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In The Bell Jar, how does Esther outwardly conform while questioning inwardly?
Quick answer:
Esther Greenwood outwardly conforms to societal expectations in the 1950s while internally questioning them. Despite her success and promising prospects, she finds her experiences shallow and unfulfilling. She maintains relationships and a career that align with societal norms but privately rejects these conventions. Her interactions with Buddy and her job at a fashion magazine highlight her internal conflict between societal pressures and her desire for personal freedom, reflecting the struggle of women in a conformist era.
Most readers would agree that the relatively limited choices available to women in the 1950s, when The Bell Jar takes place, account for much of Esther's outward conformity. She notes the irrational behavior of people around her without confronting them but by inwardly observing that there is something wrong with them—a ridiculousness in the way they act. The result is a narrative that is often comical in a very grim and disturbing way.
A key point is the way Esther responds to Buddy and his apparent nonsense toward her. It's not only that she doesn't tell Buddy the truth; her narrative itself ironically conveys the opposite reaction to her real one. After Buddy's "dry, uninspiring little kiss," he says to her,
"I guess you go out with a lot of boys."
"Well, I guess I do." I thought I must have gone out with a different boy for every week...
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in the year.
As readers, we sense this isn't true, but it fits in with the conformist posture Esther knows she's supposed to present. When Buddy takes her to a maternity ward, he asks her "Well, how was it" in his typically clueless manner, and she answers,
Wonderful. ... I could see something like that every day.
Just after this, Buddy takes his clothes off for Esther, and her reaction is less than enthusiastic. Of course, she doesn't tell him this but merely acts as if the dry, clinical way he's presenting himself to her is normal and replies, "Oh, some other time," when he asks her to do the same.
These episodes with Buddy are snapshots of Esther's discomfort with the general comportment of the men she meets and, by extension, with the vanilla, conformist world of the time. She reacts in the way she feels she's expected to and not in a way that expresses her actual thoughts.
The far worse situation with Marco is emblematic of Esther's powerlessness, in spite of her being able successfully to fight him off. Later, she goes on a rooftop and hurls her clothes to the wind. The act is a metaphor of her intended non-conformity, but it's a private act and therefore not one of true rebellion, since no one sees her doing it. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't report Marco to the police or tell others about the attempted assault.
Plath does not make these points as explicit as she might have, but this gives her message all the more power. Despite the jarring and even shocking events she narrates, the novel is a classic of understatement. It portrays a young woman trapped between her need above all for freedom and self-expression and the demands of the societal codes of the time.
Esther Greenwood seems to have everything: brains, looks, an accomplished boyfriend, and an enviable fashion internship in New York City. However, deep down, she is empty and unhappy. Still, she tries her best to make it seem as though she adheres to the same ideas of success as everyone else.
Firstly, Esther works at a fashion magazine, but she finds the whole experience shallow and unfulfilling. She finds the other employees' focuses on fashion shows and social events foolish, yet she continues to work there anyway since it is considered an acceptable career for a woman. She dresses as expected and does what she is told just to fit in and not squander the opportunity.
Secondly, Esther continues to date Buddy, a handsome and successful young man everyone considers her fiancé. However, she does not love him, views his naked body with disgust, and even finds his curt dismissal of her artistic ambitions deeply annoying. Yet she has not broken up with him properly, because others would think her insane for giving such a good match up.
Esther continues to go about life as usual, though she knows the expected path for women (marriage, motherhood, renouncing a career) is not for her. She wonders how to go about finding a relationship that will make her happy or making sure she is sexually fulfilled without trapping herself in a social system of domestic imprisonment.
I think that there is a level of conformity colliding with a sense of internal questioning within Esther. In many respects, I think that Plath constructed Esther as the modern woman. Armed, in a sense, with the understanding that the barriers that used to be present in the past for women are noticeably absent and that freedom is something that can be pursued and embraced there is a social collision between this and the past, traditional social construction of what it means to be a woman. It is here, in this balance between conformity and inward questioning, where Esther lies. She "conforms" in as far as she is able to use her intelligence to procure a job that is economically and socially acceptable. However, she is a modernist character in that she seeks to understand her own approach towards the freedom in modernity. What does it mean to interact with men? What does it mean to psychologically reconcile with her own past and the women in her own life and how they wrestle the same demons that she does? How is she able to construct reality in a setting where so many challenges are both present in so many different forms? In these realms, there exists questioning in Esther, something for which Plath does not give simple and easy answers. Rather, she raises the questions and within this, like Esther, we as the reader are left to inwardly question.