Bell Jars and Motor Cars

 Bell Jars and Motor Cars 

Sylvia Plath

“So. Did you finish The Bell Jar?” Dr. Feight asked before I could lie down on the couch, close my eyes, and begin my monologue, before he had sat in his chair behind my left ear and taken up his clipboard and his pen.

     This was yesterday. I hadn’t seen him on Tuesday for reasons I can’t recall. I am forgetting more and more, whether unwittingly - and unwillingly - or on purpose, I am not quite certain. Or, it could be the drugs.
     I remembered only at that moment that I had a copy of a letter from Moira in my pocket, and I took it out as I sat down. I unfolded it as I lay down. Then, I said that I had finished the novel, also that I had written my poor (dead) sister* and asked her if she had read it. I had a copy of my letter, too, I realized; and I began with that.

Dear Moira,

     I hope you don’t mind my writing you about The Bell Jar, because I need to think about it myself. You know it, of course. You’ve read it? You must have at some point, maybe at Sweetbriar.

     I don’t know what I think about the novel because I don’t think about anything these days. I brood about many things, but I think orderly about no thing: I can’t even make a decent list.

     But these are my scattered feelings about the novel. I liked the first part of it, “up and coming” in New York City (vs. “down and out” in Paris or London), full of energy and dark, frenzied comedy, almost farce. The writing is bright and clear and energetic; the time, events, and people described are muddled and muddied and mad. The contrast makes the comedy. Plus, there’s a lot at stake at the same time there is nothing at stake.

     There is all and nothing at stake, that is, until the month in the big city ends and the scholarship doesn’t come through, and Esther must go home and live with her mother. There, in the dark, damp confines of her bedroom, she decides that everything is at stake. At the same time, the writing loses its shine. It’s still good writing, but it’s pedantic. It plods where it had skipped. It pleads, even wheedles, where it had described. Maybe because the story turns inward. Or, if it has always been inward, now it has become more about Esther than anyone else. There is no one else because there is no one here she can find to like; there is no one she doesn’t have utter contempt for her. Maybe she’s been contemptuous from the beginning, but her contempt hasn’t been utter, it has been edged with excitement.

     Her Lone Ranger has become completely lone. There is no Doreen, no Tonto. There are only one-dimensional villains to shoot up and lock up at the end of the half-hour. But the story extends beyond the half-hour, and she gets locked up. And it (the story) turns again. The asylum section is more like the New York than the middle (home) section: there’s a dark-comic verve to it. The contempt has a thicker veil. We can no longer see the sneer. (We know it’s there, but it’s not where we are seeing it all the time.)

     Then, there’s the (relatively) happy ending. Because it’s a novel, it has to end before the author does. She must go brilliantly on, strive, succeed, crash, and burn (if by turning off the flame). And what else can she do? What else but stick her head in an oven and leave her children behind.

     I know - at least, I suspect - you’ll say she didn’t want to do that but she didn’t see any other way forward. There was no way forward at all. She was already suffocating. And you would be right, I’m sure. In any case, who would know better?

     I find myself, though, filled with respect - with envy! - for Plath’s talent but almost empty of sympathy for her. No, that’s not right: I can’t empathize with her. And I can’t say why that is so. I only arrive at conclusions, you know; I don’t think my way to them. I jump to conclusions over the considerations, the judgments that should lead me to the. And had I considered carefully, judged wisely, or had I any imagination, I may well have been led somewhere else altogether.

     So, help me reconsider. Tell me what you think of the book.

     Outside, it is cold and gray, the sky looking as if it had been “rubbed with a soiled eraser,” as Nathanael West puts it. Write me.

Love, Ted

I looked at Dr. Feight. He was making a note. He looked up. He raised his brows. I went on:

     “Then I have this in return,” I said. “Or is it too much?” He shook his head. I read:

Dear Ted,

I don’t think it’s imagination you lack. When you look out and it is cold and gray, it is energy you begin lacking: It goes out of you at an alarming rate in the cold, the damp, the bleak. You are closed up with an ogre who is always hungrier than he pretends to be, who nibbles away at you bit by bit by bit by bit. You think you’ve lost a finger or two; you look down, you’ve lost a whole hand - you’ve lost an arm up to the elbow. But it’s not a finger or a hand or a forearm that is being eaten away: it is your energy.

     You should get out, take a walk - or a drive: Take a drive! Cars are good, they take us farther away than we can walk. Granted, they pollute the atmosphere. Which pollution, however, God could prevent if he were both good and almighty. Which atmosphere he could wash clean if he wished. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

Against my will I have been thinking of The Bell Jar - since you mentioned it in a letter last week.

     Insulin therapy was for schizophrenia, I believe, but Esther Greenwood is more manic-depressive, isn’t she, what’s now called bi-polar, I believe? She climbs to the rooftop of her hotel as she contemplates leaving the “fine madness” of New York City, and she descends into the darkness of her childhood bedroom in the Boston suburbs. From there she will escape only by further confinement. She can wander away, but she cannot get away. She can attempt suicide, but she cannot succeed. She will get away from her well-meaning but horrible (unimaginative) mother only by being committed: The crazy house in which one is somehow to find oneself is not so crazy, after all.

     I’m not sure that’s what she does find, herself - or she can find. She may escape the bell jar for a time, but it will always be hovering, she knows. She may escape depression but only into mania. Or that seems to me what is happening at the summary/end of the story. I’m not sure though.

     You’d think I would know, wouldn’t you? - that’s why you wrote me. But I don’t know. I do know this, and it’s God’s fault because he has decided he doesn’t want to be almighty yet he still wants to be good. Or, he wants to be good, but he doesn’t want to have to do anything about it! I do know this: you come to realize that you can’t escape, but you don’t give up hope that some will save you. There will be a Savior!

    Still, when he comes - if he comes (or if he has come) - he can do nothing. He is strong only in weakness, they tell us, your theologians. What kind of bullshit is that? I am asking you, who reads the theologians, and who still loves Jesus. What the hell?

     I want to write more. Like: Where were you? Why didn’t you come rescue me? But that’s not fair. You were far away, and what did you know? And, finally, it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t rescuable anyway, any more than Sylvia Plath.

     And your Jesus, who put love above the law - above all things (am I right?) - what did he know? Here’s my last question: What did he know, who never (as far as we know) ever loved a woman? (Or had a car to get into the backseat with her?)

     Heavens! I’m being hard on you when you least need it, when it’s cold and gray and all. I’m sorry. But(!) I’m sending it anyway, and I have the nerve to close it . . .

Dr. Feight

Love, Moira

I folded the letters back up, and I put them back in my pocket. Behind my left ear, I could hear Dr. Feight’s pen scratching against the notebook paper on his clipboard.

11.16.19

_______________

 * See here: Moira’s story. For more on Dr. Feight and my seeing him, see here.