NAFF_Online -
Meyer, A “Expulsion/retreat of the sensitive-contradictory in American autobiographical narrative: The bell jar, Girl interrupted, and Prozac nation", NAFF_Online 5.1 (2007): pp. 16-20.
Esther’s symptomatic discourse in The Bell Jar (1988) displays the confusing understandings of a sensitive-contradictory (sensidictory) personality. The sensidictory personality is both overwhelmed and underwhelmed by expectations placed upon it by itself, and the world around it, creating attachment and detachment cycles and seemingly ‘schizoid’ motivations. The sensidictory is also infinitely sensitive and can only survive by means of expulsion or retreat. Forms of this are creative expression (writing), self-destructive behaviour, and ultimately suicide. These manifestations of expel/retreat may also occur when the sensidictory self projects the part of itself that contradicts the orthodoxy, and is rejected or misunderstood for it. It is this side of the self, the repressed, which is often criticised negatively, due to the angry strength of its frustration and/or its radicalism. The evolution of the sensidictory self can be tracked through The Bell Jar, in the character of Esther, and through the connections to the autobiographical material of Sylvia Plath. It can also be related to Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted (2003) and Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation (2002). It will be examined in relation to internal artistic drives and the influence of an American context.
The symptomatic discourse (Buntzen 1983) in The Bell Jar is due to the ‘sensidictory’ (sensitive-contradictory) personality working through the confusion of its hard-hitting and contradictory conclusions. The reader is privy to Esther’s thought patterns which offer no diagnosis, as Plath received no diagnosis in the course of her life (Plath 1982). The novel acts to open communication lines to the reader, to offer them a point of view that is both overwhelmed and underwhelmed by the its contextual world (20th century America), and by itself. It is both self-propelling and influenced by contextual factors - historical/cultural, political/societal, and familial/sexual:
If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days (Plath 1998, p. 89).
This comment to Buddy Willard in The Bell Jar displays Esther’s awareness of her contradictory condition. The other aspect of this personality is, besides its duality, its sensitivity. The details that surround it are infinitely noticeable, and hence, the personality becomes overwhelmed or underwhelmed, causing the necessity to expel or retreat. The overwhelm/underwhelm are contradictions on their own but the sensidictory can evoke these simultaneously. An example is Esther’s reaction to the death of the Rosenbergs. She is both underwhelmed by the lack of sensitivity in others, and overwhelmed by the feelings in herself. The way Esther notices everything can be exemplified in her descriptiveness in the Rosenberg opening: ‘By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream’ (p. 1). In this case the overload causes Esther to be underwhelmed or ‘numbed’ - ‘I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo’ (p. 3).
The giant political issue of the Rosenbergs contradicts the plasticity of the fashion magazine she is working at: ‘These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sun roof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up their Bermuda tans...’ (p. 4). As a result, the sensidictory Esther retreats into herself. As will be further discussed, the sensidictory tries in many ways to escape itself. One part might represent empathy for the Rosenbergs, whereas another part ‘...like[s] feeling almost naked on the hot summer nights’ (p. 7). As the sensibilities exist simultaneously the personality eventually becomes so over/underwhelmed they need to expel or retreat. To expel or retreat one can write (as is Esther’s goal), one can indulge in sex, alcohol, drugs, or therapy, and at the extreme, one can commit suicide (Esther eventually tries).
Buntzen (1983) might call this an ‘adolescent’ crisis, but when tied into the autobiographical material of Plath (1982) it can be noted that the sensidictory is a persistent being, constantly affected by its context. Edward Butscher refers to (speaking of Sylvia Plath) the part of the personality she wanted to get away from, also the voice of her most effective art - ‘the bitch goddess’ (1977, p. 15). He called it ‘...a repressed creature of awesome Freudian dimensions’ (p. 15). He also noted that ‘[h]er selves were distinct, equally real, but they did emanate from the same narcissistic basement where the bitch goddess remained in chains’ (p. 15). While this does emphasise the strength of this self nestled the sensidictory, it negativises it. The use of the word ‘bitch’ is derogative, exposing the fact that Butscher sees the repressed and angered self as feminine. The repressed self might actually be angered due to the sexual and social factors that don’t allow it to publicly or socially display natural frustration and anger. This will be further discussed. Plath is also often seen negatively for some of the references in her poetry ‘...she makes no distinction between her tragedy and those of Auschwitz or Nagasaki’ (Phillips 1977, p. 187). This is in reference to the poem Daddy, and the fact that the name ‘Esther’ is that of a Jewish Queen. What can be argued in favour of the sensidictory personality is that this displays the sensitivity to which the sensidictory is affected. The depth of what she feels is so great that she must consciously link it to great tragedy so that the reader may have some grasp.
While it may be an offence to new criticism, the link between author and text in The Bell Jar cannot be disputed. As you will see, in Esther, Plath is performing her own expulsion of the repressed side of the sensidictory. She is also ‘retreating’ by fictionalising her account. The author’s inseparability from the autobiographical material of The Bell Jar can be noted textually in the characters of Doreen and Betsy. As Gordon Lameyer notes:
The Bell Jar is full of 'doubles', mirror images that polarise the attitudes of the heroine toward herself and toward others. Some of the 'doubles' are positive and innocent, while others represent antipathies or the repressed, libidinal urges of the heroine (1977, p. 144).
Thus, Esther’s contradictory sides (and Plath’s divisions) are expressed in her relations to oppositional characters. At first Esther is attracted to the wild and sexual Doreen: ‘Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my bones’ (Plath p. 7). But when Doreen tips the balance, Esther reverts to the nice and stable Betsy:
I made a decision about Doreen that night. I decided I would watch her and listen to what she said, but deep down I would... be loyal to Betsy and her innocent friends. It was Betsy I resembled at heart (p. 21).
As a narrative device, Plath has introduced binary forces in the novel which could be seen as strong literary technique but also as her own expression of the sensidictory. As will be discussed, she later brings in the historical/cultural, political/societal, and familial/sexual in relation to Esther. And Esther often comes to the level of expel/retreat, as Lameyer notes:
Feeling herself immobilised and unable to do either what she should or what she shouldn’t, Esther retreats to either lying in her bed or in the long grass in Central park (p. 149, emphasis added).
The conflicting and urgent drives bringing her to this level can also be seen when Esther compares her life to a ‘fig tree’ (Plath 1988, p. 73). She sees the choices for her future spread out as fruit on the tree, but she remains ‘…sitting in the crotch… starving to death’ because she desires every fig and cannot choose one. Her frustration is evident as she imagines the figs wrinkle and fall to the ground at her feet. This ‘all or nothing’ approach is relational to the overwhelmed nature of the sensidictory. Later, Esther’s expulsion/retreat methods include sexual desire, writing, and self-annihilation.
The evidence of autobiography can also be supported by the reaction of some to the novel. The Bell Jar was ‘... a publication Aurelia Plath [Sylvia’s mother] wanted to prevent on the grounds that this was a voice in which Plath had not wanted to recognise herself’ (p. 108). Note here the mother’s denial and ultimate confirmation of the sensidictory. She chooses only to see the orthodoxically ‘pleasant’ side of her daughter’s personality. She believes the work an act of expulsion as she believes it expresses a side of Plath she did not want to recognise in even herself! This very rejection of the expression of inner and deeply felt truths by the sensidictory may also be what leads to expulsion/retreat - the inability of others to realise the complexity of self. When the surfaces are rubbed away and the rawness is exposed in communication or art; only to be ignored, rejected, or further contradicted; this leads to expulsion/retreat. A couple of paragraphs from Plath’s own diaries can emphasise this fact:
[W]hen such implicit belief is placed in another person, it is indeed shattering to realise that a part of what to you was such a rich, intricate, whole conception of life has been tossed off carelessly, lightly - it is then that a stunned, inarticulate numbness paralyses words, only to give way later to a deep hurt (Plath 1982, p. 29).
This evidences the effect of exposing a sensidictory truth to another person, and having it rejected - ‘tossed off carelessly, lightly’, thus, the contradiction of opinion is sensitively felt, at first in an underwhelming manner ‘stunned, inarticulate numbness’, later to give way to an overwhelming ‘deep hurt’. In a lighter moment, Plath is still aware of her contradictions, ‘I couldn’t drown. I suppose I’ll always be overvulnerable, slightly paranoid. But I’m also so damn healthy and resilient. And apple-pie happy!’ (p. 152). Note the use of the word ‘overvulnerable’. In another passage she calls it her ‘tremulous sensitivity’ (p. 31). Thus, the symptomatic discourse of Esther is in part Plath’s expressions of her own sensidictory self. She cleverly utilises narrative devices such as character contrast and binary oppositions to emphasise the themes and create structure and readability. The ultimatum is the bell jar descending and the suicide, which will be discussed.
Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted (2003) and Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation (2002) are two other American autobiographical texts that display sensidictory personalities. Further will be mentioned on whether the changing contexts (historical/cultural, political/societal, and familial/sexual) have effected the creation and the manifestations of the personality, but first, evidence will be presented for its existence. Kaysen’s own word for it is ‘velocity’:
[V]elocity endows every platelet and muscle fibre with a mind of its own, a means of knowing and commenting on its own behaviours. There is too much perception, a plethora of thoughts about the perceptions and about the fact of having perceptions (2003, p. 75, emphasis added).
Kaysen, admitted to McLean hospital in 1967 (the same hospital Plath was treated), was actually diagnosed with having Borderline Personality Disorder, which is suggestive of ambivalence and neurosis. Kaysen did attempt suicide but she sees the diagnosis (years later) as still open to interpretation (p. 147-159). This is mainly due to contextual factors (sexual, social). However, it does mean that her text is also symptomatic. The reader follows her experiences in a mental institution in the late sixties, and is left with possible but indefinite answers as to her condition.
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoir is more laconic and conversational, a cultural factor, and she was given a scientific diagnosis eventually of depression. While it is not bipolar, Elizabeth does experience manic episodes, but the split, the contradictions between what she is, and what she wants to be, as well as her sensitivity, are evidence of the sensidictory: ‘My God, where on earth do I have to go to get away from me?’ (2002, p. 95). The sensitivity is also evidenced here: ‘My gifts are for life itself, for an unfortunately astute understanding of all the cruelty and pain in the world’ (p. 201, emphasis added). Elizabeth is exposed to further means of expulsion/retreat than Esther and Susanna; blatant self-mutilation, an avalanche of drugs, promiscuous sex, escaping to another country, therapy, medication, and finally a suicide attempt. Music and writing are there, but she only truly expels in the writing of the memoir (often criticised as being precocious and self-absorbed (as in Marlan 1996)). As in The Bell Jar, the contradictions and confusions of the sensidictory are rooted in the very structure of the book. It is also thus, still symptomatic, despite her diagnosis:
Wurtzel gestures towards providing and etiology without carrying it through...[a]lso baffling is the formal construction of the book; italicised episodes seem to indicate some shift... which is neither temporal, nor spatial, nor emotional (Marlan 1996, p. 96).
Thus the reader is still invited into the sensidictory experience, to share its ‘astute understandings’ and its confusions. While both the authors’ experiences were partly in adolescence, they have written their memoirs after the fact and both admit to not being ‘cured’ as such, more ‘…patched, retreaded and approved for the road’ (Plath 1988, p. 233) as Esther expresses it at the end of The Bell Jar. Years on, writing the memoirs, they are still fighting, in an acceptance of the need for continual expulsion/retreat. It is reminiscent of Esther’s mother telling her to act as though it were all a bad dream (Plath 1988, p. 227) but to her, the world was the ‘bad dream’, but it, and her experiences, become her ‘landscape’.