Patriarchy In Doctor Gordon's The Bell Jar

Both characters experience treatment that parallels the oppression they are faced by society. In ‘The Bell Jar’, Doctor Gordon, represents the universal presence of patriarchy in society, where men are completely dominant and women’s voices are silenced. He is an influence on Esther’s psyche and displays the same lack of empathy as John, when seeing Esther and her failure to make any progress. Esther’s desperate alternatives are either shock therapy or suicide. The shock therapy is seen to be inhumane as Esther experiences it at the private hospital. Doctor Gordon does not know anything about Esther and does not seem to feel the need to ‘care’ about her illness but to cure her without engaging with her thoroughly. For example, he disregards

Despite this making her condition as worse as it already is, she is still unsuccessful in ending her life. Esther’s attempts at suicide show that there are no reasonable alternatives to relieve suffering. Comparing shock treatments and committing a suicide, a suicide seems to be an alternative. This is because it is shown to be more preferable as she can control what happens to her, how it happens, and how it will feel. Esther crawling relates back to the woman who crawls at night in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. She is first mentioned when she is described as ‘a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern’ and ‘it creeps so slowly’. (87) The narrator knows that she has to lie low and ‘creep’ to be part of society and not be caught. The creeping woman becomes increasingly physical further on, as she is tempted to escape – “she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard”. (91) A reader would say that this woman is going mad but it becomes apparent that the woman in the wallpaper, behind the ‘bars’, represents women who have been suppressed by patriarchal society itself. Being behind the

Being trapped in ‘a big airy room’ where the windows are constantly looking down on her, signify a sense of entrapment. It juxtaposes the idea that the narrator can see what she wants – “Out of one window, I can see the garden, those mysterious deep shaded arbors, the riotous old fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees”. (83) The garden is seen to be a symbol of earth or even society; it is also beautiful which suggests the freedom she could have. The use of ‘mysterious’ could indicate that the possibilities women may have, are still undiscovered. The quotation above juxtaposes what she the narrator from the other window, “out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the state”. (83) The bay is a private estate which could suggest that this section of society is forbidden to women as she can only see this through her window. Moreover, the imagery and narration makes the reader feel as if they are alongside the narrator. Plath uses images of rotting fig trees, similar to the dark imagery of the garden, to convey the desperation Esther feels when confronted with issues of her future. This indecisiveness confuses her mind as she considers different life paths such as a wife, shorthand writer, waitress, etc. – “from the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a