Esther’s Ideals in Bell Jar

This might be necessary before I start off, so here it is...

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and are not meant to cause harm to one particular age, race, gender, or religion.   

In the Bell Jar, we see Esther constantly saying things along the lines of “this is so typical of a man” and you know what, examples would work:

“I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again,” and “Cal seemed pleased. "I've often thought of that. I'd blow my brains out with a gun." I was disappointed. It was just like a man to do it with a gun.”

In both these statements, I see Esther contradicting herself. Let me start with the second one first. “It was just like a man do it with a gun”. Girl, aren’t you trying to kill yourself? You’ve tried so many ways to kill yourself, why not give another one a shot. And you know what, let’s talk about the ways you try to kill yourself (now I understand that these passages where she is trying to kill herself are meant to be comedic, but I’m gonna.. I just wanna comment on them). You try to slit your wrists, but you can’t because your poor skin that’s so soft and mignon because it will hurt. You try to drown but you keep floating back to the top. You try to hang yourself, but you can’t cause you’re weak (let’s face the facts). At this point my head is down. Sigh. Moving on.    

Initially, I was against Esther, when she was hating on Buddy for having sex before marriage. But after re-reading the text I noticed the following line:

“Of course somebody had seduced Buddy, Buddy hadn't started it and it wasn't really his fault (57)”

This made me realize something: Esther wasn’t actually mad (at the beginning) because Buddy had sex, but because he lied to it about Esther, and didn’t tell her. But then the counter side to that is the fact that Buddy does gather up the strenght to tell Esther-- he tells her the truth! So, I don’t really know what to make of that. What I do know is that following this, Esther thinks about the double standards and decides to have “sex” with Constantin. However unpleasing and uninteresting that might have been, she still does it. Once again we’ve rounded back into a circle- what do you make of that?

While I may not agree with most of Esther’s decisions, I must say that some things are understandable. Society (a word that can be used to describe men of that era), at that time, had built a convenient wall of standards for/against women. Esther tries to stand up by rejecting these double standard qualities of society. In this process, Esther has a mental breakdown, and decides to commit suicide. While these numerous suicides show that Esther is not mentally well, we can safely say that society is to blame for them. So, while the Bell Jar does portray Esther’s insanity, it also portrays the “insanity” of the era that drove Esther to become insane. Counter argument: the overwhelming majority of women (aka. 10s of millions of women) didn’t actually go insane, so does society deserve a blame? My answer: Society wasn’t completely messed up at the time, but major reforms were certainly in need, as are today, but for different reasons.   

Monday, March 2nd