The Bell Jar Shows How Shock Therapy Makes Women Strong

How Esther is a Model of a Self-Sufficient Woman in The Bell Jar
Introduction
Sylvia Plath’s first person narrator in The Bell Jar comes across as a Holden Caulfield type—a disaffected, somewhat lost, but highly intelligent individual capable of critical thought and therefore exceedingly lonely in a world of conformists, who seem to show no desire to question anything or to know themselves. The narrator of Plath’s novel is Esther Greenwood—a young woman living in New York, a city she loathes. As a result of an acute sense of not being able to fit in anywhere, Esther suffers from depression and tries to kill herself. She ends up receiving a number of shock therapies—such as insulin shock therapy and electroshock therapy—before finally beginning to feel free to be her own person without fear. From a Feminist Criticism perspective, it can be argued that Esther is the model of a strong, independent, self-sufficient woman, and this paper will show why.
Feminist Criticism
Feminist Criticism focuses on “the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women” (Tyson, 2006, p. 83). It stems from critical theory, which posits that “to be critical, an inquiry must challenge directly underlying human interests and ideologies” (Short, 1991, p. 245). Feminist theory examines the constructed relationship between gender and power in society. Feminist Criticism examines this relationship in terms of literature art. As the original Critical Theorists, particularly those of the Frankfurt School, such as Adorno and Horkheimer (2007), were interested in deconstructing modern culture to explain why things are the way they are, Feminist Criticism is another dimension of this approach and focuses on deconstructing systems of power as they are represented in works of art.
In Plath’s The Bell Jar, Esther is the main protagonist and narrator of the story. She narrates her unhappiness alongside worries and fears that she knows she is supposed to be happy because everyone else is and that is what is expected of her: “I was supposed to be having the time of my life. I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girlst just like me all over America…”(Plath, 1996, p. 2). In her hyper-awareness of the gulf between where she is emotionally and where she thinks she is supposed to be (based on cultural norms and expectations), Esther is very similar to Salinger’s Caulfield, who expresses the same sort of misgivings as he wanders the same city in the midst of an existential crisis: in fact, as Bell (2016) points out there is a veritable geneaology of type that stretches from Twain’s Tom and Huck on down to Holden and Esther. But Holden and Esther particularly seem like mirror images of one another: both characters seek to achieve something special and both wind up in a mental health facility. But though Holden Caulfield has been commonly viewed as a hero of sorts for the anti-establishment, Plath’s Esther may be viewed as a weak creature who never quite finds her own footing. Is this because she is a woman and thus any weakness in her character is associated with the concept of being of the “weaker sex”? Alberga-Parisi and Pope (2018) call it the problem of the “perfection crucible” and suggest that it is more acceptable for the male Holden to come across as a bit antic and crazy than it is for the female Esther. From a Feminist Criticism perspective, the problem of the perfection crucible is one that reveals gender inequality in society, and, since the two charactes are really rather similar in terms of plight, one should not be judged as more heroic than the other. If Holden is strong because he opposes and questions the status quo, then it should also be the case that Esther is strong, since the only difference between the two is one of gender.
The Gender Stereotype
The “weaker sex” issue is one that appears in numerous works, including Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, in which another female character, distressed by the expectations and emptiness of the world, contemplates suicide and is “rescued” by her male cousin, who is no less distressed but who comes across as the “strong” one because of two things: 1) his sex, and 2) his faith. He serves as a kind of reluctant beacon of light who at long last makes the decision to lead the distressed girl by the hand and to “man up” himself and take charge of his own destiny, essentially completing what Campbell calls the hero’s journey (Effthimiou & Franco, 2017).
Plath’s Esther has only Buddy, her supposed fiance, who is more of an abstraction in her own consciousness than a beacon of light. In short, Esther has to find her own way amid a maze of friends and colleagues, family and doctors—none of whom seem able to help her. She has to summon the strength to perserve and come to terms with life on her own and thus, from the perspective of Feminist Criticism, Esther has to be considered a strong female character who is independent and self-sufficient. Were she in another novel, she might be depicted as a distressed heroine in need of saving—but because this is Plath’s novel and is relatively autobiographical the character of Esther is not one who is written to rely on anyone but herself. She is like Holden in this respect—but her story is more emotional and introspective than Holden’s, whose tale is rather comically told with a sense of biting sarcasm that Plath’s Esther does not have. Esther is gentler in her tones and attitudes. But this does not mean she is weak, if one is going to deconstruct the relationships between power and gender according to Feminist theory.
The Double Standard
Esther questions the standards that she believes keep her feeling oppressed. For instance, she does not see why she should be expected to remain a virgin until marriage when men are not expected to do so: “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” (Plath, 1996, p. 81). She is distressed by the idea that there is one standard of purity for women and one standard of purity for men in popular culture. She is not guided by anyone to see that the same standard exists for all but that it is relaxed for men by men because they are running the show and are not interested in living up to the standards and morals of the Old World though they still want their women to do so. Esther essentially says that if the men are going to reject the Old World morals and values then she is not going to abide by them either.
Of course, being a woman, there are consequences of sex that are felt more keenly—namely, the issue of pregnancy. Esther eventually gets a diaphragm, which frees her from the fear of getting pregnant and which will allow her to pursue of a life of sexual intercourse without repurcussions. From a Feminist perspective, Esther is now an empowered woman who has overcome the natural parameters of her sex and has risen (even though in her more pious moments she might easily describe it as sinking) to the levels of the men around her, who prefer to sleep with partners indiscriminately and outside of wedlock.
Strength from the Feminist Perspective
The moral code of the Feminist is obviously different from the moral code of the Old World, which is represented in The Bell Jar by the character of Betsy. The Feminist values independence and self-sufficiency over submissiveness, humility, and motherhood. Esther thus becomes the heroic symbol of Feminism by the end of the novel because she has the tools of the Feminist—the diaphragm to ensure sterility, the license to engage in the type of illicit sexual behavior that she has feared to engage in earlier, and the strength of mind (supplied her literally by shocking her out of her senses via insulin shock and electroshock therapy) to no longer care about standards or what the world thinks or what kind of person she need be at all. She is “liberated” in the sense that she is now “free” to go her own way, no longer distressed and no longer oppressed. She has gone through her own hero’s journey and developed her own independent identity in the process.
Though some readers may view her character as “whiny,” as Alberga-Parisi and Pope (2018) admit, those readers are unlikely to be viewing her in the sympathic terms of Feminist framework. In the Feminist framework, the characteristics that define strength for males are applied to females, because the underlying assumption of Feminist theory is that men and women are inherently the same and should be judged by the same standards and should be permitted to pursue the same objectives. Though men and women are clearly different from a biological point of view, which of course has ramifications on both genders in terms of how life is experienced emotionally, psychologically, and socially (Codina & Pestana, 2019), the Feminist Perspective posits that these differences are superficial and irrelevant in the light of Feminism, which focuses on gender equality.
However, because Feminism cannot make the biological distinctions go away, there is a need to overcome them, and that becomes part of the hero’s journey in the Feminist narrative. Esther obtaining a diaphragm is akin to Holden Caulfield catching the children in the rye and preventing them from going over the cliff. The latter saves the innocent from the corrupt world of adulthood. The former overcomes her biological nature by putting a medical lock on her womb and ensuring that no man will impregnate her unless she chooses to open her womb with the key. Biology is neutered in this respect, and the female Esther can now have sex without fear just like a man (though Plath does not go into any exploration of the fact that men are just as capable of feeling fear with regards to sex because—just as easily as a woman can become a mother—a man can become a father, which has its own set of responsibilities and places new parameters on one’s life). But the Feminist Perspective is typically not focused on the male perspective. Here the focus is Esther and how she becomes strong, independent and self-sufficient and from the Feminist Perspective the solution is clear: shock therapy and a diaphragm.
Conclusion
Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar can be considered a strong, independent, self-sufficient woman in the light of Feminist Criticism because she overcomes the limitations and constraints of biology as well as the sexual double standard that she perceives in society. She completes her own hero’s journey and by the end of the novel is confident in herself and in her own identity as her own woman. She no longer feels distressed or overwhelmed by expectations from others and has had her self-doubt and self-recrimination shocked out of her. For Feminists, the autobiographical heroine of the author who killed herself a month after the book’s publication is indeed a strong woman.
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