Split Halfway

One of the most striking aspects of The Bell Jar for me is how quickly Esther's paranoid behavior escalates. As I read through Chapter 9 of the novel, I thought of Esther as a character troubled by her circumstances and others' misogynist views, not as someone who would repeatedly attempt suicide and never fully be a part of society again. But the transition from Chapter 9 to Chapter 10 is a significant change of tone. Esther not only emphasizes the ideas of death and depression more, but her behavior rapidly shifts from relatively normal (as a successful college student who hangs out with friends) to very isolated, unhealthy, and dangerous.

Part of what makes Esther's spiral into mental illness seem so fast is the language Plath uses at the beginning of Chapter 10. Esther says on page 113, "A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death," she feels she "had nothing to look forward to" on page 117, and she references the idea of not recognizing herself a few times throughout Chapter 10, including on page 120 when she decides she would create a disguise for herself named Elaine. Though Esther often has negative views on things in Chapters 1-9, much of her discomfort is related to her environment. While she criticizes Buddy Willard's behavior and describes the awkwardness of being wth Lenny and Doreen near the beginning of The Bell Jar, I think Chapter 10 marks a point in the novel when Esther directs her concerns, hatred, and discomfort more toward herself. Her escalation into serious mental illness comes from how she can no longer deal with problems she sees around her, and begins to see any criticism she has with others as a flaw with herself. The first nine chapters of the book act as a way to build up some of the qualms Esther has with her surroundings--from her first view of the rough sexuality between Doreen and Lenny, to the scene when Marco acts as a "woman-hater"--and the rest of the book is how Esther internalizes such issues.

An example of how Esther can no longer cope with problems later in the book is the fact that she stops bathing. In Chapter 2, Esther says, "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them." She uses baths as a way to both physically and mentally cleanse herself of any disgusting, uncomfortable situation she has just been in. Yet several chapters later, Esther hasn't bathed in weeks, separated from what she saw as the universal way to contemplate problems and feel better. I think this is one reason why the second half of the book felt very disjointed from the first half to me, and possibly why many people in our class find it harder to relate to Esther by the end of the book than at the beginning: instead of simply seeing problems with things on a large scale (e.g., how American women were often treated in the 1950s), Esther feels that she is unusual for noticing such issues and abuses herself for them.