Mirrors
“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.” There is a sense of truth in such words, perhaps grounded in reality or grounded in experience but for the most part, an echo of introspection. It is difficult to maintain one’s sanity. It is fleeting, yet ever threatening, an ally in the sun, a stranger in the moonlight, and a fiend in the darkness. The laughing stock of a bad joke, poorly written in haste, and yet essential to the whole, destabilized by its own weakness. What can be said of the advent of its acquaintances? That which is loneliness and that which is isolation. In the mind, the world is no longer a dream, it is inexistent. You can feel the warmth of the sun, and the cool breeze of the ocean air but the sun and the ocean are no longer there. Like the fig tree in Esther’s memories, the city presents every possibility for an individual’s life but in the end, only serves to destabilize the mind, distorting the way it perceives what is in front of it as it ushers it into madness.
In both, The Bell Jar and Woman Warrior, the city serves as destabilizing agent, a catalyst, for distorted perceptions and descent into madness. In The Bell Jar, Esther’s decent into madness is brought into the light through the isolation and loneliness she experiences as well as the veil of insincerity that is draped over New York and society. She is an intelligent but naïve person, who has a tough time connecting because her natural way of being is essentially unnatural for society at this time. She knows she should be enjoying herself as well as having the time of her life but she simply cannot bring herself to do so. The problem for Esther is that she simply does not fit the mold that has been built for her and the women of her time. She is a woman, and as woman is expected to live her life in a particular fashion. Esther is expected to be cheery, happy, confident, and ready to settle down and start a family but...