Defining Experience on the Basis of Autonomy

The frame of Plath’s The Bell Jar is very determinant of the manner in which one is inclined to define “experience” in regards to the fictional world she expresses and the one in which we live as real individuals.

Significant notes in regards to this ideal can be witnessed through several events that occur to Esther within the framework of the narrative. In the beginning and certainly towards the body of the novel, Esther endures significant anxiety in regards towards her indecision, leading to developed insomnia as well lethargic tendencies. Seeking help for these conditions, Esther is referred to psychiatrist Dr. Gordon. Following this referral, several key points need to be acknowledged. (1) Esther has voluntarily sought help in the form of a psychiatrist, (2) significant individuals around Esther do not seek to treat but simply automatically cure her, and (3) at some point, formal psychiatric agencies take over Esther’s life and means of self-control. These facts all assist us while defining personal experience in this fictional world, while also allowing us to gain insight to define experience in our real setting.

It is duly noted that Esther sought voluntary medical attention after her referral to Dr. Gordon; After all, she was referred not forced into his office. Upon their first and second meeting, however, it is apparent that Gordon’s method of treatment is not treatment at all, but simply a form of medicine in which the patient is not understood and instead is jolted back into “normal” behavior through horrifying means. “Something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant. I wondered what terrible thing I had done.” (Plath, 143) At the time in which this novel takes place, medicine was not so advanced, and the benefits of shock treatment had no “medical” foundation. This treatment was simply a way in which patients were scared into behaving in a normal societal fashion, forced to behave in a manner which society deemed appropriate, forced to conform to the “norm”.

Following the failed shock treatment, feeling as if no person is seeking to understand her, and understanding that no psychiatric facility can cure her, Esther slips into a manic bout of depression and plots her own suicide, the most significant attempt occurring when she swallows a bottle of sleeping pills and is taken to the city medical center, and then to a public mental health facility. There is a crucial element to these occurrences that one must understand to better define “experience”, and that is that Esther did NOT voluntarily move herself from the ER to the psychiatric center, it was done out of automatic accord and circumstances that were completely out of control. “I had pretended I didn’t know why they were moving me from the hospital in my home town to a city hospital, to see what they would say. ‘They want you to be in a special ward,’ my mother said. ‘They don’t have that sort of ward at our hospital.’ ‘I liked where I was.’ My mother’s mouth tightened. ‘You should have behaved better then.’ ‘What?’ ‘You shouldn’t have broken that mirror. Then maybe they’d have let you stay.’ But of course I knew the mirror had nothing to do with it.” (Plath 175-176) It can be inferred from this passage that Esther was moved by doctors to the city hospital because she was still not acting in a way in which society thought appropriate.

Based on these facts, that Esther began life with self-control and this control was slowly taken away by formal agencies of the fictional setting when she did not conform her behaviors to those of the “normal population,” help us to identify “experience” for persons in this fictional realm as such: the undergoing, recounting, or observation of events deemed appropriate to the norms of society, acting within set and proper bounds, with failure to do so resulting in the loss of one’s autonomy.

Because instances of such abstraction of independence can often be seen through the interactions of formal governances and the common population in today’s society, I would count this definition as accurate of “experience” in the modern era as well, although perhaps not on such a dramatic scale. Individuals may be held involuntarily on the basis of physical threat to themselves in today’s society, as well as those acting out of accordance with the formal rules of common society. These formal deviants are held in total institutions such as prisons or psychiatric hospitals upon the foundations of nonconformity, lending more emphasis to the given definition.

The Anxiety of Indecision

As college students, it is likely that we have experienced the strain of anxiety in regards to making significant decisions in our lives. Decisions that will, in fact, shape our futures in considerable ways. I recently felt this burden when deciding what college I would be attending in the fall semester of my freshman year. In my family, it’s expected that you’re to go to college; I never felt I had a choice in that regard. However, I had something that no one in my family had ever held before—straight A’s and internal academic motivation. Aided by these traits, I was accepted to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. I thought it was the school of my dreams. Ivy college, one of the sister schools, it was exactly the type of institution my family had always dreamed I would attend. But therein lied the problem: my FAMILY had dreamed I would attend. However, as the days after my acceptance turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, I realized I was unhappy. I was unhappy that I would be without my family, I felt like I was being pressured into this decision, and I didn’t know what to do. I had also been accepted to the University of Florida, a school closer to home with an impressive academic standing as well. In the end I decided against Smith, and thereby rebelled against my family’s wishes.

On a somewhat smaller scale, I understand what Esther was feeling when she just couldn’t decide what she wanted out of her life. Everyone around her held expectations as to what she should adopt as a career, who she should marry, and how she should fill her role as a subservient housewife. I had no idea what was going to happen in my future as well. I very much felt like I was “…Sitting in the crotch of a fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.” (Plath, 77) In the end I chose a fig that best suited me. It’s tragic that Plath couldn’t do the same in her own life, and expressed this pain through her literary persona, Esther.