing an image and a lifestyle onto her. Her attempt to look a certain way for other people is irritating to me. There should never be a time when you feel the need to reshape who you are to better fit into a different image. Especially when they're things that you can't change about yourself, like your height.
1) So far, I'd say I'm neutral. Though I haven't formed an opinion yet, I think I’m going to enjoy this book. Esther provides a perspective I haven't lived or seen yet, so that'll keep my interest piqued throughout the novel. I haven't read much yet, but the writing also seems good. The first sentence stuck out to me actually: “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenburgs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.” This quote immediately showed me the character I'd be reading through the perspective of was interesting. I found it interesting that she'd point out the summer was “sultry,” as most summers are. In this first thought, Esther goes through three completely unrelated subjects: summer, electrocution, and New York.” This may have been a hint to her mental illness, but I found it interesting regardless.
ReplyDelete2) Esther’s independence problems are very evident in this first chapter. She spends the entire chapter with Doreen, and it seems like she depends on her to live her life in anew York. When Doreen is first introduced, Esther says “She made me feel I was that much sharper that the others.” Relying on someone's else's opinion of you to validate yourself leads to independence problems, and it looks as if that’s what happening to Esther in New York. Esther notices this herself. While thinking of why she hasn't accomplished much in New York, she says “I guess one of my troubles was Doreen.” Unfortunately, )
her dependency on Doreen will prevent her from doing anything about it.
3) Though it's presented as a great opportunity, I think the fashion magazine program is very destructive for Lorene, for multiple reasons. For one, the program is forcing her to compare herself to the eleven other girls in the hotel. She compares their wealth and opportunity to her own. She says “girls like that make her sick,” but I think she's jealous of what they have. She points out that she had never left New England, while the other girls on the hotel are ”bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil.” She relies Doreen to make her feel “sharper” than the other girls in the program. Secondly, the fashion world is centered around beauty and appearance, something multiple people have pointed out on their blogs already. Beauty is just another medium for Esther to compare herself to others, which isn't good for her obviously destructive mind.