The Bell Jar Chapters 5 - 8
Post her ailment, Esther is contacted by Constantin, a UN interpreter and a friend of Mrs. Willard. He invites her to visit the UN and dine with him. Esther presumes this invitation is a courtesy to Mrs. Willard, yet she accepts. She reflects on Mrs. Willard’s son, Buddy, who is recuperating from tuberculosis in a sanitarium. Buddy desires to wed Esther, and she finds it peculiar that she once idolized him from a distance but now detests him when he wishes to marry her.
Esther reminisces about her tipping blunders: she neglected to tip the bellboy who carried her luggage to her room upon her arrival in New York, and the cab driver scoffed at her ten percent tip during her first cab ride. Esther peruses the book sent by the Ladies’ Day magazine staff. A saccharine get-well card tumbles out. She discovers a tale about a fig tree in the book. In the narrative, a Jewish man and a neighboring convent’s nun meet beneath a fig tree. They touch hands while observing a chick hatch one day. The following day, the kitchen maid replaces the absent nun. Esther draws parallels between this story and her ill-fated relationship with Buddy. She contemplates the distinctions between the two pairs: she and Buddy are Unitarian, not Catholic and Jewish, and they witnessed a baby’s birth, not a chick’s hatching.
Esther considers Buddy’s recent letters, in which he mentions discovering poems penned by a doctor, prompting him to believe that doctors and writers can coexist. This remark signifies a shift from his previous mindset: he once described a poem as “a piece of dust.” Esther was speechless at the time, but now she formulates biting retorts she could have made, denouncing his work as meaningless, and his cadavers as dust. She believes that healing people is no superior to writing “poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick or couldn’t sleep.” Esther recollects the inception of her relationship with Buddy. She was smitten with him for years, and one day he visited her home and expressed his interest in seeing her at college. He stopped by her dorm a few months later, stating that he was on campus to escort Joan Gilling to a dance. Irritated, Esther claimed she had a date shortly. Buddy left, disgruntled, but left a letter inviting Esther to the Yale Junior Prom. He treated her as a friend at the prom but kissed her afterward. She felt nothing but anticipation to share her experience with the other girls.
Esther’s recollections of her evolving relationship with Buddy persist. She visited him at Yale Medical School, and intrigued by the hospital’s sights, he presented her with cadavers and fetuses in jars, which she observed with composure. They attended a disease lecture, followed by witnessing a childbirth. Buddy and his friend Will humorously suggested that Esther should avoid watching the birth, or she would never desire motherhood. Buddy informed her that the woman was administered a drug that would erase her memory of the pain. Esther perceived the drug as a typical male invention. She despised the concept that the drug deceives the woman into forgetting her suffering. The woman had to undergo an incision to deliver the baby, and the sight of the blood and the birth distressed Esther, though she remained silent to Buddy.
After watching the childbirth, they retreated to Buddy’s room. He asked her if she had ever seen a man in the nude, and Esther told him that she hadn’t. He offered to show her his own naked body, and she agreed. She doesn’t feel anything after seeing him naked, and it makes her feel depressed. She inquired if he had ever been intimate with a woman, anticipating his response to be a commitment to marital purity. He confessed to having a physical relationship with a waitress named Gladys during a summer job in Cape Cod. He claimed she was the seductress, and conceded that their liaison lasted for ten weeks.
Esther was untroubled by Buddy’s past intimacy but was infuriated by his hypocritical portrayal of himself as chaste and innocent. Esther sought the opinion of her college peers on what their reaction would be if a boy they were dating confessed to being intimate with someone else, and they responded that a woman has no right to be upset unless she is engaged or pinned. When she questioned Buddy about his mother’s views on the affair, Buddy responded that he told his mother, “Gladys was free, white, and twenty-one.” Esther resolved to end her relationship with Buddy, but just as she had made her decision, Buddy called her from afar to inform her of his TB diagnosis. She felt not sympathy but relief, knowing she wouldn’t have to see him frequently. She decided to inform her dorm mates that she and Bobby were virtually engaged, and they left her alone on Saturday nights, admiring her for studying to conceal her distress over Buddy’s illness.
Constantin chauffeurs Esther in his open-top car to the UN. They both realize their mutual dislike for Mrs. Willard. Despite his lack of height, Esther finds Constantin appealing, and his touch brings her a joy she hasn’t felt since her ninth summer when she frolicked on the beach with her late father. At the UN, it strikes Esther as peculiar that she was only truly happy until she was nine. The interpreter’s proficiency amazes her, and she contemplates her limitations: she can’t cook, shorthand, dance, sing, horse ride, ski, or converse in foreign languages. She feels her only talent, securing scholarships, will cease once her college days are over. She envisions her life as a fig tree, with each fig symbolizing a different path—a family, a poet, a professor, an editor, a traveler—but her inability to choose leads to the figs rotting and falling, uneaten.
Constantin escorts Esther to a meal, and her spirits lift immediately, making her wonder if her fig tree vision was a result of hunger. The dinner is so delightful that she decides to allow Constantin to charm her. She dislikes the double standard of virginity between men and women. Esther decides that virginity is impractical.
Constantin extends an invitation to Esther to visit his apartment for some music. To her disappointment, Constantin merely holds her hand. Overcome with drowsiness from the wine, she reclines on his bed. He joins her, but they only sleep. She awakens, disoriented, at three in the morning and observes Constantin sleeping, contemplating the reality of matrimony. She concludes that marriage is a cycle of cleaning and washing, and it could jeopardize her aspirations. She recalls Buddy’s ominous assertion that motherhood will quell her desire to write poetry, and she fears that marriage indoctrinates women. Constantin awakens and drives her home.
Esther recalls Mr. Willard driving her to see Buddy at the sanatorium. He paused en route to express his wish for her to be his daughter. Esther’s tears, misinterpreted by Mr. Willard as tears of joy, start flowing. Much to her chagrin, Mr. Willard leaves her alone with Buddy. Buddy, who has put on weight in the sanatorium, shows Esther a poem he had published in an obscure magazine. She finds the poem terrible, though she maintains a neutral stance. Buddy proposes, asking, “How would you like to be Mrs. Buddy Willard?” Esther rejects the idea of marriage. Buddy dismisses her assertion with laughter. Esther reminds him that he labeled her as neurotic for wanting things that can’t coexist, and she asserts that she will always desire such things. He expresses his desire to be with her.
Buddy decides to teach Esther to ski. He borrows equipment for her from various people. Esther takes the rope tow to the mountain peak and Buddy stands at the base, beckoning her to ski down. Initially, she is petrified, but then the thought of potential self-destruction crosses her mind. She skis down at full speed, utterly elated. She feels as if she is skiing into her past. But suddenly, she falls, her mouth filled with ice, and the mundane world returns. She wishes to ski down the mountain again, but Buddy informs her, with an odd sense of satisfaction, that she has fractured her leg in two places.
Analysis
Society anticipates Esther, an educated girl, to marry a suitable man. Mrs. Willard tells Buddy that men are the future’s arrows, women the launchpad. This traditional view troubles Esther, who harbors her ambitions and doesn’t aspire to be merely a supportive wife. She feels torn between marriage and career, fearing that matrimony would mean surrendering her writing dreams. Rejecting Buddy, seen by many as an ideal match, would seem insane. However, Esther soon recognizes Buddy’s limitations—he cares but fails to comprehend her literary passion, patronizes her, and lacks excitement. He seeks a woman content with domesticity.
At the UN, Esther’s self-worth wavers. Her identity, tied to academic success, feels threatened as college ends, along with her scholarships. She likens herself to a “racehorse without racetracks.” Her life, visualized as a fig tree, presents a dilemma: she can choose only one path. Torn between societal expectations of marriage and her poetic aspirations, she’s paralyzed. An article from her mother reinforces gender disparities and the sexual double standard, which Esther vehemently rejects.
Esther perceives losing her virginity as transformative, given her culture’s emphasis on the chasm between virginity and sexual experience. Constantin’s platonic touch, reminiscent of her father, comforts her.
Reflecting on her ski trip, Esther hints at a fascination with self-destruction. The potential fatal descent was not a surrender but an assertion of control, a journey toward a serene end. This deathward motion elates her until reality intrudes, turning the near-death experience into a purifying ritual.
