I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. [Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7]
The Bell Jar was one of those books I always claimed to have read. Plop me down in a group of lit geeks, and I could have faked my way through several layers of analysis, no problem. I knew Plath's basic biography--how the poetry fell from her in an almost systematic desperation, that she died young and left behind a grief-ridden mother to manage the heavy legacy of her final works. The Bell Jar, a novel that Plath's mother actually didn't want anyone to see (the narrative of this family story is detailed in the prologue of most editions), summed up a young woman's struggle with depression in such a straightforward manner that many seemed to have doubted its literary merit early on. But now it stands as a classic (although, to note, I believe the term "classic" is often applied in brazenly arbitrary ways), aging gracefully as some sort of beacon for confused modern women who might find solace in seeing their own questions acted out in the hazy sophistication of postwar New England.
That sounds cynical, but I don't mean it too. In fact, after reading the book last month, I felt a bit guilty and cheapened for having faked opinions about it for so long. Its depth surprising, I found myself marking up pages with tiny white pieces of paper every time I connected with a paragraph because it reflected my own inner monologue. Plath describes mundane daily things with the precision of a tiny knife. Nothing cures sadness like a warm bath? Sign me up, I could write a novel about baths alone. Plath's observations of bright young things--Harvard men or urban women, take your pick--are spot-on, and particularly in the confusion over the meanings and finaglings of sex and dating. The only stubborn thing here is that Esther (Plath) remains buried under the stunted social mores of a pre-second-wave-feminism society; otherwise her commentay on the female intellectual struggle with marriage and careers and babies remains relevant in its simplicity.
Here's the main analytical bit: Esther doesn't do anything as a narrator but chronicle the daily yearnings of what she wants her life to be and, later, how a fog-like depression (the metaphorical bell jar) literally paralyzes her decision-making. The story of her jaunt as a magazine intern in New York is neither original nor all that interesting, but as an outsider she's able to show us the ugly parts of pretty people and pretty things. Her stay in the hospital during the final third of the novel is arduous and almost painful to read--her weight gain, her silence and anger, an elemental hope for death. But it reminds us how close death (whether physical, emotional, or intellectual) constantly is, or that it's just as close as the fig tree she imagines early in the book (excerpt pasted above)--the one with all the possibilities.
The point of this depressing summary is pretty basic. I find myself having the same conversation with my female friends all the time: is it more important for us to find and love and feed off of a healthy relationship, or to pursue a progressive career (whether radical or practical, doesn't matter) because we can? Or are we strangely required to do BOTH simply because we can? Did the radical legacy of glass-ceiling-breaking and (metaphorical, because it never really happened en masse) bra-burning supposedly erase all hesitation for us? Are we cowards for being scared?
Could I possibly form one more rhetorical queston to drive you mad?
It drives me crazy that I even still categorize these questions in a male/female framework. Reading Plath, however, reminded me more than ever that there are emotions, struggles, and aspirations that are distinctly feminine, echoing from some deep dark place in a woman that is decidedly that--of a woman--and can never be anything else. Judge me for thinking that, go ahead. I really don't care. I know there are exceptions, but here I paint in admittedly broader strokes. For any sort of analytical solution, I very recently turned to a splendidly dynamic scene in the film Up in the Air (which if you haven't seen, you should). Anna Kendrick, who plays a young professional/recent Cornell grad named Natalie, sits at a bar with George Clooney (playing Ryan, the "layoff engineer" she's tailing on an epic air trip while also attempting to completely eradicate his job with a computer) and the thirty-something woman he's currently "seeing" at various airport Hamptin Inns. Natalie's boyfriend has just broken up with her via a lone, icy text message. Ryan points out the irony of such, of course, given Natalie is also trying to replace the gruesome and personal process of laying off American folks with an impersonal digital system. The break-up breaks Natalie's usual composure, and she cries into a martini that at age 23 she "should have been engaged by now," should have had all this shit figured out. She got a degree from a prestigious place, took a job near the man she "loved"--the one with a kind smile, who loves dogs and works hard and aspires to buy a Land Rover and a four-bedroom Victorian. Clooney and his lady-friend (also a well-traveled, loner career-whore, or so we think) only laugh softly at her, in a few words assuring the broke-down Natalie that life never quite works out the way you think it will and that what makes you happy ten years in the future will bear little resemblance to what you think will make you happy now.
So true. But Natalie in this film is still too naive, too stubborn, to really understand what they tell her in these moments. She does offer some additional insight to my point from above, though. "Thank you for what your generation did for me," she whispers to the woman ten years her senior, but "I still can't help wonder if I won't be happy until I find the right man."
Bingo. And all I can wonder is--are we wired this way? I don't know, and maybe none of us ever will. What I do know is that these questions are important both to individuals and to a broader American cultural environment. As I trudge forward, a single twenty-something pursuing a graduate degree and literary aspirations as I live in a tiny bungalow in a college town and sip many whiskey-gingers, I hear that little shrill voice warning me that I shouldn't give up on the other track. Wow. Typing that...well, I've never really had the courage before now to admit all this.
Thank you Sylvia for laying bare the desperation that threatens at the edge of all of our psyches. Her story is drastic, fatal, but it's still relevant.
And all I can ever conclude is that we'd all do well to embrace that gray area that Clooney's character is alluding to. Dreams change, plans change, I guess every person is going to change. Wondering what combination of life "things" might make us happy probably wastes more times than any analysis is worth. Even this blog. What's important, it seems, is that women (and anybody really) feel comfortable discussing the gray area, never hiding from it. The most unrealistic expectations are born of silence and ignorance, right? Come to think of it, men would greatly benefit from seeing outside a black and white box as well.
These are just musings.
xoxoLA
Addendum: Go here http://www.slate.com/id/2243179/ for a great discussion on this same question. Jessica Grose reviews Lori Gottlieb's new book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Good Enough and, rightly so it seems, finds fault with Gottlieb's vision of single twenty-and-thirty-somethings.
***After re-reading my own take, as well as the above article, I guess I have to add something important here. Tied in with every point in my post is a passionate personal faith that, although life is messy and crazy (the opposite of perfect), there is the possibility for everyone of meeting the "most right" person to spend their time with. Gottlieb apparently argues that successful women remain single until they're older because they're too picky. That's hogwash. Well-educated, successful women might be more pragmatic about love than others, but if they're waiting on anything it's the discovery of a peace within themselves. That peace comes from living in the moment (excuse the cliche) and making good decisions for themselves...all while having some fun and lightening up along the way. Settling is never, ever okay, and marriage is not an end-game. It seems to me that marriage, when experienced alongside someone you truly love and respect (someone who was your first choice, someone who was maybe worth a wait), is a project, a nice challenge, and a source of the ultimate joys.
The more I write about this, the more you'll think I'm fixated on it. Which I don't think I am. So. Goodbye.
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