"Like" or "as" and more

More so than in previous novels, Housekeeping is full of comparisons, metaphors, and similes. This is how Ruth guides the reader through her world and life.

"I saw the three of us posed in all the open doors of an endless train of freight cars--innumerable, rapid, identical images that produced a flickering illusion of both movement and stasis, as the pictures in a kinetoscope do."

"It seemed then and always to be the elaboration and ornamentation of the consensus between them, which was as intricate and well-tended as a termite castle."

She also uses them to describe her philosophies.

"...memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows."

"For even things lost in a house abide, like forgotten sorrows and incipient dreams, and many household things are of purely sentimental value, like the dim coil of thick hair, saved from my grandmother's girlhood...In the equal light of disinterested scrutiny such things are not themselves. They are transformed into pure object, and are horrible, and must be burned."

Not only do these comparisons give us insight into whatever Ruth is describing, but also into Ruth herself. They tell us a bit about Ruth's character. I feel that Ruth is able to make all of these connections because she sees everything in her world as interconnected. Like Sylvie, (and unlike Lucille) Ruth is more willing to blur the boundary between humans and nature. The use of comparisons also suggest a strong familiarity--almost mastery--of her world. She has observed enough of the world to make all these connections.

She is also so unlike the other protagonists in the novels we've read. She is almost the opposite of Stephen the artist, who maintains a distance from the world, his subject. Unlike Holden, she never feels lonely and is not too interested in other people. And unlike Esther (aside from not being depressed) she never has to face a conflict between what she wants and what society expects of women. I suppose she has to face society's ill-will towards transients, but it does not bother her like Esther. Whether or not we can attribute these differences between Ruth and the other protagonists to location, circumstance, or personality, it still makes Ruth a very unique and interesting person.

Mind and Body

Twice in the novel does Esther use the phrase "I am I am I am.": once in Chapter 13 and again in Chapter 20. These two phrases (the first without commas and the second with) mean two very different things in context. In Chapter 13, Esther is fighting against her body as she tries to commit suicide by drowning and then by hanging. Esther sees her body as separate from her self. She notes her heart beating "I am I am I am" as she unsuccessfully attempts to drown herself. While Esther does not have a will to live, her body affirms its existence with "I am I am I am." She again tries to commit suicide by hanging, but again her body thwarts her: "Then I saw that my body had all sorts of little tricks, such as making my hands go limp at the crucial second, which would save it, time and again, whereas if I had the whole say, I would be dead in a flash. I would simply have to ambush it with whatever sense I had left, or it would trap me in its stupid cage for fifty years without any sense at all." She even gets books on "abnormal psychology" to match symptoms and better understand her body: "I could learn all I needed to know about my case to end it in the proper way." However, it seems she starts doubting herself and agreeing with her body as she wonders whether or not to just turn herself into a psychiatric facility. She is told to volunteer at a hospital to distract herself and thinks about going to church to be convinced of not committing suicide. However, she eventually decides to attempt once more to kill herself with sleeping pills after seeing her father's grave. Again she is unsuccessful and is moved to a psychiatric facility.

The other time the phrase "I am, I am, I am." comes up is when Esther is at Joan's funeral. This time, Esther seems much more in tune with her body: "I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart." That she anthropomorphizes her body ("old brag") suggests better knowledge and familiarity with it--not surprising considering she has just experienced sex for the first time. Perhaps her heart is bragging because Esther has just had a friend of hers die. While Esther was seeking death earlier with a curious fascination, she now sees the reality of death and is drawn away from it.

I think Esther's loss of her morbid curiosity shows how she has progressed since the beginning of the novel. This might not be a typical development in coming-of-age novels, but Esther is also not a typical girl.

Freedom

Throughout the novel, Esther has been plagued by society's expectations for her, as a woman, to remain pure for a man. Constrictive like the bell jar over Esther, these expectations contribute in some part to her depression. However, in Chapter 18, she decides to take action. She is inspired by Dr. Gordon's denouncing the article "In Defense of Chastity" written by a "married woman lawyer with children."

Esther decides to get fitted for birth control. After doing so, she gains a sense of self-ownership, breaking away from society's expectations: "I was my own woman." No longer worrying about having a baby, Esther decides to lose her virginity on her own terms, so that society can't hold that over her: "The next step was to find the proper sort of man." And that she does. She meets Irwin, a young intelligent math professor with plenty of sexual experience who meets Esther's criteria. After seeing him and his study, she "decide[s] to seduce him." This is quite the opposite of her encounter with Constantin, whom she lets seduce her. Esther is much more in control, in some ways going against what society expects of her. When she actually has sex, she is surprised, having expected a "miraculous change to make itself felt," similar to Stephen. What changes happened to her were not through some miracle, but through herself. It is through her own actions that she was able to free herself from the constraints she felt society had on her. Now, without her virginity to worry about, Esther has removed the "millstone" from around her neck.

Despite Esther dealing with depression throughout most novel, I found these actions of hers a good sign that she is recovering, despite the ambiguous ending of the novel.

Before Plath, there was Gilman

While reading The Bell Jar, I was reminded of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (a very good book, by the way). The Yellow Wallpaper depicts a woman suffering from postpartum psychosis as she descends into madness. Her husband, a physician, suggests she go on a rest cure to relieve her suffering. Deprived of any stimulation, the woman slowly goes mad as she becomes fixated on the yellow wallpaper of the bedroom. The novel ends with her walking in circles around her room, tearing down the wallpaper, which she believes is trapping a woman on the other side.

The rest cure was commonly used in the 19th century, having been created by Silas Weir Mitchell. It was mostly prescribed to women suffering from depression or hysteria. It involved keeping the patient in bed and denying them any mental or physical stimuli. Unfortunately, the cure was not very effective and caused many patients' conditions to worsen, leading to insanity or death. Gilman herself, suffering from postpartum depression, was prescribed the rest cure by Silas Mitchell, who told her to live "as domestic a life as possible." Gilman depression worsened, and she eventually took herself off the treatment, noting immediate improvement. She soon wrote The Yellow Wallpaper.

Both novels contain elements of feminism and share many characteristics. I would say that the unnamed protagonist of The Yellow Wallpaper is the person who Esther is afraid she might become if she ends up in a traditional marriage. Similar to the scene of the birth in The Bell Jar, The Yellow Wallpaper criticizes the male-dominated medical profession and their methods. Gilman felt that the rest cure reflected men's beliefs on how a woman should be. She even sent a copy of her novel to Silas Mitchell, hoping to convince him of the error of his ways. The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper also looks negatively upon marriage, similar to Esther. Both protagonists suffer from mental illnesses aggravated by outside factors, which the respective author criticizes. These similarities between the books are not surprising. Gilman was one of the first feminist writers, and probably served as a model for later writers like Plath. Whether Plath will end her novel like Gilman did, I look forward to finding out.