The Importance of Esther and Buddy’s final meeting in The Bell Jar

 One of my favorite scenes in The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, is when Buddy and Esther meet again, once Esther is in remission from her crushing, reality-distorting depressive breakdown. Prior to Esther’s ultimate test of readiness to return to society, it probes the extent of her recovery and character development. Esther has sorted out her feelings for Buddy, feeling happy to only feel a sort of “amiable boredom” (p238) towards him. She does not need him in any way, but she doesn’t hate him either. She has moved on—this is an active improvement in their relationship before their breakdown, when he brought up many conflicting emotions in her, by virtue of her feeling betrayed by him but unable to properly break up with him. This demonstrates that her healing from her illness has actually extended to bettering her life in broader ways, with Dr Nolan helping her feel more comfortable with her own sexuality by getting her access to birth control. 

 

The prior gender roles and patient/doctor roles of their relationship are reversed. As mentioned in class discussion, Esther herself says that “Buddy did let [her] do most of the work” (p238) of digging his car out of the snow, showing her own physical strength and her goodwill towards Buddy. This second aspect is particularly compelling given that Esther spends a large part of the book having somewhat garish, cruelly caricaturing opinions on most people she meets, including Buddy, and treating others in a somewhat utilitarian fashion. This act of kindness demonstrates that she is getting better.

 

Without a doubt, the single crowning moment of this scene is when Esther reassures Buddy that it isn’t his fault that she and Joan had crisis-level mental illness. We see that Esther is able to apply what Dr Nolan has taught her in her interactions with other people: it is Dr Nolan’s assurance that she did not cause Joan’s suicide that surfaces when Buddy asks if he partially caused her and Joan’s breakdowns, and it inspires her to speak confidently and directly. Esther says “‘You had nothing to do with it, Buddy,’” (p240) and says she is absolutely sure when pressed. This blunt tone, together with the by-name address as a symbol of respect to Buddy, show that she is genuinely trying to help him here, and that she believes what she is saying. Being able to apply her doctor’s guidance like this is also another sign that she is recovering, and that her stay in the asylum has let her develop her character, not just return to what she was before. 

 

Knowing that Buddy, while far from perfect, is not entirely to blame, is also a marked improvement on Esther’s previous behavior: when she was first sent to the state hospital, she viciously kicked the man who was serving them two different kinds of beans with the meal. When Esther narrated “Now I knew perfectly well you didn’t serve two kinds of beans together at a meal. … [He] was just trying to see how much we would take.” (p181), we can see that she clearly, and without proper justification, felt like the victim in this situation: she clearly thought that her common sense was under scrutiny, and thus defended her knowledge of mealtime norms, and she thought that the server was deliberately conspiring against her and trying to annoy her. This victimization is clearly irrational and a symptom of her illness. It is almost certain that the man did not choose to serve them two kinds of beans, and was simply assigned to do it. Personally, I think Esther also kicked him because she is angry about her illness and being trapped in the state hospital, and she expressed this by punching down. She chose the server because he was Black in the 1950s, and likely new to the job, meaning that she could get away with picking on him and treating him with disrespect, whereas she might have been punished more severely for kicking the nurse. In contrast, by the end of the book Esther does not think Buddy was trying to hurt her, showing that her paranoia has receded; she also actively discourages him from blaming himself, demonstrating increased emotional maturity on her part.  

 

I previously mentioned that the patient/doctor roles of their relationship are reversed in this scene. To go into that in more depth, Esther is the one listening to and comforting Buddy, the doctor, using the techniques her doctor taught her, putting her in somewhat of the doctor/caretaker role, while Buddy, seeking reassurance, is the patient. This is obviously ironic considering their positions as a psychiatric patient and a medical student respectively, but it becomes especially so when we consider that Buddy somewhat unkindly applied the psychological tests he learned to her, telling her that she was neurotic. Esther also felt threatened by the husband/wife doctor/patient dynamic, because she viewed matrimony and associated motherhood as a brainwashing cult wherein women were forced to give up their careers and personalities, to merely become “Mrs. Buddy Willard” (p92) as the case may be. This was especially clear when Buddy smiled after telling her she couldn’t go back up to ski again because she had broken her leg. This “queer, satisfied expression” (p98) on his face may have been because they were conforming to the doctor/patient relationship he might have expected, where he again has power over her, and her stubbornness is irrational and inconsequential in the wake of his steely dictation of reality. 

 

Esther’s control of her own body through her access to birth control empowers her in an oppressive, patriarchal society, allowing her to clean up the loose ends of her one-night stand with another man and feel “perfectly free” (p242) afterwards. This, and her lack of romantic attachment to Buddy, dissolves the previous husband/wife imbalance, and her application of Dr Nolan’s advice to Buddy subverts their doctor/patient relationship, allowing them to have a meeting between equals, in some sense, and so in granting Buddy’s guilt closure, Esther gains closure herself. Overall, this scene is the best evidence that promises to the reader that Esther will be approved to go back to university and re-integrate into public life once she crosses the threshold.