The End of the Bell Jar

In chapter 19 Joan leaves Belsize to go live with a nurse at Cambridge. Esther is scheduled to leave the asylum in a few months but however finds herself envious of Joan's departure. One day while Esther is out on the town she meets a man named Irwin. He so happens to be a math professor. The tow soon go out for coffee and then they return to Irwin's to have a nice pint of beer. Esther and irwin then go out for dinner that night and she gets permission from Dr. Nolan to stay at Joan's apartment at Cambridge. After the two have dinner they return to his apartment where the deflowering begins. Esther has the urge to sleep with this man becasue it's the first normal and descent man she has met in a while and she finally feels normal again. She says in the book, " I had been defending it for five years and i was sick of it." She is talking about her virginity and she feels as if it is just weighing her down so as soon as she does have sex everything will change and be better. After the two have sex irwin goes to take a shower while Esther feels like a liquid is seeping out of her. She discovers that it is blood and once she doesn't stop bleeding irwin drives her to the hospital. So to say the least i don't think it was a very enjoyable experience for Esther. She didn't have this great revelation like she thought she was going to and to her it hurt. Later on in chapter 20 irwin asks if she will see him again and she replies by saying never so I don't think that night is what she had in mind. 

Almost There

In chapter 17 Esther switches asylums from Caplan to Belsize. At Belsize the women have more freedom and Esther heard that Joan had shopping privileges and she could go out and even call her husband if she wanted to. The women at Belsize are normal and aren't always all depressed from shock treatments because they don't get them. We first see Esther compare her life to a bell jar in chapter 15 when she is talking about how she should be grateful to Mrs. Guinea but she didn't know how to be and she didn't fell "anything". Esther feels like no matter what happens, if she would fly away to paris and start a new life or go any place in the world it wouldn't matter she would still feel trapped. In chapter 18 before she gets the ability to move asylum's she gets her last shock treatment. At first she is really mad at Dr. Nolan for not telling her but the doctor says that she didn't tell her because she didn't want her to be worried about it. Esther gets the shock treatment but during the process she falls unconscious. Esther wakes up and she all of a sudden feels better. esther says that she feels like the bell jar has been lifts a few feet above her head and she is no longer trapped directly under it. She starts feeling less depressed and starts getting the shock treatments 3 times a week. She no longer feels like her sickness is just lingering behind her. 

Chapter 13-14 did the wrong blog for friday

The big problem with Esther is that she can't seem to shake what happened between her and Marco the other night. It has such an impact on her mental mind-state that in chapter 14 she tries to kill herself by overdosing on pills. After her return home all this information and news starts darting at her left and right. Her mom gets on her back about being single, buddy won't leave her alone, she didn't get into the writing course at Cambridge, and she can't seem to get a grip on her life. everything is just going in a down ward spiral for her and she is trying to take the easy way out by killing herself. Esther doesn't stop thinking about death and the million ways for her to kill herself. She is in need of help but no one seems to care enough to help her. She can't get a grip on her life and doesn't want to face all the things she will have to go through in order to fix her problems. The Marco situation really messed with her and since she hasn't told anyone about it, I think it is eating her alive inside. i think if she could find someone who would allow her to get everything off her chest and she wouldn't be judged for it then I think she would be a happier person in general. 

Esther is a looney

At Esther's new asylum she is very down on life and herself because the environment is very gloomy and dark. The nurses don't do their job very well at all. After Esther claims she is blind one of the nurses just tells her it is alright you will just find a blind husband. The nurses and the people around her cause her to think of death more frequently. The nurses are very impatient with their patients and in a mental hospital there needs to be positive reinforcement instead of making the patients be more down on themselves. The thought of killing herself still hasn't left her mind and she still thinks it as a noble act in some kind of way. She tries to kill herself because of how the asylum is and how they have only been making her worse. she hasn't gotten better and no one knows what's wrong with and aren't sure if they believe anything is. 

The Doctor

In chapter 10 Esther asks the family doctor Teresa for me sleeping pills and then she recommends a psychiatrist to her. She goes to see this psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, and hates him immediately. She thinks he is conceited and just likes to show off his perfect beautiful family. She doesn't like the doctor at all because she doesn't think he takes her seriously and he wants to give her shock treatment at one of his hospitals. In her second meeting with him she brings a letter to him that she tried to write to Doreen but her hand writing wasn't legible so she ripped it up. She thinks about running away to Chicago but realizes the bank will close before she can withdrawal any money. She decides to stop seeing the doctor after the shock treatment because of how crappy she feels. I think the doctor is hurting her because she still feels the same and then after the shock treatment she feels even worse. But she starts thinking about suicide and if it would matter if she were dead or not because she practically feels like it anyways. So i think she definitely needs some kind of help. 

Esther's Return

Chapter 9 and 10 are a little strange. After Esther's final night in New York she hops on he next train to Boston and returns home. Upon her return we get the sense that Esther is going a little insane. She is still wearing the cloths that Betsy gave her she still hasn't wiped the blood off of her face that Marco put there because she likes it for some odd reason. She gets home and all these thoughts start running through her mind. Jody calls her and Esther let's her know that she didn't get into the writing program at Cambridge and she wont be staying with her. She then gets a letter from Buddy telling her that he is falling in love with a nurse but if he goes quickly to see her, she has the chance of wining him back. Esther angered by the letter decides to cross the writing out, flip it over and write him back saying she is engaged. She then wants to start up a novel but she quickly runs out of ideas because of her lack of life experience. She shortly becomes very frustrated and very annoyed with everyone and everything around her. At on point in the novel she wants to strangle her mom because of how loud she is snoring. I think she is a little short tempered and more then annoyed and in need of sleeping pills because she still isn't over her violent night with Marco. He almost raped her and she almost allowed it to happen but then she punched his nose and she left. 

Esther and Constatine

In chapter seven Constantine comes to pick up Esther for their date to the UN building. During their dater they find out that neither of them really enjoy Mrs. Willard. Esther keeps this idea that if she sleeps with Constantine then it is as if her and Buddy are equals. So they whole date all Esther really wants is for Constantine to sleep with her. She is really hoping that Constantine will seduce her and she will get to experience sex instead of holding out for marriage like she was initially planning on doing. Constantine asks her to go back to his place and she gets a little excited. When the two are up in the room they started holding hands and drinking a little wine. This wasn't exactly how the moment played out in Esther's head. She started to get a little impatient so she asked Constantine if her had a girlfriend or if he was involved with anyone. He basically responded by saying no. the two sat on his bed when he finally fell asleep so Esther decided to join him. She woke up in the middle of the night to only find herself to be able to watch Constantine sleep. Although no sexual activity resulted in the night it was still a first for her and she thought it was interesting that Constantine made no direct move. 

Esther and Buddy

When Esther first meets Buddy she never really gets to see him or spend time with him. She only saw him on occasion at church when they were both home from college. their parents were friends in college and both married college professors. One time while they were at church Buddy came over to talk her and he told her that he might stop by during break. It shocked her up until the day it actually happened. Buddy came by to say hi and he told Esther that he had just hitch hiked all the way from Yale. When he came he told Esther that he was there because he was going to sophomore prom with Joan. As soon as that named left his lips there was a sense of bitterness the rest of the conversation from Esther. The real reason Buddy had stopped by was to ask her to Yale's junior prom. She was so excited to go. When they first started dating they were really happy with one another. A little bit after they started dating things got a little worse. She felt as though Buddy was trying to be this perfect little angel when all Esther wanted was for Buddy to be honest with her. Esther wants Buddy to think of her as an intelligent individual and someone that he can tell stuff to. 

Chemistry

In chapter three we find out that Esther had been called into the office to talk to Jay Cee while all the other girls were getting ready for the fur show. Jay Cee had called her in to see if Esther's mind was on track. Then Esther went off track, as usual, and began to talk about her physics class in college and how she was the only girl that received straight A's in the class. She then tells us how much she did not want to take chemistry and that she would do anything to get out of it. To be quite honest, I would have done the same thing. I think the whole reason why she refused to take chemistry because much like physics, it was out of her comfort zone. She says earlier on that when ever she picked up a german dictionary, "her mind shut like a clam.", learning german or taking a class that was going to be hard didn't seem to her like it would have much use. She was an English major and saw no need for taking some class that she would have to work extremely hard at. The reason i think she finds it so overwhelming is because it's like a foreign language to her and in the end it wont help her write poetry books and become an editor. 

The Bell Jar

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and i didn't know what i was doing in New York. The first line gives us the sense that Esther doesn't exactly know what her purpose is in New York. The mentioning of the Rosenbergs's execution in a way shows that nothing really that great happened during her stay. She has never been out of New England before this trip and she seems like she is getting more than annoyed with all the women around her who are living off of their husband and dad's salaries. She says that most women would kill for what she is doing, working for a fashion magazine and constantly partying, but she doesn't see all the hype surrounded by it. Her really only good friend as of now is Doreen. Doreen isn't that great of a friend because she is constantly getting drunk forcing Esther to take care of her and she is sort of a slut. Near the end of chapter two Esther decides that Doreen isn't the best person for her to be friends with so she decides to stop hanging out with her. When the two go to a bar with Lenny and Frankie we see just how uncomfortable Esther really is with the positions she gets placed in. When Lenny and Doreen are hooking up at Lenny's house Esther is just left watching and decides to just get up and go back to the hotel. She doesn't like the constant partying and being hit on by men like most of all the other girls like. 

Joan

Through out the film we see how many characters hold the values of the 1950's, Betty Warren being one of them. Joan on the other hand holds those values but only to a certain standard. She thinks she wants to get married but isn't sure. She is very convinced she wants to go to law school at Yale and she as been accepted. She would much rather go to school rather then get married which wasn't seen as proper for time. She decides not to tell anyone she has applied or even been accepted. She is torn and her action is not one that a proper woman of the 1950's would choose they would rather be married to and unhappy pleasing their man like Betty Warren. Joan doesn't constantly conform and is very open with how much she loves her boy friend. At one point of the movie when she decides to tell Betty about her acceptance to Yale we see the true joan. She doesn't exactly want to be excited about a washer and dryer but rather about a career. When she tells Betty she doesn't exactly get the response she was looking for and you can tell in her expressions that she isn't about to just conform to being a perfect little wife like her friend. 

The 1950;s

As of now the film Mona Lisa Smile portrays the 1950's very well. So far we have noticed that the family values are held within these women's lives. Each is well aware of what the perfect wife is to do and some are willing to conform to this perfect family image where some aren't. All of those married are only attending college while patiently waiting for their husbands to return from war. They are getting "Their MRS. degree". We saw that one of the characters was attending college and once she graduated she was suppose to merry, not really sure if that happens or not, but she is just trying to pass the time. The women are willing to be the ideal wife and not stand up for themselves. To me it depicts the society of the 1950's really well because once all the men returned form the war they were told to go back to being a wife instead of holding men jobs. They didn't stand up for what they really wanted and did everything as perfect as ever. In one of the first scenes Julia Roberts has a bunch of rules slapped right on her face as soon as she walks into her new room and once she decides to room with one of the fellow teachers we see how nice and neat everything has to be every where she goes.