Esther's Misrepresentations of People in The Bell Jar
As we all know, Esther has gone through a lot on her journey. She travelled to New York for a fashion journalism scholarship and, while she was there, tried over and over again to identify herself and her true desires. Throughout all of this, we have been there with her, listening silently as Esther describes her thoughts of inadequacy and aversion to society’s normalized experiences, as well as people. To be honest, it’s pretty understandable since one of the main reasons for this is her depression. However, because her narrations often depict people strangely, we don’t always know whether she is exaggerating or telling the truth.
Early on, when Esther was still hopeful of finding her place, she described Doreen, saying: “with her white hair and white dress she was so white she looked silver. I think she must have reflected the neons over the bar” (Plath 10). Now, this isn’t the only instance of Doreen being described in this way, as she is said to have “had bright white hair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible” (Plath 4). Esther’s descriptions of Doreen give the impression that Doreen is like a doll or a statue, not exactly human. This, in part, I think is due to how Doreen seems perfect and in the know, which Esther believes is the opposite of herself. Believing Doreen to be her opposite makes Esther feel lost, especially when they go out at night and Doreen fits in, while Esther does not. All of Esther’s unnerving descriptions of Doreen make me wonder if she's trying to play into Doreen’s unnatural features in order to make herself feel comparatively normal and human.
There are other people she does this with, like Hilda when she talks about the Rosenbergs. Hilda is described in a more grotesque way than Doreen, in part because Esther’s mental health has been declining much more, and probably because Hilda targeting the Rosenbergs strikes a nerve with Esther, who previously tried to empathize with them. She says on page 100, “she yawned then, and her pale orange mouth opened on a large darkness. Fascinated, I stared at the blind cave behind her face until the two lips met and moved and the dybbuk spoke out of its hiding place” (Plath). Esther’s representation of Hilda during this part of the book makes her seem animalistic and scary, which is way different than her earlier representation of Hilda when she first describes her to us. Again, like Doreen, there’s also likely a motive to distance herself from Hilda and her view on the Rosenbergs by accentuating the ‘monster’ in her.
When Esther leaves New York and learns she isn’t accepted into the writing course, there’s yet another change in her description of the world. Things become still and cage-like, and combined with the monster-like descriptions of people she continues to make, her world becomes a horror scenario, with us watching in her mind. It's such an interesting perspective to read, although equally painful once you know the reasons for her narrations.
Work Cited
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Harper, 2013.
Nice post, Citlali! I also wrote about Esther's disillusioned perspective, but definitely framed it differently. I like how you spoke about the physical descriptions that Esther used to describe her surroundings, and how she often used really descriptive and fantastical language to talk about people. I also appreciate how you noted her use of calling people "monster-like", because it really shows how warped the bell jar made her perspective.
ReplyDeleteI think it's so interesting that we actually get to see the distortion of her mental health through her view of the world around her. As a writer (both Plath and Esther), she has a unique perspective of the world, but her depression is obviously changing this. It's cool to see the still beautiful but now twisted descriptions of the world. I also think that in this same view, you could see her perspectives of the other girls around her as more blunt the longer we see Esther because she has less energy to give to being jealous and now just sees people as they are.
ReplyDeleteHi Citlali! One of the things I thought Plath did extremely well in The Bell Jar was really putting us in Esther's mind with these grotesque descriptions of other people and the world around her. It really gives a good idea of how her depression is affecting her everyday life and why that would lead her to spiral in the way that she did. It is sometimes easy to forget how much of an exaggeration some of these descriptions may be, but I think for what it lacks in accuracy to the real world, the novel makes up for with the true perspective of Esther Greenwood. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Citlali! I love your examples of how warped Esther's perspective really becomes and how she can interpret people in multiple ways based on the state of her mind. The example with Hilda I think best represents how Hilda didn't align her views with Esther on the aspect of the Rosenburgs and how Hilda's physical appearance becomes one of a demonic figure in Esther's eyes as she fights her illness from the front of social connections. With her connection with Doreen, Esther feels judgment just from Doreen's presence and ability to live without the hindering of a mental illness. Great post!
ReplyDeleteThe Hilda example is such a good reflection of the bell jar's distortions, since we see so little of Hilda in the novel. She stands in for a "typical" member of the _Ladies' Day_ guest-editor cohort, not even given the animatronic/semi-human kind of individuation afforded to Doreen. She's just a normal college student who is doing her best in New York--in many ways, the reflection of the identity Esther has believed she herself embodies, before her psychological tailspin kicks in.
ReplyDeleteSo when Hilda's "true identity" (in Esther's distorted view) is revealed in such a grotesque and creepy fashion (I especially get chills imagining the VOICE in which her "dybbuk-spirit" speaks), it's a stark and nightmarish reflection of how the ordinary world has become utterly monstrous to Esther. And an important feature of her distorted view (typical of depression) is that this distorted reality is experienced as the "underlying truth" that is there all the time, invisible to regular people. The mentally ill person believes that they and they alone are seeing the "truth" under the surface. And here, Hilda expressing a harsh but pretty conventional view on capital punishment and the cold war is quite literally experienced by Esther as a demon possession.
Hello Citlali!! You did a really good job at picking apart Esther's descriptions of people, and I do agree that some of them are a bit crude and confusing. I think this definitely opens up the whole conversation of the reliable narrator concept. I feel like Esther definitely didn't feel as unreliable as Holden for example (Most likely due to how outward he is about his negativity), so this topic is definitely one I overlooked. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Citlali! This was such an interesting blog topic, I think Esther's misrepresentations of people's physical appearances are some of the most concrete examples of her actively declining mental health, and a very vivid representation of how disillusioned she's becoming with her world. This is one of the ways that Plath is able to show Esther's mental decline without having to spell out the fact that she's struggling. This was a really good blog!
ReplyDeleteHey Citlali! I think that Esther's descriptions provide a lot of insight into the state of her character, and is one of the many interesting aspects of this book, so I'm glad you brought it up. Not only do they represent Esther's mental decline, but also how her perception of others and the world around her shifts. I think it's also interesting that as she recovers towards the end of the book, her descriptions of people seem to become more realistic. Good job!
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