The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar Core Collection

This edition of Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar' is part of a public domain collection for Ontario post-secondary institutions.
The text and audio recordings are copyright-free, while front matter is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
The book includes accessibility features for screen readers and is available in multiple formats including PDF and epub.
The project was a collaboration between Ryerson and Brock universities funded by the Government of Ontario's Virtual Learning Strategy.

The Bell Jar The Bell Jar SYLVIA PLATH RYERSON UNIVERSITY TORONTO This work (The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath) is free of known copyright restrictions. The Librivox recordings are also free of known copyright restrictions. All other material in the front and back matter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license unless otherwise noted. Cover image by Mysticsartdesign on Pixabay This book was produced with Pressbooks (https://pressbooks.com) and rendered with Prince. Series Introduction PUBLIC DOMAIN CORE COLLECTION TEAM The Public Domain Core Collection consists of over 50 titles of public domain works that have been created using Pressbooks and made available in online, epub, pdf and editable formats. Although the primary audience for this collection is students and faculty members in the post-secondary education sector in Ontario, the titles are freely available on the web to anyone who wants to read or adapt them for their own use. Titles were chosen for this collection based on the following criteria: • Relevance to post-secondary courses taught in Ontario • Frequency of appearance on syllabi listed in the Open Syllabus Project • Proposed usage in open assignments in courses at Ryerson and Brock universities during the Fall 2021 semester • Inclusion of underrepresented voices (including titles by BIPOC authors) • In the public domain All texts are in the public domain (50 years after the death of the author) in Canada as of 2021. If you are accessing these texts from another country, please be aware that some of these works may not be in the public domain in your country. Supplementary materials (introductions, acknowledgements, etc.) are licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Credit Statement Adaptations of public domain texts do not require attribution; however, we would appreciate acknowledgement of the source of the work as follows: Series Introduction | 1 This work has been adapted from The Bell Jar, a title from the eCampusOntario Public Domain Core Collection. This work is in the Public Domain. Content from the front and back matter is licensed under CC BY 4.0, and should be attributed according to Creative Commons best practices. If you have suggestions for additional public domain titles that you would like to see in this collection, please complete this suggestion form. This project is made possible with funding by the Government of Ontario and the Virtual Learning Strategy. To learn more about the Virtual Learning Strategy visit: https://vls.ecampusontario.ca/. 2 | The Bell Jar Introduction to the Book PUBLIC DOMAIN CORE COLLECTION TEAM This Public Domain Core Collection book was created using the Faber and Faber, 1971 third printing of the 1966 edition of The Bell Jar courtesy of Faded Page. Introduction to the Book | 3 Accessibility Statement PUBLIC DOMAIN CORE COLLECTION TEAM Accessibility Features of the Web Version of this Resource The web version of The Bell Jar has been optimized for people who use screen-reading technology and includes the following features: • All content can be navigated using a keyboard, • Links, headings, and tables use proper markup, and • All images have text descriptions. Other Formats Available In addition to the web version, this book is available in a number of file formats including digital PDF, epub (for eReaders) and LibriVox audio recordings (where available). You can download these alternative formats from the book’s home page. 4 | Accessibility Statement Known Accessibility Issues and Areas for Improvement There are no known accessibility issues at this time. Let us know if you are having problems accessing this book. If accessibility issues are stopping you from accessing the information in this book, please contact us at pressbooks@ryerson.ca to let us know and we will get it fixed. If you discover any other issues, please let us know of those as well. Please include the following information: • The location of the problem by providing a web address or page description • A description of the problem • The computer, software, browser, and any assistive technology you are using that can help us diagnose and solve your issue e.g., Windows 10, Google Chrome (Version 65.0.3325.181), NVDA screen reader This statement was last updated on February 15, 2022. Accessibility Statement | 5 Acknowledgements PUBLIC DOMAIN CORE COLLECTION TEAM The Public Domain Core Collection Project would not have been possible without the enthusiastic collaboration between staff, faculty members and students at Ryerson and Brock universities. We came together with a shared desire to make commonly used public domain texts more accessible to instructors and students in our institutions, Ontario and beyond. We also wanted to encourage instructors to use the texts as a basis for open pedagogy assignments with the aim of empowering students to become knowledge creators rather than just knowledge consumers. Core Project Team Ryerson University • Payton Flood, Digital Publication Coordinator • Nipuni Kuruppu, 4th year, Creative Industries student • Val Lem, Collections Lead, Faculty of Arts • Ann Ludbrook, Research Lead, Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian • Emma Seston, 4th year, New Media student • Sally Wilson, Web Services Librarian, Project Lead Brock University • Giulia Forsythe, Associate Director, Centre for Pedagogical 6 | Acknowledgements Innovation • Cal Murgu, Liaison and Instructional Design Librarian • Jennifer Thiessen, Head, Liaison Services This project is made possible with funding by the Government of Ontario and through eCampusOntario’s support of the Virtual Learning Strategy. To learn more about the Virtual Learning Strategy visit: https://vls.ecampusontario.ca.” Acknowledgements | 7 Chapter 1

A Summer of Disconnection

The narrator reflects on the eerie atmosphere of a New York summer dominated by the news of the Rosenberg executions.
She describes a profound sense of physical and mental displacement, unable to enjoy her prestigious internship.
The text explores the contrast between the narrator's inner morbid obsessions and the superficial glamour of the fashion world.
The narrator portrays herself as a passive observer of her own life, feeling empty and numb despite her objective successes.
She uses the image of a cadaver's head to illustrate her inability to escape intrusive, disturbing thoughts.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that’s all there was to read about in the papers—goggle- eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves. I thought it must be the worst thing in the world. New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-grey at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, tindery dust blew into my eyes and down my throat. I kept hearing about the Rosenbergs over the radio and at the office till I couldn’t get them out of my mind. It was like the first time I saw a cadaver. For weeks afterwards, the cadaver’s head—or what there was left of it—floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and behind the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadaver’s head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar. I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I’d been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I’d totted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue. I was supposed to be having the time of my life. I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls Chapter 1 | 9 just like me all over America who wanted nothing more than to be tripping about in those same size seven patent leather shoes I’d bought in Bloomingdale’s one lunch hour with a black patent leather belt and black patent leather pocket-book to match. And when my picture came out in the magazine the twelve of us were working on—drinking martinis in a skimpy, imitation silver-lamé bodice stuck on to a big, fat cloud of white tulle, on some Starlight Roof, in the company of several anonymous young men with all- American bone structures hired or loaned for the occasion—everybody would think I must be having a real whirl. Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car. Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolley-bus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn’t get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. There were twelve of us at the hotel. We had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writing essays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizes they gave us jobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, and piles and piles of free bonuses, like ballet tickets and passes to fashion shows and hair stylings at a famous expensive salon and chances to meet successful people in the field of our desire and advice about what to do with our particular complexions.

The Amazon Hotel

Twelve winners of a fashion magazine contest are awarded a month of professional opportunities and luxury gifts in New York City.
The narrator stays at the Amazon, a sheltered hotel for wealthy young women who appear profoundly bored by their privileged lifestyles.
Despite achieving a long-sought goal, the protagonist feels a sense of psychological paralysis, unable to fully engage with her surroundings.
She finds a cynical mentor in Doreen, a sharp-tongued girl who views their high-society experiences with amused contempt.

ere were twelve of us at the hotel. We had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writing essays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizes they gave us jobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, and piles and piles of free bonuses, like ballet tickets and passes to fashion shows and hair stylings at a famous expensive salon and chances to meet successful people in the field of our desire and advice about what to do with our particular complexions. I still have the make-up kit they gave me, fitted out for a person with brown eyes and brown hair: an oblong of brown mascara with a tiny brush, and a round basin of blue eye-shadow just big enough to dab the tip of your finger in, and three lipsticks ranging from red to pink, all cased in the same little gilt box with a mirror on one side. 10 | The Bell Jar I also have a white plastic sun-glasses case with coloured shells and sequins and a green plastic starfish sewed on to it. I realized we kept piling up these presents because it was as good as free advertising for the firms involved, but I couldn’t be cynical. I got such a kick out of all those free gifts showering on to us. For a long time afterwards I hid them away, but later, when I was all right again, I brought them out, and I still have them around the house. I use the lipsticks now and then, and last week I cut the plastic starfish off the sun-glasses case for the baby to play with. So there were twelve of us at the hotel, in the same wing on the same floor in single rooms, one after the other, and it reminded me of my dormitory at college. It wasn’t a proper hotel—I mean a hotel where there are both men and women mixed about here and there on the same floor. This hotel—the Amazon—was for women only, and they were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents who wanted to be sure their daughters would be living where men couldn’t get at them and deceive them; and they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, where they had to wear hats and stockings and gloves to class, or they had just graduated from places like Katy Gibbs and were secretaries to executives and junior executives and simply hanging around in New York waiting to get married to some career man or other. These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sun- roof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell. I talked with one of them, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in aeroplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil. Girls like that make me sick. I’m so jealous I can’t speak. Nineteen years, and I hadn’t been out of New England except for this trip to New York. It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water. I guess one of my troubles was Doreen. I’d never known a girl like Doreen before. Doreen came from a Chapter 1 | 11 society girls’ college down South and 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, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual sneer. I don’t mean a nasty sneer, but an amused, mysterious sneer, as if all the people around her were pretty silly and she could tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to. Doreen singled me out right away. She made me feel I was that much sharper than the others, and she really was wonderfully funny. She used to sit next to me at the conference table, and when the visiting celebrities were talking she’d whisper witty sarcastic remarks to me under her breath. Her college was so fashio

Decadence and Disillusionment

Doreen captivates the narrator with her cynical wit and a sophisticated lifestyle characterized by what the narrator calls 'elaborate decadence.'
While the narrator respects her boss JayCee for her intelligence and literary connections, Doreen mocks JayCee’s appearance and professional discipline.
The narrator finds herself drawn to Doreen’s rebellious attitude, eventually deciding that the traditional mentors in her life have nothing left to teach her.
Betsy, a wholesome girl from Kansas, serves as a conventional foil to Doreen, representing a midwestern purity that the narrator finds herself drifting away from.

sneer, but an amused, mysterious sneer, as if all the people around her were pretty silly and she could tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to. Doreen singled me out right away. She made me feel I was that much sharper than the others, and she really was wonderfully funny. She used to sit next to me at the conference table, and when the visiting celebrities were talking she’d whisper witty sarcastic remarks to me under her breath. Her college was so fashion-conscious, she said, that all the girls had pocket-book covers made out of the same material as their dresses, so each time they changed their clothes they had a matching pocket-book. This kind of detail impressed me. It suggested a whole life of marvellous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet. The only thing Doreen ever bawled me out about was bothering to get my assignments in by a deadline. “What are you sweating over that for?” Doreen lounged on my bed in a peach silk dressing-gown, filing her long, nicotine-yellow nails with an emery board, while I typed up the draft of an interview with a best-selling novelist. That was another thing—the rest of us had starched cotton summer nighties and quilted housecoats, or maybe terry-towel robes that doubled as beachcoats, but Doreen wore these full- length nylon and lace jobs you could half see through, and dressing- gowns the colour of skin, that stuck to her by some kind of electricity. She had an interesting, slightly sweaty smell that reminded me of those scallopy leaves of sweet fern you break off and crush between your fingers for the musk of them. “You know old Jay Cee won’t give a damn if that story’s in tomorrow or Monday.” Doreen lit a cigarette and let the smoke flare slowly from her nostrils so her eyes were veiled. “Jay Cee’s ugly as 12 | The Bell Jar sin,” Doreen went on coolly. “I bet that old husband of hers turns out all the lights before he gets near her or he’d puke otherwise.” Jay Cee was my boss, and I liked her a lot, in spite of what Doreen said. She wasn’t one of the fashion magazine gushers with fake eyelashes and giddy jewellery. Jay Cee had brains, so her plug-ugly looks didn’t seem to matter. She read a couple of languages and knew all the quality writers in the business. I tried to imagine Jay Cee out of her strict office suit and luncheon-duty hat and in bed with her fat husband, but I just couldn’t do it. I always had a terribly hard time trying to imagine people in bed together. Jay Cee wanted to teach me something, all the old ladies I ever knew wanted to teach me something, but I suddenly didn’t think they had anything to teach me. I fitted the lid on my typewriter and clicked it shut. Doreen grinned. “Smart girl.” Somebody tapped at the door. “Who is it?” I didn’t bother to get up. “It’s me, Betsy. Are you coming to the party?” “I guess so.” I still didn’t go to the door. They imported Betsy straight from Kansas with her bouncing blonde pony-tail and Sweetheart-of-Sigma-Chi smile. I remember once the two of us were called over to the office of some blue- chinned TV producer in a pin-stripe suit to see if we had any angles he could build up for a programme, and Betsy started to tell about the male and female corn in Kansas. She got so excited about that damn corn even the producer had tears in his eyes, only he couldn’t use any of it, unfortunately, he said. Later on, the Beauty Editor persuaded Betsy to cut her hair and made a cover girl out of her, and I still see her face now and then, smiling out of those “P.Q.’s wife wears B.H. Wragge” ads. Betsy was always asking me to do things with her and the other girls as if she were trying to save me in some way. She never asked Doreen. In

The Allure of Cynicism

Esther consciously distances herself from the wholesome, successful Betsy, whom Doreen derisively nicknames 'Pollyanna Cowgirl.'
The narrator re-evaluates her relationship with Buddy Willard, concluding that his academic achievements are undermined by a total lack of intuition.
While stuck in New York City traffic, Esther feels a new sense of maturity and cynicism, bolstered by her expensive black shantung sheath dress.
A charismatic man in cowboy boots approaches the girls' taxi, offering an escape from the predictable and 'boring' official social schedule.
Despite hearing a warning in the mocking laughter of the stranger's friends, Esther feels a desperate urge to seize the opportunity for adventure.

t so excited about that damn corn even the producer had tears in his eyes, only he couldn’t use any of it, unfortunately, he said. Later on, the Beauty Editor persuaded Betsy to cut her hair and made a cover girl out of her, and I still see her face now and then, smiling out of those “P.Q.’s wife wears B.H. Wragge” ads. Betsy was always asking me to do things with her and the other girls as if she were trying to save me in some way. She never asked Doreen. In private, Doreen called her Pollyanna Cowgirl. “Do you want to come in our cab?” Betsy said through the door. Chapter 1 | 13 Doreen shook her head. “That’s all right, Betsy,” I said. “I’m going with Doreen.” “Okay.” I could hear Betsy padding off down the hall. “We’ll just go till we get sick of it,” Doreen told me, stubbing out her cigarette in the base of my bedside reading-lamp, “then we’ll go out on the town. Those parties they stage here remind me of the old dances in the school gym. Why do they always round up Yalies? They’re so stoo-pit!” Buddy Willard went to Yale, but now I thought of it, what was wrong with him was that he was stupid. Oh, he’d managed to get good marks all right, and to have an affair with some awful waitress on the Cape by the name of Gladys, but he didn’t have one speck of intuition. Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones. We were stuck in the theatre-hour rush. Our cab sat wedged in back of Betsy’s cab and in front of a cab with four of the other girls, and nothing moved. Doreen looked terrific. She was wearing a strapless white lace dress zipped up over a snug corset affair that curved her in at the middle and bulged her out again spectacularly above and below, and her skin had a bronzy polish under the pale dusting-powder. She smelled strong as a whole perfume store. I wore a black shantung sheath that cost me forty dollars. It was part of a buying spree I had with some of my scholarship money when I heard I was one of the lucky ones going to New York. This dress was cut so queerly I couldn’t wear any sort of a bra under it, but that didn’t matter much as I was skinny as a boy and barely rippled, and I liked feeling almost naked on the hot summer nights. The city had faded my tan, though. I looked yellow as a Chinaman. Ordinarily, I would have been nervous about my dress and my odd colour, but being with Doreen made me forget my worries. I felt wise and cynical as all hell. When the man in the blue lumber shirt and black chinos and tooled leather cowboy boots started to stroll over to us from under the striped awning of the bar where he’d been eyeing our cab, I 14 | The Bell Jar didn’t have any illusions. I knew perfectly well he’d come for Doreen. He threaded his way out between the stopped cars and leaned engagingly on the sill of our open window. “And what, may I ask, are two nice girls like you doing all alone in a cab on a nice night like this?” He had a big, wide, white tooth-paste-ad smile. “We’re on our way to a party,” I blurted, since Doreen had gone suddenly dumb as a post and was fiddling in a blasé way with her white lace pocket-book cover. “That sounds boring,” the man said. “Whyn’t you both join me for a couple of drinks in that bar over there? I’ve some friends waiting as well.” He nodded in the direction of several informally dressed men slouching around under the awning. They had been following him with their eyes, and when he glanced back at them, they burst out laughing. The laughter should have warned me. It was a kind of low, know- it-all snicker, but the traffic showed signs of moving again, and I knew that if I sat tight, in two seconds I’d be wishing I’d taken this gift of a cha

Melting Into the Shadows

Esther and Doreen impulsively abandon their scheduled magazine group to join a charismatic stranger and his friends at a New York bar.
The narrator’s decision to leave the taxi causes a minor traffic accident, symbolizing her break from the orderly and planned life expected of her.
Esther experiences acute physical self-consciousness and social anxiety when she is paired with a short man, making her feel like a 'side-show' attraction.
In the dark bar, Esther feels her identity dissolving, comparing herself to a photographic negative while Doreen appears radiantly silver.
To mask her lack of experience with alcohol and social norms, Esther orders a plain vodka based solely on the aesthetic of a magazine advertisement.

over there? I’ve some friends waiting as well.” He nodded in the direction of several informally dressed men slouching around under the awning. They had been following him with their eyes, and when he glanced back at them, they burst out laughing. The laughter should have warned me. It was a kind of low, know- it-all snicker, but the traffic showed signs of moving again, and I knew that if I sat tight, in two seconds I’d be wishing I’d taken this gift of a chance to see something of New York besides what the people on the magazine had planned out for us so carefully. “How about it, Doreen?” I said. “How about it, Doreen?” the man said, smiling his big smile. To this day I can’t remember what he looked like when he wasn’t smiling. I think he must have been smiling the whole time. It must have been natural for him, smiling like that. “Well, all right,” Doreen said to me. I opened the door, and we stepped out of the cab just as it was edging ahead again and started to walk over to the bar. There was a terrible shriek of brakes followed by a dull thump- thump. “Hey you!” Our cabby was craning out of his window with a furious, purple expression. “Waddaya think you’re doin’?” He had stopped the cab so abruptly that the cab behind bumped Chapter 1 | 15 smack into him, and we could see the four girls inside waving and struggling and scrambling up off the floor. The man laughed and left us on the kerb and went back and handed a bill to the driver in the middle of a great honking and some yelling, and then we saw the girls from the magazine moving off in a row, one cab after another, like a wedding party with nothing but bridesmaids. “Come on, Frankie,” the man said to one of his friends in the group, and a short, scrunty fellow detached himself and came into the bar with us. He was the type of fellow I can’t stand. I’m five feet ten in my stocking feet, and when I am with little men I stoop over a bit and slouch my hips, one up and one down, so I’ll look shorter, and I feel gawky and morbid as somebody in a side-show. For a minute I had a wild hope we might pair off according to size, which would line me up with the man who had spoken to us in the first place, and he cleared a good six feet, but he went ahead with Doreen and didn’t give me a second look. I tried to pretend I didn’t see Frankie dogging along at my elbow and sat close by Doreen at the table. It was so dark in the bar I could hardly make out anything except Doreen. 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. I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before in my life. “Well, what’ll we have?” the man asked with a large smile. “I think I’ll have an Old-Fashioned,” Doreen said to me. Ordering drinks always floored me. I didn’t know whisky from gin and never managed to get anything I really liked the taste of. Buddy Willard and the other college boys I knew were usually too poor to buy hard liquor or they scorned drinking altogether. It’s amazing how many college boys don’t drink or smoke. I seemed to know them all. The farthest Buddy Willard ever went was buying us a bottle of Dubonnet, which he only did because he was trying to prove he could be æsthetic in spite of being a medical student. 16 | The Bell Jar “I’ll have a vodka,” I said. The man looked at me more closely. “With anything?” “Just plain,” I said. “I always have it plain.” I thought I might make a fool of myself by saying I’d have it with ice or soda or gin or anything. I’d seen a vodka ad once, just a glass full of vodka standing in the middle of a snowdrift in a blue light, and the vodka looked clear and pure

The Mask of Elly Higginbottom

The narrator orders a plain vodka, influenced by a minimalist advertisement, hoping the drink will finally provide the wonderful experience she seeks.
To protect her reputation and distance herself from her Boston roots, the narrator adopts the pseudonym Elly Higginbottom from Chicago.
Lenny Shepherd, a self-proclaimed famous disc jockey, ignores his friend Frankie to focus his intense attention on the glamorous and passive Doreen.
The narrator feels a surge of god-like power and physical strength as the tasteless vodka takes effect, viewing the social scene with detached superiority.
The group dynamic becomes increasingly surreal as Lenny acts like a dog to get fruit from Doreen's glass and Frankie desperately begs for money.

ying to prove he could be æsthetic in spite of being a medical student. 16 | The Bell Jar “I’ll have a vodka,” I said. The man looked at me more closely. “With anything?” “Just plain,” I said. “I always have it plain.” I thought I might make a fool of myself by saying I’d have it with ice or soda or gin or anything. I’d seen a vodka ad once, just a glass full of vodka standing in the middle of a snowdrift in a blue light, and the vodka looked clear and pure as water, so I thought having vodka plain must be all right. My dream was some day ordering a drink and finding out it tasted wonderful. The waiter came up then, and the man ordered drinks for the four of us. He looked so at home in that citified bar in his ranch outfit I thought he might well be somebody famous. Doreen wasn’t saying a word, she only toyed with her cork place- mat and eventually lit a cigarette, but the man didn’t seem to mind. He kept staring at her the way people stare at the great white macaw in the zoo, waiting for it to say something human. The drinks arrived, and mine looked clear and pure, just like the vodka ad. “What do you do?” I asked the man, to break the silence shooting up around me on all sides, thick as jungle grass. “I mean what do you do here in New York?” Slowly and with what seemed a great effort, the man dragged his eyes away from Doreen’s shoulder. “I’m a disc jockey,” he said. “You prob’ly must have heard of me. The name’s Lenny Shepherd.” “I know you,” Doreen said suddenly. “I’m glad about that, honey,” the man said, and burst out laughing. “That’ll come in handy. I’m famous as hell.” Then Lenny Shepherd gave Frankie a long look. “Say, where do you come from?” Frankie asked, sitting up with a jerk. “What’s your name?” “This here’s Doreen.” Lenny slid his hand around Doreen’s bare arm and gave her a squeeze. What surprised me was that Doreen didn’t let on she noticed what he was doing. She just sat there, dusky as a bleached blonde negress in her white dress and sipped daintily at her drink. Chapter 1 | 17 “My name’s Elly Higginbottom,” I said. “I come from Chicago.” After that I felt safer. I didn’t want anything I said or did that night to be associated with me and my real name and coming from Boston. “Well, Elly, what do you say we dance some?” The thought of dancing with that little runt in his orange suede elevator shoes and mingy T-shirt and droopy blue sports coat made me laugh. If there’s anything I look down on, it’s a man in a blue outfit. Black or grey, or brown, even. Blue just makes me laugh. “I’m not in the mood,” I said coldly, turning my back on him and hitching my chair over nearer to Doreen and Lenny. Those two looked as if they’d known each other for years by now. Doreen was spooning up the hunks of fruit at the bottom of her glass with a spindly silver spoon, and Lenny was grunting each time she lifted the spoon to her mouth, and snapping and pretending to be a dog or something, and trying to get the fruit off the spoon. Doreen giggled and kept spooning up the fruit. I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword- swallower’s sword and made me feel powerful and god-like. “I better go now,” Frankie said, standing up. I couldn’t see him very clearly, the place was so dim, but for the first time I heard what a high, silly voice he had. Nobody paid him any notice. “Hey, Lenny, you owe me something. Remember, Lenny, you owe me something, don’t you, Lenny?” I thought it odd Frankie should be reminding Lenny he owed him something in front of us, and we being perfect strangers, but Frankie stood there saying the same thing over and over until Lenny dug into

The Ranch in New York

Lenny pays a ten-dollar debt to Frankie before escorting Doreen and the narrator to his apartment.
The narrator reflects on her voyeuristic need to observe people in crucial situations like accidents or street fights.
Lenny's New York residence is a surreal Western-themed ranch replica complete with pine walls and taxidermy.
The host plays back recordings of himself acting as a disc jockey, showcasing his vanity and expensive equipment.
Doreen expresses a sense of unease and asks the narrator to stay close for protection against Lenny's advances.

e said, standing up. I couldn’t see him very clearly, the place was so dim, but for the first time I heard what a high, silly voice he had. Nobody paid him any notice. “Hey, Lenny, you owe me something. Remember, Lenny, you owe me something, don’t you, Lenny?” I thought it odd Frankie should be reminding Lenny he owed him something in front of us, and we being perfect strangers, but Frankie stood there saying the same thing over and over until Lenny dug into his pocket and pulled out a big roll of green bills and peeled one off and handed it to Frankie. I think it was ten dollars. “Shut up and scram.” For a minute I thought Lenny was talking to me as well, but then I heard Doreen say “I won’t come unless Elly comes”. I had to hand it to her the way she picked up my fake name. “Oh, Elly’ll come, won’t you, Elly?” Lenny said, giving me a wink. 18 | The Bell Jar “Sure I’ll come,” I said. Frankie had wilted away into the night, so I thought I’d string along with Doreen. I wanted to see as much as I could. I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I’d stop and look so hard I never forgot it. I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all the time. Chapter 1 | 19 Chapter 2 I wouldn’t have missed Lenny’s place for anything. It was built exactly like the inside of a ranch, only in the middle of a New York apartment house. He’d had a few partitions knocked down to make the place broaden out, he said, and then had them pine-panel the walls and fit up a special pine-panelled bar in the shape of a horseshoe. I think the floor was pine-panelled, too. Great white bearskins lay about underfoot, and the only furniture was a lot of low beds covered with Indian rugs. Instead of pictures hung up on the walls, he had antlers and buffalo horns and a stuffed rabbit head. Lenny jutted a thumb at the meek little grey muzzle and stiff jackrabbit ears. “Ran over that in Las Vegas.” He walked away across the room, his cowboy boots echoing like pistol shots. “Acoustics,” he said, and grew smaller and smaller until he vanished through a door in the distance. All at once music started to come out of the air on every side. Then it stopped, and we heard Lenny’s voice say “This is your twelve o’clock disc jock, Lenny Shepherd, with a round-up of the tops in pops. Number Ten in the wagon train this week is none other than that little yaller-haired gal you been hearin’ so much about lately … the one an’ only Sunflower!” I was born in Kansas, I was bred in Kansas, And when I marry I’ll be wed in Kansas… “What a card!” Doreen said. “Isn’t he a card?” “You bet,” I said. “Listen, Elly, do me a favour.” She seemed to think Elly was who I really was by now. “Sure,” I said. “Stick around, will you? I wouldn’t have a chance if he tried anything funny. Did you see that muscle?” Doreen giggled. Lenny popped out of the back room. “I got twenty grand’s worth 20 | Chapter 2 of recording equipment in there.” He ambled over to the bar and set out three glasses and a silver ice-bucket and a big pitcher and began to mix drinks from several different bottles. …to a true-blue gal who promised she would wait— She’s the sunflower of the Sunflower State. “Terrific, huh?” Lenny came over, balancing three glasses. Big drops stood out on them like sweat, and the ice-cubes jingled as he passed them round. Then the music twanged to a stop, and we heard Lenny’s voice announcing the next number. “Nothing like listening to yourself talk. Say,” Lenny’s eye l

The Shrinking Observer

The narrator experiences a profound sense of isolation while watching the increasingly intimate and erratic behavior of Lenny and Doreen.
A sense of detachment is illustrated through the metaphor of a traveler moving rapidly away from a bright, exciting city.
The social atmosphere turns volatile when a jitterbug dance escalates into a violent and sexually charged physical confrontation.
Overwhelmed by the chaos and her own feelings of insignificance, the narrator flees the apartment into the night air.

and a big pitcher and began to mix drinks from several different bottles. …to a true-blue gal who promised she would wait— She’s the sunflower of the Sunflower State. “Terrific, huh?” Lenny came over, balancing three glasses. Big drops stood out on them like sweat, and the ice-cubes jingled as he passed them round. Then the music twanged to a stop, and we heard Lenny’s voice announcing the next number. “Nothing like listening to yourself talk. Say,” Lenny’s eye lingered on me, “Frankie vamoosed, you ought to have somebody, I’ll call up one of the fellers.” “That’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to do that.” I didn’t want to come straight out and ask for somebody several sizes larger than Frankie. Lenny looked relieved. “Just so’s you don’t mind. I wouldn’t want to do wrong by a friend of Doreen’s.” He gave Doreen a big white smile. “Would I, honeybun?” He held out a hand to Doreen, and without a word they both started to jitterbug, still hanging on to their glasses. I sat cross-legged on one of the beds and tried to look devout and impassive like some businessmen I once saw watching an Algerian belly-dancer, but as soon as I leaned back against the wall under the stuffed rabbit, the bed started to roll out into the room, so I sat down on a bearskin on the floor and leaned back against the bed instead. My drink was wet and depressing. Each time I took another sip it tasted more and more like dead water. Around the middle of the glass there was painted a pink lasso with yellow polka dots. I drank to about an inch below the lasso and waited a bit, and when I went to take another sip, the drink was up to lasso-level again. Out of the air Lenny’s ghost voice boomed, “Wye oh wye did I ever leave Wyoming?” The two of them didn’t even stop jitterbugging during the intervals. I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those Chapter 2 | 21 red and white rugs and that pine-panelling. I felt like a hole in the ground. There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It’s like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction—every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it’s really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour. Every so often Lenny and Doreen would bang into each other and kiss and then swing back to take a long drink and close in on each other again. I thought I might just lie down on the bearskin and go to sleep until Doreen felt ready to go back to the hotel. Then Lenny gave a terrible roar. I sat up. Doreen was hanging on to Lenny’s left earlobe with her teeth. “Leggo, you bitch!” Lenny stooped, and Doreen went flying up on to his shoulder, and her glass sailed out of her hand in a long, wide arc and fetched up against the pine-panelling with a silly tinkle. Lenny was still roaring and whirling round so fast I couldn’t see Doreen’s face. I noticed, in the routine way you notice the colour of somebody’s eyes, that Doreen’s breasts had popped out of her dress and were swinging out slightly like full brown melons as she circled belly- down on Lenny’s shoulder, thrashing her legs in the air and screeching, and then they both started to laugh and slow up, and Lenny was trying to bite Doreen’s hip through her skirt when I let myself out the door before anything more could happen and managed to get downstairs by leaning with both hands on the banister and half sliding the whole way. I didn’t realize Lenny’s place had been air-conditioned until I wavered out on to the pavement. The tropical, stale he

Isolation in the City

Esther flees Lenny’s apartment during a rowdy encounter and chooses to walk over forty blocks back to her hotel in the oppressive heat.
Back at the hotel, she is struck by her own reflection in the elevator mirror, feeling significantly aged and worn down.
She experiences a profound psychological detachment where the bustling city outside her window feels silent, flat, and entirely inaccessible.
The sight of the UN building and the city lights fails to move her, as she feels an internal silence that drowns out the world's noise.
She cynically considers her social obligations, specifically the meddling of Buddy Willard’s mother and the domestic life expected of her.

on Lenny’s shoulder, thrashing her legs in the air and screeching, and then they both started to laugh and slow up, and Lenny was trying to bite Doreen’s hip through her skirt when I let myself out the door before anything more could happen and managed to get downstairs by leaning with both hands on the banister and half sliding the whole way. I didn’t realize Lenny’s place had been air-conditioned until I wavered out on to the pavement. The tropical, stale heat the sidewalks had been sucking up all day hit me in the face like a last insult. I didn’t know where in the world I was. For a minute I entertained the idea of taking a cab to the party 22 | The Bell Jar after all, but decided against it because the dance might be over by now, and I didn’t feel like ending up in an empty barn of a ballroom strewn with confetti and cigarette-butts and crumpled cocktail napkins. I walked carefully to the nearest street corner, brushing the wall of the buildings on my left with the tip of one finger to steady myself. I looked at the street sign. Then I took my New York street map out of my pocket-book. I was exactly forty-three blocks by five blocks away from my hotel. Walking has never fazed me. I just set out in the right direction, counting the blocks under my breath, and when I walked into the lobby of the hotel I was perfectly sober and my feet only slightly swollen, but that was my own fault because I hadn’t bothered to wear any stockings. The lobby was empty except for a night clerk dozing in his lit booth among the key-rings and the silent telephones. I slid into the self-service elevator and pushed the button for my floor. The doors folded shut like a noiseless accordion. Then my ears went funny, and I noticed a big, smudgy-eyed Chinese woman staring idiotically into my face. It was only me, of course. I was appalled to see how wrinkled and used-up I looked. There wasn’t a soul in the hall. I let myself into my room. It was full of smoke. At first I thought the smoke had materialized out of thin air as a sort of judgement, but then I remembered it was Doreen’s smoke and pushed the button that opened the window vent. They had the windows fixed so you couldn’t really open them and lean out, and for some reason this made me furious. By standing at the left side of the window and laying my cheek to the woodwork, I could see downtown to where the UN balanced itself in the dark, like a weird, green, Martian honeycomb. I could see the moving red and white lights along the drive and the lights of the bridges whose names I didn’t know. The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people Chapter 2 | 23 in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn’t hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for all the good it did me. The china-white bedside telephone could have connected me up with things, but there it sat, dumb as a death’s head. I tried to think of people I’d given my phone number to, so I could make a list of all the possible calls I might be about to receive, but all I could think of was that I’d given my phone number to Buddy Willard’s mother so she could give it to a simultaneous interpreter she knew at the UN. I let out a small, dry laugh. I could imagine the sort of simultaneous interpreter Mrs Willard would introduce me to when all the time she wanted me to marry Buddy, who was taking the cure for TB somewhere in upper New York State. Buddy’s mother had even arranged for me to be given

Rituals of Purification

Esther reflects on the stifling expectations of Mrs. Willard, who hoped Esther would work at a TB sanatorium to be near her son Buddy.
Faced with existential dread and social exhaustion, the protagonist turns to a scalding hot bath as her primary method of emotional recovery.
She describes the bath as a secular baptism, imagining that the 'dirt' of her recent social experiences in New York is being washed away.
The process of immersion allows her to feel 'pure' again, mentally dissolving the people and events that have troubled her during her trip.
Her hard-won sense of peace and purity is abruptly interrupted when a drunken Doreen returns to the hotel, knocking and calling out for her.

ight be about to receive, but all I could think of was that I’d given my phone number to Buddy Willard’s mother so she could give it to a simultaneous interpreter she knew at the UN. I let out a small, dry laugh. I could imagine the sort of simultaneous interpreter Mrs Willard would introduce me to when all the time she wanted me to marry Buddy, who was taking the cure for TB somewhere in upper New York State. Buddy’s mother had even arranged for me to be given a job as a waitress at the TB sanatorium that summer so Buddy wouldn’t be lonely. She and Buddy couldn’t understand why I chose to go to New York City instead. The mirror over my bureau seemed slightly warped and much too silver. The face in it looked like the reflection in a ball of dentist’s mercury. I thought of crawling in between the bed-sheets and trying to sleep, but that appealed to me about as much as stuffing a dirty, scrawled-over letter into a fresh, clean envelope. I decided to take a hot bath. There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot bath.” I meditate in the bath. The water needs to be very hot, so hot you can barely stand putting your foot in it. Then you lower yourself, inch by inch, till the water’s up to your neck. I remember the ceilings over every bathtub I’ve stretched out in. I remember the texture of the ceilings and the cracks and the colours 24 | The Bell Jar and the damp spots and the light fixtures. I remember the tubs, too: the antique griffin-legged tubs, and the modern coffin-shaped tubs, and the fancy pink marble tubs overlooking indoor lily ponds, and I remember the shapes and sizes of the water taps and the different sorts of soap-holders. I never feel so much myself as when I’m in a hot bath. I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women- only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near on to an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don’t believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water. I said to myself: “Doreen is dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is dissolving, Frankie is dissolving, New York is dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none of them matter any more. I don’t know them, I have never known them and I am very pure. All that liquor and those sticky kisses I saw and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way back is turning into something pure.” The longer I lay there in the clear hot water the purer I felt, and when I stepped out at last and wrapped myself in one of the big, soft, white, hotel bath-towels I felt pure and sweet as a new baby. I don’t know how long I had been asleep when I heard the knocking. I didn’t pay any attention at first, because the person knocking kept saying “Elly, Elly, Elly, let me in”, and I didn’t know any Elly. Then another kind of knock sounded over the first dull, bumping knock—a sharp tap-tap, and another, much crisper voice said “Miss Greenwood, your friend wants you,” and I knew it was Doreen. I swung to my feet and balanced dizzily for a minute in the middle of the dark room. I felt angry with Doreen for waking me up. All I stood a chance of getting out of that sad night was a good sleep, and she had to wake me up and spoil it. I thought if I pretended to be asleep the knocking might go away and leave me in peace, but I waited, and it didn’t. “Elly, Elly, Elly,” the first voice mumbled, while the other voice Chapter 2 | 25 went on hissing “Miss Greenwood,

A Lurid Third Interval

Esther is awakened in the middle of the night by a drunken Doreen and a stern night maid, leading to a surreal sense of timelessness.
The physical presence of the hardworking night maid makes Esther feel judged, prompting a desire to distance herself from Doreen’s behavior.
After Doreen vomits and passes out on the hallway carpet, Esther chooses to leave her there rather than bring the mess into her own room.
This moment of disgust leads Esther to make a internal decision to abandon her association with Doreen and align herself with the 'innocent' Betsy.
The following morning, the hallway is empty and clean, leaving only a faint stain as evidence of the night's sordid events.

swung to my feet and balanced dizzily for a minute in the middle of the dark room. I felt angry with Doreen for waking me up. All I stood a chance of getting out of that sad night was a good sleep, and she had to wake me up and spoil it. I thought if I pretended to be asleep the knocking might go away and leave me in peace, but I waited, and it didn’t. “Elly, Elly, Elly,” the first voice mumbled, while the other voice Chapter 2 | 25 went on hissing “Miss Greenwood, Miss Greenwood, Miss Greenwood,” as if I had a split personality or something. I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn’t night and it wasn’t day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end. Doreen was slumped against the door-jamb. When I came out, she toppled into my arms. I couldn’t see her face because her head was hanging down on her chest and her stiff blonde hair fell from its dark roots like a hula fringe. I recognized the short, squat, moustached woman in the black uniform as the night maid who ironed day-dresses and party-frocks in a crowded cubicle on our floor. I couldn’t understand how she came to know Doreen or why she should want to help Doreen wake me up instead of leading her quietly back to her own room. Seeing Doreen supported in my arms and silent except for a few wet hiccups, the woman strode away down the hall to her cubicle with its ancient Singer sewing-machine and white ironing-board. I wanted to run after her and tell her I had nothing to do with Doreen, because she looked stern and hard-working and moral as an old-style European immigrant and reminded me of my Austrian grandmother. “Lemme lie down, lemme lie down,” Doreen was muttering. “Lemme lie down, lemme lie down.” I felt if I carried Doreen across the threshold into my room and helped her on to my bed I would never get rid of her again. Her body was warm and soft as a pile of pillows against my arm where she leaned her weight, and her feet, in their high, spiked heels, dragged foolishly. She was much too heavy for me to budge down the long hall. I decided the only thing to do was to dump her on the carpet and shut and lock my door and go back to bed. When Doreen woke up she wouldn’t remember what had happened and would think she must have passed out in front of my door while I slept, and she would get up of her own accord and go sensibly back to her room. 26 | The Bell Jar I started to lower Doreen gently on to the green hall carpet, but she gave a low moan and pitched forward out of my arms. A jet of brown vomit flew from her mouth and spread in a large puddle at my feet. Suddenly Doreen grew even heavier. Her head drooped forward into the puddle, the wisps of her blonde hair dabbling in it like tree roots in a bog, and I realized she was asleep. I drew back. I felt half- asleep myself. I made a decision about Doreen that night. I decided I would watch her and listen to what she said, but deep down I would have nothing at all to do with her. Deep down, I would be loyal to Betsy and her innocent friends. It was Betsy I resembled at heart. Quietly, I stepped back into my room and shut the door. On second thoughts, I didn’t lock it. I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that. When I woke up in the dull, sunless heat the next morning, I dressed and splashed my face with cold water and put on some lipstick and opened the door slowly. I think I still expected to see Doreen’s body lying there in the pool of vomit like an ugly, concrete testimony to my own dirty nature. There was nobody in the hall. The carpet stretched from one end of the hall to the other, clean and eternally verdant except for a faint, irregular dark stain be

The Ladies' Day Banquet

The narrator wakes with a sense of internal shame, expecting to see physical evidence of the previous night's debauchery in the hallway.
A lavish luncheon hosted by Ladies' Day magazine serves as a backdrop for the narrator's revelation about her deep, uninhibited love for rich and expensive food.
The narrator contrasts her current access to high-end dining with her modest background of eating cheeseburgers at Howard Johnson's.
While other women at the magazine diet and order light salads, the narrator indulges in the most expensive dishes available on expense accounts.
The visit to the magazine's test kitchens reveals the artifice of food media, where ice cream is propped up with toothpicks for photography.

to do that. When I woke up in the dull, sunless heat the next morning, I dressed and splashed my face with cold water and put on some lipstick and opened the door slowly. I think I still expected to see Doreen’s body lying there in the pool of vomit like an ugly, concrete testimony to my own dirty nature. There was nobody in the hall. The carpet stretched from one end of the hall to the other, clean and eternally verdant except for a faint, irregular dark stain before my door as if somebody had by accident spilled a glass of water there, but dabbed it dry again. Chapter 2 | 27 Chapter 3 Arrayed on the Ladies’ Day banquet table were yellow-green avocado pear halves stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise, and platters of rare roast beef and cold chicken, and every so often a cut-glass bowl heaped with black caviar. I hadn’t had time to eat any breakfast at the hotel cafeteria that morning, except for a cup of over-stewed coffee so bitter it made my nose curl, and I was starving. Before I came to New York I’d never eaten out in a proper restaurant. I don’t count Howard Johnson’s, where I only had French fries and cheeseburgers and vanilla frappes with people like Buddy Willard. I’m not sure why it is, but I love food more than just about anything else. No matter how much I eat, I never put on weight. With one exception I’ve been the same weight for ten years. My favourite dishes are full of butter and cheese and sour cream. In New York we had so many free luncheons with people on the magazine and various visiting celebrities I developed the habit of running my eye down those huge, handwritten menus, where a tiny side-dish of peas costs fifty or sixty cents, until I’d picked the richest, most expensive dishes and ordered a string of them. We were always taken out on expense accounts, so I never felt guilty. I made a point of eating so fast I never kept the other people waiting who generally ordered only chef’s salad and grapefruit juice because they were trying to reduce. Almost everybody I met in New York was trying to reduce. “I want to welcome the prettiest, smartest bunch of young ladies our staff has yet had the good luck to meet,” the plump, bald master- of-ceremonies wheezed into his lapel microphone. “This banquet is just a small sample of the hospitality our Food Testing Kitchens here on Ladies’ Day would like to offer in appreciation for your visit.” A delicate, ladylike spatter of applause, and we all sat down at the enormous linen-draped table. 28 | Chapter 3 There were eleven of us girls from the magazine, together with most of our supervising editors, and the whole staff of the Ladies’ Day Food Testing Kitchens in hygienic white smocks, neat hair-nets and flawless make-up of a uniform peach-pie colour. There were only eleven of us, because Doreen was missing. They had set her place next to mine for some reason, and the chair stayed empty. I saved her place-card for her—a pocket mirror with “Doreen” painted along the top of it in lacy script and a wreath of frosted daisies around the edge, framing the silver hole where her face would show. Doreen was spending the day with Lenny Shepherd. She spent most of her free time with Lenny Shepherd now. In the hour before our luncheon at Ladies’ Day—the big women’s magazine that features lush double-page spreads of technicolour meals, with a different theme and locale each month—we had been shown around the endless glossy kitchens and seen how difficult it is to photograph apple pie à la mode under bright lights because the ice-cream keeps melting and has to be propped up from behind with toothpicks and changed every time it starts looking too soppy. The sight of all the food stacked in t

The Art of Social Arrogance

The narrator describes the deceptive and artificial methods used to photograph food for Ladies’ Day magazine spreads.
She recalls how her grandmother’s constant reminders of food costs made eating at home feel like a financial burden.
Her grandfather, a head waiter, fostered her expensive tastes by introducing her to delicacies like caviar and vichyssoise.
She discovers that social blunders can be perceived as original or witty if performed with enough confidence and arrogance.

at Ladies’ Day—the big women’s magazine that features lush double-page spreads of technicolour meals, with a different theme and locale each month—we had been shown around the endless glossy kitchens and seen how difficult it is to photograph apple pie à la mode under bright lights because the ice-cream keeps melting and has to be propped up from behind with toothpicks and changed every time it starts looking too soppy. The sight of all the food stacked in those kitchens made me dizzy. It’s not that we hadn’t enough to eat at home, it’s just that my grandmother always cooked economy joints and economy meat- loafs and had the habit of saying, the minute you lifted the first forkful to your mouth, “I hope you enjoy that, it cost forty-one cents a pound,” which always made me feel I was somehow eating pennies instead of Sunday roast. While we were standing up behind our chairs listening to the welcome speech, I had bowed my head and secretly eyed the position of the bowls of caviar. One bowl was set strategically between me and Doreen’s empty chair. I figured the girl across from me couldn’t reach it because of the mountainous centrepiece of marzipan fruit, and Betsy, on my right, would be too nice to ask me to share it with her if I just kept it out of the way at my elbow by my bread-and-butter plate. Besides, Chapter 3 | 29 another bowl of caviar sat a little way to the right of the girl next to Betsy, and she could eat that. My grandfather and I had a standing joke. He was the head waiter at a country club near my home town, and every Sunday my grandmother drove in to bring him home for his Monday off. My brother and I alternated going with her, and my grandfather always served Sunday supper to my grandmother and whichever of us was along as if we were regular club guests. He loved introducing me to special titbits, and by the age of nine I had developed a passionate taste for cold vichyssoise and caviar and anchovy paste. The joke was that at my wedding my grandfather would see I had all the caviar I could eat. It was a joke because I never intended to get married, and even if I did, my grandfather couldn’t have afforded enough caviar unless he robbed the country club kitchen and carried it off in a suitcase. Under cover of the clinking of water goblets and silverware and bone china, I paved my plate with chicken slices. Then I covered the chicken slices with caviar thickly as if I were spreading peanut- butter on a piece of bread. Then I picked up the chicken slices in my fingers one by one, rolled them so the caviar wouldn’t ooze off and ate them. I’d discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty. I learned this trick the day Jay Cee took me to lunch with a famous poet. He wore a horrible, lumpy, speckled brown tweed jacket and grey pants and a red-and-blue checked open-throated jersey in a very formal restaurant full of fountains and chandeliers, where all the other men were dressed in dark suits and immaculate white shirts. This poet ate his salad with his fingers, leaf by leaf, while talking to me about the antithesis of nature and art. I couldn’t take my eyes 30 | The Bell Jar off the pale, stubby white fingers travelling back and forth from the poet’s salad bowl to the poet’s mouth with one dripping lettuce leaf after another. Nobody giggled or whispered rude remarks. The poet made eating salad with your fingers seem to be the only natural

Dropping Out of the Race

The narrator finds herself captivated by a poet who flouts etiquette by eating salad with his fingers, suggesting a preference for natural behavior over rigid artifice.
While indulging in luxury foods, the narrator reflects on her childhood memories of eating avocados with her grandfather, revealing a sense of homesickness and emotional isolation.
The description of Hilda’s homemade mink scarf highlights a divide between the creative, pragmatic world of fashion and the narrator’s own stifled literary ambitions.
After a harsh professional critique, the narrator acknowledges a deep internal crisis, feeling she is finally succumbing to the pressure of years of academic and social competition.

dark suits and immaculate white shirts. This poet ate his salad with his fingers, leaf by leaf, while talking to me about the antithesis of nature and art. I couldn’t take my eyes 30 | The Bell Jar off the pale, stubby white fingers travelling back and forth from the poet’s salad bowl to the poet’s mouth with one dripping lettuce leaf after another. Nobody giggled or whispered rude remarks. The poet made eating salad with your fingers seem to be the only natural and sensible thing to do. None of our magazine editors or the Ladies’ Day staff members sat anywhere near me, and Betsy seemed sweet and friendly, she didn’t even seem to like caviar, so I grew more and more confident. When I finished my first plate of cold chicken and caviar, I laid out another. Then I tackled the avocado and crabmeat salad. Avocados are my favourite fruit. Every Sunday my grandfather used to bring me an avocado pear hidden at the bottom of his briefcase under six soiled shirts and the Sunday comics. He taught me how to eat avocados by melting grape jelly and French dressing together in a saucepan and filling the cup of the pear with the garnet sauce. I felt homesick for that sauce. The crabmeat tasted bland in comparison. “How was the fur show?” I asked Betsy, when I was no longer worried about competition over my caviar. I scraped the last few salty black eggs from the dish with my soup spoon and licked it clean. “It was wonderful,” Betsy smiled. “They showed us how to make an all-purpose neckerchief out of mink tails and a gold chain, the sort of chain you can get an exact copy of at Woolworth’s for a dollar ninety-eight, and Hilda nipped down to the wholesale fur warehouses right afterwards and bought a bunch of mink tails at a big discount and dropped in at Woolworth’s and then stitched the whole thing together coming up on the bus.” I peered over at Hilda, who sat on the other side of Betsy. Sure enough, she was wearing an expensive-looking scarf of furry tails fastened on one side by a dangling gilt chain. I never really understood Hilda. She was six feet tall, with huge, slanted, green eyes and thick red lips and a vacant, Slavic expression. She made hats. She was apprenticed to the Fashion Editor, which set her apart from the more literary ones among us Chapter 3 | 31 like Doreen and Betsy and I myself, who all wrote columns, even if some of them were only about health and beauty. I don’t know if Hilda could read, but she made startling hats. She went to a special school for making hats in New York and every day she wore a new hat to work, constructed by her own hands out of bits of straw or fur or ribbon or veiling in subtle, bizarre shades. “That’s amazing,” I said. “Amazing.” I missed Doreen. She would have murmured some fine, scalding remark about Hilda’s miraculous furpiece to cheer me up. I felt very low. I had been unmasked only that morning by Jay Cee herself, and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true, and I couldn’t hide the truth much longer. After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race. “Why didn’t you come along to the fur show with us?” Betsy asked. I had the impression she was repeating herself, and that she’d asked me the same question a minute ago, only I couldn’t have been listening. “Did you go off with Doreen?” “No,” I said, “I wanted to go to the fur show, but Jay Cee called up and made me come into the office.” That wasn’t quite true about wanting to go to the show, but I tried to convince myself now that it was true, so I could be really wounded about what Jay Cee had done. I tol

Torn Between Two Paths

Esther lies to her friend Betsy, claiming she was forced to work when she actually stayed in bed to avoid both professional and social obligations.
She reflects on her inability to commit to either a conventional, successful life or a rebellious one, leaving her feeling profoundly sad and exhausted.
The absolute silence of her hotel room becomes physically oppressive until it is broken by a sharp, demanding phone call from her boss, JayCee.
JayCee reprimands Esther for her lack of initiative and orders her to the office for a talk regarding her work and future.
The emotional weight of the confrontation and her inner turmoil causes Esther to break down in tears during a later meal with Betsy.

th us?” Betsy asked. I had the impression she was repeating herself, and that she’d asked me the same question a minute ago, only I couldn’t have been listening. “Did you go off with Doreen?” “No,” I said, “I wanted to go to the fur show, but Jay Cee called up and made me come into the office.” That wasn’t quite true about wanting to go to the show, but I tried to convince myself now that it was true, so I could be really wounded about what Jay Cee had done. I told Betsy how I had been lying in bed that morning planning to go to the fur show. What I didn’t tell her was that Doreen had come into my room earlier and said, “What do you want to go to that assy show for, Lenny and I are going to Coney Island, so why don’t you come along? Lenny can get you a nice fellow, the day’s shot to hell anyhow with that luncheon and then the film première in the afternoon, so nobody’ll miss us.” For a minute I was tempted. The show certainly did seem stupid. I have never cared for furs. What I decided to do in the end was to lie in bed as long as I wanted to and then go to Central Park and spend the day lying in the grass, the longest grass I could find in that bald, duck-ponded wilderness. 32 | The Bell Jar I told Doreen I would not go to the show or the luncheon or the film première, but that I would not go to Coney Island either, I would stay in bed. After Doreen left, I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I shouldn’t, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired. I didn’t know what time it was, but I’d heard the girls bustling and calling in the hall and getting ready for the fur show, and then I’d heard the hall go still, and as I lay on my back in bed staring up at the blank, white ceiling the stillness seemed to grow bigger and bigger until I felt my eardrums would burst with it. Then the phone rang. I stared at the phone for a minute. The receiver shook a bit in its bone-coloured cradle, so I could tell it was really ringing. I thought I might have given my phone number to somebody at a dance or a party and then forgotten clean, about it. I lifted the receiver and spoke in a husky, receptive voice. “Hello?” “Jay Cee here,” Jay Cee rapped out with brutal promptitude. “I wondered if you happened to be planning to come into the office today?” I sank down into the sheets. I couldn’t understand why Jay Cee thought I’d be coming into the office. We had these mimeographed schedule cards so we could keep track of all our activities, and we spent a lot of mornings and afternoons away from the office going to affairs in town. Of course, some of the affairs were optional. There was quite a pause. Then I said meekly, “I thought I was going to the fur show.” Of course I hadn’t thought any such thing, but I couldn’t figure out what else to say. “I told her I thought I was going to the fur show,” I said to Betsy. “But she told me to come into the office, she wanted to have a little talk with me, and there was some work to do.” “Oh-oh!” Betsy said sympathetically. She must have seen the tears that plopped down into my dessert dish of meringue and brandy ice-cream, because she pushed over her own untouched dessert Chapter 3 | 33 and I started absently on that when I’d finished my own. I felt a bit awkward about the tears, but they were real enough. Jay Cee had said some terrible things to me. When I made my wan entrance into the office at about ten o’clock, Jay Cee stood up and came round her desk to shut the door, and I sat in the swivel chair in front of my typewriter table facing her, and she sat in the swivel chair behin

The Cracks in Ambition

Esther Greenwood meets with her editor, JayCee, who confronts her about her apparent lack of interest and drive in her internship.
Despite a lifetime of academic excellence and prestige, Esther feels unable to maintain the persona of the high-achieving student she once was.
When asked about her future plans, Esther experiences a moment of profound realization as she admits she no longer knows what she wants.
This admission of uncertainty feels like a shocking, undeniable truth that replaces her previously rehearsed scripts for success.
The conversation moves to Esther's heritage and her father's German roots, highlighting her struggle to connect with his language and legacy.

because she pushed over her own untouched dessert Chapter 3 | 33 and I started absently on that when I’d finished my own. I felt a bit awkward about the tears, but they were real enough. Jay Cee had said some terrible things to me. When I made my wan entrance into the office at about ten o’clock, Jay Cee stood up and came round her desk to shut the door, and I sat in the swivel chair in front of my typewriter table facing her, and she sat in the swivel chair behind her desk facing me, with the window full of potted plants, shelf after shelf of them, springing up at her back like a tropical garden. “Doesn’t your work interest you, Esther?” “Oh, it does, it does,” I said. “It interests me very much.” I felt like yelling the words, as if that might make them more convincing, but I controlled myself. All my life I’d told myself studying and reading and writing and working like mad was what I wanted to do, and it actually seemed to be true, I did everything well enough and got all A’s, and by the time I made it to college nobody could stop me. I was college correspondent for the town Gazette and editor of the literary magazine and secretary of Honour Board, which deals with academic and social offences and punishments—a popular office, and I had a well-known woman poet and professor on the faculty championing me for graduate school at the biggest universities in the east, and promises of full scholarships all the way, and now I was apprenticed to the best editor on any intellectual fashion magazine, and what did I do but balk and balk like a dull cart horse? “I’m very interested in everything.” The words fell with a hollow flatness on to Jay Cee’s desk, like so many wooden nickels. “I’m glad of that,” Jay Cee said a bit waspishly. “You can learn a lot in this month on the magazine, you know, if you just roll up your shirt-cuffs. The girl who was here before you didn’t bother with any of the fashion show stuff. She went straight from this office, on to Time.” “My!” I said, in the same sepulchral tone. “That was quick!” 34 | The Bell Jar “Of course, you have another year at college yet,” Jay Cee went on a little more mildly. “What do you have in mind after you graduate?” What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I’d be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue. “I don’t really know,” I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true. It sounded true, and I recognized it, the way you recognize some nondescript person that’s been hanging around your door for ages and then suddenly comes up and introduces himself as your real father and looks exactly like you, so you know he really is your father, and the person you thought all your life was your father is a sham. “I don’t really know.” “You’ll never get anywhere like that.” Jay Cee paused. “What languages do you have?” “Oh, I can read a bit of French, I guess, and I’ve always wanted to learn German.” I’d been telling people I’d always wanted to learn German for about five years. My mother spoke German during her childhood in America and was stoned for it during the First World War by the children at school. My German-speaking father, dead since I was nine, came from some manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia. My younger brother was at that moment on the Experiment in International Living in Berlin and speaking German like a native. What I didn’t say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the v

Ambition and Intellectual Friction

Esther describes a deep-seated psychological block against learning German, despite her family's heritage and the professional necessity of the language.
Her mentor JayCee warns that a career in publishing requires mastery of several languages to distinguish her from the flood of other applicants.
The protagonist feels trapped by a demanding academic schedule that prioritizes advanced literary themes over the practical skills needed for her career.
While Esther excelled in Botany because of its tangible and visual nature, she experiences a complete mental paralysis in her Physics course.
The contrast between Esther's academic success and her internal sense of failure highlights her growing anxiety about the future and her own capabilities.

ther spoke German during her childhood in America and was stoned for it during the First World War by the children at school. My German-speaking father, dead since I was nine, came from some manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia. My younger brother was at that moment on the Experiment in International Living in Berlin and speaking German like a native. What I didn’t say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam. “I’ve always thought I’d like to go into publishing.” I tried to recover a thread that might lead me back to my old, bright salesmanship. “I guess what I’ll do is apply at some publishing house.” “You ought to read French and German,” Jay Cee said mercilessly, Chapter 3 | 35 “and probably several other languages as well, Spanish and Italian—better still, Russian. Hundreds of girls flood into New York every June thinking they’ll be editors. You need to offer something more than the run-of-the-mill person. You better learn some languages.” I hadn’t the heart to tell Jay Cee there wasn’t one scrap of space on my senior year schedule to learn languages in. I was taking one of those honours programmes that teaches you to think independently, and except for a course in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and a seminar in advanced poetry-composition, I would spend my whole time writing on some obscure theme in the works of James Joyce. I hadn’t picked out my theme yet, because I hadn’t got round to reading Finnegan’s Wake, but my professor was very excited about my thesis and had promised to give me some leads on images about twins. “I’ll see what I can do,” I told Jay Cee. “I probably might just fit in one of those double-barrelled, accelerated courses in elementary German they’ve rigged up.” I thought at the time I might actually do this. I had a way of persuading my Class Dean to let me do irregular things. She regarded me as a sort of interesting experiment. At college I had to take a required course in physics and chemistry. I had already taken a course in botany and done very well. I never answered one test question wrong the whole year, and for a while I toyed with the idea of being a botanist and studying the wild grasses in Africa or the South American rain forests, because you can win big grants to study off-beat things like that in queer areas much more easily than winning grants to study art in Italy or English in England, there’s not so much competition. Botany was fine, because I loved cutting up leaves and putting them under the microscope and drawing diagrams of bread mould and the odd, heart-shaped leaf in the sex cycle of the fern, it seemed so real to me. The day I went into physics class it was death. A short dark man with a high, lisping voice, named Mr Manzi, stood in front of the class in a tight blue suit holding a little wooden 36 | The Bell Jar ball. He put the ball on a steep grooved slide and let it run down to the bottom. Then he started talking about let a equal acceleration and let t equal time and suddenly he was scribbling letters and numbers and equals signs all over the blackboard and my mind went dead. I took the physics book back to my dormitory. It was a huge book on porous mimeographed paper—four hundred pages long with no drawings or photographs, only diagrams and formulas—between brick-red cardboard covers. This book was written by Mr Manzi to explain physics to college girls, and if it worked on us he would try to have it published. Well, I studied those formulas, I went to class and watched balls roll down slides and listened to bells ring and by the end of the semester most of t

The Deception of Success

Despite her hatred for the subject's reduction of nature to abstract formulas, the narrator achieves a straight A in her physics course.
Mr. Manzi, her instructor, uses her success as evidence to silence other students who complain that his course is too difficult.
Driven by a panic-stricken dread of chemistry's ugly abbreviations and decimal numbers, the narrator concocts a plan to avoid taking the course for a grade.
She successfully convinces the faculty that she wishes to audit chemistry for the 'sheer beauty' of the subject while focusing her credits on Shakespeare.
The administration ironically interprets her attempt to escape academic pressure as a sign of profound intellectual maturity.

my dormitory. It was a huge book on porous mimeographed paper—four hundred pages long with no drawings or photographs, only diagrams and formulas—between brick-red cardboard covers. This book was written by Mr Manzi to explain physics to college girls, and if it worked on us he would try to have it published. Well, I studied those formulas, I went to class and watched balls roll down slides and listened to bells ring and by the end of the semester most of the other girls had failed and I had a straight A. I heard Mr Manzi saying to a bunch of the girls who were complaining that the course was too hard, “No, it can’t be too hard, because one girl got a straight A.” “Who is it? Tell us,” they said, but he shook his head and didn’t say anything and gave me a sweet little conspiring smile. That’s what gave me the idea of escaping the next semester of chemistry. I may have made a straight A in physics, but I was panic- struck. Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn’t stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers. Instead of leaf shapes and enlarged diagrams of the holes the leaves breathe through and fascinating words like carotene and xanthophyll on the blackboard, there were these hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas in Mr Manzi’s special red chalk. I knew chemistry would be worse, because I’d seen a big chart of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminium were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them. If I had to strain my brain with any more of that stuff I would go mad. I would fail outright. It was only by a horrible effort of will that I had dragged myself through the first half of the year. Chapter 3 | 37 So I went to my Class Dean with a clever plan. My plan was that I needed the time to take a course in Shakespeare, since I was, after all, an English major. She knew and I knew perfectly well I would get a straight A again in the chemistry course, so what was the point of my taking the exams, why couldn’t I just go to the classes and look on and take it all in and forget about marks or credits? It was a case of honour among honourable people, and the content meant more than the form, and marks were really a bit silly anyway, weren’t they, when you knew you’d always get an A? My plan was strengthened by the fact that the college had just dropped the second year of required science for the classes after me anyway, so my class was the last to suffer under the old ruling. Mr Manzi was in perfect agreement with my plan. I think it flattered him that I enjoyed his classes so much I would take them for no materialistic reason like credit and an A, but for the sheer beauty of chemistry itself. I thought it was quite ingenious of me to suggest sitting in on the chemistry course even after I’d changed over to Shakespeare. It was quite an unnecessary gesture and made it seem I simply couldn’t bear to give chemistry up. Of course, I would never have succeeded with this scheme if I hadn’t made that A in the first place. And if my Class Dean had known how scared and depressed I was, and how I seriously contemplated desperate remedies such as getting a doctor’s certificate that I was unfit to study chemistry, the formulas made me dizzy and so on, I’m sure she wouldn’t have listened to me for a minute, but would have made me take the course regardless. As it happened, the Faculty Board passed my petition, and my Class Dean told me later that several of the professors were touched by it. They took it as a real step in intellectual maturity. I had to laugh when I thought abou

Poetry and Scientific Deception

The narrator recounts her successful petition to bypass chemistry requirements, which her professors ironically lauded as a sign of intellectual maturity.
She attended every lecture only to ignore the science, writing poetry while her professor misinterpreted her focus as fascination with his experiments.
Reflecting on this deception later, she feels a profound sense of guilt and pity for her professor's genuine kindness and passion.
Her editor, JayCee, provides a glimpse into the cutthroat and ego-driven world of professional publishing through her social navigation of famous writers.
Despite her odd appearance, the narrator finds a deep, quiet respect for JayCee’s wisdom and professional mastery.

remedies such as getting a doctor’s certificate that I was unfit to study chemistry, the formulas made me dizzy and so on, I’m sure she wouldn’t have listened to me for a minute, but would have made me take the course regardless. As it happened, the Faculty Board passed my petition, and my Class Dean told me later that several of the professors were touched by it. They took it as a real step in intellectual maturity. I had to laugh when I thought about the rest of that year. I went to the chemistry class five times a week and didn’t miss a single one. Mr Manzi stood at the bottom of the big, rickety old amphitheatre, making blue flames and red flares and clouds of yellow stuff by pouring the contents of one test-tube into another, and I shut his voice out of my ears by pretending it was only a mosquito in the 38 | The Bell Jar distance and sat back enjoying the bright lights and the coloured fires and wrote page after page of villanelles and sonnets. Mr Manzi would glance at me now and then and see me writing, and send up a sweet little appreciative smile. I guess he thought I was writing down all those formulas not for exam time, like the other girls, but because his presentation fascinated me so much I couldn’t help it. Chapter 3 | 39 Chapter 4 I don’t know just why my successful evasion of chemistry should have floated into my mind there in Jay Cee’s office. All the time she talked to me, I saw Mr Manzi standing on thin air in back of Jay Cee’s head, like something conjured up out of a hat, holding his little wooden ball and the test-tube that billowed a great cloud of yellow smoke the day before Easter vacation and smelt of rotten eggs and made all the girls and Mr Manzi laugh. I felt sorry for Mr Manzi. I felt like going down to him on my hands and knees and apologizing for being such an awful liar. Jay Cee handed me a pile of story manuscripts and spoke to me much more kindly. I spent the rest of the morning reading the stories and typing out what I thought of them on the pink Interoffice Memo sheets and sending them into the office of Betsy’s editor to be read by Betsy the next day. Jay Cee interrupted me now and then to tell me something practical or a bit of gossip. Jay Cee was going to lunch that noon with two famous writers, a man and a lady. The man had just sold six short stories to the New Yorker and six to Jay Cee. This surprised me, as I didn’t know magazines bought stories in lots of six, and I was staggered by the thought of the amount of money six stories would probably bring in. Jay Cee said she had to be very careful at this lunch, because the lady writer wrote stories too, but she had never had any in the New Yorker and Jay Cee had only taken one from her in five years. Jay Cee had to flatter the more famous man at the same time as she was careful not to hurt the less famous lady. When the cherubs in Jay Cee’s French wall-clock waved their wings up and down and put their little gilt trumpets to their lips and pinged out twelve notes one after the other, Jay Cee told me I’d done enough work for the day, and to go off to the Ladies’ Day tour and banquet and to the film première, and she would see me bright and early tomorrow. 40 | Chapter 4 Then she slipped a suit jacket over her lilac blouse, pinned a hat of imitation lilacs on the top of her head, powdered her nose briefly and adjusted her thick spectacles. She looked terrible, but very wise. As she left the office, she patted my shoulder with one lilac-gloved hand. “Don’t let the wicked city get you down.” I sat quietly in my swivel chair for a few minutes and thought about Jay Cee. I tried to imagine what it would be like if I were Ee Gee, the famous editor, in an office full of pot

Mothers, Mentors, and Finger-Bowls

The protagonist reflects on her editor, JayCee, wishing for a maternal mentor who could guide her through her burgeoning career.
The narrative reveals the protagonist's strained relationship with her own mother, who prioritizes practical skills like shorthand due to a fear of poverty.
A flashback introduces Philomena Guinea, a wealthy novelist of melodramatic fiction whose scholarship funded the protagonist's education.
The text highlights a significant social gap through an anecdote where the protagonist mistakenly ate the contents of a finger-bowl during a formal lunch.
The protagonist uses the contrast between her humble background and her current surroundings to measure how far she has traveled socially.

lac blouse, pinned a hat of imitation lilacs on the top of her head, powdered her nose briefly and adjusted her thick spectacles. She looked terrible, but very wise. As she left the office, she patted my shoulder with one lilac-gloved hand. “Don’t let the wicked city get you down.” I sat quietly in my swivel chair for a few minutes and thought about Jay Cee. I tried to imagine what it would be like if I were Ee Gee, the famous editor, in an office full of potted rubber plants and African violets my secretary had to water each morning. I wished I had a mother like Jay Cee. Then I’d know what to do. My own mother wasn’t much help. My mother had taught shorthand and typing to support us ever since my father died, and secretly she hated it and hated him for dying and leaving no money because he didn’t trust life insurance salesmen. She was always on to me to learn shorthand after college, so I’d have a practical skill as well as a college degree. “Even the apostles were tent-makers,” she’d say. “They had to live, just the way we do.” I dabbled my fingers in the bowl of warm water a Ladies’ Day waitress set down in place of my two empty ice-cream dishes. Then I wiped each finger carefully with my linen napkin which was still quite clean. Then I folded the linen napkin and laid it between my lips and brought my lips down on it precisely. When I put the napkin back on the table a fuzzy pink lip-shape bloomed right in the middle of it like a tiny heart. I thought what a long way I had come. The first time I saw a finger-bowl was at the home of my benefactress. It was the custom at my college, the little freckled lady in the Scholarships Office told me, to write to the person whose scholarship you had, if they were still alive, and thank them for it. I had the scholarship of Philomena Guinea, a wealthy novelist who went to my college in the early nineteen-hundreds and had her first novel made into a silent film with Bette Davis as well as a radio serial that was still running, and it turned out she was alive and lived in a large mansion not far from my grandfather’s country club. Chapter 4 | 41 So I wrote Philomena Guinea a long letter in coal-black ink on grey paper with the name of the college embossed on it in red. I wrote what the leaves looked like in autumn when I bicycled out into the hills, and how wonderful it was to live on a campus instead of commuting by bus to a city college and having to live at home, and how all knowledge was opening up before me and perhaps one day I would be able to write great books the way she did. I had read one of Mrs Guinea’s books in the town library—the college library didn’t stock them for some reason—and it was crammed from beginning to end with long, suspenseful questions: “Would Evelyn discern that Gladys knew Roger in her past? wondered Hector feverishly” and “How could Donald marry her when he learned of the child Elsie, hidden away with Mrs Rollmop on the secluded country farm? Griselda demanded of her bleak, moonlit pillow.” These books earned Philomena Guinea, who later told me she had been very stupid at college, millions and millions of dollars. Mrs Guinea answered my letter and invited me to lunch at her home. That was where I saw my first finger-bowl. The water had a few cherry blossoms floating in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms. Mrs Guinea never said anything, and it was only much later, when I told a debutante I knew at college about the dinner, that I learned what I had done. When we came out of the sunnily-lit interior of the Ladies’ Day offices, the streets were grey and fuming with rain. It wasn’t t

The Sickness of Artifice

Esther reflects on a past social blunder where she mistakenly ate decorative cherry blossoms from a finger bowl.
A torrential and oppressive rainstorm forces Esther into a crowded taxi, destroying her hopes for a solitary afternoon.
While watching a Technicolor film, Esther feels a deep sense of alienation and disgust toward its artificial characters and predictable plot.
A sudden and violent physical illness overcomes Esther during the movie, which she suspects may be caused by the film's vapidity or tainted caviar.

l. The water had a few cherry blossoms floating in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms. Mrs Guinea never said anything, and it was only much later, when I told a debutante I knew at college about the dinner, that I learned what I had done. When we came out of the sunnily-lit interior of the Ladies’ Day offices, the streets were grey and fuming with rain. It wasn’t the nice kind of rain that rinses you clean, but the sort of rain I imagine they must have in Brazil. It flew straight down from the sky in drops the size of coffee saucers and hit the hot sidewalks with a hiss that sent clouds of stream writhing up from the gleaming, dark concrete. My secret hope of spending the afternoon alone in Central Park died in the glass egg-beater of Ladies’ Day’s revolving doors. I found myself spewed out through the warm rain and into the dim, throbbing cave of a cab, together with Betsy and Hilda and Emily 42 | The Bell Jar Ann Offenbach, a prim little girl with a bun of red hair and a husband and three children in Teaneck, New Jersey. The movie was very poor. It starred a nice blonde girl who looked like June Allyson but was really somebody else, and a sexy black- haired girl who looked like Elizabeth Taylor but was also somebody else, and two big, broad-shouldered boneheads with names like Rick and Gil. It was a football romance and it was in technicolour. I hate technicolour. Everybody in a technicolour movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid new costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clothes-horse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction. Most of the action in this picture took place in the football stands, with the two girls waving and cheering in smart suits with orange chrysanthemums the size of cabbages on their lapels, or in a ballroom, where the girls swooped across the floor with their dates, in dresses like something out of Gone With the Wind, and then sneaked off into the powder-room to say nasty intense things to each other. Finally I could see the nice girl was going to end up with the nice football hero and the sexy girl was going to end up with nobody, because the man named Gil had only wanted a mistress and not a wife all along and was now packing off to Europe on a single ticket. At about this point I began to feel peculiar. I looked round me at all the rows of rapt little heads with the same silver glow on them at the front and the same black shadow on them at the back, and they looked like nothing more or less than a lot of stupid moon-brains. I felt in terrible danger of puking. I didn’t know whether it was the awful movie giving me a stomach-ache or all that caviar I had eaten. “I’m going back to the hotel,” I whispered to Betsy through the half-dark. Betsy was staring at the screen with deadly concentration. “Don’t you feel good?” she whispered, barely moving her lips. “No,” I said. “I feel like hell.” Chapter 4 | 43 “So do I, I’ll come back with you.” We slipped out of our seats and said Excuse me Excuse me Excuse me down the length of our row, while the people grumbled and hissed and shifted their rain boots and umbrellas to let us pass, and I stepped on as many feet as I could because it took my mind off this enormous desire to puke that was ballooning up in front of me so fast I couldn’t see round it. The remains of a tepid rain were still sifting down when we stepped out into the street. Betsy looked a fright. The bloom was gone from her cheeks and her drained face floated in front of me, green and sweating. We fell into one of

Sickness and Shared Misery

Esther and Betsy suffer a violent bout of food poisoning, resulting in a desperate and nauseating journey back to their hotel.
The two women attempt to conceal their vomiting from the taxi driver by pretending to pick items up off the floor while humming.
The narrator reflects that the raw intimacy of shared illness has the power to forge immediate and deep friendships.
Upon reaching the hotel, Esther's condition deteriorates into a chilling physical collapse on the bathroom floor.

and shifted their rain boots and umbrellas to let us pass, and I stepped on as many feet as I could because it took my mind off this enormous desire to puke that was ballooning up in front of me so fast I couldn’t see round it. The remains of a tepid rain were still sifting down when we stepped out into the street. Betsy looked a fright. The bloom was gone from her cheeks and her drained face floated in front of me, green and sweating. We fell into one of those yellow checkered cabs that are always waiting at the kerb when you are trying to decide whether or not you want a taxi, and by the time we reached the hotel I had puked once and Betsy had puked twice. The cab driver took the corners with such momentum that we were thrown together first on one side of the back seat and then on the other. Each time one of us felt sick, she would lean over quietly as if she had dropped something and was picking it up off the floor, and the other one would hum a little and pretend to be looking out the window. The cab driver seemed to know what we were doing, even so. “Hey,” he protested, driving through a light that had just turned red, “you can’t do that in my cab, you better get out and do it in the street.” But we didn’t say anything, and I guess he figured we were almost at the hotel so he didn’t make us get out until we pulled up in front of the main entrance. We didn’t dare wait to add up the fare. We stuffed a pile of silver into the cabby’s hand and dropped a couple of kleenexes to cover the mess on the floor, and ran in through the lobby and on to the empty elevator. Luckily for us, it was a quiet time of day. Betsy was sick again in the elevator and I held her head, and then I was sick and she held mine. Usually after a good puke you feel better right away. We hugged 44 | The Bell Jar each other and then said good-bye and went off to opposite ends of the hall to lie down in our own rooms. There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends. But the minute I’d shut the door behind me and undressed and dragged myself on to the bed, I felt worse than ever. I felt I just had to go to the toilet. I struggled into my white bathrobe with the blue cornflowers on it and staggered down to the bathroom. Betsy was already there. I could hear her groaning behind the door, so I hurried on around the corner to the bathroom in the next wing. I thought I would die, it was so far. I sat on the toilet and leaned my head over the edge of the washbowl and I thought I was losing my guts and my dinner both. The sickness rolled through me in great waves. After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again, and the glittering white torture-chamber tiles under my feet and over my head and on all four sides closed in and squeezed me to pieces. I don’t know how long I kept at it. I let the cold water in the bowl go on running loudly with the stopper out, so anybody who came by would think I was washing my clothes, and then when I felt reasonably safe I stretched out on the floor and lay quite still. It didn’t seem to be summer any more. I could feel the winter shaking my bones and banging my teeth together, and the big white hotel towel I had dragged down with me lay under my head numb as a snowdrift. I thought it very bad manners for anybody to pound on a bathroom door the way some person was pounding. They could just go around the corner and find another bathroom the way I had done and leave me in peace. But the person kept banging and pleading with me to let them in and I thought I dimly recognized the voice. It sounded a bit like Emily Ann Offenbach. “Just a

The Mass Poisoning

The narrator suffers through a violent illness alone in a bathroom before collapsing in the hotel hallway.
From her position on the floor, she experiences a disoriented perspective of the world, focusing on a stranger's cracked leather shoe.
A hotel nurse and a doctor intervene, revealing that nearly a dozen other women in her group have also been poisoned.
The nurse provides a grimly vivid description of the collective sickness, noting the girls are 'sick as dogs and cryin’ for ma.'
After receiving a medical injection, the narrator experiences a sense of relief and drifts into a deep sleep.

er, and the big white hotel towel I had dragged down with me lay under my head numb as a snowdrift. I thought it very bad manners for anybody to pound on a bathroom door the way some person was pounding. They could just go around the corner and find another bathroom the way I had done and leave me in peace. But the person kept banging and pleading with me to let them in and I thought I dimly recognized the voice. It sounded a bit like Emily Ann Offenbach. “Just a minute,” I said then. My words bungled out thick as molasses. I pulled myself together and slowly rose and flushed the toilet for the tenth time and slopped the bowl clean and rolled up the towel Chapter 4 | 45 so the vomit stains didn’t show very clearly and unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall. I knew it would be fatal if I looked at Emily Ann or anybody else so I fixed my eyes glassily on a window that swam at the end of the hall and put one foot in front of the other. The next thing I had a view of was somebody’s shoe. It was a stout shoe of cracked black leather and quite old, with tiny air holes in a scalloped pattern over the toe and a dull polish, and it was pointed at me. It seemed to be placed on a hard green surface that was hurting my right cheekbone. I kept very still, waiting for a clue that would give me some notion of what to do. A little to the left of the shoe I saw a vague heap of blue cornflowers on a white ground and this made me want to cry. It was the sleeve of my own bathrobe I was looking at, and my left hand lay pale as a cod at the end of it. “She’s all right now.” The voice came from a cool, rational region far above my head. For a minute I didn’t think there was anything strange about it, and then I thought it was strange. It was a man’s voice, and no men were allowed to be in our hotel at any time of the night or day. “How many others are there?” the voice went on. I listened with interest. The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther. “Eleven, I think,” a woman’s voice answered. I figured she must belong to the black shoe. “I think there’s eleven more of ‘um, but one’s missin’ so there’s oney ten.” “Well, you get this one to bed and I’ll take care of the rest.” I heard a hollow boomp boomp in my right ear that grew fainter and fainter. Then a door opened in the distance, and there were voices and groans, and the door shut again. Two hands slid under my armpits and the woman’s voice said, “Come, come, lovey, we’ll make it yet,” and I felt myself being half lifted, and slowly the doors began to move by, one by one, until we came to an open door and went in. The sheet on my bed was folded back, and the woman helped me 46 | The Bell Jar lie down and covered me up to the chin and rested for a minute in the bedside armchair, fanning herself with one plump, pink hand. She wore gilt-rimmed spectacles and a white nurse’s cap. “Who are you?” I asked in a faint voice. “I’m the hotel nurse.” “What’s the matter with me?” “Poisoned,” she said briefly. “Poisoned, the whole lot of you. I never seen anythin’ like it. Sick here, sick there, whatever have you young ladies been stuffin’ yourselves with?” “Is everybody else sick too?” I asked with some hope. “The whole of your lot,” she affirmed with relish. “Sick as dogs and cryin’ for ma.” The room hovered around me with great gentleness, as if the chairs and the tables and the walls were withholding their weight out of sympathy for my sudden frailty. “The doctor’s given you an injection,” the nurse said from the doorway. “You’ll sleep now.” And the door took her place like a sheet of blank paper, and then a larger sheet of paper took the place of the door, and I drifted towa

The Purifying Poison

The narrator recovers from a severe bout of food poisoning, feeling a deep physical frailty and a quiet, somnolent connection to her surroundings.
Doreen provides uncharacteristic care and tenderness, bringing chicken broth and staying by the narrator's side throughout the recovery.
The source of the mass illness is identified as ptomaine-laden crabmeat served during a Ladies' Day luncheon.
The magazine quickly sends expensive gifts to the sick girls as a calculated attempt to avoid legal action and potential lawsuits.
Despite the physical agony, the narrator experiences a spiritual epiphany, feeling entirely purged and ready to start a new life.

f your lot,” she affirmed with relish. “Sick as dogs and cryin’ for ma.” The room hovered around me with great gentleness, as if the chairs and the tables and the walls were withholding their weight out of sympathy for my sudden frailty. “The doctor’s given you an injection,” the nurse said from the doorway. “You’ll sleep now.” And the door took her place like a sheet of blank paper, and then a larger sheet of paper took the place of the door, and I drifted toward it and smiled myself to sleep. Somebody was standing by my pillow with a white cup. “Drink this,” they said. I shook my head. The pillow crackled like a wad of straw. “Drink this and you’ll feel better.” A thick white china cup was lowered under my nose. In the wan light that might have been evening and might have been dawn I contemplated the clear amber liquid. Pads of butter floated on the surface and a faint chickeny aroma fumed up to my nostrils. My eyes moved tentatively to the skirt behind the cup. “Betsy,” I said. “Betsy nothing, it’s me.” I raised my eyes then, and saw Doreen’s head silhouetted against the paling window, her blonde hair lit at the tips from behind like a halo of gold. Her face was in shadow, so I couldn’t make out her expression, but I felt a sort of expert tenderness flowing from the Chapter 4 | 47 ends of her fingers. She might have been Betsy or my mother or a fern-scented nurse. I bent my head and took a sip of the broth. I thought my mouth must be made of sand. I took another sip and then another and another until the cup was empty. I felt purged and holy and ready for a new life. Doreen set the cup on the window-sill and lowered herself into the armchair. I noticed that she made no move to take out a cigarette, and as she was a chain-smoker this surprised me. “Well, you almost died,” she said finally. “I guess it was all that caviar.” “Caviar nothing! It was the crabmeat. They did tests on it and it was chock-full of ptomaine.” I had a vision of the celestially white kitchens on Ladies’ Day stretching into infinity. I saw avocado pear after avocado pear being stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise and photographed under brilliant lights. I saw the delicate, pink-mottled claw-meat poking seductively through its blanket of mayonnaise and the bland yellow pear cup with its rim of alligator-green cradling the whole mess. Poison. “Who did tests?” I thought the doctor might have pumped somebody’s stomach and then analyzed what he found in his hotel laboratory. “Those dodos on Ladies’ Day. As soon as you all started keeling over like ninepins somebody called into the office and the office called across to Ladies’ Day and they did tests on everything left over from the big lunch. Ha!” “Ha!” I echoed hollowly. It was good to have Doreen back. “They sent presents,” she added. “They’re in a big carton out in the hall.” “How did they get here so fast?” “Special express delivery, what do you think? They can’t afford to have the lot of you running around saying you got poisoned at Ladies’ Day. You could sue them for every penny they own if you just knew some smart law man.” 48 | The Bell Jar “What are the presents?” I began to feel if it was a good enough present I wouldn’t mind about what happened, because I felt so pure as a result. “Nobody’s opened the box yet, they’re all out flat. I’m supposed to be carting soup into everybody, seeing as I’m the only one on my feet, but I brought you yours first.” “See what the present is,” I begged. Then I remembered and said, “I’ve a present for you as well.” Doreen went out into the hall. I could hear her rustling around for a minute and then the sound of paper tearing. Finally she came back carrying a thick book with a glossy cover

Interesting Names and New Dates

Esther and Doreen recover from their food poisoning, exchanging personal gifts while the rest of the group remains incapacitated.
The girls receive copies of a short story collection from their hosts, which Doreen suggests is intended to keep them busy while sick.
A man named Constantin, an interpreter connected to Mrs. Willard, calls Esther early in the morning to invite her out.
Esther muses on her habit of 'collecting' men with unique names, citing previous acquaintances named Socrates and Attila.
Reflecting on Mrs. Willard's social networking, Esther cynically realizes she is part of a reciprocal hospitality trade.

e as a result. “Nobody’s opened the box yet, they’re all out flat. I’m supposed to be carting soup into everybody, seeing as I’m the only one on my feet, but I brought you yours first.” “See what the present is,” I begged. Then I remembered and said, “I’ve a present for you as well.” Doreen went out into the hall. I could hear her rustling around for a minute and then the sound of paper tearing. Finally she came back carrying a thick book with a glossy cover and people’s names printed all over it. “The Thirty Best Short Stories of the Year.” She dropped the book in my lap. “There’s eleven more of them out there in that box. I suppose they thought it’d give you something to read while you were sick.” She paused. “Where’s mine?” I fished in my pocket-book and handed Doreen the mirror with her name and the daisies on it. Doreen looked at me and I looked at her and we both burst out laughing. “You can have my soup if you want,” she said. “They put twelve soups on the tray by mistake and Lenny and I stuffed down so many hotdogs while we were waiting for the rain to stop I couldn’t eat another mouthful.” “Bring it in,” I said. “I’m starving.” Chapter 4 | 49 Chapter 5 At seven the next morning the telephone rang. Slowly I swam up from the bottom of a black sleep. I already had a telegram from Jay Cee stuck in my mirror, telling me not to bother to come into work but to rest for a day and get completely well, and how sorry she was about the bad crabmeat, so I couldn’t imagine who would be calling. I reached out and hitched the receiver on to my pillow so the mouthpiece rested on my collarbone and the earpiece lay on my shoulder. “Hello?” A man’s voice said, “Is that Miss Esther Greenwood?” I thought I detected a slight foreign accent. “It certainly is,” I said. “This is Constantin Something-or-Other.” I couldn’t make out the last name, but it was full of S’s and K’s. I didn’t know any Constantin, but I hadn’t the heart to say so. Then I remembered Mrs Willard and her simultaneous interpreter. “Of course, of course!” I cried, sitting up and clutching the phone to me with both hands. I’d never have given Mrs Willard credit for introducing me to a man named Constantin. I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a Catholic, which ruined it for both of us. In addition to Socrates I knew a White Russian named Attila at the Boston School of Business Administration. Gradually I realized that Constantin was trying to arrange a meeting for us later in the day. “Would you like to see the UN this afternoon?” “I can already see the UN,” I told him, with a little hysterical giggle. 50 | Chapter 5 He seemed nonplussed. “I can see it from my window.” I thought perhaps my English was a touch too fast for him. There was a silence. Then he said, “Maybe you would like a bite to eat afterwards.” I detected the vocabulary of Mrs Willard and my heart sank. Mrs Willard always invited you for a bite to eat. I remembered that this man had been a guest at Mrs Willard’s house when he first came to America—Mrs Willard had one of these arrangements where you open your house to foreigners and then when you go abroad they open their houses to you. I now saw quite clearly that Mrs Willard had simply traded her open house in Russia for my bite to eat in New York. “Yes, I would like a bite to eat,” I said stiffly. “What time will you come?” “I’ll call for you in my car about two. It’s the Amazon, isn’t it?” “Yes.” “Ah, I know where that is.” For a moment I thought his tone was laden with special meaning, and then I figured that probably some of

Hypocrisy and Hotel Etiquette

Esther reluctantly agrees to a date with a UN interpreter, immediately imagining his flaws and her own future disdain for him.
She reflects on her hidden resentment toward Buddy Willard, whom she once idolized but now views as a hypocrite.
Because Buddy is ill with tuberculosis, Esther feels burdened by the social obligation to humor him until he recovers.
Her confusion over the etiquette of tipping hotel staff highlights her general sense of alienation and social incompetence in New York.
Esther’s internal monologue reveals a deep-seated cynicism regarding romantic relationships and the transactional nature of social interactions.

and then when you go abroad they open their houses to you. I now saw quite clearly that Mrs Willard had simply traded her open house in Russia for my bite to eat in New York. “Yes, I would like a bite to eat,” I said stiffly. “What time will you come?” “I’ll call for you in my car about two. It’s the Amazon, isn’t it?” “Yes.” “Ah, I know where that is.” For a moment I thought his tone was laden with special meaning, and then I figured that probably some of the girls at the Amazon were secretaries at the UN and maybe he had taken one of them out at one time. I let him hang up first, and then I hung up and lay back in the pillows, feeling grim. There I went again, building up a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few prosy nothings. A duty tour of the UN and a post-UN sandwich! I tried to jack up my morale. Probably Mrs Willard’s simultaneous interpreter would be short and ugly and I would come to look down on him in the end the way I looked down on Buddy Willard. This thought gave me a certain satisfaction. Because I did look down on Buddy Willard, and although everybody still thought I would marry him when he came out of the TB place, I knew I would never marry him if he were the last man on earth. Buddy Willard was a hypocrite. Chapter 5 | 51 Of course, I didn’t know he was a hypocrite at first. I thought he was the most wonderful boy I’d ever seen. I’d adored him from a distance for five years before he even looked at me, and then there was a beautiful time when I still adored him and he started looking at me, and then just as he was looking at me more and more I discovered quite by accident what an awful hypocrite he was, and now he wanted me to marry him and I hated his guts. The worst part of it was I couldn’t come straight out and tell him what I thought of him, because he caught TB before I could do that, and now I had to humour him along till he got well again and could take the unvarnished truth. I decided not to go down to the cafeteria for breakfast. It would only mean getting dressed, and what was the point of getting dressed if you were staying in bed for the morning? I could have called down and asked for a breakfast tray in my room, I guess, but then I would have to tip the person who brought it up and I never knew how much to tip. I’d had some very unsettling experiences trying to tip people in New York. When I first arrived at the Amazon a dwarfish, bald man in a bellhop’s uniform carried my suitcase up in the elevator and unlocked my room for me. Of course I rushed immediately to the window and looked out to see what the view was. After a while I was aware of this bellhop turning on the hot and cold taps in my washbowl and saying “This is the hot and this is the cold” and switching on the radio and telling me the names of all the New York stations and I began to get uneasy, so I kept my back to him and said firmly, “Thank you for bringing up my suitcase.” “Thank you thank you thank you. Ha!” he said in a very nasty insinuating tone, and before I could wheel round to see what had come over him he was gone, shutting the door behind him with a rude slam. Later, when I told Doreen about his curious behaviour, she said, “You ninny, he wanted his tip.” I asked how much I should have given and she said a quarter at least and thirty-five cents if the suitcase was too heavy. Now I could 52 | The Bell Jar have carried that suitcase to my room perfectly well by myself, only the bellhop seemed so eager to do it that I let him. I thought that sort of service came along with what you paid for your hotel room. I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily

Social Missteps and Fig Tree Fables

Esther reflects on her inability to navigate New York's tipping culture, which makes her feel nervous and socially inept.
A traumatic encounter with an angry taxi driver highlights her vulnerability and lack of street smarts in the city.
While recovering, Esther reads a story about a Jewish man and a nun whose relationship at a fig tree is ruined by outside observers.
She identifies with the story's tragic shift, comparing it to her own disillusionment with Buddy Willard after witnessing a medical procedure together.

d, “You ninny, he wanted his tip.” I asked how much I should have given and she said a quarter at least and thirty-five cents if the suitcase was too heavy. Now I could 52 | The Bell Jar have carried that suitcase to my room perfectly well by myself, only the bellhop seemed so eager to do it that I let him. I thought that sort of service came along with what you paid for your hotel room. I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous. Doreen said ten per cent was what you should tip a person, but I somehow never had the right change and I’d have felt awfully silly giving somebody half a dollar and saying, “Fifteen cents of this is a tip for you, please give me thirty-five cents back.” The first time I took a taxi in New York I tipped the driver ten cents. The fare was a dollar, so I thought ten cents was exactly right and gave the driver my dime with a little flourish and a smile. But he only held it in the palm of his hand and stared and stared at it, and when I stepped out of the cab, hoping I had not handed him a Canadian dime by mistake, he started yelling, “Lady I gotta live like you and everybody else,” in a loud voice which scared me so much I broke into a run. Luckily he was stopped at a traffic light or I think he would have driven along beside me yelling in that embarrassing way. When I asked Doreen about this she said the tipping percentage might well have risen from ten to fifteen per cent since she was last in New York. Either that, or that particular cab-driver was an out and out louse. I reached for the book the people from Ladies’ Day had sent. When I opened it a card fell out. The front of the card showed a poodle in a flowered bedjacket sitting in a poodle basket with a sad face, and the inside of the card showed the poodle lying down in the basket with a little smile, sound asleep under an embroidered sampler that said, “You’ll get well best with lots and lots of rest”. At the bottom of the card somebody had written, “Get well quick! from all of your good friends at Ladies’ Day” in lavender ink. I flipped through one story after another until finally I came to a story about a fig-tree. This fig-tree grew on a green lawn between the house of a Jewish man and a convent, and the Jewish man and a beautiful dark nun Chapter 5 | 53 kept meeting at the tree to pick the ripe figs, until one day they saw an egg hatching in a bird’s nest on a branch of the tree, and as they watched the little bird peck its way out of the egg, they touched the backs of their hands together, and then the nun didn’t come out to pick figs with the Jewish man any more but a mean-faced Catholic kitchen-maid came to pick them instead and counted up the figs the man picked after they were both through to be sure he hadn’t picked any more than she had, and the man was furious. I thought it was a lovely story, especially the part about the fig- tree in winter under the snow and then the fig-tree in spring with all the green fruit. I felt sorry when I came to the last page. I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig- tree. It seemed to me Buddy Willard and I were like that Jewish man and that nun, although of course we weren’t Jewish or Catholic but Unitarian. We had met together under our own imaginary fig-tree, and what we had seen wasn’t a bird coming out of an egg but a baby coming out of a woman, and then something awful happened and we went our separate ways. As I lay there in my white hotel bed feeling lonely and weak, I thought of Buddy Willard lying even lonelier and weaker than I was up in that san

Dust and Poetry

Esther reflects on her loneliness in a New York hotel while Buddy Willard suffers from tuberculosis in an Adirondack sanatorium.
She recalls a past conversation where Buddy dismissively defined a poem as nothing more than a piece of dust.
Esther develops imaginary retorts to Buddy's scientific arrogance, arguing that humans and the cadavers he dissects are just as much dust as poetry is.
She explores the power dynamic in their relationship, noting how she struggled to maintain her own perspective against his 'scientific' proofs.
The narrative shifts back to the origins of their courtship, sparked by Buddy's unexpected visit and invitation to the Yale Junior Prom.

d I were like that Jewish man and that nun, although of course we weren’t Jewish or Catholic but Unitarian. We had met together under our own imaginary fig-tree, and what we had seen wasn’t a bird coming out of an egg but a baby coming out of a woman, and then something awful happened and we went our separate ways. As I lay there in my white hotel bed feeling lonely and weak, I thought of Buddy Willard lying even lonelier and weaker than I was up in that sanatorium in the Adirondacks, and I felt like a heel of the worst sort. In his letters Buddy kept telling me how he was reading poems by a poet who was also a doctor and how he’d found out about some famous dead Russian short story writer who had been a doctor too, so maybe doctors and writers could get along fine after all. Now this was a very different tune from what Buddy Willard had been singing all the two years we were getting to know each other. I remember the day he smiled at me and said, “Do you know what a poem is, Esther?” “No, what?” I said. “A piece of dust.” And he looked so proud of having thought of this 54 | The Bell Jar that I just stared at his blond hair and his blue eyes and his white teeth—he had very long, strong white teeth—and said “I guess so.” It was only in the middle of New York a whole year later that I finally thought of an answer to that remark. I spent a lot of time having imaginary conversations with Buddy Willard. He was a couple of years older than I was and very scientific, so he could always prove things. When I was with him I had to work to keep my head above water. These conversations I had in my mind usually repeated the beginnings of conversations I’d really had with Buddy, only they finished with me answering him back quite sharply, instead of just sitting around and saying “I guess so”. Now, lying on my back in bed, I imagined Buddy saying, “Do you know what a poem is, Esther?” “No, what?” I would say. “A piece of dust.” Then just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, “So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you’re curing. They’re dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.” And of course Buddy wouldn’t have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn’t see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn’t sleep. My trouble was I took everything Buddy Willard told me as the honest-to-God truth. I remember the first night he kissed me. It was after the Yale Junior Prom. It was strange, the way Buddy had invited me to that Prom. He popped into my house out of the blue one Christmas vacation, wearing a thick white turtleneck sweater and looking so handsome I could hardly stop staring and said, “I might drop over to see you at college some day, all right?” I was flabbergasted. I only saw Buddy at church on Sundays when we were both home from college, and then at a distance, and I Chapter 5 | 55 couldn’t figure what had put it into his head to run over and see me—he had run the two miles between our houses for cross- country practice, he said. Of course, our mothers were good friends. They had gone to school together and then both married their professors and settled down in the same town, but Buddy was always off on a scholarship at prep school in the fall or earning money by fighting blister rust in Montana in the summer, so our mothers being old school chums really didn’t matter a bit. After this sudden visit I didn’t hear a word from Buddy until one fine Saturday morning in early March

Buddy’s Unexpected Visit

While studying for a history exam, Esther is surprised by an unannounced visit from her family friend Buddy Willard.
Esther reflects on her dismal dating life, noting that she often ends up with unattractive matches set up by college seniors.
The excitement of Buddy's visit is undercut when he reveals he is actually in town for a formal dance with another girl, Joan Gilling.
Esther describes Joan as a physically imposing and overly successful peer whose presence makes her feel deeply insecure.
Overwhelmed by envy regarding Buddy’s social life at Yale, Esther resolves to lower her expectations of him.

practice, he said. Of course, our mothers were good friends. They had gone to school together and then both married their professors and settled down in the same town, but Buddy was always off on a scholarship at prep school in the fall or earning money by fighting blister rust in Montana in the summer, so our mothers being old school chums really didn’t matter a bit. After this sudden visit I didn’t hear a word from Buddy until one fine Saturday morning in early March. I was up in my room at college, studying about Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless for my history exam on the crusades the coming Monday when the hall phone rang. Usually people are supposed to take turns answering the hall phone, but as I was the only freshman on a floor with all seniors they made me answer it most of the time. I waited a minute to see if anybody would beat me to it. Then I figured everybody was probably out playing squash or away on week-ends, so I answered it myself. “Is that you, Esther?” the girl on watch downstairs said, and when I said “Yes,” she said, “There’s a man to see you.” I was surprised to hear this, because of all the blind dates I’d had that year not one called me up again for a second date. I just didn’t have any luck. I hated coming downstairs sweaty-handed and curious every Saturday night and having some senior introduce me to her aunt’s best friend’s son and finding some pale, mushroomy fellow with protruding ears or buck teeth or a bad leg. I didn’t think I deserved it. After all, I wasn’t crippled in any way, I just studied too hard, I didn’t know when to stop. Well, I combed my hair and put on some more lipstick and took my history book—so I could say I was on my way to the library if it turned out to be somebody awful—and went down, and there was Buddy Willard leaning against the mail table in a khaki zipper jacket and blue dungarees and frayed grey sneakers and grinning up at me. “I just came over to say hello,” he said. 56 | The Bell Jar I thought it odd he should come all the way up from Yale even hitch-hiking, as he did, to save money, just to say hello. “Hello,” I said. “Let’s go out and sit on the porch.” I wanted to go out on the porch because the girl on watch was a nosey senior and eyeing me curiously. She obviously thought Buddy had made a big mistake. We sat side by side in two wicker rocking-chairs. The sunlight was clean and windless and almost hot. “I can’t stay more than a few minutes,” Buddy said. “Oh, come on, stay for lunch,” I said. “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m up here for the Sophomore Prom with Joan.” I felt like a prize idiot. “How is Joan?” I asked coldly. Joan Gilling came from our home town and went to our church and was a year ahead of me at college. She was a big wheel—president of her class and a physics major and the college hockey champion. She always made me feel squirmy with her starey pebble-coloured eyes and her gleaming tombstone teeth and her breathy voice. She was big as a horse, too. I began to think Buddy had pretty poor taste. “Oh Joan,” he said. “She asked me up to this dance two months ahead of time and her mother asked my mother if I would take her, so what could I do?” “Well, why did you say you’d take her if you didn’t want to?” I asked meanly. “Oh, I like Joan. She never cares whether you spend any money on her or not and she enjoys doing things out-of-doors. The last time she came down to Yale for house week-end we went on a bicycle trip to East Rock and she’s the only girl I haven’t had to push up hills. Joan’s all right.” I went cold with envy. I had never been to Yale, and Yale was the place all the seniors in my house liked to go best on week- ends. I decided to expect nothing from Buddy Willard. If you e

The Yale Junior Prom

Buddy praises a girl named Joan for her low-maintenance nature, sparking deep envy in Esther regarding Joan's experiences at Yale.
Buddy delivers a formal invitation to the Yale Junior Prom, an event that instantly elevates Esther's social status at her college.
The prestige of the invitation causes the seniors in Esther's house to treat her with newfound respect and spontaneous kindness.
The actual weekend at Yale fails to meet Esther's romantic expectations, leaving her feeling hollow and physically uncomfortable.
The night ends with a dry, uninspiring kiss behind a chemistry lab that Buddy describes as 'terrific' despite Esther's indifference.

e Joan. She never cares whether you spend any money on her or not and she enjoys doing things out-of-doors. The last time she came down to Yale for house week-end we went on a bicycle trip to East Rock and she’s the only girl I haven’t had to push up hills. Joan’s all right.” I went cold with envy. I had never been to Yale, and Yale was the place all the seniors in my house liked to go best on week- ends. I decided to expect nothing from Buddy Willard. If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed. Chapter 5 | 57 “You better go and find Joan then,” I said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I’ve a date coming any minute and he won’t like seeing me sitting around with you.” “A date?” Buddy looked surprised. “Who is it?” “It’s two,” I said, “Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless.” Buddy didn’t say anything, so I said, “Those are their nicknames.” Then I added, “They’re from Dartmouth.” I guess Buddy never read much history, because his mouth stiffened. He swung up from the wicker rocking-chair and gave it a sharp little unnecessary push. Then he dropped a pale blue envelope with a Yale crest into my lap. “Here’s a letter I meant to leave for you if you weren’t in. There’s a question in it you can answer by mail. I don’t feel like asking you about it right now.” After Buddy had gone I opened the letter. It was a letter inviting me to the Yale Junior Prom. I was so surprised I let out a couple of yips and ran into the house shouting, “I’m going I’m going I’m going.” After the bright white sun on the porch it looked pitch-dark in there, and I couldn’t make out a thing. I found myself hugging the senior on watch. When she heard I was going to the Yale Junior Prom she treated me with amazement and respect. Oddly enough, things changed in the house after that. The seniors on my floor started speaking to me and every now and then one of them would answer the phone quite spontaneously and nobody made any more nasty loud remarks outside my door about people wasting their golden college days with their noses stuck in a book. Well all during the Junior Prom Buddy treated me like a friend or a cousin. We danced about a mile apart the whole time, until during “Auld Lang Syne” he suddenly rested his chin on the top of my head as if he were very tired. Then in the cold, black, three o’clock wind we walked very slowly the five miles back to the house where I was sleeping in the living-room on a couch that was too short because 58 | The Bell Jar it only cost fifty cents a night instead of two dollars like most of the other places with proper beds. I felt dull and flat and full of shattered visions. I had imagined Buddy would fall in love with me that week-end and that I wouldn’t have to worry about what I was doing on any more Saturday nights the rest of the year. Just as we approached the house where I was staying Buddy said, “Let’s go up to the chemistry lab.” I was aghast. “The chemistry lab?” “Yes.” Buddy reached for my hand. “There’s a beautiful view up there behind the chemistry lab.” And sure enough, there was a sort of hilly place behind the chemistry lab from which you could see the lights of a couple of the houses in New Haven. I stood pretending to admire them while Buddy got a good footing on the rough soil. While he kissed me I kept my eyes open and tried to memorize the spacing of the house lights so I would never forget them. Finally Buddy stepped back. “Wow!” he said. “Wow what?” I said, surprised. It had been a dry, uninspiring little kiss, and I remember thinking it was too bad both our mouths were so chapped from walking five miles in that cold wind. “Wow, it makes me feel terrific to kiss you.” I modestly didn’t say anything. “I g

Medical Realities and Romantic Illusions

Esther reflects on her uninspiring romantic interactions with Buddy Willard, which contrast sharply with his self-assured perception of their relationship.
Upon visiting Buddy at medical school, Esther is confronted with the stark and grotesque realities of death through the dissection of cadavers.
The couple views a series of preserved fetuses in bottles, an experience that Esther navigates with a self-conscious sense of pride in her own composure.
The clinical environment is further emphasized by a lecture on fatal diseases and the preparation to witness a live birth, stripping away the romantic mystery of life.

od footing on the rough soil. While he kissed me I kept my eyes open and tried to memorize the spacing of the house lights so I would never forget them. Finally Buddy stepped back. “Wow!” he said. “Wow what?” I said, surprised. It had been a dry, uninspiring little kiss, and I remember thinking it was too bad both our mouths were so chapped from walking five miles in that cold wind. “Wow, it makes me feel terrific to kiss you.” I modestly didn’t say anything. “I guess you go out with a lot of boys,” Buddy said then. “Well, I guess I do.” I thought I must have gone out with a different boy for every week in the year. “Well, I have to study a lot.” “So do I,” I put in hastily. “I have to keep my scholarship after all.” “Still, I think I could manage to see you every third week-end.” “That’s nice.” I was almost fainting and dying to get back to college and tell everybody. Buddy kissed me again in front of the house steps, and the next fall, when his scholarship to Medical School came through, I went Chapter 5 | 59 there to see him instead of to Yale and it was there I found out how he had fooled me all those years and what a hypocrite he was. I found out on the day we saw the baby born. 60 | The Bell Jar Chapter 6 I had kept begging Buddy to show me some really interesting hospital sights, so one Friday I cut all my classes and came down for a long week-end and he gave me the works. I started out by dressing in a white coat and sitting on a tall stool in a room with four cadavers, while Buddy and his friends cut them up. These cadavers were so unhuman-looking they didn’t bother me a bit. They had stiff, leathery, purple-black skin and they smelt like old pickle jars. After that, Buddy took me out into a hall where they had some big glass bottles full of babies that had died before they were born. The baby in the first bottle had a large white head bent over a tiny curled-up body the size of a frog. The baby in the next bottle was bigger and the baby next to that one was bigger still and the baby in the last bottle was the size of a normal baby and he seemed to be looking at me and smiling a little piggy smile. I was quite proud of the calm way I stared at all these gruesome things. The only time I jumped was when I leaned my elbow on Buddy’s cadaver’s stomach to watch him dissect a lung. After a minute or two I felt this burning sensation in my elbow and it occurred to me the cadaver might just be half alive since it was still warm, so I leapt off my stool with a small exclamation. Then Buddy explained the burning was only from the pickling fluid, and I sat back in my old position. In the hour before lunch Buddy took me to a lecture on sickle cell anaemia and some other depressing diseases, where they wheeled sick people out on to the platform and asked them questions and then wheeled them off and showed coloured slides. One slide I remember showed a beautiful laughing girl with a black mole on her cheek. “Twenty days after that mole appeared the girl was dead,” the doctor said, and everybody went very quiet for a Chapter 6 | 61 minute and then the bell rang, so I never really found out what the mole was or why the girl died. In the afternoon we went to see a baby born. First we found a linen closet in the hospital corridor where Buddy took out a white mask for me to wear and some gauze. A tall fat medical student, big as Sidney Greenstreet, lounged nearby, watching Buddy wind the gauze round and round my head until my hair was completely covered and only my eyes peered out over the white mask. The medical student gave an unpleasant little snicker. “At least your mother loves you,” he said. I was so busy thinking how very fat he was and how unfortunate it must b

Childbirth and Clinical Detachment

Esther observes a childbirth under the guidance of Buddy, feeling alienated by the clinical environment and the judgmental attitudes of medical students.
The medical setting is described as dehumanizing, with delivery equipment appearing more like instruments of torture than tools for healing.
A medical student suggests that the reality of birth should be hidden from women to prevent them from rejecting motherhood entirely.
Esther critiques the use of drugs that erase a mother's memory of pain, viewing it as a systemic deception that forces women into repetitive cycles of labor.
The physical process of delivery is depicted with a focus on the grotesque, emphasizing the woman’s loss of identity and humanity during the procedure.

hospital corridor where Buddy took out a white mask for me to wear and some gauze. A tall fat medical student, big as Sidney Greenstreet, lounged nearby, watching Buddy wind the gauze round and round my head until my hair was completely covered and only my eyes peered out over the white mask. The medical student gave an unpleasant little snicker. “At least your mother loves you,” he said. I was so busy thinking how very fat he was and how unfortunate it must be for a man and especially a young man to be fat, because what woman could stand leaning over that big stomach to kiss him, that I didn’t immediately realize what this student had said to me was an insult. By the time I figured he must consider himself quite a fine fellow and had thought up a cutting remark about how only a mother loves a fat man, he was gone. Buddy was examining a queer wooden plaque on the wall with a row of holes in it, starting from a hole about the size of a silver dollar and ending with one the size of a dinner-plate. “Fine, fine,” he said to me. “There’s somebody about to have a baby this minute.” At the door of the delivery room stood a thin, stoop-shouldered medical student Buddy knew. “Hello, Will,” Buddy said. “Who’s on the job?” “I am,” Will said gloomily, and I noticed little drops of sweat beading his high pale forehead. “I am, and it’s my first.” Buddy told me Will was a third-year man and had to deliver eight babies before he could graduate. Then we noticed a bustle at the far end of the hall and some men in lime-green coats and skull-caps and a few nurses came moving towards us in a ragged procession wheeling a trolley with a big white lump on it. “You oughtn’t to see this,” Will muttered in my ear. “You’ll never 62 | The Bell Jar want to have a baby if you do. They oughtn’t to let women watch. It’ll be the end of the human race.” Buddy and I laughed, and then Buddy shook Will’s hand and we all went into the room. I was so struck by the sight of the table where they were lifting the woman I didn’t say a word. It looked like some awful torture table, with these metal stirrups sticking up in mid-air at one end and all sorts of instruments and wires and tubes I couldn’t make out properly at the other. Buddy and I stood together by the window, a few feet away from the woman, where we had a perfect view. The woman’s stomach stuck up so high I couldn’t see her face or the upper part of her body at all. She seemed to have nothing but an enormous spider-fat stomach and two little ugly spindly legs propped in the high stirrups, and all the time the baby was being born she never stopped making this unhuman whooing noise. Later Buddy told me the woman was on a drug that would make her forget she’d had any pain and that when she swore and groaned she really didn’t know what she was doing because she was in a kind of twilight sleep. I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn’t groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again. The head doctor, who was supervising Will, kept saying to the woman, “Push down, Mrs Tomolillo, push down, that’s a good girl, push down,” and finally through the split, shaven place between her legs, lurid with disinfectant, I saw a dark fuzzy thing appear. “The baby’s head,” Buddy whispered under cover of the woman’s groans. But the baby’s head stuck for some reason, and the doctor told Will he’d have to mak

The Delivery and the Room

Esther witnesses a visceral and graphic childbirth, observing the clinical detachment of the medical staff as they manage the mother's labor.
The reality of the delivery, involving an episiotomy and a sedated mother, shatters Esther's romanticized vision of a radiant and conscious birth experience.
In a social performance for Buddy, Esther claims the experience was 'wonderful' while privately questioning the ethics of erasing a mother's memory of the event.
Buddy treats poetry as a curriculum to be mastered rather than an art to be felt, highlighting the intellectual divide between his clinical worldview and Esther's literary one.
The encounter shifts from the intellectual to the physical when Buddy abruptly asks Esther if she has ever seen a man in an intimate or anatomical context.

n was waiting to open up and shut her in again. The head doctor, who was supervising Will, kept saying to the woman, “Push down, Mrs Tomolillo, push down, that’s a good girl, push down,” and finally through the split, shaven place between her legs, lurid with disinfectant, I saw a dark fuzzy thing appear. “The baby’s head,” Buddy whispered under cover of the woman’s groans. But the baby’s head stuck for some reason, and the doctor told Will he’d have to make a cut. I heard the scissors close on the Chapter 6 | 63 woman’s skin like cloth and the blood began to run down—a fierce, bright red. Then all at once the baby seemed to pop out into Will’s hands, the colour of a blue plum and floured with white stuff and streaked with blood, and Will kept saying, “I’m going to drop it, I’m going to drop it, I’m going to drop it,” in a terrified voice. “No, you’re not,” the doctor said, and took the baby out of Will’s hands and started massaging it, and the blue colour went away and the baby started to cry in a lorn, croaky voice and I could see it was a boy. The first thing that baby did was pee in the doctor’s face. I told Buddy later I didn’t see how that was possible, but he said it was quite possible, though unusual, to see something like that happen. As soon as the baby was born the people in the room divided up into two groups, the nurses tying a metal dog-tag on the baby’s wrist and swabbing its eyes with cotton on the end of a stick and wrapping it up and putting it in a canvas-sided cot, while the doctor and Will started sewing up the woman’s cut with a needle and a long thread. I think somebody said, “It’s a boy, Mrs Tomolillo,” but the woman didn’t answer or raise her head. “Well, how was it?” Buddy asked with a satisfied expression as we walked across the green quadrangle to his room. “Wonderful,” I said. “I could see something like that every day.” I didn’t feel up to asking him if there were any other ways to have babies. For some reason the most important thing to me was actually seeing the baby come out of you yourself and making sure it was yours. I thought if you had to have all that pain anyway you might just as well stay awake. I had always imagined myself hitching up on to my elbows on the delivery table after it was all over—dead white, of course, with no make-up and from the awful ordeal, but smiling and radiant, with my hair down to my waist, and reaching out for my first little squirmy child and saying its name, whatever it was. “Why was it all covered with flour?” I asked then, to keep the 64 | The Bell Jar conversation going, and Buddy told me about the waxy stuff that guarded the baby’s skin. When we were back in Buddy’s room, which reminded me of nothing so much as a monk’s cell, with its bare walls and bare bed and bare floor and the desk loaded with Gray’s Anatomy and other thick gruesome books, Buddy lit a candle and uncorked a bottle of Dubonnet. Then we lay down side by side on the bed and Buddy sipped his wine while I read aloud “somewhere I have never travelled” and other poems from a book I’d brought. Buddy said he figured there must be something in poetry if a girl like me spent all her days over it, so each time we met I read him some poetry and explained to him what I found in it. It was Buddy’s idea. He always arranged our week-ends so we’d never regret wasting our time in any way. Buddy’s father was a teacher, and I think Buddy could have been a teacher as well, he was always trying to explain things to me and introduce me to new knowledge. Suddenly, after I finished a poem, he said, “Esther, have you ever seen a man?” The way he said it I knew he didn’t mean a regular man or a man in general, I knew he meant a man

The Illusion of Purity

Buddy Willard awkwardly exposes himself to Esther as a form of sexual education, but the sight leaves her feeling depressed and detached.
Esther reflects on the social conditioning from her family that painted Buddy as a paragon of cleanliness and moral integrity.
The prospect of undressing in front of Buddy triggers Esther's anxiety regarding the invasive and evaluative posture pictures taken at her college.
Esther is shocked to discover that Buddy's perceived innocence was a facade, as he admits to having had a prior sexual affair.

t I found in it. It was Buddy’s idea. He always arranged our week-ends so we’d never regret wasting our time in any way. Buddy’s father was a teacher, and I think Buddy could have been a teacher as well, he was always trying to explain things to me and introduce me to new knowledge. Suddenly, after I finished a poem, he said, “Esther, have you ever seen a man?” The way he said it I knew he didn’t mean a regular man or a man in general, I knew he meant a man naked. “No,” I said. “Only statues.” “Well, don’t you think you would like to see me?” I didn’t know what to say. My mother and my grandmother had started hinting around to me a lot lately about what a fine, clean boy Buddy Willard was, coming from such a fine, clean family, and how everybody at church thought he was a model person, so kind to his parents and to older people, as well as so athletic and so handsome and so intelligent. All I’d heard about, really, was how fine and clean Buddy was and how he was the kind of person a girl should stay fine and clean for. So I didn’t really see the harm in anything Buddy would think up to do. “Well, all right, I guess so,” I said. I stared at Buddy while he unzipped his chino pants and took Chapter 6 | 65 them off and laid them on a chair and then took off his underpants that were made of something like nylon fishnet. “They’re cool,” he explained, “and my mother says they wash easily.” Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed. Buddy seemed hurt I didn’t say anything. “I think you ought to get used to me like this,” he said. “Now let me see you.” But undressing in front of Buddy suddenly appealed to me about as much as having my Posture Picture taken at college, where you have to stand naked in front of a camera, knowing all the time that a picture of you stark naked, both full view and side view, is going into the college gym files to be marked A B C or D depending on how straight you are. “Oh, some other time,” I said. “All right.” Buddy got dressed again. Then we kissed and hugged a while and I felt a little better. I drank the rest of the Dubonnet and sat cross-legged at the end of Buddy’s bed and asked for a comb. I began to comb my hair down over my face so Buddy couldn’t see it. Suddenly I said, “Have you ever had an affair with anyone, Buddy?” I don’t know what made me say it, the words just popped out of my mouth. I never thought for one minute that Buddy Willard would have an affair with anyone. I expected him to say, “No, I have been saving myself for when I get married to somebody pure and a virgin like you”. But Buddy didn’t say anything, he just turned pink. “Well, have you?” “What do you mean, an affair?” Buddy asked then in a hollow voice. “You know, have you ever gone to bed with anyone?” I kept rhythmically combing the hair down over the side of my face nearest to Buddy, and I could feel the little electric filaments 66 | The Bell Jar clinging to my hot cheeks and I wanted to shout, “Stop, stop, don’t tell me, don’t say anything.” But I didn’t, I just kept still. “Well, yes, I have,” Buddy said finally. I almost fell over. From the first night Buddy Willard kissed me and said I must go out with a lot of boys, he made me feel I was much more sexy and experienced than he was and that everything he did like hugging and kissing and petting was simply what I made him feel like doing out of the blue, he couldn’t help it and didn’t know how it came about. Now I saw he had only been pretending all this time to be so innocent. “Tell me about it.” I combed my hair slowly over and over, feeling the teeth of the comb dig

Buddy's Hypocritical Innocence

Buddy Willard admits to a summer affair with a waitress, exposing his previous performance of innocence as a deceptive facade.
The protagonist is repulsed by the hypocrisy of Buddy's behavior, as he had previously made her feel self-conscious and 'sexy' while acting pure.
The revelation that the affair happened roughly thirty times causes the protagonist to emotionally 'freeze up' and distance herself from Buddy.
The protagonist finds she cannot accept the social double standards that permit men's sexual history while demanding purity from women.
Mrs. Willard’s traditionalist views on gender roles further alienate the protagonist, who views the Willard family dynamic as stifling.
Ultimately, the protagonist decides to leave Buddy because of his lack of honesty and the dishonesty inherent in his judgmental nature.

illard kissed me and said I must go out with a lot of boys, he made me feel I was much more sexy and experienced than he was and that everything he did like hugging and kissing and petting was simply what I made him feel like doing out of the blue, he couldn’t help it and didn’t know how it came about. Now I saw he had only been pretending all this time to be so innocent. “Tell me about it.” I combed my hair slowly over and over, feeling the teeth of the comb dig into my cheek at every stroke. “Who was it?” Buddy seemed relieved I wasn’t angry. He even seemed relieved to have somebody to tell about how he was seduced. Of course, somebody had seduced Buddy, Buddy hadn’t started it and it wasn’t really his fault. It was this waitress at the hotel he worked at as a busboy the last summer on Cape Cod. Buddy had noticed her staring at him queerly and shoving her breasts up against him in the confusion of the kitchen, so finally one day he asked her what the trouble was and she looked him straight in the eye and said, “I want you.” “Served up with parsley?” Buddy had laughed innocently. “No,” she had said. “Some night.” And that’s how Buddy had lost his pureness and his virginity. At first I thought he must have slept with the waitress only the once, but when I asked how many times, just to make sure, he said he couldn’t remember but a couple of times a week for the rest of the summer. I multiplied three by ten and got thirty, which seemed beyond all reason. After that something in me just froze up. Back at college I started asking a senior here and a senior there what they would do if a boy they knew suddenly told them he’d slept thirty times with some slutty waitress one summer, smack in the Chapter 6 | 67 middle of knowing them. But these seniors said most boys were like that and you couldn’t honestly accuse them of anything until you were at least pinned or engaged to be married. Actually, it wasn’t the idea of Buddy sleeping with somebody that bothered me. I mean I’d read about all sorts of people sleeping with each other, and if it had been any other boy I would merely have asked him the most interesting details, and maybe gone out and slept with somebody myself just to even things up, and then thought no more about it. What I couldn’t stand was Buddy’s pretending I was so sexy and he was so pure, when all the time he’d been having an affair with that tarty waitress and must have felt like laughing in my face. “What does your mother think about this waitress?” I asked Buddy that week-end. Buddy was amazingly close to his mother. He was always quoting what she said about the relationship between a man and a woman, and I knew Mrs Willard was a real fanatic about virginity for men and women both. When I first went to her house for supper she gave me a queer, shrewd, searching look, and I knew she was trying to tell whether I was a virgin or not. Just as I thought, Buddy was embarrassed. “Mother asked me about Gladys,” he admitted. “Well, what did you say?” “I said Gladys was free, white and twenty-one.” Now I knew Buddy would never talk to his mother as rudely as that for my sake. He was always saying how his mother said, “What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security,” and, “What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from,” until it made me tired. Every time I tried to argue, Buddy would say his mother still got pleasure out of his father and wasn’t that wonderful for people their age, it must mean she really knew what was what. Well, I had just decided to ditch Buddy Willard for once and for all, not because he’d slept with that waitress but because he didn’t have the honest

A Convenient Diagnosis

Esther expresses exhaustion with Buddy’s sexist philosophy that men are arrows into the future while women are merely the place the arrow shoots off from.
Just as Esther decides to leave Buddy for his lack of integrity regarding an affair, she discovers he has contracted tuberculosis.
Rather than feeling sorrow, Esther experiences a wonderful relief, viewing the illness as a karmic consequence for Buddy’s perceived superiority.
She leverages the situation to maintain a facade of a brave girlfriend, using the tragedy to avoid the exhaustion of dating and gain social sympathy.
Esther's attention shifts to Constantin, a sophisticated and intuitive man who treats her as an individual rather than a medical student's appendage.

What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from,” until it made me tired. Every time I tried to argue, Buddy would say his mother still got pleasure out of his father and wasn’t that wonderful for people their age, it must mean she really knew what was what. Well, I had just decided to ditch Buddy Willard for once and for all, not because he’d slept with that waitress but because he didn’t have the honest guts to admit it straight off to everybody and face 68 | The Bell Jar up to it as part of his character, when the phone in the hall rang and somebody said in a little knowing singsong, “It’s for you, Esther, it’s from Boston.” I could tell right away something must be wrong, because Buddy was the only person I knew in Boston, and he never called me long distance because it was so much more expensive than letters. Once, when he had a message he wanted me to get almost immediately, he went all round his entry at medical school asking if anybody was driving up to my college that week-end, and sure enough, somebody was, so he gave them a note for me and I got it the same day. He didn’t even have to pay for a stamp. It was Buddy all right. He told me that the annual fall chest X-ray showed he had caught TB and he was going off on a scholarship for medical students who caught TB to a TB place in the Adirondacks. Then he said I hadn’t written since that last week-end and he hoped nothing was the matter between us, and would I please try to write him at least once a week and come to visit him at this TB place in my Christmas vacation? I had never heard Buddy so upset. He was very proud of his perfect health and was always telling me it was psychosomatic when my sinuses blocked up and I couldn’t breathe. I thought this an odd attitude for a doctor to have and perhaps he should study to be a psychiatrist instead, but of course I never came right out and said so. I told Buddy how sorry I was about the TB and promised to write, but when I hung up I didn’t feel one bit sorry. I only felt a wonderful relief. I thought the TB might just be a punishment for living the kind of double life Buddy lived and feeling so superior to people. And I thought how convenient it would be now I didn’t have to announce to everybody at college I had broken off with Buddy and start the boring business of blind dates all over again. I simply told everyone that Buddy had TB and we were practically engaged, and when I stayed in to study on Saturday nights they were Chapter 6 | 69 extremely kind to me because they thought I was so brave, working the way I did just to hide a broken heart. 70 | The Bell Jar Chapter 7 Of course, Constantin was much too short, but in his own way he was handsome, with light brown hair and dark blue eyes and a lively, challenging expression. He could almost have been an American, he was so tan and had such good teeth, but I could tell straight away that he wasn’t. He had what no American man I’ve ever met has had, and that’s intuition. From the start Constantin guessed I wasn’t any protégée of Mrs Willard’s. I raised an eyebrow here and dropped a dry little laugh there, and pretty soon we were both openly raking Mrs Willard over the coals and I thought, “This Constantin won’t mind if I’m too tall and don’t know enough languages and haven’t been to Europe, he’ll see through all that stuff to what I really am.” Constantin drove me to the UN in his old green convertible with cracked, comfortable brown leather seats and the top down. He told me his tan came from playing tennis, and when we were sitting there side by side flying down the streets in the open sun he took my hand and squeezed it, and I felt happier than I

A Catalog of Inadequacies

Esther experiences a rare moment of happiness with Constantin, which triggers a painful realization that she has not felt truly happy since her father's death when she was nine.
Watching the UN interpreters, Esther feels a sense of alienation and a desire to trade her identity for the 'efficiency' of their mechanical linguistic work.
The narrator reflects on her intentional failure to learn domestic skills like cooking as a subconscious defense against being expected to perform them.
She expresses a deep-seated resistance to learning shorthand, viewing it as a symbol of female subservience and an obstacle to her own ambition of dictating 'thrilling letters.'
Esther begins a mental inventory of her perceived failures, listing various physical and social skills she lacks compared to her more 'practical' peers.

Constantin won’t mind if I’m too tall and don’t know enough languages and haven’t been to Europe, he’ll see through all that stuff to what I really am.” Constantin drove me to the UN in his old green convertible with cracked, comfortable brown leather seats and the top down. He told me his tan came from playing tennis, and when we were sitting there side by side flying down the streets in the open sun he took my hand and squeezed it, and I felt happier than I had been since I was about nine and running along the hot white beaches with my father the summer before he died. And while Constantin and I sat in one of those hushed plush auditoriums in the UN, next to a stern muscular Russian girl with no make-up who was a simultaneous interpreter like Constantin, I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old. After that—in spite of the Girl Scouts and the piano lessons and the water-colour lessons and the dancing lessons and the sailing camp, all of which my mother scrimped to give me, and college, with crewing in the mist before breakfast and black-bottom pies and the little new firecrackers of ideas going off every day—I had never been really happy again. I stared through the Russian girl in her double-breasted grey suit, Chapter 7 | 71 rattling off idiom after idiom in her own unknowable tongue—which Constantin said was the most difficult part, because the Russians didn’t have the same idioms as our idioms—and I wished with all my heart I could crawl into her and spend the rest of my life barking out one idiom after another. It mightn’t make me any happier, but it would be one more little pebble of efficiency among all the other pebbles. Then Constantin and the Russian girl interpreter and the whole bunch of black and white and yellow men arguing down there behind their labelled microphones seemed to move off at a distance. I saw their mouths going up and down without a sound, as if they were sitting on the deck of a departing ship, stranding me in the middle of a huge silence. I started adding up all the things I couldn’t do. I began with cooking. My grandmother and my mother were such good cooks that I left everything to them. They were always trying to teach me one dish or another, but I would just look on and say, “Yes, yes, I see,” while the instructions slid through my head like water, and then I’d always spoil what I did so nobody would ask me to do it again. I remember Jody, my best and only girl-friend at college in my freshman year, making me scrambled eggs at her house one morning. They tasted unusual, and when I asked her if she had put in anything extra, she said cheese and garlic salt. I asked who told her to do that, and she said nobody, she just thought it up. But then, she was practical and a sociology major. I didn’t know shorthand either. This meant I couldn’t get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand was something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and- coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little 72 | The Bell Jar shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equal time and let s equal the total distance. My list grew longer. I was a terrible dancer. I couldn’t carry a tune. I had no sense of balance, and when we had to walk down a narrow board with our hands out and a book on our heads in gym class I always fell over. I couldn’t ride a horse or ski, the two things I

The Paralyzing Fig Tree

Esther reflects on her lack of practical skills and languages, feeling dreadfully inadequate despite her history of academic success.
She realizes that her identity was built on winning prizes, a phase of life that is ending and leaving her directionless.
The fig tree serves as a powerful metaphor for her many conflicting ambitions, from motherhood to becoming a famous poet or world traveler.
Her inability to choose a single path leads to a paralyzing vision where every opportunity eventually withers and dies.
After eating at a Greek restaurant with Constantin, she wonders if her dark philosophical crisis was partially induced by her empty stomach.

d to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little 72 | The Bell Jar shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equal time and let s equal the total distance. My list grew longer. I was a terrible dancer. I couldn’t carry a tune. I had no sense of balance, and when we had to walk down a narrow board with our hands out and a book on our heads in gym class I always fell over. I couldn’t ride a horse or ski, the two things I wanted to do most, because they cost too much money. I couldn’t speak German or read Hebrew or write Chinese. I didn’t even know where most of the odd out-of-the-way countries the UN men in front of me represented fitted in on the map. For the first time in my life, sitting there in the sound-proof heart of the UN building between Constantin who could play tennis as well as simultaneously interpret and the Russian girl who knew so many idioms, I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it. The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. I felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone. I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would Chapter 7 | 73 choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. Constantin’s restaurant smelt of herbs and spices and sour cream. All the time I had been in New York I had never found such a restaurant. I only found those Heavenly Hamburger places, where they serve giant hamburgers and soup-of-the-day and four kinds of fancy cake at a very clean counter facing a long glarey mirror. To reach this restaurant we had to climb down seven dimly-lit steps into a sort of cellar. Travel posters plastered the smoke-dark walls, like so many picture windows overlooking Swiss lakes and Japanese mountains and African velds, and thick, dusty bottle-candles that seemed for centuries to have wept their coloured waxes red over blue over green in a fine, three-dimensional lace, cast a circle of light round each table where the faces floated, flushed and flamelike themselves. I don’t know what I ate, but I felt immensely better after the first mouthful. It occurred to me that my vision of the fig-tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to earth might well have arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach. Constantin kept refilling our glasses with a sweet Greek wine that tasted of pine bark, and I found myself telling him how I was going to learn German and go to Europe and be a war correspondent like Maggie Higgins. I felt so fine by the tim

The Logic of Seduction

Esther realizes that her bleak outlook and the vision of the withering fig tree may have been exacerbated by the physical void of an empty stomach.
Driven by a desire to match Buddy Willard's sexual experience, Esther decides to seek out her own first sexual encounter to even the score.
She reflects on a boy named Eric who viewed sex as a base animal instinct and believed it should be kept entirely separate from love.
Eric's refusal to sleep with Esther because he respected her intelligence highlights the era's restrictive and paradoxical moral codes regarding women.
Esther selects Constantin as her intended seducer because his maturity and professional discretion distinguish him from the boastful college boys she knows.

felt immensely better after the first mouthful. It occurred to me that my vision of the fig-tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to earth might well have arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach. Constantin kept refilling our glasses with a sweet Greek wine that tasted of pine bark, and I found myself telling him how I was going to learn German and go to Europe and be a war correspondent like Maggie Higgins. I felt so fine by the time we came to the yoghourt and strawberry jam that I decided I would let Constantin seduce me. Ever since Buddy Willard had told me about that waitress I had been thinking I ought to go out and sleep with somebody myself. Sleeping with Buddy wouldn’t count, though, because he would still be one person ahead of me, it would have to be with somebody else. The only boy I ever actually discussed going to bed with was a bitter, hawk-nosed Southerner from Yale, who came up to college one week-end only to find his date had eloped with a taxi-driver the 74 | The Bell Jar day before. As the girl had lived in my house and as I was the only one home that particular night, it was my job to cheer him up. At the local coffee-shop, hunched in one of the secretive, high- backed booths with hundreds of peoples’ names gouged into the wood, we drank cup after cup of black coffee and talked frankly about sex. This boy—his name was Eric—said he thought it disgusting the way all the girls at my college stood around on the porches under the porch lights and in the bushes in plain view, necking madly before the one o’clock curfew, so everybody passing by could see them. A million years of evolution, Eric said bitterly, and what are we? Animals. Then Eric told me how he had slept with his first woman. He went to a Southern prep school that specialized in building all-round gentlemen, and by the time you graduated it was an unwritten rule that you had to have known a woman. Known in the Biblical sense, Eric said. So one Saturday Eric and a few of his classmates took a bus into the nearest city and visited a notorious whore house. Eric’s whore hadn’t even taken off her dress. She was a fat, middle-aged woman with dyed red hair and suspiciously thick lips and rat-coloured skin and she wouldn’t turn off the light, so he had had her under a fly- spotted twenty-five watt bulb, and it was nothing like it was cracked up to be. It was boring as going to the toilet. I said maybe if you loved a woman it wouldn’t seem so boring, but Eric said it would be spoiled by thinking this woman too was just an animal like the rest, so if he loved anybody he would never go to bed with her. He’d go to a whore if he had to and keep the woman he loved free of all that dirty business. It had crossed my mind at the time that Eric might be a good person to go to bed with, since he had already done it and, unlike the usual run of boys, didn’t seem dirty-minded or silly when he talked about it. But then Eric wrote me a letter saying he thought he might really be able to love me, I was so intelligent and cynical and yet had such a kind face, surprisingly like his older sister’s; so Chapter 7 | 75 I knew it was no use, I was the type he would never go to bed with, and wrote him I was unfortunately about to marry a childhood sweetheart. The more I thought about it the better I liked the idea of being seduced by a simultaneous interpreter in New York City. Constantin seemed mature and considerate in every way. There were no people I knew he would want to brag to about it, the way college boys bragged about sleeping with girls in the backs of cars to their room- mates or their friends on the basketball team. And there would be a pleasant irony in sle

The Issue of Purity

Esther contemplates losing her virginity to Constantin, viewing him as a mature alternative to the immature college boys she usually encounters.
She reflects on a traditional article sent by her mother which argues that a woman's chastity is necessary to bridge the emotional gap between men and women.
The text highlights the societal double standard where men are expected to teach their wives about sex while women are expected to remain pure.
Esther critiques this logic, noting that it ignores the woman's feelings and allows men like Buddy Willard to lead 'double lives' of hypocrisy.
She concludes that if pure men are impossible to find, she should abandon her own purity so she can meet a future husband on equal terms.
For Esther at nineteen, the most significant social divide is not religion or politics, but whether a person has had sexual experience or not.

tely about to marry a childhood sweetheart. The more I thought about it the better I liked the idea of being seduced by a simultaneous interpreter in New York City. Constantin seemed mature and considerate in every way. There were no people I knew he would want to brag to about it, the way college boys bragged about sleeping with girls in the backs of cars to their room- mates or their friends on the basketball team. And there would be a pleasant irony in sleeping with a man Mrs Willard had introduced me to, as if she were, in a roundabout way, to blame for it. When Constantin asked if I would like to come up to his apartment to hear some balalaika records I smiled to myself. My mother had always told me never under any circumstances to go with a man to a man’s rooms after an evening out, it could mean only the one thing. “I am very fond of balalaika music,” I said. Constantin’s room had a balcony, and the balcony overlooked the river, and we could hear the hooing of the tugs down in the darkness. I felt moved and tender and perfectly certain about what I was going to do. I knew I might have a baby, but that thought hung far and dim in the distance and didn’t trouble me at all. There was no one hundred per cent sure way not to have a baby, it said in an article my mother cut out of the Reader’s Digest and mailed to me at college. This article was written by a married woman lawyer with children and called “In Defence of Chastity”. It gave all the reasons a girl shouldn’t sleep with anybody but her husband and then only after they were married. The main point of the article was that a man’s world is different from a woman’s world and a man’s emotions are different from a woman’s emotions and only marriage can bring the two worlds and the two different sets of emotions together properly. My mother said this was something a girl didn’t know about till it was too late, 76 | The Bell Jar so she had to take the advice of people who were already experts, like a married woman. This woman lawyer said the best men wanted to be pure for their wives, and even if they weren’t pure, they wanted to be the ones to teach their wives about sex. Of course they would try to persuade a girl to have sex and say they would marry her later, but as soon as she gave in, they would lose all respect for her and start saying that if she did that with them she would do that with other men and they would end up by making her life miserable. The woman finished her article by saying better be safe than sorry and besides, there was no sure way of not getting stuck with a baby and then you’d really be in a pickle. Now the one thing this article didn’t seem to me to consider was how a girl felt. It might be nice to be pure and then to marry a pure man, but what if he suddenly confessed he wasn’t pure after we were married, the way Buddy Willard had? I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not. Finally I decided that if it was so difficult to find a red-blooded intelligent man who was still pure by the time he was twenty-one I might as well forget about staying pure myself and marry somebody who wasn’t pure either. Then when he started to make my life miserable I could make his miserable as well. When I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue. Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another. I thought a spectacular chan

The Great Divide of Purity

Esther views purity as the most significant societal divider, distinguishing people more than religion, race, or gender.
She imagines that losing her virginity will leave a physical, visible mark in her eye, symbolizing a profound personal transformation.
Lying beside Constantin, she feels inferior and worries that she lacks the intellectual or physical attributes to be worth seducing.
Esther realizes she rejects marriage because she fears domesticity will trap her in a role of support rather than allowing her to pursue her own ambitions.

make my life miserable I could make his miserable as well. When I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue. Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another. I thought a spectacular change would come over me the day I crossed the boundary line. I thought it would be the way I’d feel if I ever visited Europe. I’d come home, and if I looked closely into the mirror I’d be able to Chapter 7 | 77 make out a little white Alp at the back of my eye. Now I thought that if I looked into the mirror tomorrow I’d see a doll-size Constantin sitting in my eye and smiling out at me. Well for about an hour we lounged on Constantin’s balcony in two separate sling-back chairs with the victrola playing and the balalaika records stacked between us. A faint milky light diffused from the street lights or the half-moon or the cars or the stars, I couldn’t tell what, but apart from holding my hand Constantin showed no desire to seduce me whatsoever. I asked if he was engaged or had any special girl friend, thinking maybe that’s what was the matter, but he said no, he made a point of keeping clear of such attachments. At last I felt a powerful drowsiness drifting through my veins from all the pine-bark wine I had drunk. “I think I’ll go in and lie down,” I said. I strolled casually into the bedroom and stooped over to nudge off my shoes. The clean bed bobbed before me like a safe boat. I stretched full-length and shut my eyes. Then I heard Constantin sigh and come in from the balcony. One by one his shoes clonked on to the floor, and he lay down by my side. I looked at him secretly from under a fall of hair. He was lying on his back, his hands under his head, staring at the ceiling. The starched white sleeves of his shirt, rolled up to the elbows, glimmered eerily in the half-dark and his tan skin seemed almost black. I thought he must be the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I thought if only I had a keen, shapely bone-structure to my face or could discuss politics shrewdly or was a famous writer Constantin might find me interesting enough to sleep with. And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him. The same thing happened over and over: 78 | The Bell Jar I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all. That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket. I woke to the sound of rain. It was pitch dark. After a while I deciphered the faint outlines of an unfamiliar window. Every so often a beam of light appeared out of thin air, traversed the wall like a ghostly, exploratory finger, and slid off into nothing again. Then I heard the sound of somebody breathing. At first I thought it was only myself, and that I was lying in the dark in my hotel room after being poisoned. I held my breath, but the breathing kept on. A green eye glowed on the bed beside me. It was divided into quarters like a compass. I reached out slowly and closed my hand on it. I lifted it up. With it came an arm, heavy as a dead man’s, but warm with sleep. Constantin’s watc

The Domestic Trap of Marriage

Esther wakes in the early morning and observes Constantin, imagining the soul-crushing routine of a traditional marriage.
She reflects on her academic achievements, viewing the domestic expectations of cooking and cleaning as a dreary and wasted life.
Through the example of Mrs. Willard's rug, Esther concludes that a woman's creative labor is often relegated to something to be stepped upon.
She fears that marriage is a deceptive trap where men ultimately desire to flatten their wives into utilitarian objects.
Esther recalls Buddy Willard’s claim that motherhood would kill her desire to write, leading her to compare marriage to being a slave in a private, totalitarian state.

nd slid off into nothing again. Then I heard the sound of somebody breathing. At first I thought it was only myself, and that I was lying in the dark in my hotel room after being poisoned. I held my breath, but the breathing kept on. A green eye glowed on the bed beside me. It was divided into quarters like a compass. I reached out slowly and closed my hand on it. I lifted it up. With it came an arm, heavy as a dead man’s, but warm with sleep. Constantin’s watch said three o’clock. He was lying in his shirt and trousers and stocking feet just as I had left him when I dropped asleep, and as my eyes grew used to the darkness I made out his pale eyelids and his straight nose and his tolerant, shapely mouth, but they seemed insubstantial, as if drawn on fog. For a few minutes I leaned over, studying him. I had never fallen asleep beside a man before. I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband. It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he’d left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he’d expect a big dinner, and I’d spend the evening Chapter 7 | 79 washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself. Once when I visited Buddy I found Mrs Willard braiding a rug out of strips of wool from Mr Willard’s old suits. She’d spent weeks on that rug, and I had admired the tweedy browns and greens and blues patterning the braid, but after Mrs Willard was through, instead of hanging the rug on the wall the way I would have done, she put it down in place of her kitchen mat, and in a few days it was soiled and dull and indistinguishable from any mat you could buy for under a dollar in the Five and Ten. And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs Willard’s kitchen mat. Hadn’t my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon—my father had been married before, so he needed a divorce—my father said to her, “Whew, that’s a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves,”—and from that day on my mother never had a minute’s peace. I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. As I stared down at Constantin the way you stare down at a bright, unattainable pebble at the bottom of a deep well, his eyelids lifted and he looked through me, and his eyes were full of love. I watched dumbly as a little shutter of recognition clicked across the blur of 80 | The Bell Jar tenderness and the wide pupils went glossy and depthless as patent leather. Constantin sat up, yawning. “What time is it?” “Three,” I said in a flat voice. “I better go home. I have to be at work first thing in the morning.” “I’ll drive you.” As we sat back to back on our separate sides of the bed fumbling with our shoes in the horrid cheerful white light o

Lingering Pain and Unmet Promises

Esther experiences a brief moment of peace when Constantin touches her hair, contrasting with the flat tone of their earlier conversation.
A physical ache in Esther's shin triggers a realization that her previous injury was a deliberate act of self-punishment.
The post-Christmas journey to the Adirondacks is marked by a deep sense of disappointment and the failure of holiday symbols to provide meaning.
Mr. Willard’s innocent and trusting nature makes Esther feel trapped, as his paternal affection imposes a role she feels unable to decline.

ull of love. I watched dumbly as a little shutter of recognition clicked across the blur of 80 | The Bell Jar tenderness and the wide pupils went glossy and depthless as patent leather. Constantin sat up, yawning. “What time is it?” “Three,” I said in a flat voice. “I better go home. I have to be at work first thing in the morning.” “I’ll drive you.” As we sat back to back on our separate sides of the bed fumbling with our shoes in the horrid cheerful white light of the bed lamp, I sensed Constantin turn round. “Is your hair always like that?” “Like what?” He didn’t answer but reached over and put his hand at the root of my hair and ran his fingers out slowly to the tip ends like a comb. A little electric shock flared through me, and I sat quite still. Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful. “Ah, I know what it is,” Constantin said. “You’ve just washed it.” And he bent to lace up his tennis shoes. An hour later I lay in my hotel bed, listening to the rain. It didn’t even sound like rain, it sounded like a tap running. The ache in the middle of my left shin bone came to life, and I abandoned any hope of sleep before seven, when my radio-alarm clock would rouse me with its hearty renderings of Sousa. Every time it rained the old leg-break seemed to remember itself, and what it remembered was a dull hurt. Then I thought, “Buddy Willard made me break that leg.” Then I thought, “No, I broke it myself. I broke it on purpose to pay myself back for being such a heel.” Chapter 7 | 81 Chapter 8 Mr Willard drove me up to the Adirondacks. It was the day after Christmas and a grey sky bellied over us, fat with snow. I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass. At Christmas I almost wished I was a Catholic. First Mr Willard drove and then I drove. I don’t know what we talked about, but as the countryside, already deep under old falls of snow, turned us a bleaker shoulder, and as the fir trees crowded down from the grey hills to the road edge, so darkly green they looked black, I grew gloomier and gloomier. I was tempted to tell Mr Willard to go ahead alone, I would hitch- hike home. But one glance at Mr Willard’s face—the silver hair in its boyish crewcut, the clear blue eyes, the pink cheeks, all frosted like a sweet wedding cake with the innocent, trusting expression—and I knew I couldn’t do it. I’d have to see the visit through to the end. At midday the greyness paled a bit, and we parked in an icy turn- off and shared out the tunafish sandwiches and the oatmeal cookies and the apples and the thermos of black coffee Mrs Willard had packed for our lunch. Mr Willard eyed me kindly. Then he cleared his throat and brushed a few last crumbs from his lap. I could tell he was going to say something serious, because he was very shy, and I’d heard him clear his throat in that same way before giving an important economics lecture. “Nelly and I have always wanted a daughter.” For one crazy minute I thought Mr Willard was going to announce 82 | Chapter 8 that Mrs Willard was pregnant and expecting a baby girl. Then he said, “But I don’t see how any daughter could be nicer than you.” Mr Willard must have thought I was crying because I was so glad he wanted to be a father to me. “There, there,” he patted my shoulder and cleared his throat once or twice. “I think we understand each other.” Then he opened the car door on his side and strolled round to my side, his breath shaping

A Visit to the Sanatorium

Mr. Willard misinterprets the narrator's emotional reaction, believing she is touched by his desire to act as a father figure to her.
The narrator's idealized vision of a mountain chalet sanatorium is replaced by the grim, 'liver-colored' reality of a decaying institution.
Buddy Willard describes his life with tuberculosis as living with a 'bomb in your lung,' where the primary goal is to remain perfectly still.
Upon meeting Buddy, the narrator is shocked to find him plump and ruddy rather than the emaciated, tragic figure she had envisioned.

as going to announce 82 | Chapter 8 that Mrs Willard was pregnant and expecting a baby girl. Then he said, “But I don’t see how any daughter could be nicer than you.” Mr Willard must have thought I was crying because I was so glad he wanted to be a father to me. “There, there,” he patted my shoulder and cleared his throat once or twice. “I think we understand each other.” Then he opened the car door on his side and strolled round to my side, his breath shaping tortuous smoke signals in the grey air. I moved over to the seat he had left and he started the car and we drove on. I’m not sure what I expected of Buddy’s sanatorium. I think I expected a kind of wooden chalet perched up on top of a small mountain, with rosy-cheeked young men and women, all very attractive but with hectic glittering eyes, lying covered with thick blankets on outdoor balconies. “TB is like living with a bomb in your lung,” Buddy had written to me at college. “You just lie around very quietly hoping it won’t go off.” I found it hard to imagine Buddy lying quietly. His whole philosophy of life was to be up and doing every second. Even when we went to the beach in the summer he never lay down to drowse in the sun the way I did. He ran back and forth or played ball or did a little series of rapid push-ups to use the time. Mr Willard and I waited in the reception room for the end of the afternoon rest cure. The colour scheme of the whole sanatorium seemed to be based on liver. Dark, glowering woodwork, burnt-brown leather chairs, walls that might once have been white but had succumbed under a spreading malady of mould or damp. A mottled brown linoleum sealed off the floor. On a low coffee-table, with circular and semi-circular stains bitten into the dark veneer, lay a few wilted numbers of Time and Life. I flipped to the middle of the nearest magazine. The face of Eisenhower beamed up at me, bald and blank as the face of a foetus in a bottle. Chapter 8 | 83 After a while I became aware of a sly, leaking noise. For a minute I thought the walls had begun to discharge the moisture that must saturate them, but then I saw the noise came from a small fountain in one corner of the room. The fountain spurted a few inches into the air from a rough length of pipe, threw up its hands, collapsed and drowned its ragged dribble in a stone basin of yellowing water. The basin was paved with the white hexagonal tiles one finds in public lavatories. A buzzer sounded. Doors opened and shut in the distance. Then Buddy came in. “Hello, Dad.” Buddy hugged his father, and promptly, with a dreadful brightness, came over to me and held out his hand. I shook it. It felt moist and fat. Mr Willard and I sat together on a leather couch. Buddy perched opposite us on the edge of a slippery armchair. He kept smiling, as if the corners of his mouth were strung up on invisible wire. The last thing I expected was for Buddy to be fat. All the time I thought of him at the sanatorium I saw shadows carving themselves under his cheekbones and his eyes burning out of almost fleshless sockets. But everything concave about Buddy had suddenly turned convex. A pot belly swelled under the tight white nylon shirt and his cheeks were round and ruddy as marzipan fruit. Even his laugh sounded plump. Buddy’s eyes met mine. “It’s the eating,” he said. “They stuff us day after day and then just make us lie around. But I’m allowed out on walk-hours now, so don’t worry, I’ll thin down in a couple of weeks.” He jumped up, smiling like a glad host. “Would you like to see my room?” I followed Buddy, and Mr Willard followed me, through a pair of swinging doors set with panes of frosted glass down a dim, liver- coloured corridor smelling of floor w

The Sanitarium Visit

Esther visits Buddy Willard at his recovery facility, where he has gained weight due to a regimen of forced overfeeding and rest.
Mr. Willard abruptly departs to avoid facing his son's illness, which he views as a shameful failure of individual will.
Buddy reveals a newfound creative side by showing Esther a mediocre poem he published and a handmade clay ashtray.
Esther feels a profound physical discomfort and fear of contagion, imagining Buddy surrounded by a murderous aura of germs.
The atmosphere becomes increasingly strained as Buddy begins to pivot toward a serious, personal proposal.

gh sounded plump. Buddy’s eyes met mine. “It’s the eating,” he said. “They stuff us day after day and then just make us lie around. But I’m allowed out on walk-hours now, so don’t worry, I’ll thin down in a couple of weeks.” He jumped up, smiling like a glad host. “Would you like to see my room?” I followed Buddy, and Mr Willard followed me, through a pair of swinging doors set with panes of frosted glass down a dim, liver- coloured corridor smelling of floor wax and lysol and another vaguer odour, like bruised gardenias. 84 | The Bell Jar Buddy threw open a brown door, and we filed into the narrow room. A lumpy bed, shrouded by a thin white spread, pencil-striped with blue, took up most of the space. Next to it stood a bed table with a pitcher and a water glass and the silver twig of a thermometer poking up from a jar of pink disinfectant. A second table, covered with books and papers and off-kilter clay pots—baked and painted, but not glazed—squeezed itself between the bed foot and the closet door. “Well,” Mr Willard breathed, “it looks comfortable enough.” Buddy laughed. “What are these?” I picked up a clay ashtray in the shape of a lilypad, with the veinings carefully drawn in yellow on a murky green ground. Buddy didn’t smoke. “That’s an ashtray,” Buddy said. “It’s for you.” I put the tray down. “I don’t smoke.” “I know,” Buddy said. “I thought you might like it, though.” “Well,” Mr Willard rubbed one papery lip against another. “I guess I’ll be getting on. I guess I’ll be leaving you two young people…” “Fine, Dad. You be getting on.” I was surprised. I had thought Mr Willard was going to stay the night before driving me back the next day. “Shall I come too?” “No, no.” Mr Willard peeled a few bills from his wallet and handed them to Buddy. “See that Esther gets a comfortable seat on the train. She’ll stay a day or so, maybe.” Buddy escorted his father to the door. I felt Mr Willard had deserted me. I thought he must have planned it all along, but Buddy said No, his father simply couldn’t stand the sight of sickness and especially his own son’s sickness, because he thought all sickness was sickness of the will. Mr Willard had never been sick a day in his life. I sat down on Buddy’s bed. There simply wasn’t anywhere else to sit. Chapter 8 | 85 Buddy rummaged among his papers in a businesslike way. Then he handed me a thin, grey magazine. “Turn to page eleven.” The magazine was printed somewhere in Maine and full of stencilled poems and descriptive paragraphs separated from each other by asterisks. On page eleven I found a poem titled “Florida Dawn.” I skipped down through image after image about water- melon lights and turtle-green palms and shells fluted like bits of Greek architecture. “Not bad.” I thought it was dreadful. “Who wrote it?” Buddy asked with an odd, pigeony smile. My eye dropped to the name on the lower right-hand corner of the page. B. S. Willard. “I don’t know.” Then I said, “Of course I know, Buddy. You wrote it.” Buddy edged over to me. I edged back. I had very little knowledge about TB, but it seemed to me an extremely sinister disease, the way it went on so invisibly. I thought Buddy might well be sitting in his own little murderous aura of TB germs. “Don’t worry,” Buddy laughed. “I’m not positive.” “Positive?” “You won’t catch anything.” Buddy stopped for a breath, the way you do in the middle of climbing something very steep. “I want to ask you a question.” He had a disquieting new habit of boring into my eyes with his look as if actually bent on piercing my head, the better to analyse what went on inside it. “I’d thought of asking it by letter.” I had a fleeting vision of a pale blue envelope with a Yale crest on the back fla

A Refusal of Domesticity

Buddy Willard proposes marriage to Esther Greenwood while recovering from tuberculosis, assuming she will wait for him to finish medical school.
Esther rejects his proposal and asserts that she never intends to marry, a stance Buddy dismisses as a temporary whim or a result of her being 'crazy.'
The narrator recalls a past incident where Buddy labeled her 'neurotic' because she couldn't choose between living in the city and the country.
Esther reclaims the label of neurosis, defining it as the state of wanting two mutually exclusive things at the same time and refusing to settle for one.
The scene shifts to Esther standing at the summit of a steep ski slope on Mount Pisgah, feeling a sense of clarity in the punishing cold air despite her lack of skiing experience.

ghed. “I’m not positive.” “Positive?” “You won’t catch anything.” Buddy stopped for a breath, the way you do in the middle of climbing something very steep. “I want to ask you a question.” He had a disquieting new habit of boring into my eyes with his look as if actually bent on piercing my head, the better to analyse what went on inside it. “I’d thought of asking it by letter.” I had a fleeting vision of a pale blue envelope with a Yale crest on the back flap. “But then I decided it would be better if I waited until you came up, so I could ask you in person.” He paused. “Well, don’t you want to know what it is?” “What?” I said in a small, unpromising voice. Buddy sat down beside me. He put his arm around my waist and 86 | The Bell Jar brushed the hair from my ear. I didn’t move. Then I heard him whisper, “How would you like to be Mrs Buddy Willard?” I had an awful impulse to laugh. I thought how that question would have bowled me over at any time in my five-or six-year period of adoring Buddy Willard from a distance. Buddy saw me hesitate. “Oh, I’m in no shape now, I know,” he said quickly. “I’m still on P.A.S. and I may yet lose a rib or two, but I’ll be back at med school by next fall. A year from this spring at the latest…” “I think I should tell you something, Buddy.” “I know,” Buddy said stiffly. “You’ve met someone.” “No, it’s not that.” “What is it, then?” “I’m never going to get married.” “You’re crazy.” Buddy brightened. “You’ll change your mind.” “No. My mind’s made up.” But Buddy just went on looking cheerful. “Remember,” I said, “that time you hitch-hiked back to college with me after Skit Night?” “I remember.” “Remember how you asked me where would I like to live best, the country or the city?” “And you said…” “And I said I wanted to live in the country and in the city both?” Buddy nodded. “And you,” I continued with sudden force, “laughed and said I had the perfect set-up of a true neurotic and that that question came from some questionnaire you’d had in psychology class that week?” Buddy’s smile dimmed. “Well, you were right. I am neurotic. I could never settle down in either the country or the city.” “You could live between them,” Buddy suggested helpfully. “Then you could go to the city sometimes and to the country sometimes.” “Well, what’s so neurotic about that?” Chapter 8 | 87 Buddy didn’t answer. “Well?” I rapped out, thinking, “You can’t coddle these sick people, it’s the worst thing for them, it’ll spoil them to bits.” “Nothing,” Buddy said in a pale, still voice. “Neurotic, ha!” I let out a scornful laugh. “If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.” Buddy put his hand on mine. “Let me fly with you.” I stood at the top of the ski slope on Mount Pisgah, looking down. I had no business to be up there. I had never skied before in my life. Still, I thought I would enjoy the view while I had the chance. At my left, the rope tow deposited skier after skier on the snowy summit which, packed by much crossing and re-crossing and slightly melted in the noon sun, had hardened to the consistency and polish of glass. The cold air punished my lungs and sinuses to a visionary clearness. On every side of me the red and blue and white jacketed skiers tore away down the blinding slope like fugitive bits of an American flag. From the foot of the ski run, the imitation log cabin lodge piped its popular songs into the overhang of silence. Gazing down on the Jungfrau From our chalet for two… The lilt and boom threaded by me like an invisible rivulet in a desert of snow. One careless, superb

Skiing with Buddy Willard

Buddy Willard organizes a skiing trip for Esther, persistently borrowing equipment from various acquaintances despite his own lack of experience.
Esther reflects on Buddy's clinical persuasiveness, noting he once won a medical school prize for convincing grieving families to permit autopsies.
Despite her hesitation and lack of skill, Esther feels compelled to follow Buddy's instructions, illustrating a submissive dynamic in their relationship.
While attempting to use the rope tow, Esther becomes trapped by the momentum and the presence of other skiers, forcing her to travel all the way to the summit.
From the top of the slope, Esther experiences a sense of visionary detachment, viewing Buddy and the other skiers as tiny, insignificant organisms.

d air punished my lungs and sinuses to a visionary clearness. On every side of me the red and blue and white jacketed skiers tore away down the blinding slope like fugitive bits of an American flag. From the foot of the ski run, the imitation log cabin lodge piped its popular songs into the overhang of silence. Gazing down on the Jungfrau From our chalet for two… The lilt and boom threaded by me like an invisible rivulet in a desert of snow. One careless, superb gesture, and I would be hurled into motion down the slope towards the small khaki spot in the sidelines, among the spectators, which was Buddy Willard. All morning Buddy had been teaching me how to ski. First, Buddy borrowed skis and ski poles from a friend of his in the village, and ski boots from a doctor’s wife whose feet were only one size larger than my own, and a red ski jacket from a student nurse. His persistence in the face of mulishness was astounding. Then I remembered that at medical school Buddy had won a prize for persuading the most relatives of dead people to have their 88 | The Bell Jar dead ones cut up whether they needed it or not, in the interests of science. I forget what the prize was, but I could just see Buddy in his white coat with his stethoscope sticking out of a side pocket like part of his anatomy, smiling and bowing and talking those numb, dumb relatives into signing the post-mortem papers. Next, Buddy borrowed a car from his own doctor, who’d had TB himself and was very understanding, and we drove off as the buzzer for walk-hour rasped along the sunless sanatorium corridors. Buddy had never skied before either, but he said that the elementary principles were quite simple, and as he’d often watched the ski instructors and their pupils he could teach me all I’d need to know. For the first half-hour I obediently herring-boned up a small slope, pushed off with my poles and coasted straight down. Buddy seemed pleased with my progress. “That’s fine, Esther,” he observed, as I negotiated my slope for the twentieth time. “Now let’s try you on the rope tow.” I stepped in my tracks, flushed and panting. “But Buddy, I don’t know how to zigzag yet. All those people coming down from the top know how to zigzag.” “Oh, you need only go half-way. Then you won’t gain very much momentum.” And Buddy accompanied me to the rope tow and showed me how to let the rope run through my hands, and then told me to close my fingers round it and go up. It never occurred to me to say no. I wrapped my fingers around the rough, bruising snake of a rope that slithered through them, and went up. But the rope dragged me, wobbling and balancing, so rapidly I couldn’t hope to dissociate myself from it half-way. There was a skier in front of me and a skier behind me, and I’d have been knocked over and stuck full of skis and poles the minute I let go, and I didn’t want to make trouble, so I hung quietly on. At the top, though, I had second thoughts. Buddy singled me out, hesitating there in the red jacket. His arms Chapter 8 | 89 chopped the air like khaki windmills. Then I saw he was signalling me to come down a path that had opened in the middle of the weaving skiers. But as I poised, uneasy, with a dry throat, the smooth white path from my feet to his feet grew blurred. A skier crossed it from the left, another crossed it from the right, and Buddy’s arms went on waving feebly as antennae from the other side of a field swarming with tiny moving animalcules like germs, or bent, bright exclamation marks. I looked up from that churning amphitheatre to the view beyond it. The great, grey eye of the sky looked back at me, its mist- shrouded sun focusing all the white and silent distances that poured from ev

A Reckless Descent

Esther contemplates the idea of suicide with an unsettling coolness while surveying the snowy landscape from a hilltop.
She deliberately launches herself into a dangerous ski run, seeking a momentary feeling of purity and happiness through high-speed flight.
The descent ends in a crash that breaks Esther's leg in two places, an injury Buddy Willard reports with a disturbing sense of satisfaction.
The narrative transitions to the fashion magazine office, where Esther's colleague Hilda displays a morbid and cynical attitude toward others' deaths.

feet grew blurred. A skier crossed it from the left, another crossed it from the right, and Buddy’s arms went on waving feebly as antennae from the other side of a field swarming with tiny moving animalcules like germs, or bent, bright exclamation marks. I looked up from that churning amphitheatre to the view beyond it. The great, grey eye of the sky looked back at me, its mist- shrouded sun focusing all the white and silent distances that poured from every point of the compass, hill after pale hill, to stall at my feet. The interior voice nagging me not to be a fool—to save my skin and take off my skis and walk down, camouflaged by the scrub pines bordering the slope—fled like a disconsolate mosquito. The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower. I measured the distance to Buddy with my eye. His arms were folded, now, and he seemed of a piece with the split-rail fence behind him—numb, brown and inconsequential. Edging to the rim of the hilltop, I dug the spikes of my poles into the snow and pushed myself into a flight I knew I couldn’t stop by skill or any belated access of will. I aimed straight down. A keen wind that had been hiding itself struck me full in the mouth and raked the hair back horizontal on my head. I was descending, but the white sun rose no higher. It hung over the suspended waves of the hills, an insentient pivot without which the world would not exist. A small, answering point in my own body flew towards it. I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.” I plummeted down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts, 90 | The Bell Jar through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise, into my own past. People and trees receded on either hand like the dark sides of a tunnel as I hurtled on to the still, bright point at the end of it, the pebble at the bottom of the well, the white sweet baby cradled in its mother’s belly. My teeth crunched a gravelly mouthful. Ice water seeped down my throat. Buddy’s face hung over me, near and huge, like a distracted planet. Other faces showed themselves up in back of his. Behind them, black dots swarmed on a plane of whiteness. Piece by piece, as at the strokes of a dull godmother’s wand, the old world sprang back into position. “You were doing fine,” a familiar voice informed my ear, “until that man stepped into your path.” People were unfastening my bindings and collecting my ski poles from where they poked skyward, askew, in their separate snowbanks. The lodge fence propped itself at my back. Buddy bent to pull off my boots and the several pairs of white wool socks that padded them. His plump hand shut on my left foot, then inched up my ankle, closing and probing, as if feeling for a concealed weapon. A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife. “I’m going up,” I said. “I’m going to do it again.” “No, you’re not.” A queer, satisfied expression came over Buddy’s face. “No, you’re not,” he repeated with a final smile. “Your leg’s broken in two places. You’ll be stuck in a cast for months.” Chapter 8 | 91 Chapter 9 “I’m so glad they’re going to die.” Hilda arched her cat-limbs in a yawn, buried her head in her arms on the conference table and went back to sleep. A wisp of bilious green straw perched on her brow like a tropical bird. Bile green. They were promoting it for fall, only Hilda, as usual, was half a year ahead of time. Bile green with black, bile green with white, bile green with nile green, its kissing cousin. Fashion blurbs, silv

The Shadow of Execution

Hilda expresses a chilling enthusiasm for the impending execution of the Rosenbergs, revealing a void of empathy that unnerves the narrator.
The narrator experiences a profound sense of alienation, viewing her peers as performative mannequins and herself as an unsteady vessel for repressed emotion.
During a final magazine photo shoot, the young women are asked to pose with props that represent their future career ambitions.
Esther struggles with an overwhelming, inexplicable urge to cry as she realizes she cannot identify what she wants to become.

ths.” Chapter 8 | 91 Chapter 9 “I’m so glad they’re going to die.” Hilda arched her cat-limbs in a yawn, buried her head in her arms on the conference table and went back to sleep. A wisp of bilious green straw perched on her brow like a tropical bird. Bile green. They were promoting it for fall, only Hilda, as usual, was half a year ahead of time. Bile green with black, bile green with white, bile green with nile green, its kissing cousin. Fashion blurbs, silver and full of nothing, sent up their fishy bubbles in my brain. They surfaced with a hollow pop. I’m so glad they’re going to die. I cursed the luck that had timed my arrival in the hotel cafeteria to coincide with Hilda’s. After a late night I felt too dull to think up the excuse that would take me back to my room for the glove, the handkerchief, the umbrella, the notebook I forgot. My penalty was the long, dead walk from the frosted glass doors of the Amazon to the strawberry-marble slab of our entry on Madison Avenue. Hilda moved like a mannequin the whole way. “That’s a lovely hat, did you make it?” I half-expected Hilda to turn on me and say, “You sound sick”, but she only extended and then retracted her swanny neck. “Yes.” The night before I’d seen a play where the heroine was possessed by a dybbuk, and when the dybbuk spoke from her mouth its voice sounded so cavernous and deep you couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. Well Hilda’s voice sounded just like the voice of that dybbuk. She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist. The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must be my fault. So I said, “Isn’t it awful about the Rosenbergs?” 92 | Chapter 9 The Rosenbergs were to be electrocuted late that night. “Yes!” Hilda said, and at last I felt I had touched a human string in the cat’s cradle of her heart. It was only as the two of us waited for the others in the tomb-like morning gloom of the conference room that Hilda amplified that Yes of hers. “It’s awful such people should be alive.” 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, “I’m so glad they’re going to die.” “Come on, give us a smile.” I sat on the pink velvet love-seat in Jay Cee’s office, holding a paper rose and facing the magazine photographer. I was the last of the twelve to have my picture taken. I had tried concealing myself in the powder-room, but it didn’t work. Betsy had spied my feet under the doors. I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full. This was the last round of photographs before the magazine went to press and we returned to Tulsa or Biloxi or Teaneck or Coos Bay or wherever we’d come from, and we were supposed to be photographed with props to show what we wanted to be. Betsy held an ear of corn to show she wanted to be a farmer’s wife, and Hilda held the bald, faceless head of a hatmaker’s dummy to show she wanted to design hats, and Doreen held a gold- embroidered sari to show she wanted to be a social worker in India (she didn’t really, she told me, she only wanted to get her hands on a sari). When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know. “Oh, sure you know,” the photographer said. “She wants,” said Jay Cee

The Mask of Ambition

During a magazine photoshoot, the interns pose with objects representing their future careers, while Esther struggles to find a prop that fits her identity as a poet.
Forced by the photographer to perform a smile for the camera, Esther suffers a sudden emotional collapse and bursts into uncontrollable tears.
After her breakdown, Esther views her reflection as a bruised, puffed-up stranger that resembles a prisoner after a prolonged beating.
Despite her despair, Esther clings to the hope of being accepted into a prestigious summer writing course led by a famous author.

etsy held an ear of corn to show she wanted to be a farmer’s wife, and Hilda held the bald, faceless head of a hatmaker’s dummy to show she wanted to design hats, and Doreen held a gold- embroidered sari to show she wanted to be a social worker in India (she didn’t really, she told me, she only wanted to get her hands on a sari). When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know. “Oh, sure you know,” the photographer said. “She wants,” said Jay Cee wittily, “to be everything.” Chapter 9 | 93 I said I wanted to be a poet. Then they scouted about for something for me to hold. Jay Cee suggested a book of poems, but the photographer said no, that was too obvious. It should be something that showed what inspired the poems. Finally Jay Cee unclipped the single, long- stemmed paper rose from her latest hat. The photographer fiddled with his hot white lights. “Show us how happy it makes you to write a poem.” I stared through the frieze of rubber plant leaves in Jay Cee’s window to the blue sky beyond. A few stagey cloud puffs were travelling from right to left. I fixed my eyes on the largest cloud, as if, when it passed out of sight, I might have the good luck to pass with it. I felt it was very important to keep the line of my mouth level. “Give us a smile.” At last, obediently, like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy, my own mouth started to quirk up. “Hey,” the photographer protested, with sudden foreboding, “you look like you’re going to cry.” I couldn’t stop. I buried my face in the pink velvet façade of Jay Cee’s love-seat and with immense relief the salt tears and miserable noises that had been prowling around in me all morning burst out into the room. When I lifted my head, the photographer had vanished. Jay Cee had vanished as well. I felt limp and betrayed, like the skin shed by a terrible animal. It was a relief to be free of the animal, but it seemed to have taken my spirit with it, and everything else it could lay its paws on. I fumbled in my pocketbook for the gilt compact with the mascara and the mascara brush and the eyeshadow and the three lipsticks and the side mirror. The face that peered back at me seemed to be peering from the grating of a prison cell after a prolonged beating. It looked bruised and puffy and all the wrong colours. It was a face that needed soap and water and Christian tolerance. I started to paint it with small heart. 94 | The Bell Jar Jay Cee breezed back after a decent interval with an armful of manuscripts. “These’ll amuse you,” she said. “Have a good read.” Every morning a snowy avalanche of manuscripts swelled the dust-grey piles in the office of the Fiction Editor. Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing. Say someone or other finished a manuscript every minute; in five minutes that would be five manuscripts stacked on the Fiction Editor’s desk. Within the hour there would be sixty, crowding each other on to the floor. And in a year… I smiled, seeing a pristine, imaginary manuscript floating in mid- air, with Esther Greenwood typed in the upper-right hand corner. After my month on the magazine I’d applied for a summer school course with a famous writer where you sent in the manuscript of a story and he read it and said whether you were good enough to be admitted into his class. Of course, it was a very small class, and I had sent in my story a long time ago and hadn’t heard from the writer yet, but I was sure I’d find the letter of acceptance waiting on the mail table at home. I decided I’d surprise Jay Cee and send in a couple of the stories I wrote in this class under a pseudonym. Then one day the Fiction Editor would come in to Jay Cee persona

Kept 6 of 50 sections, 0 of 0 figures.

A Summer of Disconnection

Esther portrays herself as a passive observer of her own life, empty and numb despite her outward success.
She uses the image of a cadaver’s head to convey her inability to escape intrusive, disturbing thoughts.

Childbirth and Clinical Detachment

Esther sees the delivery room as dehumanizing, with equipment resembling instruments of torture more than tools of healing.
She critiques drugs that erase a mother’s memory of pain, viewing them as a deception that traps women in repeated labor.

Buddy's Hypocritical Innocence

Buddy’s affair exposes his performed innocence as a facade, repulsing Esther after he made her feel self-conscious while acting pure.
Esther cannot accept the double standard that permits men sexual experience while demanding purity from women.

The Paralyzing Fig Tree

The fig tree becomes Esther’s central metaphor for conflicting ambitions: motherhood, poetry, travel, and other possible lives.
Her inability to choose one path becomes a paralyzing vision in which every opportunity withers and dies.

The Domestic Trap of Marriage

Esther fears marriage as a trap in which men flatten their wives into useful domestic objects.
Recalling Buddy’s claim that motherhood would kill her desire to write, she compares marriage to slavery in a private totalitarian state.

A Reckless Descent

Esther contemplates suicide with unsettling coolness while surveying the snowy landscape from the hilltop.
She launches herself into a dangerous ski run, seeking a brief feeling of purity and happiness through high-speed flight.

Arbitrary Prompt (The Bell Jar)

A Summer of Disconnection

The Amazon Hotel

Decadence and Disillusionment

The Allure of Cynicism

Melting Into the Shadows

The Mask of Elly Higginbottom

The Ranch in New York

The Shrinking Observer

Isolation in the City

Rituals of Purification

A Lurid Third Interval

The Ladies' Day Banquet

The Art of Social Arrogance

Dropping Out of the Race

Torn Between Two Paths

The Cracks in Ambition

Ambition and Intellectual Friction

The Deception of Success

Poetry and Scientific Deception

Mothers, Mentors, and Finger-Bowls

The Sickness of Artifice

Sickness and Shared Misery

The Mass Poisoning

The Purifying Poison

Interesting Names and New Dates

Hypocrisy and Hotel Etiquette

Social Missteps and Fig Tree Fables

Dust and Poetry

Buddy’s Unexpected Visit

The Yale Junior Prom

Medical Realities and Romantic Illusions

Childbirth and Clinical Detachment

The Delivery and the Room

The Illusion of Purity

Buddy's Hypocritical Innocence

A Convenient Diagnosis

A Catalog of Inadequacies

The Paralyzing Fig Tree

The Logic of Seduction

The Issue of Purity

The Great Divide of Purity

The Domestic Trap of Marriage

Lingering Pain and Unmet Promises

A Visit to the Sanatorium

The Sanitarium Visit

A Refusal of Domesticity

Skiing with Buddy Willard

A Reckless Descent

The Shadow of Execution

The Mask of Ambition

A Summer of Disconnection

Childbirth and Clinical Detachment

Buddy's Hypocritical Innocence

The Paralyzing Fig Tree

The Domestic Trap of Marriage

A Reckless Descent