The Bell Jar

Throughout the novel Esther struggles to establish and maintain a sense of identity. Her personal crisis is closely linked to being a woman in 1950s America. Esther feels that there are almost too many ways her life can go, and that each lifestyle is mutually exclusive. Esther sorts the women around her into categories. She “tries on” several identities throughout the novel. Esther plays close attention to other women’s clothing and to her own, associating certain outfits with specific qualities.

For her stay in New York, Esther buys a wardrobe full of trendy and expensive clothing to suit her new role as a self-assured, modern young woman. When she goes out with Doreen early in the novel, she wears a skimpy black dress. She is projecting sexuality and adventurousness, trying to embody the archetype of carefree transgressor modeled by Doreen, but it doesn’t work and she returns home eager to strip off the troublesome dress and take a bath.

Visiting the UN with Constantin, Esther feels intellectually inferior for the first time as she watches a female simultaneous interpreter at work. She notes that the woman is not wearing any makeup and feels a desire to “crawl into…her gray suit” (75). Intelligence and academic prowess are vital to Esther’s self-concept; she tries on the identity of a homely but career-driven woman to soothe her bruised ego.

Esther wears a trendy, sexy dress on her date with Marco, again seeking to feel experienced and assume the identity of a liberated woman. Marco rips the dress during the attempted rape, shattering Esther’s symbolic worldliness. He calls her a slut, presumably because of her outfit. After her escape from Marco, Esther throws all of her trendy clothes off the roof of her hotel. This moment indicates that in the aftermath of the attack, she wants to distance herself from her sexuality. She has internalized Marco’s misogynistic comments and connected the clothing she was wearing to the way he treated her. Her rejection of the clothes is also a symbol of her failure to embody the identity she hoped to find in New York.

On the train ride back home to the suburbs, Esther wears clothes borrowed from Betsy, a modest outfit which she describes as “Pollyanna Cowgirl” style. In the aftermath of Marco’s attempted assault, she is trying to re-establish a “good girl” identity, distancing herself from sexuality and leaning into what she sees as a safer kind of femininity. Ironically, she leaves Marco’s blood on her face because she thinks it looks moving. She is still performing her identity for the world even as her grasp on reality slips.

Although Esther’s clothes reflect her thoughts, they are just that—clothes. Changing clothes does little more for Esther than reflect her murky sense of self. All the outfits in the world cannot help Esther figure out who she is, and it’s not until she enters treatment that she starts to better understand herself. In the asylum she can no longer plan out complex outfits that allow her to present herself a certain way; instead she has to focus on her inner self. After undergoing successful treatment, Esther once again makes the reader aware of her outfit as she waits for her release interview. She is wearing a red wool suit and cracked black shoes, but her outfit is no longer a costume. She is just dressing the way Esther Greenwood likes to dress, signaling a stronger sense of identity.