Esther's Barrier
At many instances throughout the story, Esther shows having the potential and opportunities of becoming successful. She has numerous paths that she is able to take, but every time she is about to step forward, it is as though she takes two steps back. She has potential and she knows it, but for some reason, something always holds her back from pursuing it, even when it is something that she actually enjoys and not something someone expects her to do.
One reason for the presence of this barrier that is especially prominent is her view that these paths aren't worth pursuing because, in the end, everyone would eventually die. She talks about how she has so many plans and things that she wants to do in her life like writing a novel, learning german, and learning pottery, but after her list of plans ends she can't see anything else and automatically believes that that is all there is to her life and they all eventually have no meaning (Plath 123). Additionally, throughout the book, she has shown how she feels pressure from people to take on pursuits that are expected of her especially when she says that she would want to move to Chicago under a new name so no one would know her so she could be who she wanted to be (Plath132).
For these reasons among others, I think her barrier has been formed because she feels lost. She has spent the majority of her life pursuing activities and careers that she believed other people expected from her that she didn't have time to understand what she truly wanted. Instead, she spent years stuck in a place that she hated and she finally became tired and done with putting all of her energy into faking her way to these pursuits. At this point, I feel as though it has taken such a toll on her, wearing her out, and helping develop her depression and negative outlook on life that by the time she has decided to finally do the things that she would possibly want to do, her perspective on life or barrier that has been built throughout her life pushes her to turn away from those opportunities.
Furthermore, this might be why she, out of the many women and especially in this time period where it seems that many women have accepted their more inferior roles to men, hates these ideas of social norms of women in addition to being very critical of people for being judgemental. By suffering through the experiences of people constantly pushing her to fill their expectations and worried of what people might think about her if she did otherwise, this translates to her views on judgment and social norms that are both rooted in the people's expectations of others.
There is an interesting combination, in Esther's psychological profile, of a more general existential despair ("what is the point of washing your hair if it's just going to get dirty again?" "what's the point of living if we just die in the end?") mixed with a much more culturally specific, gender-based despair ("what is the point of getting good grades and scholarships to writing programs if I'm just going to take dictation from some man using shorthand?"). In some ways, her "issues" are with specific, gendered obstacles and double standards in her society, and in other ways she is despairing about life itself.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting points. One thing that could have broken her despair would be meeting Dr. Nolan. I think that having her as a figure to look up to was really useful for her and perhaps helped her see that despite the constraints on her as a woman, she has people she can look up to as professionals who did succeed and who can mentor her (Dr. Nolan quite literally since she was in fact counselling her). Great job connecting different elements of the book!
ReplyDelete