Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, demonstrates the startling effects of an oppressive patriarchal society on a bright and accomplished woman. Esther’s descent into madness can be attributed towards 1950’s America’s absurd expectations of women, the pressure women place on each other and the patronising attitude of the medical world. All throughout the novel, characters such as Esther’s own mother, Buddy Willard and Mrs. Willard all exist as manifestations of the suffocating environment that characterised mid 20th century America.
Ideologies such as “a girl shouldn’t sleep with anybody but her husband and then only after they were married” reveals the double standards to which marriage and sexuality was held to. Esther resists this blatant display of sexism by stating “I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not” and furthermore, actively goes against the norm to pursue and explore her own sexual identity and freedom in the form of Constantin, and later, Irwin.
However, when Marco forces himself onto her and sexually assaults her, he calls her “slut” over and over again, an act resembling Lenny calling Doreen a “bitch” when she bites him during their sexual encounter, yet nothing came of consequence when “[he] was trying to bite Doreen’s hip”. The longer Esther remains at the mercy of the patriarchal society, the more she realises the gap between what society says she should experience and what she does experience, intensifying her madness.
1950’s America dictated women like Esther to be a perpetually cheerful and confident blond doll like Betsy “with er bouncing blonde ponytail and Sweetheart-of-Sigma-Chi smile” and Doreen with her “bright white hair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles”, when all she wanted was to be sarcastic and “cynical as all hell”. On top of that, all her relationships with the opposite sex were not the “A man is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from” but rather situations that left her in a worse place from where she begun from.
This further highlighted the discord between expectation and reality for women, driving Esther deeper into her frustration and later, sense of unreality. The pressure and judgement women place on each other is the product of living in a poisonous male dominated society. During Esther’s college life, the seniors at her school would ridicule her and her commitment to her studies by leaving “nasty loud remarks outside my door about people wasting their golden college days with their noses stuck in a book”.
It was only when they found out a boy had asked Esther out to the Yale Junior Prom that they started to treat her with “amazement and respect”. By doing that, Plath implies that a woman’s self worth and importance is judged on her success with associating with the opposite sex, not on one’s own academic merit. It also shows that females exist to service the male and those who chose otherwise are shunned and looked on as an outcast. This judgement of women from women also continues into Esther’s brief stint at Ladies Day.
Doreen describes their boss and magazine editor as being as “ugly as sin”, then goes on to remark “I bet that old husband of hers turns out all the lights before he gets near her or he’d puke otherwise”, completely disregarding her talent and success. Instead, Doreen boils her entire life into her external appearance and sexual appeal. The poisonous environment where even your own kind is an enemy is one Esther chokes silently in for many years, alienating her ven further from her peers, accelerating her faster into darkness.
Lastly, another reason for Esther’s spiral into madness is the patronising and belittling attitude of the medical society. When Buddy and her observe Mrs. Tomolillo give birth, the head doctor infantilizes the married woman, dropping condescending comments such as “that’s a good girl”, implying women are small and unimportant, unable to care for themselves, just like a child.
A medical student also remarks to Esther that “They oughtn’t to let women watch [childbirth]” despite women being the childbearers and having the right to know and understand exactly what occurs when nine months of their labour is heralded into the world. The student’s comment also infers that women are weaker and need to be shielded from nature’s natural way, since they are lesser and unable to handle situations like men can. Esther’s encounter with Doctor Gordon does nothing to improve her rapidly dwindling sanity, and in fact, hastens it.
From the get go, he dismisses her and her opinions, not taking them seriously. “Suppose you try and tell me what you think is wrong” shows us he does not take Esther’s concerns to heart, believing there is no problem of concern and it is only in her imagination that something is not quite right despite the fact she had not slept for seven nights, not eaten and had not washed herself or her clothes since she returned from New York.
The haughty and flippant attitude the male medical profession displays and the way they dismiss the validity of women’s concerns only further indicates the sexism Esther has to suffer at the hands of scientific community, pushing her closer into the territory of insanity. In The Bell Jar, Esther dances on a thin tightrope between madness and sanity during an oppressive time where mental illness was heavily stigmatised and misunderstood. Her descent into psychosis can be credited towards the patriarchal society’s expectations of women, the pressure women place on each other and the belittling attitude of the medical world.
