Freedom, Purity Culture, and Sex in "The Bell Jar"


    Near the beginning of the Bell Jar, our fun Doreen shows a scandalous display with Lenny Shepherd, biting at his ear, when he bites at her hip, and they dance. This semi-sexual display is told through the eyes of Esther Greenwood, who sees this event as animalistic. She describes it as “thrashing”, “screeching”, and Lenny’s “roaring” (Plath, 17). From this we can begin to get a read on Esther’s view of sex; she’s so disgusted she must leave.
    We get a flashback to Buddy Willard admitting he’d had an affair, as Esther asks if he’d ever done it (expecting him to flatter her with a shy “no, never!”) but alas, he had. Not just once, but for a whole summer. Esther tells us: “Actually, it wasn’t the idea of Buddy sleeping with somebody that bothered me,” (Plath, 71). She goes on to explain that had it been anyone else to tell her, she would’ve simply “gotten even” (by going out and sleeping with someone too), but Buddy had acted like she was sexy, and he must be laughing in her face. She feels insecure at her lack of experience, and the fact that she thought she was playing the temptress in Buddy’s life– that she’d been playing the seductress without the training, when he in fact knew she was not, because he had been with one. Here we begin to see sex as this casting of your role in society; the experienced and the inexperienced. Soon, we progress to see sex as the embodiment of unfair societal expectations for men and women; women ought to stay pure, men are bound to screw around. Sex holds the oppressive weights of society, because she just cannot do it, but he can.
    At the end of the novel, sex is seen again as Esther loses her virginity: “I lay, rapt and naked, on Irwin’s rough blanket, waiting for the miraculous change to make itself felt,” (Plath, 229). In this, it’s clear, she doesn’t get the hype. She came here, looking to understand, to even the grounds with Buddy (thus the societal expectations he represents), but she found nothing. Finding out for herself how she felt is freedom.
    In “The Bell Jar” sex is seen as disgusting, animalistic, a power in the hands of men for men by men, but in experiencing and asserting freedom over the experience, sex is freedom.

Comments

  1. Annika DFebruary 28, 2026 at 5:43 PM

    I find this commentary on Esther's view of sex quite interesting and a powerful statement made through the writing. As you said, Esther didn't "get the hype" around losing her virginity or having intercourse, however I think the moment where she felt like she hadn't changed frees her from the views that come with premarital sex. She is still the same person before and after and her role as a woman isn't defined by this interaction either. She finds herself on an even "playing field" as Buddy, and honestly a more powerful Esther as before.

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