The Bell Jar

Although Esther’s depression and mental break are primarily caused by her brain chemistry, her struggle is inseparable from the experiences she endures as a young woman in the 1950s. The society she lives in sorts men and women into separate and unequal categories, and Esther’s already shaky sense of identity is weakened by the stress of living up to misogynistic standards. Gendered violence and social pressure accelerate her descent into depression, and after her suicide attempt she has to reckon with her relationship to her gender.

At the age of 19 in 1953, Esther is entering adulthood during a decade which marks a turning point for women. Traditional ideas about womanhood still dominate, with people like Buddy Willard and Mrs. Greenwood believing that women should be homemakers who prioritize marriage and motherhood. Yet alternative paths already exist: women like Philomena Guinea and Jay Cee model the possibility of a life centered around career success rather than marriage.

As she tries to sort out her plan for adult life, Esther is inundated with contradictory messages about who she can be and what she can do. She feels like she wants too much and worries that her desires for love, sexual freedom, and a successful career are mutually exclusive. Although she scorns a life of domesticity, she imagines that she might be happier if she could fit into conventional expectations; she sometimes feels that there is something fundamentally wrong with her aspirations. She is both repulsed and fascinated by women like Dodo Conway, whose lives are centered around the home. Yet she cannot fully connect with Philomena Guinea or Jay Cee either—her internalized misogyny makes her wary of these “strange” and “ugly” women who have shirked a conventional lifestyle.

As she witnesses violence perpetrated against herself and other women, Esther grows to associate womanhood with inevitable pain and subjugation. Her relationships with men further complicate her feelings about femininity. Buddy, the supposed ideal man, subjects Esther to a hypocritical double standard. He cheats on her with a waitress but expects her to remain a virgin until marriage in order to be worthy of his love. Esther balks at his affected piety and reacts by resolving to lose her own virginity, an act of defiance against a society that wants to deny women the right to pleasure and bodily autonomy.

Esther associates marrying Buddy with a loss of personal autonomy. She decides that all men ultimately want women “to flatten out underneath [their] feet” after marriage (85). She has good reason to feel this way. Buddy does want Esther to give up her ambitions as a writer and become a homemaker. The pressure he puts on her is a microcosm of the pressure 1950s society puts on all women, and it heightens her stress and feelings of hopelessness.

Beyond Buddy, most of the men in Esther’s life let her down in some way, from her father, who abandons the family in death, to the violent and misogynistic Marco. Sexism pervades her psychiatric care when her male psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, immediately forces her into electroshock therapy without attempting less extreme treatments first. His behavior is Plath’s way of calling out the harmful and misogynistic standards that have historically pervaded the field of mental health, and which she experienced firsthand during her own mental crises. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, almost every male character in The Bell Jar harms Esther or inhibits her recovery.

In the midst of Esther’s struggle, Dr. Nolan appears as a guiding light and a proxy mother figure. Dr. Nolan lacks the perceived negative traits that made Esther dismiss other potential mentors like Philomena Guinea and Jay Cee. She is a young woman succeeding in a male-dominated field and is the first to take Esther’s pain seriously. Dr. Nolan understands Esther’s complicated relationship to men, sexuality, and her mother. She empowers Esther to process her emotions fully and prescribes her the birth control which allows her to engage in safe and consensual sex.

After Esther loses her virginity, she bleeds heavily. Although she is happy to have completed her objective, her hemorrhaging symbolizes the sacrifice she is making—a nonvirgin who has been institutionalized, she will never again be viewed as the pure and uncomplicated feminine stereotype of the Madonna, or the marriageable “good girl.” Her sacrifice is not in vain, though; in Esther’s mind, losing her virginity allows her to join a “great tradition” of other women who have done the same, positively aligning her with her femininity.

Esther’s turbulent relationship with womanhood is caused by her surroundings that exacerbate her struggle with depression. She has to fight through both external and internalized misogyny to achieve the life she wants for herself. Esther eventually finds a more positive relationship to femininity by identifying a role model in Dr. Nolan and losing her virginity on her own terms. The novel is narrated by an older Esther who mentions in passing that she has a baby, implying that she has either caved to social pressure or managed to find a balance between her career ambitions and motherhood.