One of the things that struck me as strange and a little morbid
about the opening of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar was Esther’s obsession
with the Rosenbergs. Reading more of the novel and doing some additional
research has added more dimensions to this detail, with worrying implications.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a married couple who lived in New
York City and were executed on June 19, 1953 after being charged with
conspiracy to commit espionage and transmit information regarding military
technologies to the Soviet Union. The method used in their execution was the electric
chair. It is not immediately clear why Esther is so empathetic, but throughout
the following chapters we see her describe herself again and again as an
imposter in New York City. She’s been presenting herself for years as the
smart, hardworking student who aspires to go to graduate school and write
poetry, and feels like she’s been exposed as a fake when she realizes in her
conversation with Jay Cee that that’s not who she is anymore. She even says
when thinking back on the conversation later “I had been unmasked only that
morning by Jay Cee herself and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicious
I had about myself were coming true, and I couldn’t hide the truth much longer”
(29). Esther also describes herself as having an acute awareness of how to
present herself as someone she’s not.
I’d
discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that
if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew
perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody
will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are
original and witty. (27)
It’s possible
that Esther’s feelings of being an imposter and not belonging in New York City
are connected to her empathy towards the Rosenbergs and fascination with their
execution.
There might also be some dark
foreshadowing here. Knowing that The Bell Jar is semi-autobiographical,
I learned a little bit about Sylvia Plath to see if that would provide any
insights into this scene. Much like Esther, Plath was studious, excelled
academically, and spent a month in New York City as a guest editor at Mademoiselle
magazine after her junior year of college. It was during this experience
that Plath first experienced the depression that would affect her for the rest
of her life. She began electroconvulsive therapy to treat her depression, but
would still make her first documented suicide attempt later that summer. I
wonder if these events will be depicted in the novel, and if Esther’s fixation
on what electrocution would feel like is connected to this treatment that the
person her character is based on undergoes.
I might be reading too much into
this opening scene, but given how Esther is feeling like an imposter and that
Plath, who was treated using electroconvulsive therapy is depicting Esther, a
character based on herself, as obsessed with electrocution, it seemed like too
much to ignore. The opening paragraphs were disturbing when we read them the
first time. Rereading them with this new information, I am getting even more
worried about Esther.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
I definitely agree with a lot of the details you pointed out. The fact that Plath opens her novel with such a morbid thought is extremely telling. From early on, we get the sense that Esther is already becoming acquaintances with death. I've never made the connection about Esther feeling like an imposter and the Rosenbergs though, which I think is really interesting. The fact that the Rosenbergs, known imposters, get electrocuted and Esther who feels like an imposter also gets shock therapy doesn't seem like a coincidence.
ReplyDeleteThere definitely is a correlation between the Rosenbergs and Esther, not only in that they are both "living fake lives", but also they are electrocuted in the chair. However, it is weird that it is something that stays on her mind even before she gets shocked.
ReplyDeleteThe Rosenberg executions work conveniently to place this narrative in a clear historical context--it is *this* summer that the story takes place--but as you suggest, the prominent allusion in the first sentence of the book, and the fact that the story pops up again later, to reflect just how out of touch Esther feels around her fellow guest editors, suggests that it's more than just historical context. The fact that Esther will later experience "electrocution" herself is relevant--as is the connection to the cadaver, which we associate with Buddy and her troubling insights about the male-dominated medical profession, and by extension to her strong reaction against Dr. Gordon. I hadn't thought of the Rosenberg story and the issue of identity, being "unmasked," and experiencing herself as a kind of interloper or intruder onto this NY fashion scene, before. Issues of identity are foregrounded throughout the novel, and the Rosenbergs are part of that.
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