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.
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.
ReplyDeleteThis was such an interesting angle that I had not really considered while reading. I never thought about Esther's view of sex as its own arc throughout the book, but the way you laid it out makes it really clear. I also never thought about the fact that she did not even enjoy losing her virginity, but that was almost the point-- she just needed to find out for herself and take that power back from what Buddy represented. It is also interesting how purity culture plays into this because the whole reason it felt like such a big deal was that society made it one, but when she actually experienced it and felt nothing change about herself, it kind of breaks up that idea completely. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHiii sophie, nice blog :) I agree with your observation of how the 1950s society classifies people depending on whether they had sexual relationships. I think Esther is also very conscious of this. I think at one point she even explicitly points out that her society is not separated by men or women, or young and old, but by whether someone has had sex or not.
ReplyDeleteSophie, Sophie, Sophie,... I agree with the negative portrayal of sex within "The Bell Jar" that you talk about. I find it interesting how sex is freedom, but society only allows men to freely do it, whereas women are expected to stay pure. This contrast is very prevalent in her relationship with Buddy, and I am so glad you analyzed this moment further!
ReplyDeleteHi Sophie! Your analysis of sex within the novel as ultimately a freeing source is really interesting! I think something that maybe complicates the narrative is how completely unhappy or weirded out she feels when Buddy undresses in front of her. This would typically lead to sex, but she seems very uncomfortable with the idea of doing anything with Buddy in that moment. I'm not sure how or where exactly that slots into this narrative, perhaps it fits with her disgust with it? But she feels this discomfort with Buddy even before she realizes that he is more experienced than her.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that we don't even get any objective account of what actually happens between Doreen and Lenny--the extent to which it is "semi-sexual"--precisely because it is "told through the eyes of Esther Greenwood." Is this a particularly violent and grotesque interaction? Or is Esther's "bell jar" lens starting to distort her perception, so the more or less "normal" process of "two people falling madly in love" looks *through her eyes* to be violent, grotesque, horrific, brutal? In my surely memorable out-loud reading of the narration in this scene, I tried to really emphasize just how distorted and even surreal her account is, if we imagine these things taking place literally. Doreen simply *CAN'T* hang horizontally from Lenny's ear by her teeth as he spins her around in circles, but the lack of "realism" is not the point: these two people dancing to music and interacting flirtatiously seems like a grotesque nightmare to Esther, but so do plenty of other common and "normal" things she sees and describes in the New York chapters. And the more we learn about her history with Buddy Willard and her ambivalence about conventional sexual dynamics, purity culture, and the marriage cult, the more her depictions of Lenny and Doreen seem to "confirm" her sense that all of this is brutal, gross, dehumanizing. She's curious about experimenting with "being a Doreen," but in this scene she recoils in horror from what that identity might entail.
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