I'm really enjoying The Bell Jar. I find it really interesting to get a female perspective on some of the same kinds of concepts that came up in the last couple books that we read as a class. The experience is rather jarring but it rings true. Get it? Well you don't have to because it was an awful joke.
When I first started reading the novel I immediately started drawing parallels with Holden in Catcher in the Rye, but as I read on the differences in the characters of Holden and Esther became more and more apparent. In the early chapters of The Bell Jar, Esther uses some of the repeated phrases that Holden does throughout Catcher, like how something "depresses her" or verbing the hell out of a noun. I guess that could be just as much from how people talked back then as it is a similarity. Besides that, they both feel out of place in their respective environments.
The main difference is that Esther knows how to play the game and is good at it. She's an A student, has manufactured answers to any probing question. She surrounds herself with a diverse, close group and knows how to behave in all kinds of situations. On the outside she also seems to be able to be comfortable with herself, like when she rolled caviar into chicken and ate it without fearing any judgement. Under the surface though, the reality is different from her self-assured exterior.
Both characters realize the inevitability of the path they're going down eventually and that scares them. Esther is pretending in order to move up in the world but she doesn't know about what that means about herself.
In my opinion, if you pretend for long enough you can overcome the brain and it actually becomes a reality. I feel like certain character traits can be faked until success. If someone acted really confident and well prepared all the time, people would be more inclined to trust them and follow them. As a result of more people being attracted to the pretender, they would take on more burdens and actually settle into the "lie" they created for themselves. I'm not really sure, that's just my theory.
I guess I'm not far enough in the book to make any more definitive statements but the blurb on the book says it's about a woman's descent into insanity and I'm curious how that would come about in the end.
The issues that these two characters are upset with in the world are also interesting and similar. They are both disgusted with the system in general and have doubts for the future in a world that they do not feel they belong in. I also noticed that they both have an issue with gender roles specifically. We talked about how Esther sees various aspects of her relationship and trip to the medical school as hypocritical manifestations of a double standard. Holdon also gets upset with the concept of prostitution and stradlier for his attitude towards how he treats women.
ReplyDeleteYeah I just wrote a paper about how Holden had a sort of confident facade that seems to crumble as the book went along, but I now realize the similarity there between Holden as Esther. Esther too has this kind of facade that she has build up. Like you said she is and A student who up until the summer of the book had an answer for every question. In the summer though she is starting to realize that maybe she isn't who she appears to be. She sees her facade start to crumble as she begins to become unsure about her future.
ReplyDeleteI'm really glad you made a blogpost mentioning this female versus male perspective thing, because I had especially noticed it as well once I began to read The Bell Jar. With the first two novels I read, I found myself identifying with the characters to some degree, even though they were male. However, once I began reading The Bell Jar, I was much more drawn to Esther in terms of alikeness, simply because I found myself more similar to her than I was to Stephen or Holden. It seems as that, although the ideas and values of the three characters may be somewhat similar, Esther tends to carry herself and go about her day much more like I do than Holden or Stephen does. I think it's really valuable that we are reading a novel with a female main character.
ReplyDeleteI think there is an extremely blurry line between what is "reality" and what is a facade. As such, a lot of Holden and Esther's anguish comes from desiring this "purity" so badly but being unable to discern it not only in others, but in themselves as well.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea of people being able to settle into a "lie", especially when it isn't that far off from the truth. During my time in the public school system, I had to lie whenever other students asked about test grades, because I tended to do well on those things. Since changing a number wasn't that hard, it became a reality for me that I "didn't do well on that test."
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