Under cover of the clinking of water goblets and silverware and bone china, I paved my plate with chicken slices. Then I covered the chicken slices with caviar thickly spread as if I were spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread. Then I picked up the chicken slices in my fingers one by one, rolled them so the caviar wouldn't ooze off and ate them. (27)
Of course, I would never have succeeded with this scheme if I hadn't made that A in the first place. And if my Class Dean had known how scared and depressed I was, and how I seriously contemplated desperate remedies such as getting a doctor's certificate that I was unfit to study chemistry, the formulas made me dizzy and so on, I'm sure she wouldn't have listened to me for a minute, but would have made me take the course regardless. (36)
"I don't really know," I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true. (32)
I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling. I felt like a hole in the ground. (16)
This is, I think, maybe my fifth or sixth time I've taught this book, and it's become a harder read for me this time than it has been the five or six previous times. This world inside Esther's head and the world that surrounds her are, for me, a sad, sometimes terrifying, place; and yet, it never fails, there are students reading it, girls almost exclusively, who say "I get it totally," or "This is my story." I'm thinking too, about what Agasha and Jaliwa said when we read Black Ice last semester: "I'm reading about my own life." There's a powerful responsibility that comes with books that touch people so closely, so deeply; a responsibility to be honest and analytical, as we always are in this class, but also to be sensitive and respectful to the experiences that people may share that connect their lives to the life we see in the book. I'm thinking this now because some students have already revealed their connections to Esther's experiences in one of the other classes that is reading this. There's a courage and strength there—and a risk that they are assuming. I don't know what will happen as we move through this book, but let's be what we have been so far: honest, analytical, challenging, attentive, non-judgemental, and sensitive, kind, and gracious to each other.
1. Three chapters into the book: what's it like being Esther? Quote a couple times in your response.
2. Esther is clearly—I think—being drawn deeper and deeper into the bell jar (if you don't know what a bell jar is...)
For you, where do you see in the reading her illness most displaying itself? And how so? Quote once in your response.
3. One of the striking parts of the novel for me is how Plath presents a young woman falling into mental illness...and at the same time—in my opinion—showing how in the world she lives in, mental illness may be a reasonable, perhaps logical, response to this world. Again—just my opinion. What do you think of that?
See you all tomorrow.
ReplyDelete1.It seems like Esther naturally feels a pressure to be something. It unclear what exactly she needs to be, but she says, "all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true, and I couldn't hide the truth much longer . . .I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race". She had suspicions that she would fail in some way, and since she is now unsure of what she wants to do in life, she feels (and this is added to by Jay Cee) that she will "never get anywhere like that". She has a sort of listless disinterest in many of the things around, yet she takes very specific interest in certain things. She didn't want to go out with Doreen or to the show and felt disinterested in social activity. Meanwhile, the task of securing caviar for herself takes her whole attention.
2. When Esther cries into her dessert, I felt like she was particularly unstable in that moment. Reading the section, there is barely an indication that she is crying until she says she, "felt a little bit awkward about the tears, but they were real enough". It is almost as if she doesn't realize she is crying or that the meeting with Jay Cee took such an emotional toll on her. She just absentmindedly eats Betsy's dessert until she realized she cried into her own. Up until this point, Esther seems to hold her emotions in. Now, she starts to release them, but in a strange way. She barely acknowledges what she is feeling until the very end of the scene when she says, "Jay Cee had said some terrible things to me".
3. I think that Esther's environment could have contributed a lot to her mental illness. She is faced with so many expectations about her future success. She is likely facing pressures to be a certain type of woman because of the time period she is living in. All of these expectations may not align with who Esther truly is, and may cause her a lot of anxiety. Her environment at this magazine seems very surface level. She seems to be going to a lot of lunches or events where she is surrounded by people, but she does not actually connect with these people. This likely isolates her even further. So yes, this does seem like a reasonable response to her world. However, I also feel that mental illness has to do with an individual...or else almost every woman in Esther's world would be mentally ill. Mental illnesses are illnesses, and that means that they still relate to a person's body and chemistry.
1. Esther, who has always been so sure of herself and her ambitions, is slowly coming undone. For years and years she has pushed herself in order to accomplish her goal of working as a writer or publisher, but now, when that goal is almost within her reach, she’s starting to question what she really wants: “After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race”(29). She doesn’t really understand why she’s letting herself slow down, why she isn’t holding herself to the same standards. I think that this frustration with herself and bewilderment with her change of mindset are two major factors driving her downwards spiral. This is just my own psychological analysis here, but it seems as though she’s been so driven, so focused, her whole life, that she doesn’t know how to define herself apart from her career aspirations and love of writing. And now, with her future more uncertain, she loses a sense of herself. Additionally, she seems to have lost a sense of agency over her own actions: “I was apprenticed to the best editor on an intellectual fashion magazine, and what did I do but balk and balk like a dull cart horse”(32). She doesn’t understand her inability to perform, her disinterest in that which she loves, so she feels unable to control herself. This is worrisome, since some concept of free will and agency is necessary to perform even the most basic tasks, like getting out of bed in the morning.
ReplyDelete2. Speaking of getting out of bed in the morning, the scene in which Esther decides to avoid all her commitments in favor of staying in bed all morning is indicative of a growing mental illness. She turns down invitations to Coney Island with Doreen and to the fur show with the other girls, planning to lie in her bed in the silence instead. She doesn’t seem to know why she makes this decision: “I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I should anymore. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I shouldn’t, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired”(30). Sleeping more than normal is a classic sign of depression, as is secluding oneself from the world. I get the feeling that Esther was generally more outgoing prior to this, indicating that this transition is rather abrupt.
3. I know what you’re saying, but I don’t think I agree completely. The external pressures on these girls to look beautiful, behave properly, and succeed either in the workforce or in the household are intense, so it makes sense that some of these girls would develop anything from generalized insecurity to pathological anxiety or depression. So yes, mental illness may be a reasonable response to the constant barrage of impossible expectations and inadequacy that these girls experience. But I don’t know if I would use the word “logical” to describe it. I guess I just have trouble connecting the word “logical” to mental illness, since a mental illness, by definition, negatively impacts the day to day life of the sufferer. Mental illness is irrational. But maybe that’s just my preconceived notion based on social norms. I don’t know. I need to think more about this.
1. I don’t think that being Esther is particularly enjoyable. She seems to be on the verge of plunging into depression. She is lonely. She is acutely aware of her own isolation: “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.” (18). Esther is always alone, even when she is surrounded by people. She is trapped inside her own head. She does not feel much of anything—she is absorbed by numbness: “I knew perfectly well the cars were making noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn’t hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me.” (18-19).
ReplyDelete2. I think that her illness is slowly coming out as the book progresses. After she walks the 47 blocks back to the hotel, she remarks, “there wasn’t a soul in the hall.” (18). The double meaning of this sentence struck me. She is a person, a living being, and she is in the hall, but there are no souls in the hall. She does not feel that she has a soul. (I also recognize that she could just be making an everyday platitudinous remark, but the fact that it is at the beginning of a paragraph makes me pause and think that there is a double meaning). Instead of going to the fur show or going to Coney Island, she chooses to stay in bed alone: “What I decided to do was lie in bed as long as I wanted and then go to Central Park and spend the day lying in the grass, the longest grass I could find in that bald, duck-ponded wilderness.” (29-30). Connecting with nature is important, but it feels to me like Esther is intentionally isolating herself, and that shows she is slipping into depression.
3. I agree. I think that the world around Esther accepts, almost encourages, her increasing isolation. She is manipulative and cunning, as we see with her strategic exemption from getting graded in chemistry, and on the surface this works to her advantage. But she may be too smart for her own good. If she always gets out of anything challenging, never takes risks, she will become stagnant emotionally and intellectually. She is a junior in college and she should be growing and exploring, but instead she is building a shell around herself. The professors at her college seem to encourage this, and she does not have friends who really care about her or who know her well enough to be concerned. The world seems to have forgotten Esther.
Esther's life is fast paced, and she should be prepared for it. She gets straight As, she goes to a good college, she's in a program in New York City that should be giving her tons of connection and opportunities, but somehow something's wrong. She's not keeping up any more - she's stressed and confused and doesn't know what to do. Esther takes a bath and pretends that it takes away everything that's been bothering her, "I don't know them, I have never known them and I am very pure" 20. She wants to be something pure, something perfect. Maybe at one point she was perfect - her teachers certainly thought she was, allowing her to take courses without taking the tests because the very idea of making her take credit when they knew she was just going to get another A was silly, but now.... she's getting lost. Esther is losing her direction in life, "What I always thought I had in my mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over europe [...] Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue. 'I don't really know,' I heard myself say" 32. The rapid-fire golden girl with the straight As had a plan and was on track for it, but suddenly she's doubting everything - she really doesn't know what she's doing, and that's terrifying.
ReplyDeleteReally there were two moments where I felt something was off. Firstly, when she cried into her dessert when recounting her stressful encounter with Jay Cee. It happened so emotionlessly that it seemed like something that happened often - "I felt a bit awkward about the tears, but they were real enough" 31 sounds to me like she cried frequently enough that the very act of crying was common place. She never refers to it as crying - just tears. The other moment was her recount of finding a way to get out of chemistry. Clever a solution as it was, it was borne out of incredible anxiety - she would rather fail than suffer another term of unpleasant learning, and rather lie to her teachers than fail. She'd even contemplated getting a doctor's note to get out of the class. This sort of extreme reaction really displays how stressed Esther is, and marks maybe the first decline in her perfect academic record - she didn't want to try anymore.
Esther is under an incredible amount of stress. She's been the perfect student for so long that finding a balance of life and work is difficult, so she's flipping from 100% engaged to skipping events. What's expected of her is unrealistic - Jay Cee tells her that she needs to learn not only German, but three other languages in addition if she hopes to make it in New York as an editor. What she's being told she needs to do is beyond what she, and most people, is capable of, and besides that she's now so bent out of shape about life in general that she can't even put in the effort she used to. What should be a wonderful opportunity is turning out to be a mess of anxiety and impossible expectations, so her reaction is as reasonable as it is saddening.
1. Her whole life is a paradox. I talked about this a little in my first blog with how she wants this kind of companionship yet she doesn't want to get married, she doesn't want to be friends with Dorene at times, and she pushes away the other girls as well. We see her almost get swallowed by her loneliness when she talks about how she relates the city to her loneliness. She says, "every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier" (16). Her loneliness wears at her motivation too and we see her struggle to bring herself to do things. She constantly talks about just being in her room or sleeping somewhere until something else happens. She's depressed and yearning for something else that she can't obtain. She feels like she should have it all by now and that the other girls should envy her, yet when she reflects on her life she's not interested in any of it nor is she interested in the people in her life.
ReplyDelete2. I think I see this in how much she dreads to be around the other girls. I think that this is partially due to her life being so routine that it's become monotonous, but I also think that her lack of interest in doing what they're doing in addition to being around those kinds of people only adds to her being sucked deeper into the bell jar. Esther talks more passionately about food than anything else in her life. She says, "I love food more than just about anything else" (24). And while I hate to analyze her like this, I think this is one area of her life where she might feel like she's most in control, because a) she doesn't gain weight, and b) she doesn't have to pay for any of it. Therefore she can eat whatever and however much she wants to. I think this instance shows how little control Esther feels over her life and I think it's a reflection of what little she has to look forward to.
3. I think this response is logical unfortunately. Being subjected and reduced to the roles women are encouraged into at this time would make any woman capable of realizing this maltreatment ill. I imagine it feels like there's no way out and that the constraints are only tightening the more you try to break free. Knowing that you'll be subjected to this judgement and scrutiny for the rest of your life would wear at you and I think it makes total sense for one to become depressed after coming to terms with these circumstances.
Esther always seems to emotionally isolate herself from other people. On her own account, she is perpetually alone. At the beginning of chapter 2, when Lenny asks her if she wants somebody else to partner up with her, she rejects his offer, telling herself that she “didn't want to come straight out and ask for somebody several sizes larger than Frankie”(15). I doubt that this is the only reason for her not to request somebody else; she wouldn't have offended Frankie, who isn't present, and she has been well aware that Lenny and Doreen are almost entirely interested in one another. Additionally, she has no reason to be polite in front of a man who asked out two women in a stationary taxi cab. The only reason left is that Esther subconsciously wanted to be alone. Later in the chapter, when she takes a bath, she remarks how “Doreen is dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is dissolving, Frankie is dissolving, New York is dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none of them matter any more”(20). In her personal sanctuary, her safe space, she emotionally withdraws from her friends and from her surroundings. And when Doreen is deposited at her door by the night maid, she realizes that if she brings Doreen in, they would be friends for life: “If I carried Doreen across the threshold into my room and helped her onto my bed I would never get rid of her again”(22). So she makes the decision to “dump her on the carpet and shut and lock my door” so that this wouldn't be the case (22). The odd thing is that Esther is depressed by the solitude she condemns herself to. While at her apartment, looking out on the city, she comments on how “the silence depressed me. It wasn't he silence of silence. It was my own silence”(18). Maybe the explanation for this behavior is that Esther felt rejected at a young age, and as a result never became close to others and pursued high grades to bolster her self worth.
ReplyDeleteI would talk about Esther's desire to be alone again here, but since I just talked about that, I'll focus on Esther's projection of self-hate and judgment onto her surrounding environment. When she gets into the elevator at her hotel after returning from Lenny's She notices “a big, smudgy eyed Chinese woman staring idiotically into my face. It was only me, of course. I was appalled to see how wrinkled and used up I looked”(18). Her perception of herself as Chinese alerts us to her distorted perception in the moment, which leads us to distrust her self-depiction as “wrinkled and used up,” which could just be her projection of how she feels about herself onto a reflection of her actual appearance. And when she enters her room, she comments how “it was full of smoke. At first I thought the smoke had materialized out of thin air as a sort of judgment, but then I remembered it was Doreen's smoke and pushed the button that opened the window vent”(18). Why would smoke ever appear out of nowhere as a judgment? Again, Esther projects negative feelings about herself onto her surroundings, creating an increasingly depressing scene for her to live in.
Psychological instability seems to go hand in hand with competitive career paths. Couple that with a bombardment of messages about a woman's traditional role in life, the general pressures of being a single woman in New York, and an unsupportive grandmother and dead father and you end up with a lot of psychic forces at play. Thinking about it, I'm reminded of Esther's averse reaction to physics; she works hard and does well in the class, but the amount of abstraction in the course makes it inhospitable for her. Botany, meanwhile, with its more real and tactile learning methods, is much more pleasing for her. I think this runs a parallel with New York; its big and abstracted from more simple, self-supporting life, and therefore inhospitable for Esther. So in order to get by in New York and other cities, she puts herself through grueling work and painful facades.
1. Three chapters into the book, I think I can safely say I don’t understand Esther. Maybe this is because I feel like she doesn’t quite understand what she wants in life, and she’s not quite satisfied with where she is, although many other girls would kill for her position. When I was reading, I felt like she kept contradicting herself. Esther seems to go back and forth about her opinion of Doreen. She refers to her as a “trouble” (5) but also claims that “everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones” (8), as if she’s not sure whether to avoid or stick close to Doreen. I get the feeling that Esther is always working towards something she can never quite attain, and she frets over every decision she makes, for fear of missing out: “[…] I knew that if I sat tight, in two seconds I’d be wishing I’d taken this gift of a chance to see something of New York besides what the people on the magazine had planned out for us so carefully” (10). I think Esther feels separated from all of the other girls at the magazine, which may be part of why she feels so dissatisfied that summer in New York (though, to be honest, I don’t feel like I know Esther well enough to know how much value she places on the other people in her life, or how much she depends on them). “Girls like that make me sick. I’m so jealous I can’t speak. Nineteen years, and I hadn’t been out of New England except for this trip to New York” (5).
ReplyDelete2. I think the fact that most of this book, so far, has very little dialogue is crucial. We are supposed to be in Esther’s head all of the time, and we are supposed to be subject to her thoughts. The lack of dialogue shows how much time Esther spends thinking about everything, how much time she spends in her own head. Speaking from experience, this is not necessarily healthy, as I think staying inside your own head can blind you to reality and what is actually happening around you. It’s so easy to blow things up when all you do is think about them. That said, I think Esther’s illness shows clearly to me in the first page and a half of the book, right from the first sentence really: “It was a queer, sultry, summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York” (1). Esther’s mind narrows in on certain details, and sticks to them. She dwells on things. In the first couple pages of the book, it’s pretty clear Esther is unhappy with this stage of her life: “all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I’d been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I’d totted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue” (2). Being unhappy with certain parts of your life is, I don’t think, indicative of mental illness. But it’s rather the disjointed way in which Esther talks about her life that is a sign.
ReplyDelete3. I think Esther is trying to figure herself out. She has already stated she doesn’t want to get married, despite societal pressures, and she has realized, while talking to Jay Cee, that she really has no idea what she wants to study (let alone whether being an academic is what she thinks she should do). Some people may say this is normal for a lot of people her age, that she ‘should’ be feeling this pressure. I, personally, think a lot of people would be suffering from mental illness if faced with Esther’s situations, but I also think mental illness tends to get swept under the rug; many people believe they are the only ones who have ever felt these types of struggles. I think Esther’s disconnection from the girls in Manhattan with her exacerbates this – if you are not connecting with, talking with other people, how do you know you are not alone? Lastly, I think many people underestimate the stress of living in New York City, even if only for a summer. Someone once told me that anyone living in Manhattan should be in therapy. The city alone pressures its residents to constantly be moving, or doing something. Sitting alone in a bath is not acceptable when you are in one of the biggest cities in the world, with so much culture at your fingertips.
1. Esther is very lonely and feeling increasingly discouraged about herself and the world around her. There is nothing anchoring her like a healthy relationship of any type, or any long-term goals. She is helpless to resist the powerful force that is dragging her down. There seems like no right path to take in life anymore. “I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I shouldn’t, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.” (30)
ReplyDelete2. Esther staying in bed instead of choosing to go to Coney Island or take part in the activities that she was expected to take part in because of her job was the most indicative display of her mental illness for me. Even as she lays in her bed she seems to be feeling pain. “As 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. (30) She chooses the stillness over her other two options yet it seems to make her physically uncomfortable and bother her deeply. Maybe this means she would prefer this pain over her other options which shows how far she is starting to fall.
3. I agree so far. There hasn’t been anything in the world of this book up until this point that would suggest that the way Esther is responding to her world is illogical in any way. There doesn’t seem to be a place in this world where she can feel good about herself and the choices she’s made. She is smart and she sees the flaws in the people around her and in herself and in the way her world is structured and all these things cause her to feel stressed. The combination of feeling pressure to succeed and then realizing that she doesn’t actually see much value in success is devastating for her mental health because the world she lives in is pretty unforgiving towards those who reach this realization.
1. I think that to be Esther is to be so overwhelmed with her issues/the world's issues that she can't handle it anymore, and retreats. A good example of this is when Jay Cee asks her what se wants to do after college and she can't answer. Before (she became a victim of depression -- or burnout?) she had extremely clear goals in her mind: all the languages she wanted to learn, where she wanted to go and work, yet now she has no idea. Esther's problems, however, go beyond just not wanting to think about/accept reality -- I feel like she has shut herself out from the world so much that there is almost an inability to accept reality, and an inability to see herself as capable of changing this. I feel like the largest example of this is when she simply "lets herself out" (17) without remaining to help Doreen. Instead, she tries to make the problem (which is complex and most likely has something to do with her insecurity) go away, physically, by bathing to wash away her problems. Furthermore, when Doreen returns it is almost as if Esther has so thoroughly convinced herself of her separation from Doreen's problems that she can't physically notice them - there's a sense that she's deluded herself so completely that she can't even comprehend reality; "I had the impression that it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third internal that had suddenly slipped in between...I wanted to tell her I had nothing to do with Doreen" (21). She completely abandons Doreen in her time of greatest need.
ReplyDelete2. I think the place her illness manifests the most is when Jay Cee confronts her on what she wants to do with her life. Seeing Esther talk in that "sepulchral" (32) (@marlow) tone when she is supposed to be talking about her life's ambition is incredibly discouraging. We see someone withdrawing from the pressures of life, saying, honestly, that "they don't know" (32) what they want to do when a couple of months before they (probably) would have been jumping out of their seat to tell you. While I think its easy to read to much into that (lots of people don't know what they want to do), the lack of enthusiasm into finding a way, her natural inclination to just find a way out, whatever is easiest, and not confront serious problems that there are with where she's going in her life (she needs to realize that she can't learn German, for instance) suggest that her once iron will and sense of purpose are unravelling.
3. I agree, I think her mental illness definitely can seem reasonable. When you are confronted with so many headwinds everyday -- the pressure of being a woman in the fifties, the alienation and loneliness of living in a big city, and unsupportive/nonexistent family, it can seem logical to retreat from the issues of life, cutting yourself off to save yourself some trouble. Furthermore, even while she retreats I think Esther still feels a pressure to succeed, compounding her own sadness and feeling of worthlessness to make it insurmountable
1.It's pretty stressful. Esther is getting pulled in so many different directions, and she puts a lot of pressure on herself to succeed. On top of these ridiculous expectations that are set for her, Esther does not seem to have anyone to talk to. This goes beyond simple loneliness. She has no way to really get out and process her emotions. She says, "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath'" (19). If these things happen enough that she has this specific method, there is clearly a deeper problem that stays past the bath. She says, "I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath" and tries to become "pure" (20). The stress of everything she has to do, and all the conflicting plans for her are insane. This is Esther's way of trying to decide who she is. But ultimately, as she tells Jay Cee, Esther doesn't know herself. She doesn't have any close friends to support her, and this revelation is too much for Esther.
ReplyDelete2. As I said above, we see Esther spin loose as she realizes that she has no idea what she wants. She is unsure of herself and has relied on the expectations of her to define what she wants, many of which conflict. Now she is in New York, living what sounds like the perfect life for a 19 year old girl, and finds that she doesn't particularly care for it. In the absence of a particular desire, Esther does nothing. She leaves her friend in the hall in a pool of her own vomit. She chooses neither to go out to Coney Island nor to learn about fashion, but to lie in bed. This indifference is a sign of serious unhappiness beneath. Esther says, "I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should anymore. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired" (30). Her lethargy demonstrates that she has lost interest in her work and her life more generally.
3. There is no way Esther can achieve the ridiculous standards set by Jay Cee and other such women. Her alternative is a mediocre life married to a mediocre man like Buddy Willard. This isn't anything too awful, but just uninteresting. In one option, Esther will be stressed and have no time for herself and her relationships. In the other, she will be bored. And Esther is expected to do both. Upon her realization that she's not all fired up about either choice, depression is a reasonable response. It's not the most satisfying option, but certainly understandable. Given the expectations put on women in the 1950s, it should be expected that some would become depressed. It's not a logical choice to make, but it isn't a choice. Given the knowledge we have about Esther's situation, it is very logical that this is the result. Depending on which way you mean it, mental illness can be seen as a logical response to the situation Esther is put in.
1) Esther quite literally lives inside her mind. At multiple points in these two chapters, the line between what was being said in her mind and what she was saying in the real wold was completely blurred. The best example of this was when Esther spoke to Jay CEE about what she planned to do on her future. Jay Cee posed the question and Esther immediately responded with an elaborate plan, with steps including “getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe,” becoming a professor, writing, and working as an editor. I was impressed with how well thought out her response was, only to realize that was all in her head, while the real answer she gave to Jay CEE was “I don't really know.” Living in your head as Esther does produces a lot of doubt, something I think everyone has experienced. The more you think, the more you start to realize all the things that can go wrong, fostering doubt. If Esther had just told Jay CEE what was in her head, rather than thinking about and in the end doubting it, that meeting would have been much better for her. Esther has made some progress though. It hasn't been long since, but it looks like she has finally moved on from her dependency of Doreen, which I think I will be for the better.
ReplyDelete2) I can see her mental illness everywhere. A lot of protagonist I have read from the perspective from are very descriptive, but There is a very obvious difference between them and Esther. For example, she compares her sleeping between her sheets to “stuffing a dirty, scrawled-over letter into a fresh, clean envelope.” I can usually understand most characters thoughts and description, but with Esther, I don't know where her ideas come from and what some of them even mean. Esther Is different, and it's her mental illness that makes her this way. There are so many more examples, especially in the scene where she’s alone in her hotel room. The way she feels in a hot bath or the way halls seems to stretch on forever for her. This description also stuck out to me: “I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't Day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.” Reading through Esther’s perspective, the world seems to go much slower, also.
3) I definitely agree. I don't think someone like Esther does well with expectations. She panics slightly whoever she thinks about the future, shown when she talks with Jay CEE about what she plans to do. I think she does best when she's living in the present, with something to do, with a purpose. If she's in a class, she'll get an A. If she has to write a literary piece, it'll be good. If she's eating, she knows if she eats with enough confidence that “nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up.” Then, she's able to execute that idea perfectly at the banquet. All of the girls in the hotel won the fashion competition, and along with the parties and free stuff comes expectation for greatness. If they we're old enough to win the competition, they have to be able to accomplish something. That's why Jay CEE was so focused on what Esther planned to do later. Things go bad when Esther stays inside her mind, and there's no where else to go when thinking about the future, cause it doesn't exist. Living in the present, having something to do, is an escape from her head. The future puts her right back into it.
1. I still think that Esther is a very complicated person mainly because She seems confused. I would think that it wouldn't be very reassuring to be Esther at this point in the book. She seems conflicted with what she wants and who she is. She spends her life “running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race”(29). She is very much affected with what she thinks the world wants her to be like “pure” (20) and perhaps thinks she's achieving that by not doing what she wants.
ReplyDelete2. I think there are many moments that could be the start of her mental illness, but the overarching one is probably her slowly not wanting to be around people. Staying in bed all day, and not wanting to be around the girls. She has a feeling of being all alone: “I don't know them, I have never known them”. Another moment is when she cried into her dessert. It's not the crying into the dessert that indicates the mental illness but the fact that she was doing it in public when most people wouldn't feel it appropriate to do so.
3. I agree with that, I find it hard to believe that more people aren't having the problems Esther is having. It's hard to have two personalities fighting inside oneself. I feel like more people are experiencing this sort of confusion but are restraining themselves from doing anything about it, or even from feeling it.