Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Ivana Králiková

Rebellion and Mental Illness

Supervisor: Mgr. Martina Horáková, Ph.D.

2013
 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Ivana Králiková

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 I would like to thank my supervisor
Mgr. Martina Horáková, Ph.D. for her advice
and support throughout the writing process.

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Table of Contents

Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 5

1. The Protagonists and their Conflict with the Society ................................................. 9

1.1 The Potential for Rebellion .................................................................................... 9

1.2 Resisting Gender Stereotypes .............................................................................. 13

2. The Lack of Аcceptable Guidance ............................................................................. 22

2.1 The Family ........................................................................................................... 22

2.2 The Educational Institutions ................................................................................ 32

3. Escape Strategies and Mental Illness . ........................................................................ 44

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 56

Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 58

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Introduction

Both Sylvia Plath‟s The Bell Jar (1963) and Jerome David Salinger‟s

The Catcher in the Rye (1951) are American coming-of-age novels published within the

first two decades after the Second World War. Their main protagonists, Esther

Greenwood and Holden Caulfield, are portrayed in the process of initiation into the

society, which they continuously resist, eventually succumbing to a mental illness.

The ultimate purpose of this thesis is to define the relationship between the

protagonists‟ growing anxiety and the larger social context of their lives, to find a

possible link between the social atmosphere of their historical period and the mental

illness they eventually develop.

In order to trace the connection, the work first points out how some vital

attributes of Esther and Holden‟s personalities contrast with the basic social premises of

the early postwar period in America. According to Sarah Graham, “the legacy of the

World War was a more restricted society that had been seen in America for many years”

(15). For the two decades that Esther and Holden‟s narratives are placed in, “conformity

and assent became the approved means of maintaining the nation‟s safety and prosperity

[while] individualism, free thought and alternative lifestyles were discouraged”

(Graham 15). Raised in this type of environment, a young person who is curious and

imaginative in nature, perceptive and capable of critical thought, is basically bound to

develop conflicts with their surroundings, and eventually begin to feel subdued by it,

unable to share what Tindall calls “the mood of giddy optimism” typical of the era

(982). The first part of the thesis is therefore devoted to discussing the personal qualities

mentioned as ones at the core of the protagonists‟ personalities.

The work then proceeds to describe in detail the actual conflict Esther and

Holden get into in the process of their initiation. The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the

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Rye are complex texts, mirroring many aspects of the society that are disturbing to their

main characters. In this work, the focus is mainly on the social category of gender,

which, in the given historical era, seems nearly all-pervasive, determining people‟s

lives, education and the initiation process on the whole. In the postwar period, there was

a revival of the “the deeply embedded notion that a woman‟s place [is] in the home as

tender of the hearth and guardian of the children” (Tindall 992), and also a “marked

tendency for women to occupy subordinate posts in organization under the direction of

mainly male senior staff” (Goldthorpe 145). This chapter describes how Esther deals

with these stereotypes, stressing the way they collide with her artistic identity and her

own vision of her future life. Likewise, it examines how Holden‟s life is affected by the

prevailing line of thought, particularly by the “belie[f] that perpetual economic growth

was possible, desirable, and, in fact, essential” (Tindall 982). Obviously, the prosperity

dream was to be kept alive by “heterosexual young men, […] the most powerful sector

by far” (Graham 15). As a member of this promising group, Holden is expected to

devote his professional life to earning large amounts of money that could ensure him a

life of social prestige and material luxury. But there is just as much discord between this

vision and Holden‟s personal preferences and artistic nature as there is in The Bell Jar,

and just as few alternatives he can work with. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the

conflicts mentioned and begin to outline the feelings of anxiety and lack of personal

space that Esther and Holden develop in response.

The following part of the thesis is concerned with the lack of kind, acceptable

guidance available to Esther and Holden in this uneasy time of their lives. The chapter

is voiced as an analysis of the performance of parents and educational institutions that

are meant to be responsible for the process of initiation. As both Esther and Holden are

still at the brink of childhood, the family relationships and especially parental roles are

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seen as crucial in shaping their attitudes to the world and developing their anxieties. The

chapter questions the protagonists‟ parents as figures providing security and

understanding, and suggests they might be acting as a source of additional pressure

instead. It also examines how their own flawless confirmation to the social expectations

negatively affects their personal relationship with their children. The chapter then

analyses the educational institutions portrayed in the novels as another potential source

of guidance, suggesting that they actually reinforce the social stereotypes Esther and

Holden resist. They also provide the protagonists with the company of people of the

same age, which, again, is crucial from the sociohistorical point of view: the postwar era

saw the emergence of “a peer-group culture in which young people looked to each other

[…] for advice about how to live” (Graham 13). Overall, the aim of the chapter is to

point out Esther and Holden‟s disillusionment with the supposed sources of help and

guidance and briefly evaluate its contribution to the feelings of anxiety and loneliness

building up throughout the novels.

The final part of the work discusses in more detail the feelings Esther and

Holden develop in reaction to the overwhelming conflict of self with the world,

stressing their increasing desire to separate themselves from the reality they perceive as

threatening. The chapter describes various coping mechanisms they take up in order to

accomplish this, pointing out the remarkable similarities between the patterns portrayed

in the two novels. The aim is to interpet the emergence of Esther and Holden‟s mental

illness in the light of their desire to separate themselves from the unbearable reality

around them, suggesting it might be the climax of their continuous escapist tendencies,

a particularly extreme way of self-detachment from the world. Finally, the thesis is to

stress the significance of the mental illness as a poignant critical commentary on the

social atmosphere of the period.

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 1. The Protagonists and their Conflict with the Society

The Bell Jar opens with the young English student Esther Greenwood trying to

come to terms with the newly discovered life of a fashion magazine intern in New York.

“After nineteen years of running after good marks, and prizes and grants of one sort or

another” (Plath 27), with the last year of college ahead of her, she has come to the city

to explore the reality of what will come after. It is what Linda Wagner recognizes as

a typical motive of a buildungsroman, where “the character‟s escape to a city images the

opportunity to find self as well as truths about life” (n.pag.). In The Bell Jar, as well as

The Catcher in the Rye, the narrator is captured in the crucial period of confrontation

with experience, in the time of transition from a somewhat isolated world of childhood

to the uncompromising reality of adulthood, a full-time membership in society. It is also

a period when the world becomes, more strictly than ever, divided in terms of gender:

Holden, Esther and their peers no longer belong to the common sexless category of

“children;” they become young men and women, whose social roles and mutual

relationships are precisely set out. Ideally, this encounter with experience should incite

initiation – “the process leading through right action and consecrated knowledge, to a

viable mode of life in the word” and ending with confirmation (Hassan 35). However,

Holden and Esther are far from taking this ideal road. Instead, they seem to go along the

other possible path, one that Hassan labels “victimization” and characterizes as

“enstrangement from the world, with its values largely inward and transcendental”

(Hassan 35). A victimized adolescent suffers from “the neurosis of innocence,” which

Hassan defines as “a regressive force that prevents the self from fully participating in

the world” (40). In order to explore this development on Holden‟s and Esther‟s part, I

first intend to have a closer look at some personal qualities they very obviously share,

ones that seem to set them apart from people around them, and that can be traced

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throughout their narratives, underlying their relationship to the world and enhancing the

conflict with the society‟s guidelines for life – in other words, forming the characters‟

personal potential for rebellion.

1.1 The Potential for Rebellion

Both Holden and Esther seem to possess great imagination and creative potential

that is most clearly manifested in their love and talent for English and writing. While

being a high-achieving English major and a frequent winner of creative writing contests,

Esther also seems to believe there is a greater, almost spiritual purpose in making art.

She “reckon(s) a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of [...] people put

together” and sees poetry as something “people would remember and repeat to

themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn‟t sleep” (Plath 53).

Significantly, she seems resentful towards any attempt to subject poetry to reason and

pre-established categories, which she perceives as limitng: “I hated the very idea of the

eighteenth century, with all those smug men writing tight little couplets and being so

dead keen on reason” (Plath 120). The same sense of opposition between the freedom of

art and the chains of scientific thought is expressed in Esther‟s attitude towards the

compulsory chemistry course at college: “What I couldn‟t stand was shrinking

everything into letters and numbers. All the perfectly good words like gold and silver

and cobalt and aluminium were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal

numbers after them” (Plath 33). Resisting the modern Western tendency to subject the

world to categories, to classify and establish order, Esther‟s love for English seems to

represent the eagerness and capacity of her mind to think outside pre-established

patterns, to look for its own ways instead of following the old ones. Plath stresses the

exceptionality of this capacity in the passage where Buddy Willard – a Yale medical

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student who “manages to get good marks all right” but does not have “one speck of

intuition” (Plath 7) – attempts to write a poem, and fails completely. Esther thinks very

lowly of his literary achievement: “I skipped down through image after image about

water-melon lights and turtle-green palms and shells fluted like bits of Greek

architecture. I thought it was dreadful” (Plath 87). Creativity is something that cannot be

“mastered” at will or command, but also cannot be denied or ignored once someone is

blessed with it: “for Esther, [it] is an undeniable part of herself, which patterns her

perception of the world and repeatedly causes conflicts” (Martin n.pag.). If, as Martin

states, “writing assumes special significance […] as counteraction to socialized female

silence,” then its centrality to Esther‟s personality practically anticipates an uneasy

relationship between her and the society.

In the Catcher In The Rye, the exceptionality of Holden‟s creative potential is

best displayed in his choice of topic for a composition Stradlater asks him to write for

his English class instead of him. Stradlater‟s sole purpose is to turn in an essay that

answers to the given standards, without truly caring about its content; as far as he is

concerned, it can be pretty much “anything. Anything descriptive. A room. Or a house.

Just as long as it‟s descriptive as hell” (Salinger 24). Stradlater‟s usage of the word

“anything” is significant because he immediately limits its content by specifying that

the essay should in fact deal with a room or a house. Stradlater‟s horizons, his idea of

the content of “anything” seem to be crippled by the conventional expectations

concerning a descriptive composition, and he does not seem able to think outside these

categories.

Holden, on the other hand, has trouble finding a conventional subject for the

essay: “The thing was, I couldn‟t think of a room or a house or anything to describe the

way Stradlater said he had to have” (Salinger 33). Holden‟s trouble seems to stem from

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his refusal to “betray talent and spirit alike by [...] conforming [his] behaviour to the

regulations of a standardized performance” (Rowe n.pag.). He thus comes up with

a very personal subject – his brother Allie‟s baseball mitt – but, having enough

experience with the restricting world, he already feels the need to justify his choice: “It

was a very descriptive subject. It really was“ (Salinger 33). The subtle plea in his voice

remains unheard by Stradlater, who, upon finding out the subject of the essay, accuses

Holden of doing everything backwards: “No wonder you‟re flunking the hell out of

here. You don‟t do one damn thing the way you‟re supposed to” (Salinger 36). Here,

Stradlater already hints at the impending clash between Holden‟s creative potential and

the limiting rules of the educational institution that is supposed to prepare him for his

adult life.

Another crucial attribute the heroes share is their gift of perception, a downright

willingness to observe reality without closing their eyes in the face of its unpleasant

sides. Esther openly admits to this tendency and appears to find it valuable: “I wanted to

see as much as I could. I liked looking on other people in crucial situations. If there was

a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at,

I‟d stop and look so hard I‟d never forgot it” (Plath 12). While actually watching the

baby in the jars, she claims to be “proud of the calm way [she] stare[s] at these

gruesome things” (Plath 59). This eagerness to observe the unattractive is vital as it

enables Esther to complete (or even change) the idealized picture of life promoted in her

era into a one that can be safely called reality.

In The Catcher, Holden seems to be similarly attracted by unpleasant sights:

while waiting for Carl Luce at the Wicker Bar, he orders the drink and then “watch[es]

the phonies for a while” (Salinger 128), making a full-time activity out of it instead of

just ignoring them to make the moment more bearable. In the Edmont Hotel, he “look[s]

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out of the window for a while,” only to see a “a gray-haired, very distinguished-looking

guy with only his shorts [taking] out all these women‟s clothes and put[ting] them on”

(Salinger 55). Here, Holden‟s look symbolically penetrates through the mask of

distinguished look and gray hair that connotate decency and wisdom, and sees the

disturbing reality underneath. On the next morning, despite being quite disgusted with

what he saw, Holden takes “a look out of the window before [he leaves] the room […],

to see how all the perverts [are] doing” (Salinger 96). The fact that they all have the

shades down at that point, being “the heights of modesty in the morning” (Salinger 96)

suggests the craftiness of the enemy and the related uneasy position of the observer,

who may easily remain alone in their awareness of the truth. Seeing the sides of reality

that are not meant to be seen, Esther and Holden receive extra knowledge that forces

them to mature quicker than their “happily blind” peers.

The ability to critically observe real-life situations is further stressed by the

protagonists‟ lack of enthusiasm to watch things that are officially meant to be watched

(and have their content taken at a face value), such as movies. Holden claims to hate the

movies right at the beginning of his narrative, and this feeling is one of the most

persistent features throughout the novel. He later provides more insight into it, revealing

that he “can understand somebody going to the movies because there‟s nothing else to

do, but when somebody really wants to go […] then it depresses hell out of [him]”

(Salinger 105). What seems to bother him the most is the central place of movies in

people‟s life, the unreasonable attachment towards it and its tendency to use them to

replace the acuteness of reality. Reflecting upon an experience when a woman in the

cinema cried through the whole movie while neglecting her child on the next seat,

Holden concludes, albeit somehow exaggeratingly: “You take somebody that cries their

goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they‟re mean

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bastards at heart” (Salinger 126). Refusing to have his mind taken off reality, Holden

remains inherently suspicious towards any images that are being served to him, be it a

movie or a play on the stage. “The trouble with me is,” Holden explains, “I always

have to read that stuff by myself” (Salinger 107), suggesting that he only trust his own

judgment and will not take things at face value.

Esther displays a related tendency when she claims to “hate technicolour,” as

“everybody in a technicolour movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid new costume

in each new scene and to stand like a clothes-horse with a lot of very green trees or very

yellow wheat or very blue ocean” (Plath 39). The way Esther stresses the exaggerated

luridness of the costumes or the colors of the trees, wheat and ocean suggest that she is

aware of the contrast between movies and reality, aware that the movies provide people

with unrealistic, idealized images. She also seems to see through the shallow,

stereotypical content repeated in the media: watching a movie along with her peers from

the magazine, she observes critically that “most of the action [takes] place in the

football stands, with the two girls waving and cheering in smart suits” (Plath 39). It may

be assumed that her evaluation of the piece as “very poor” (Plath 38 ) owes at least

partly to its artificiality that is in conflict with her critical self.

1.2 Resisting Gender Stereotypes

All of the attributes mentioned above – the protagonists‟ young age, their

imagination and creative potential as well as their observation skills and critical minds –

make them particularly prone to developing thoughts and desires that reach outside the

established patterns, and thus to finding the rigidity of these patterns somewhat stifling.

As many of these life-determining patterns of their period are related to gender (the

stereotypical images of feminity and masculinity as well as rigid division of gender

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roles), it is hardly surprising that Holden and Esther repeatedly display behavioral traits

that oppose or do not live up to what their socitety perceives as typically male or

female.

In both novels, the inadequacy or “otherness” of the main character is first

symbolically manifested in their physique. Esther is “skinny as a boy and barely

rippled” (Plath 7) and apparently a bit taller than an average female: “I‟m five feet ten in

my stocking feet, and when I am with little men I slouch my hips […] so I‟ll look

shorter, and I feel gawky and morbid as somebody in a side-show” (Plath 9). The

feeling of inadequacy inherent in her words keeps building up throughout the narrative;

Esther begins to reflect on her abilities, counting out the things she cannot do, and starts

with cooking: “My mother and grandmother [...] were always trying to teach me one

dish or another, but I would just look on and say „Yes, yes, I see,‟ while the instructions

slid thrоugh my head like water, and then I‟d always spoil what I did so nobody would

ask me to do it again” (Plath 71). The significance of Esther‟s unability (or, rather,

unwilligness) to cook as a deviation from a conventional model of domestic feminity is

further stressed by her exceptional interest in eating. She claims to “love food more

than just anything else,” up to a point when “the sight of all the food stacked in [the]

kitchens” at the Ladies‟Day banquet makes her dizzy (Plath 24). At the social event,

instead of paying attention to the welcoming speech – which would be the proper thing

to do – Esther “bow[s] [her] head and secretly eye[s] the position of the bowls of

caviar” (Plath 24), managing to stay occupied almost solely by food throughout the

whole evening. Esther‟s excessive eating makes her stand out from the crowd, as

“almost everybody [...] in New York [is] trying to reduce“ (Plath 23); the fact that

Esther herself never puts on weight no matter how much she eats only stresses the sense

of irregularity about her. As gaining weight, developing breasts and hips is a normal

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part of female physical maturation, Esther‟s exceptional thinness might symbolize her

refusal to mature into a conventional female role. Overall, her reversed relationship to

food represents a revolt towards gender stereotypes, which associate women with food

preparation but pressure them to consume food moderately for the sake of their

appearance.

Esther displays a similar unwillingness to learn in relation to shorthand, the

second item on her I-cannot-do list: “If I never learnt shorthand, I‟d never have to use

it. There wasn‟t one job I felt like doing where you used shorthand” (Plath 117-118).

Shorthand signs, just as the abbreviations in the chemistry course, cripple the complex

reality of the world and as such are in conflict with Esther‟s creative identity (Martin

n.pag.). She finds it hard to envision herself in an unimaginative occupation that makes

little use of her talent and intellect, only requiring her to follow other people‟s orders:

“The trouble was I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my

own thrilling letters” (Plath 72). The subservient jobs Esther refuses are a part of “the

societal betrayal of educated women [that are being] forced to scale themselves down”

(MacPherson 22), kept from the truly professional world and relegated to domestic

sphere where “their capacities of making meaning from their education in relation to the

larger, social world” are being broken (MacPherson 44).

Esther is very aware of this betrayal, noting that a life confined to household

“seem[s] to be a dreary and wasted [one] for a girl with fifteen years of straight A‟s”

(Plath 80). What seems to scare her even more, though, is the possibility that after

getting married, she might lose the actual interest in the intellectual and artistic: “I [...]

remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children

I would feel differently, I wouldn‟t want to write poems anymore” (Plath 81). No

wonder that Esther, for whom this would mean losing a substantial part of her identity,

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then assumes marriage to be a threatening, evil institution: “When you were married

and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as

a slave in some private, totalitarian state” (Plath 81). Esther fears that Buddy‟s words

may come true as she sees them embodied in his mother, a highly educated woman who

spends weeks braiding a beautiful rug, but then, “instead of hanging [it] on the wall the

way [Esther] would have done, she put[s] it down in place of her kitchen mat,” as if

enslaved by domesticity into a complete disregard of the value of her own creative

work.

Yet, marriage is what everybody expects from Esther at some point in her life; it

seems to be the obvious, natural thing for a woman to do. When Esther wakes up

contemporarily sightless in a hospital after her suicide attempt, a nurse tries to comfort

her by saying that she will “marry a nice blind man some day” (Plath 165), implying

that marriage is all that matters in the end. It is an innocent, well-meant remark on her

part, but a sinister one to Esther, as it downplays the loss of her sight (and in that, her

critical perception) while offering the dreaded institution as a consolation. Esther‟s

experience further tells her that a single existence is somewhat of a social handicap for a

female, especially if it is connected to extensive intellectual activity: the girls in her

dormitory tend to look down on her because she studies too hard but upon finding out

she is going to the Junior Prom with Buddy, begin to treat her with “amazement and

respect” (Plath 56). Marriage, or at least a distant promise of it, seems to earn social

prestige for a girl because she is closer to accomplishing what is believed to be the

central purpose of her life.

Esther‟s unease stems from the fact that for her, marriage and children are only

one of the many things she considers to include in her future. Drawing on the book‟s

key metaphor, the fig tree, Linda Wagner sees Esther‟s dilemma in that “every choice is

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also a relinquishing: she believes there is no way in her era for a talented woman to

combine professional career and homemaking” (n.pag.). The dilemma is one of

“separate spheres in social world,” where the “sterilized-by-career woman, the all-job-

nothing-else choice” stands in opposition to the “mind-numbed housewife, the all-

childcare-nothing-else choice, apparently devoid of brains, commerce and meritocratic

prizes alike” (MacPherson 24). Jay-C, Esther‟ boss and a famous magazine editor, who

has gained a high social status and managed to escape the confinement to domestic

sphere, is described by Doreen as “ugly as sin” (Plath 5); when Esther tries to imagine

her “out of her strict office suit and luncheon-duty hat and in a bed with her fat

husband” (Plath 6), that is, in a context that evokes procreation and family, she fails.

The seemingly liberating example Jay-C sets for Esther has its own “strings attached”

(Martin n.pag.) because Jay-C‟s feminine identity is being significantly questioned. In

Esther‟s world, professionalism seems to rule out the feminine just as marriage seems to

rule out the artistic, and Esther, who wants to preserve both, eventually comes to realize

that she will be “flying between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of

her days” (Plath 90).

This rigid separation of the professional and the domestic limits Esther, rather

than the idea of family and motherhood itself. It is only in the stifling environment of

the suburbs, watching a pregnant Dodo Conway with a baby carriage, three kids at her

side and “a serene, almost religious smile” on her face, that Esther claims that children

make her sick (Plath 111-112); earlier in the book, she uses the image of a baby with

strongly positive connotations, as a symbol of purity and new life (Plath 19). Also, the

fact that Esther had a baby after having been provided with contraception implies that,

at some point, she probably began to truly want one. Marriage and motherhood are only

threat to Esther in the social context of her period, where they mean confining all her

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life to home and family, wasting or denying her creative potential and turning her into

“the place an arrow shoots off from” instead of letting her “shoot off in various

directions [her]self, like the colored arrows from a Fourth July rocket” (Plath 79).

In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden‟s inability to live up to expectations is

symbolically manifested in his physique, too. While being quite tall for his age, he is

very skinny and appears to lack great physical strength; when comparing himself to his

roommate Stradlater, he openly labels himself “a very weak guy” (Salinger 26). He also

seems to be void of the aggressiveness that is conventionally ascribed to young men:

having “been in about two fights in [his] whole life, and [having] lost both of them,”

Holden realizes that he is “not too tough” (Salinger 40). He also seems to feel contempt

for ostensibly aggressive male behavior, complaining about the “guys that think they‟re

being a pansy if they don‟t break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands

with you” (Salinger 79). But at the same time, Holden is aware that this pacifistic

inclination of his is in a way undesirable, even inappropriate, and therefore makes him

inadequate. He groups himself with “those very yellow1 guys” because he cannot bring

himself to punch a boy‟s face over a pair of stolen galoshes, and presently states that

“what you should be is not yellow at all” (Salinger 80-81).

The authoritative „should‟, the expectations of toughness and physical strength

Holden is failing to live up to, are part of the highly idealized image of a man promoted

in the media of his period, such as the movies or those “dumb stories in a magazine

[…] with a lot of phony, lean-jawed guys named David in it and a lot of phony girls [...]

that are always lighting the goddam Davids‟ pipes for them” (Salinger 47). Although

Holden can see these images for what they really are and is thus “aware of being

1
yellow (informal, disapproving) = easily frightened (“Yellow,” def.3 )

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contained within the artificial cinematic tropes of tough masculinity” (Baldwin n.pag.),

he is not completely immune to their influence. After being beaten and humiliated by

Maurice at the Edmont hotel, he imagines himself as a hero of a very unrealistic action

movie, taking a violent revenge on Maurice and then having Jane “hold a cigarette for

[him] to smoke while [he is] bleeding,” picturing the very stereotypical motive he is in

fact critical of.

This “lack of immunity” towards the pressure of the mainstream ideals of

manhood is further manifested in various actions Holden undertakes after leaving the

Pencey Prep. The whole of his Manhattan experience, the “touring the bars and night

clubs of New York” is an attempt to embody the “sophisticated, white, heterosexual

metropolian masculinity” (Baldwin n.pag.), one which Holden repeatedly and often

comically fails at. He fails to seduce the three women, fails to sleep with a prostitute

and fails to get drunk because he, as a minor, is not served in the bar. The failures

themselves work as a confirmation of Holden‟s deviation from the masculine ideal and

enhance his feeling of inadequacy and lack of self-respect (Baldwin n.pag.). But it is

also important to look into why he is trying to enact those roles in the first place, why he

is not secure enough in his awareness of their artificiality to fully reject them. As

Baldwin suggests, the problem is that while the cultural constructions of masculinity are

clearly contrastive to Holden‟s authentic feelings, his world has no “viable alternative

masculine subjectivity” for him (n.pag.) The boy is thus left with the dominant model

only, the one he secretly resents; it is not certain at all who he can be unless he

conforms to it, and if he can be someone at all, so his attempt to enact the mainstream

roles can be seen as a desperate subconscious better-the-devil-you-know strategy.

Paradoxically, Holden‟s ability to see through the artificiality of the prevailing image

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and to reject it as shallow and unworthy, becomes more of a burden than a gift to him,

contributing to his vulnerability and eventual misery.

Another central image of The Catcher, one that forms yet another battlefield of

the “holdenesque” and the conventionally masculine, is that of a car. Along with the

movies, it is on the top of Holden‟s hate list; and just like in the case of the movies, it is

the centrality of cars in people‟s lives rather than the thing itself that bothers him. While

“most people [are] crazy about cars, worry[ing] if they get a little scratch on them, and

[…] always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon,” Holden cannot bring

himself to care: “I‟d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God‟s

sake” (Salinger 117). For Holden, who values a genuine, albeit simple emotional

relationship more than the pretentious glamour of a new car, an extensive interest in

cars has clearly bad connotations. It seems to imply qualities such as vanity,

conceitedness or lack of intellectual interests: “guys that always talk about how many

miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars” are likely to be the ones who “get sore

and childish when you beat them at golf” or “never read books” (Salinger 111), that is,

men Holden cannot relate to.

The car has a further meaning in being an integral part of the future that is

awaiting boys like Holden after they finish their education, one that in Holden‟s

perception assumes the quality of impending doom: “Did you ever get fed up? I mean,

did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did

something? (Salinger 117). Just like Esther does in The Bell Jar, Holden feels

frightened of being pushed towards a future that he feels cannot make him happy, in his

case a typical path of an upper-class man that evolves around financial success and

trivial entertainment, one that simply does not hold enough sustenance for his

imaginative mind. The activities usually perceived as desirable, as the markers of a

20
man‟s high status and social success, thus assume a stifling, almost duty-like character

for the boy, as he is being told not only what to do, but also what to like: “We‟d have to

go downstairs in elevators in suitcases and stuff. And I‟d be working in some office,

making a lot of dough, […] and playing bridge all the time, and going to the movies and

seeing a lot of stupid shorts and coming attractions and newsreels” (Salinger 119-20).

The precisely outlined trajectory of an elevator, “the going up and down in elevators

when you just want to go outside” (Salinger 117) stands in opposition to the idea of free

movement, inherent in Holden‟s love for digression as a narrative device he repeatedly

uses and also explicitly claims to like (Salinger 165). Similarly based is the image of

multi-directional arrows Esther uses to suggests that she wants to move in many

directions, to do many different things in her life (Plath 79). Holden‟s desired “outside”

further represents a mental space, a genuine freedom of thinking and personal choices,

while the stereotypical up-and-down movement symbolizes the stifling outlining of

people‟s lives characteristic of the period, the chains of stereotypes that bear especially

hard on а creative, imaginative minds Esther and Holden possess.

A part of Holden‟s resentment towards the conventional success-oriented future

also stems from the conflict of authenticity and “the endless appetite for glamour of

appearance, for the vanity of effect and approval” that is characteristic of the world he

lives in (Rowe n.pag.). It is important for Holden to do a job for its true essence, for a

greater purpose than the fame and financial reward connected to it. This is the main

issue he has with the position of a lawyer Phoebe suggests to him: “Even if you did go

around saving guys‟ lives and all, how would you know you did it because you really

wanted to save guys‟ lives, or because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific

lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you […], the way

it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren‟t being a phony? (Salinger

21
155). In Holden‟s world, “those who act out of purpose, conviction or faith are

heartbreakingly rare” (Rowe), and to Holden, this realization is frightening. Disgusted

by the audience‟s applause to Ernie‟s piano performance, he claims that “if (he) was a

piano player, (he)‟d play in the goddam closet” (Salinger 77). The desire to isolate his

work from the audience and financial rewards, is an attempt to protect himself from the

omnipresent „phoniness‟, to make sure that he remains faithful to the true cause of

things – be it the pureness of art or “saving guys‟ lives”- and not succumb to the appeal

of wealth and status like most men do. Significantly, the one job Holden really wants to

do – catching the children that play in the rye field to prevent them from falling off the

cliff into the world of plight– is centered around Holden‟s greatest cause, saving the

innocence of childhood, but assumes no financial reward or social prestige. His dream is

“a denial of the work ethic, the evidence of Holden‟s failure to be the mature man

idealized in the contemporary American culture” (Baldwin n.pag.).

22
 2. The Lack of Acceptable Guidance

With their identity and personal aspirations at odds with the society‟s basic

guidelines for life, initiation proves to be a problematic process for Esther and Holden.

In the following chapters, I discuss the social institutions responsible for guiding

adolescents into adulthood, namely educational institutions and family, and examine the

roles they play in the characters‟ conflict with society. I try to account for Esther‟s and

Holden‟s inability to relate to their parents and point out the significance of their failure

to “be educated” by the institutions appointed for that purpose.

2.1 The Family

During adolescence, various conflicts between parents and their children seems

inevitable, owing to the “different perspectives that parents and adolescents adopt.

Parents view conflicts through a moral or social-conventional lens, feeling that they

have a responsibility to monitor and regulate their child‟s conduct, whereas the

adolescent, locked in his quest for autonomy, views his nagging parents as infringing on

personal rigths and choices” (Shaffer 386). This type of friction is at the base of the

parent-child relationships in The Bell Jar and The Catcher In The Rye, where the

parents figure as siding with the society‟s interest and trying to normalize their

children‟s deviation, rather than being understanding towards their children‟s

personality and individual needs. However, considering the serious clash between the

characters‟ personalities and the rhetoric of the society, both Esther and Holden

experience this friction in a largely intensified form, as a complete estrangement from –

and, in Esther‟s case, even resentment towards – their parents.

Much of Esther‟s strained relationship with her mother comes from her

disillusionment with the mother as an effective role model. In Esther‟s mind, her mother

23
and the stiffling suburban environment are virtually one: coming back from the rush of

New York City, she claims to feel “the motherly breath of the suburbs” enfold her and

“a summer calm [lay] its soothing hand over everything, like death” (Plath 109). Surely

enough, the next thing she sees is her mother “waiting by the glove-grey chevrolet”

(Plath 109) to take her home. The lethal blend of the suburban and the motherly

continues the next morning when Esther, “instead of being awaken by her mother‟s

voice, […] is awakened by the sounds of proper domesticity” (Smith n.pag.) – by the

buzz of the orange squeezer, the smell of coffee and bacon, the clinking of dishes being

cleaned up after breakfast. “Though she cannot directly see it, Esther envisions her

mother‟s neat and orderly housekeeping” (Smith n.pag.). Introducing each of the

mother‟s activities with an obstinate “then” (Plath 110), Plath successfully conveys the

sense of the maddening stereotype that has kept Esther from the suburbs – and her

mother‟s company – for the last few summers of her life (Plath 110).

The last sound Esther listens to, one of the car engine, breaks the household

routine only to take the mother to another one, her job as a shorthand teacher at the local

college. Perceptive as she is, Esther can see through any pretences her mother keeps

into the actual misery of her existence: “Мy mother had taught shorthand and typing to

support us ever since my father died, and secretly hated it” (Plath 36). Not only does

her mother have the kind of dull, unimaginative job Esther is desperate to avoid, she is

also unhappy doing it, and what is more, seems intent on keeping her true feelings a

secret. She seems to have accepted the fact that the family “demands the sacrifice of the

individual to ensure collective survival” (Martin n.pag.): if shorthand is the most

reliable and well-paid job a woman is allowed to have, then it is her duty to perform it

without complaint. Having watched her mother‟s self-sacrifice for years, Esther seems

to suffer from what Pat MacPherson labels “matrophobia,” a mixture of hatred towards

24
her mother and fear that she will eventually have to embrace the same self-denying

destiny, as if becoming the same person (59). “Esther […] sees her mother‟s martyrdom

as archaic: self-denying has made a monster out of her and Esther has made sure she

herself never succumbed to a self-denying impulse in her life” (MacPherson 70).

But Esther‟s mother is not only an unsuitable role-model for her ambitious,

excitement-craving daughter; she also seems to act as a vessel carrying Esther to the

same self-sacrificing future. Symbolically, she is the one who drives the “prison van”

from the train station back into the “large but escape-proof cage” of their suburban

home (Plath 110), and also the one to tell Esther she has not been accepted for a

summer writing course (MacPherson 42), one that “had stretched before [Esther] like a

safe bridge over the dull gulf of the summer” (Plath 110). Instead, the mother tries to

persuade Esther to study shorthand in the evenings, that is to replace the desired but

unavailable creative activity by the dull reality of a stereotypical female job. She does

not seem to believe that Esther could have a professional future evolved around her

artistic interests: “She was always on to me to learn shorthand after college, so I‟d have

a practical skill as well as a college degree” (Plath 36). It is significant that Mrs

Greenwood herself does not merely use shorthand in her work, she actually teaches it

“to a lot of college girls” (Plath 110), that is, girls like Esther, who have better chances

of utilizing shorthand than their actual field of expertise. Her teaching job stresses her

role of “a socializing agent for the patriarchal society” (Martin n.pag.), a woman that

works to reproduce the very system that has oppressed her the whole life.

Mrs Greenwood‟s willingness to subject her daughter to the same unfulfilled

existence she has been living significantly shapes her personal relationship with Esther.

She “manifest[s] little understanding for [her] daughter‟s suffering and demonstrate[s]

no comprehension of [her] daughter‟s creative needs” (Martin n.pag.). Being a proper,

25
well-behaved girl matters more than Esther‟s actual feelings, and the mother makes it

clear by the way she relates to Esther‟s mental illness. She “feels […] threatened by her

daughter‟s madness because the daughter is an integral part of her self-identity” (Martin

n.pag.). In her mother‟s eyes, Esther‟s deviation is a commentary on her own

performance as the socializing agent, a testimony of her failure at her role in society:

“My mother‟s face floated to mind, a pale reproachful moon (…) A daughter in an

asylum! I had done that to her” (Plath 227). Instead of seeing her child‟s suffering, she

sees the illness as a crime committed against her, the parent; instead of trying to relate

to her daugher, she continually tries to normalize her behavior. When Esther expresses

her anxiety about being closely watched by the doctors at the hospital, her mother treats

her like a misbehaving child: “Oh, Esther, I wish you would co-operate. They say you

don‟t co-operate” (Plath 173). In her unquestioning siding with the authorities Esther

perceives as threatening, she separates herself from this sick, improper, deviant

daughter Esther has become, further deepening the rupture between them.

A part of the mother‟s failure to recognize the depth of Esther‟s troubles is her

obvious willingness to deny and even forget everything unpleasant that has happened.

Fatal as it is for her relationship with Esther, it is a part of her proper performance as a

“wife and mother maintaining the togetherness norm in the suburban frontier of the

post-war American dream” (MacPherson 62-63). The mother‟s “business” as a keeper is

to “forget the past, not to know the war, to ignore the not-niceties pounding on the

door” (MacPherson 62-63). After Esther‟s shock treatment at Doctor Gordon‟s hospital,

the mother is only too eager to interpret her refusal to come back as a sign that she has

“decide[d] to be okay again” (Plath 140). Her desperate resolution not to see the ugly

reaches its climax at the end of the book when, visiting Esther during her final days at

the hospital, she suggests to “take up where [they] left from” and “act as if all this were

26
a bad dream” (Plath 227). In what seems like a final confirmation of the breech between

her mother and herself, Esther then proclaims that everything she has seen and been

through has become a part of her, forming her personal landscape (Plath 227),

suggesting that her mother will remain blind to an integral, crucial part of her, and thus

unable to really understand her.

While losing her mother to rigid conformity and the lack of understanding,

Esther has also been abandoned by her father. Mr Greenwood died when she was only

nine and she does not seem to have recovered from his death: “After that – in spite of

the Girls Scouts and the piano lessons and the water-colour lessons and the dancing

lessons and the sailing camp, all of which my mother scrimped to give me (…) I had

never been really happy again” (Plath 71). According to Elaine Martin, the significance

of Mr Greenwood‟s demise in his daughter‟s life is two-fold: beside making Esther feel

lonely and deserted, it has also intensified the “claustrophobic bond with her mother” in

the years following her father‟s death. Reflecting on her early childhood, Esther dreams

that “if [her] father hadn‟t died, he would have taught [her] all about insects, which was

his speciality at the university” (Plath 159) – insects, as opposed to the Girls Scouts and

piano lessons that were on Esther‟s schedule since her mother took over her upbringing

completely. The fact that Mrs Greenwood never mourned her husband and did not let

her children attend his funeral (Plath 159) further stresses the opposition of Esther‟s

parents in relation to their daughter: Esther‟s father seems to represent Esther‟s lost

connection to the outer world, the hope of the unconventional, a divergence from

domesticity and stereotypically female activities her mother embodies.

While Esther‟s mother seems very central to The Bell Jar, the parents in The

Catcher are, at first sight at least, hardly present in the story at all. Robert Miltner

27
observes that Holden‟s father is “largely absent from the book” and, while being

referred to by Holden and several other characters, he is never shown in any interaction

with his son (n.pag.). His physical absence in the book seems to correspond to his

virtual absence in Holden‟s life as parent – the lack of emotional contact with his son

and Holden‟s inability to turn to his father for guidance (Miltner n.pag.). Just like in The

Bell Jar, a part of Holden‟s problem with his father is one of an unacceptable role-

model: whatever picture can be pieced together from Holden‟s references to his father

bears resemblance to Mrs Greenwood in being the dreaded and resented version of the

adolescent‟s future. Working as a corporation lawyer, Holden‟s father does not get to

“save guys‟s lives” (Salinger 155) as Holden would most likely want him to. He does,

however, manage to earn enough money to be considered “quite wealthy” (97). The

other source of his income, the frequent “investing [of] money in shows on Broadway”

(97) is void of a higher (money-free) purpose altogether. Overall, the father‟s business

activities seem like a precise reversal of Holden‟s idea of a dream job that evolves

around an altruistic purpose rather than a financial reward.

There is no wonder, then, in the subtle but tracable sense of resistance in the

way Holden relates to his father‟s money. For instance, he states that “[his] father is

quite wealthy” (Salinger 97), rather than extending the subject to “his family” or at least

“his parents”: not only does the phrasing stress wealth as an attribute peculiar to

Holden‟s father, it also evokes the boy‟s wish to distance himself from his father‟s

wealth. Furthermore, Mr. Caulfield‟s skillful handling of money – earning it in a well-

paid job, multiplying it by successful investments and then spending elaborately for

things that build up a high living standard, such as a new car radio (Salinger 147) –

contrasts with Holden‟s careless treatment of it. He claims to be “pretty loaded”

(Salinger 47) when leaving Pencey at the beginning of the book but has none of the

28
money left two days later. He openly admits to be “a goddam spendthrift at heart”

revealing that he frequently loses money and forgets to pick up his change (Salinger

97). His extensive spending does not come from the desire to surround himself by

luxurious things but rather from a complete disregard of it that serves him as a means of

resistance.

However, it is important not to perceive Holden‟s father as a necessarilly

materialistic person by nature. Rather than that, he seems to be what Mrs Greenwood is

in The Bell Jar, an individual produced by and representative of the society he lives in.

He is “an example of the typical „fifties male‟”(Miltner n.pag.) – a highly disciplined,

responsible person, devoted to his work in order to support his family. And just like in

the case of Mrs Greenwood, his perfect adaptation to the society‟s expectations seems

to take its toll in other parts of his life, namely in his personal relationship with his

children. The lack of emotional connection, already derivable from Mr Caulfield‟s

vague presence in the book as well as the fact that Holden provides no memories of

actual bonding moments with his father, is symbolically confirmed during Holden‟s

short stay at home. There, Phoebe reveals that her father is going to miss her

performance in a school Christmas play because he “has to fly to California” (Salinger

146), pressumably on a business trip. For Holden, who apparently adores his little sister

(and generally thinks very highly of young children), missing out on family moments

for the sake of work is yet another menace inherent in following in his father‟s

footsteps.

However, Mr. Caulfield himself seems to be pushing Holden in the direction of

a succesfull, prestigious career the boy resents: “My father wants me to go to Yale, or

maybe Princeton, but I swear, I wouldn‟t go to one of the Ivy League colleges if I was

dying” (Salinger 78). Having witnessed his son‟s expulsion from several prep schools –

29
the necessary steps on the ladder to a successful future – the father is aware of Holden‟s

radical divergence from the desired path, and appears critical towards it. He often tells

Holden that he does not act his age (Salinger 8), as if cautioning him that he is failing to

live up to the expectations society has of a boy on the verge of adulthood. The image of

strictness and normativity suggested by Holden‟s narrative is once again confirmed by

Phoebe who, upon learning about Holden‟s newest expulsion from school, repeatedly

exclaims “Daddy‟ll kill you!” (Salinger 149-150). While refusing her exaggerated

claim, Holden admits that his father will probably “give [him] hell again, and then […]

send [him] to that goddam military school” (Salinger 150), which Miltner defines as the

“1950s version of juvenile delinquent boot camp for an attitude readjustment” (n.pag.).

Again, Holden‟s father resembles The Bell Jar‟s Mrs Greenwood in being a parent who

simply reinforces the social norm, who tries to “fix” their child rather than understand

the origins of their deviation and misery. His lack of presence in the book is therefore a

little ambiguous: despite being “a shadowy abstraction,” he proves to be just “as

controlling of Holden as is the impersonal, elusive corporate authority which […]

ultimately determines the values of his home” (Rowe n.pag.), that is, the society Holden

lives in and repeatedly struggles with.

Like her husband, Holden‟s mother seems very “shadowy” as a character and

unavailable as a parent or a guide. On the one occassion she actually appears in the

book, Holden is hiding in D.B.‟s closet, so he is unable to really see her or talk to her –

an impossibility that is representative of their relationship on the whole (Graham 69).

Holden is aware that his mother has been emotionally unstable since her son Allie‟s

death; he describes her as “slightly hysterical” (Salinger 45) and “nervous as hell,”

revealing that she often stays “up all night smoking cigarettes” (143). While he is by no

means judgmental towards her and even claims to feel sorry for her (139), it is clear that

30
the condition affects Mrs Caulfield‟s relationship to her children: she is “too nervous

and anxious herself to do more than pay perfunctionary attention to [them]” (Rowe

n.pag.).

Understandably, then, her focus in upbringing is on the propriety of conduct and

appearance rather than the children‟s inner world. In the brief interaction with her

daughter, Mrs Caulfield makes sure Phoebe has had her dinner and “sai[d] [her]

prayers,” cautions her about her improper vocabulary, scolds her for supposed smoking,

and, before showing any signs of genuinely knowing her child, goes to bed with a

“splitting headache” (Salinger 160). In acting as a normative rather than understanding

parent, she resembles both her husband and Mrs Greenwood from The Bell Jar.

Moreover, she manifests a similar sense of suppressed individuality that is central to the

feminity in Esther‟s world. She tells Phoebe she had a “marvelous” time at a party she

attended with her husband but Holden immediately reveals it is just a pretence: “You

could tell she didn‟t mean it. She doesn‟t enjoy herself much when she goes out”

(Salinger 159). Holden sees his mother neglect her own feelings for the sake of a proper

appearance and is very aware of the pain stuffed under the idyllic façade: the “splitting

headache” Mrs Caulfield complains about right after lying to Phoebe (Salinger 160)

might stand for both her emotional unease and the exhaustion of having to disguise it by

continual pretences. Being a victim of the very philosophy Holden is rebelling against,

she is hardly the one to help her son through the difficult period he is experiencing.

As suggested earlier, the parents‟s elusive presence in the book represents their

inability to genuinely connect to their son and provide him with the help he is looking

for. While Holden initially tries to stay away from home as to avoid their reaction to his

expulsion from school, he eventually cannot help returning to his parents„ apartment:

аccording to Graham, it is “something he has unconsciously wanted to do ever since he

31
arrived in Manhattan” (66). His visit at home in the middle of the night can be read as

a desperate attempt to establish a connection with his parents and ask them for help. On

his way back out of the flat – having seen or talked to neither of them – Holden finally

realizes that he “[does] not give a damn anymore if they caught [him]” and admits he

almost wishes they would (Salinger 163). “Clearly, although he fears [their]

disapproval, he would like to be „caught‟ by them and saved from the crisis he is falling

into” (Graham 69). However, his wish remains unfulfilled: his parents never catch him

and “Holden falls again over „ten million garbage pails‟ outside the family home,

emphasizing his increasing vulnerability” (Graham 69).

2.2 The Educational Institutions

Many social values that Holden and Esther find oppressive or hard to live up to

are a part of the (hidden) curriculum of the educational institutions figuring in the

novels. Responsible for proper initiation of young men and women, these institutions

provide them with both guidelines for gender-specific thinking and behavior, and peer

company to compare their performances to. In The Catcher in the Rye, the focus is on

the Pencey Prep, the prestigious boarding school that proudly claims to be “molding

boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men” (Salinger 2), advertising their services

“in about a thousand magazines,” along with a picture of “a hot-shot guy on a horse

jumping over a fence” (Salinger 2). The advertisement introduces the Pencey Prep into

the book and serves as a significant prevision of the school‟s agenda that Holden

repeatedly struggles with, often observing it critically from a distance instead of

internalizing its values.

A crucial attribute of the school‟s “media image” is the way it “contrasts [with]

the physical actuality of the school” (Miltner n.pag.). As an upper-class boarding

32
school, they use a picture of a polo player for self-promotion because it “connotates

class, leisure […] and status” (Miltner n.pag.). However, Holden reveals the ad to be an

elaborate construction when he claims that he “never even once saw a horse anywhere

near the place” (Salinger 2). The premise Pencey is working with here is that image

does not have to match the bare reality, that reality can be embellished or partly made-

up in order to achieve the image and result one desires. Holden also sees the theory at

work while closely watching his dorm mates Stradlater and Ackley. Both boys are

“slob[s] in [their] personal habits” (Salinger 23) but while Ackley openly walks around

with his teeth all “mossy and awful” (16) and “crumby fingernails” (34), Stradlater is

more subtle about his slobbery: “He always looked all right, Stradlater, but [..] you

should‟ve seen the razor he shaved himself with. […] He never cleaned it or anything.

He always looked good when he finished fixing himself up but he was a secret slob

anyway if you knew him the way I did” (Salinger 23, emphasis in original). Stradlater,

who has apparently mastered the art of cover making, happens to be a “social success”

(Graham 37-38) at Pencey while Ackley is the direct opposite, a loser that “never [does]

anything on Saturday night except stay in his room and squeeze his pimples” (Salinger

31). In terms of success and social acceptance, Pencey is telling Holden, one is always

better off with their image edited and polished than with letting people see the bare

reality. Holden, who prefers plain truth to glittery pretences, cannot make use of this

knowledge himself; he can only be reassured in the “phoniness” of the world and the

institution that is supposed to guide him into maturity.

Another important meaning is embedded in the “boys” and “young men”

figuring in the advertisement; the words refer to the strict gender division central to the

higher education, and especially to elite boarding schools like Pencey. As Holden

observes unhappily, the separation routine extends beyond the actual learning process,

33
making the school grounds unnaturally void of the other sex: “There were never many

girls at all at the football games. Only seniors were allowed to bring girls with them. It

was a terrible school, no matter how you look at it” (Salinger 2). Critical of the school‟s

policy, Holden dreams of a more integrated environment, a place “where you can see a

few girls around once in a while” (Salinger 2). The wish, although perfectly common

for a boy at Holden‟s age, can also be read as a voice of resistance against the strict

reinforcement of cultural categories that undermines the natural integrity of the world,

which naturally consists of both men and women.

Absent from Pencey as actual people, the representatives of the other gender

figure in the ongoing “talk[s] about girls and liquor and sex” that Holden lists as one of

the reasons why he hates the school (Salinger 118). In these conversations, girls are

being used by boys to help build the desired image of “sophisticated white, heterosexual

[…] masculinity” (Baldwin n.pag.) that implies substential sexual experience as well as

the “mastery” of seduction. At Pencey, this identity is once again best embraced by

Stradlater, “the ward of the prep school system” (Miltner n.pag.), whose sexual

activities makes him stand out among his peers: “Most guys at Pencey just talked about

having sexual intercourse with girls all the time […] but old Stradlater really did it

(Salinger 43). In his relation to girls, Stradlater is a typical “user […]: he uses Jane for

his own sexual gratification,” (Miltner n.pag.), not having enough respect for her to

remember her name properly (Salinger 26) or enough interest to care for anything but

the “very sexy stuff” in her life (Salinger 28). There is a subtle hint in the book that the

school might be secretly approving of Stradlater‟s exploitative ways: much of the boy‟s

sexual life, including his date with Jane, takes place in the car of Pencey‟s basketball

coach (Salinger 39, 43), that is, a school authority, who “let[s] Stradlater borrow his car

when he want[s] to,” even though it is officially against the rules (Salinger 39).

34
Moreover, it could be argued that the school‟s gender policy itself reinforces the

evolution of quick, impersonal relationships as the boys there lack both a

comprehensive, realistic vision of the other gender and an actual chance to spend

enough time with girls to really know them. Holden, although often confused in his

attitude to girls, outmatures the peer trend in claiming that “you don‟t always have to

get too sexy to know a girl” (Salinger 69). As Miltner observes, Holden‟s “physical

contact with Jane is limited to holding hands and kissing […] as she cries after an

encounter with her stepfather, and his innocent, non-exploitative actions are in direct

contrast to those of Stradlater” (n.pag.) Holden, rather than the school authority, ends up

being the voice of morality when he claims that “if you don‟t really like the girl, you

shouldn‟t horse around with her at all” (Salinger 56).

The gender division at Pencey also has to do with young men and women being

brought up for substantially different roles in society. If a man‟s primary task is to be a

breadwinner for the family (Goldthorpe 138) then the students of a prestigious upper-

class boarding school are obviously meant to become better at breadwinning than

everybody else. Holden seems to sense that the ultimate purpose of his education is

prosperity, wealth and high status: “All you do is study so that you can learn enough to

be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day” (Salinger 118). The

school confirms this idea by drawing attention to financially successful graduates and

setting them as role-models for the current students. Instead of being named after a

memorable scholar or a scientist, Holden‟s dorms carry the name of a successful

business who “made a pot of dough […] after he got out of Pencey” and “gave a pile of

[it]” to the school (Salinger 14). The peculiar title “Ossenburger Memorial Wing”

further suggests that the sponsor is someone to be remembered and perhaps even

35
glorified; when he “[comes] up to school in his big goddam Cadillac,” the students “all

[have] to stand up and give him a […] cheer” (Salinger 14).

There also seem to be a gender-flavoured edge to the learning curriculum itself:

in Holden‟s Oral Expression class, the students are required to stick to the chosen topic

and “yell „Digression!‟” at their classmates as soon as they begin to digress (Salinger

165). According to Baldwin, the teacher‟s “view of the ideal form of narrative seems to

be conventionally rationalistic – story telling should be direct, logical, purposive – traits

commonly associated with masculinity” (n.pag.). The course‟s methods seem to be in

line with the school‟s intention to “mold[...] boys into splendid, clear thinking young

men” (Salinger 2), to cleanse them of all things impulsive, emotional and spontaneous.

Holden‟s classmate Richard Kinsella fails the course because he is unable to stick to the

chosen topic, his father‟s farm, and “all of а sudden gets more interested in his uncle”

(Salinger 166). Holden expresses sympathy for Kinsella, stating that “it‟s dirty to keep

yelling „Digression!‟ at him when he‟s all nice and exciting” (Salinger 166), and

explicitly claims to prefer digression as a “more interesting” mode of narrative (Salinger

165). Holden questions the teacher‟s requirement to constantly “unify and simplify,”

claiming that “some things you just can‟t do that to” (Salinger 166). In rejecting the

course‟s perspective as limiting, and failing to pass it himself, Holden refuses to have

his mind subdued to Pencey‟s molding craftsmanship, to let himself be “unified and

simplified” into the brilliant result promised by the school‟s advertisement.

As pointed out above, the knowledge students receive at Pencey is largely social

in character, reinforcing behavioral practices and stereotypes that Holden considers

either limiting or simply wrong. Therefore, his “flunking out is an act of moral will

rather than a failure of application” (Baumbach 60). In failing to master the curriculum,

Holden “resists the initiatory knowledge of the false father[s]” (Baumbach 60), all the

36
unacceptable adult or peer authorities he encounters at Pencey. Holden‟s relationship

with these authority figures is symbolically concluded in his final interaction with Mr

Spencer, the history teacher, on the day of his departure from Pencey. In their

conversation, “there is an ironic inversion of the traditional student-teacher, son-father

relationship which extends through the novel” (Baumbach 59). While Mr Spencer

obstinately reminds Holden of his failure in history class and embarrasses him by

reading his answers out loud, Holden is kind and mature enough to reassure the teacher

that he is by no means responsible for Holden‟s failure, thus proving morally superior to

his mentor (Baumbach 59). Their encounter is also significant because it stresses the

sense of unease and abandonement inherent in Holden‟s exceptionality. Towards the

end of his talk with Spencer, he begins to reflect on a question that becomes one of his

greatest issues throughout the narrative, the fate of the ducks in Central Park. “I was

thinking about the lagoon in Central Park […]. I was wondering if it would be frozen

over when I got home and if it was, where did the ducks go. […] I wondered if some

guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew

away” (Salinger 11). As Heiserman and Miller suggest, Holden “fears for the ducks

when the lagoon freezes over because he is a duck himself, with nowhere to go” (201),

with no one to turn to for help or guidance. His emotionally distant parents have

entrusted his upbringing to educational institutions; however, he is now at the verge of

leaving his fourth school, and he has yet found no “wise and good father whose

example would justify his own initiation into manhood” (Baumbach 57). If there is no

“guy in a truck” to come and help Holden survive the freezing reality of the world, his

sole option is to “just fl[y] away” – something that he, as discussed in the following

chapter, desperately and repeatedly attempts to do.

37
 An institution somewhat correspondent to The Catcher‟s Pencey Prep is the New

York fashion magazine where Esther spends a whole a month on an elite internship.

Like Pencey, it is considered a prestigeous, desirable place for a young person to be at:

“I was supposed to be the envy of thousand other college girls just like me all over

America who wanted nothing more than to be tripping about in those same size seven

patent leather shoes […] and black patent leather pocket-book to match” (Plath 2).

Although not explicitly proclaimed an educating facility, it clearly has a mind-shaping

purpose and is heavily concerned with female socialization. Esther recognizes this

educational edge when she first describes the hotel the girls are accommodated at: “it

reminded me of my dormitory at college. It wasn‟t a proper hotel […] where there are

both men and women mixed about here and there on the same floor. This hotel – the

Amazon – was for women only” (Plath 3-4). At the Amazon, these twelve elite girls are

“protected” from the complex reality of a gender-mixed society so the impulses they

receive and ideas they develop can be kept in check. Once again, Plath uses prison-like

imagery to express the limiting properties of the institution: “They had the windows

fixed so you couldn‟t really open them and lean out, and for some reason this made me

furious” (Plath 17). In her urge to lean out, Esther refuses the claustrophobic safety of

the hotel and voices a desire for a contact with the complex, albeit dangerous world

outside. She is eager to accept Lenny Shepherd‟s invitation for a drink and a night out,

seeing it as a “gift of a chance to see something of New York besides what the people

on the magazine planned out for [her] so carefully” (Plath 8). Esther realizes that

whatever activities the magazine has in stock for the girls is only deliberately selected

part of the experience she could get from a stay in a city, and, by analogy, from life.

The internship‟s program seems to evolve strictly around all things “properly

female:” the girls are being invited to banquets in luxurious restaurants connected with

38
visiting the kitchens (Plath 23) or provided with “piles and piles of free bonuses, like

ballet tickets and passes to fashion shows and hair stylings at a famous expensive salon

(…) and advice about what to do with [their] particular complexions” (Plath 3). If, as

MacPherson points out, “the business of Esther‟s magazine [is] fashioning feminity

through image” (8), the twelve interns seem to be submitted to the process just as the

audience is. In what could be compared to Pencey‟s “molding philosophy,” the girls at

the magazine are provided with “recipes for turning the raw into the cooked”

(MacPherson 12), a precise set of instructions to fashion themselves to the image of an

ideal woman. They are to be heavily concerned with their appearance while not overly

intellectual or interested in matters outside the feminine scope. At one point, the girls do

receive a gift that is intellectual in nature – a book, The Thirty Best Short Stories of The

Year (Plath 46). But while the literary gift “serves as a tangible reminder of Esther‟s

career goals,” its overall function in The Bell Jar is ambiguous (Smith n.pag.): in one of

the stories, Esther encounters the image of the fig tree, which eventually develops into

the narrative‟s key symbol of a woman‟s life choices and the strict separation of private

and public sphere. As discussed in the previous chapter, this rigid separation is fatal to

Esther because it cripples extensively intellectual women, ripping them of their

feminine essence. The fact that Esther never mentions any other story from the book

only stresses its importance as a source of this fatal metaphor, and thus a gift that “both

encourage[s] and discourage[s] Esher‟s navigation beyond the private sphere” (Smith

n.pag.).

The initiating knowledge Esther receives at the magazine thus clearly evolves

around the message that “women‟s bodies are of more exchange value in the market

than women‟s minds” (MacPherson 28). Sensing this philosophy on the background of

the internship‟s activities, Esther finds herself unable to enjoy the experience the way

39
she expected herself to: “I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties like a

numb trolley-bus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls

were but I couldn‟t get myself to react” (Plath 2). The “numb trolley bus,” conducting a

stereotypical movement in precisely set out lines, resembles the image of an elevator

repeatedly used in The Catcher to express the dull, limited existence Holden associates

with a conventional male future (see Chapter One). By parallel, Esther‟s lack of

enthusiasm and interest in her work at the magazine can be compared to Holden‟s “not

applying [him]self” at Pencey (Salinger 3): Esther cannot bring herself to try because

she is disillusioned by the very foundations of the institution that, despite all its prestige

and glamour, is shattering her dreams of an intellectual future and limiting the scopes of

her existence.

If the magazine is where Esther receives her social education, it is also a place

where “her ability to play all the roles assigned” is tested (MacPherson 6). As

MacPherson observes, “the magazine becomes for Esther a kind of tribunal, a College

Board on female identity questions of career and – or is it or? – feminity” (6). Needless

to say, Esther fails at the test just like Holden does at his final school exams. On their

last day in New York, the girls are “supposed to be photographed with props to show

what [they] wanted to be” (Plath 97), that is, to construct a perfect, blissful image of

themselves, one they will be expected to keep up for the rest of their lives. Esther

watches her friend Betsy complete the task flawlessly: Betsy decides to be

photographed with “an ear of corn to show she want[s] to be a farmer‟s wife” (Plath

97), and years later, Esther “still see[s] her face now and then, smiling out of those

P.Q.‟s wife wears B.H. Wragge‟ adds” (Plath 6). Having chosen the well trodden path,

followed by countless women before her, Betsy‟s life is smoothly laid out and struggle-

free, in other words, the exact opposite of Esther‟s. Esther, by contrast, has a much

40
harder time at the “exam:” she cannot say what it is she wants to be and when the

photographer asks her to smile for the picture, she has to struggle to do so: “At last,

obediently, like the mouth of a ventriloquist‟s dummy, my own mouth started to quirk

up. „Hey,‟ the photographer protested, with sudden foreboding, you look like you‟re

going to cry‟” (Plath 97). Esther‟s feeble attempt to complete the given task results in a

precisely opposite effect. Instead of smiling, she eventually bursts out to tears, thus

failing at the essential art of image-making – by the magazine‟s standard, she seems

unsuitable for her role in society. After the painful experience is over, she claims to feel

“limp and betrayed, like the skin shed by a terrible animal. It was a relief to be free free

of the animal, but it seemed to have taken my spirit with it” (Plath 98). Esther seems to

be facing a similar problem concerning medial constructions of gender identity as

Holden does: she fails to live up to the image of a perfect female that she in fact resents

– “the terrible animal” – but the institution provides her with no viable alternatives, no

other versions of feminity she could take up.

For a while, it seems that Esther‟s hope could be in her connection to the

“wordly [and] seductive” Doreen, who figures in the narrative as the evil opposite of the

good and proper Betsy (Martin n.pag.). Esther states with admiration that she had

“never known a girl like Doreen before; [she had] an amused, mysterious sneer, as if all

the people around her were pretty silly, and she could tell some good jokes on them if

she wanted to” (Plath 4). Esther is intrigued by the striking sense of difference and

superior that Doreen emanates, and even more by the chance to share the position,

elavating herself above the limiting world at the magazine: “Doreen singled me out

right away. She made me feel I was so much sharper than the others” (Plath 4).

Unimpressed by the internship program herself, Doreen regularly misses out on the

magazine‟s girly activities, “bawle[s] Esther out about […] bothering to get her

41
assignments in by a deadline” (Plath 5) and even debases the seriousness of the

photographing exam that is so distressing for Esther: “Doreen held a gold-embroidered

sari to show she wanted to be a social worker in India. She didn‟t really, she told me,

she only wanted to get her hands on a sari” (Plath 97). With her nonchalant, careless

attitude towards the education process at the magazine, Doreen contemporarily relieves

Esther of her fears of inadequacy and failure: “Being with Doreen made me forget my

worries. I felt wise and cynical as hell” (Plath 7). But Doreen never really fulfills her

potential in a way Esther could appreciate. For all her wit and amazing intuition, her

daring behavior does not move beyond the realm of the body into the intellectual,

creative sphere where Esther would gladly follow. Their evening out with Lenny

Shepherd turns out to be a major disenchantment for Esther as she watches Doreen – the

smart, funny, insightful Doreen – “hanging on to Lenny‟s left earlobe with her teeth”

(Plath 15). Indeed, Doreen‟s openly sexual relationship with Lenny is a rebellion

against the confinement of the Amazon hotel where the girls are placed so that “men

couldn‟t get at them and deceive them” (Plath 4). But she never shows Esther what she

wants to see most – a girl whose existence makes sense without any necessary relation

to men, a girl who can be whole in herself, not just a companion to someone else, a

pretty toy to satisfy a man‟s desire. The fact that Doreen begins to spend “most of her

free time with Lenny Shepherd” instead of taking part in the magazine‟s activities

therefore cannot inspire Esther or help her build her own, satisfying identity. As

MacPherson observes, there is a “partnership between the fashion magazine and the

date, in which the date becomes the means of self-improvement, instead of its goal.

Dating creates the competitive motivation necessary to cultivate feminity to its fullest,

developed state” (10). The alternative Doreen offers is no less dependent on a female

body and no more concerned with Esther‟s intellectual and artistic capacities than the

42
magazine is, and the broken illusion ends up driving Esther even further into her

despair: “I wondered why I couldn‟t go the whole way doing what I shouldn‟t, the way

Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired” (Plath 28). Having refused

the initiatory knowledge of the institution and deemed Doreen‟s alternative

unsatisfactory, Esther is left feeling empty and insecure, all alone in figuring out how to

become the person she wants to be and if it is possible to be that person at all.

43
 3. Escape Strategies and Mental Illness

Pushed towards a future they abhor and abandoned in their unwillingness to

reconcile to the demands and limitations the society lays upon them, both Esther and

Holden begin to feel increasingly threatened by their surrounding environment. As

suggested in the previous chapters, there is a continuous prison imagery stretching

throughout The Bell Jar that expresses Esther‟s lack of freedom and space for personal

development. During the stay in New York, where Esther receives her social education,

she complains about the fixed windows at the Amazon hotel (Plath 17) and describes

her own mirror reflection as a face “peering from the grating of a prison cell after

a prolonged beating” (98) – the violent image at the end hinting at the destructive

potential of the limited space behind the bars. The symbols appear again on her way

home to the suburbs as she calls her mother‟s car “a prison van,” (110) and her

suburban home “a large, but escape-proof cage” (110). Esther‟s anxieties culminate

after her first unsuccessful attempts to break out by the means of a suicide: аt that point,

she begins to consider her very existence a prison cell, fearing that her body “would trap

[her] in its stupid cage for fifty years with no sense at all” (Plath 153). Finally, Esther‟s

fear is reflected in the book‟s central metaphor, the bell jar, which stands for a limited,

closed space that isolates its inhabitant and prevents them from moving freely.

Holden perceives the world around him as a dreary, corrupt place to which there

is no good alternative. While his friend Sally presents her vision of a future full of

options, Holden claims there is “no marvelous place to go after college,” the only thing

there is the stereotypical world of business offices, suitcases and elevators (Salinger

119). He later adds some fatality to his claim as he repeatedly discovers the word “fuck”

written on the wall of Phoebe‟s school: “You can‟t ever find a place that‟s nice and

peaceful because there isn‟t any. You may think there is but once you get there, when

44
you‟re not looking, somebody‟ll sneak up and write „Fuck you‟ right under your nose”

(Salinger 120). According to Joyce Rowe, Holden sees the vulgar words “as ineluctable

blight spreading through space and time” (n.pag.), inflicting the whole world, and

possibly including Holden as well: “I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a

cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it‟ll say „Holden Caulfield‟ […] and then

right under it it‟ll say „Fuck you.‟ I‟m positive, in fact” (Salinger 183). Holden‟s fears

are also partly reflected in the book‟s title image: in Holden‟s perception, people enter

the plight of the world by falling from the original, unspoilt state of childhood. The

narrative therefore stresses Holden‟s continuous but fatally unsuccessful search for a

catcher, a person who could prevent his fall by showing him a different, viable way of

growing into adulthood (Baumbach 60).

Frightened by a reality they deem unbearable and provided with no obvious way

out, Esther and Holden begin to engage in a series of “escape strategies,” specific

behavioral and mental patterns designed to detach themselves from the world they live

in. Each of the strategies they take up does, in one way or another, negate or deny some

aspect of the world, or prevent Esther and Holden from participating in it.

The most straightforward way of escaping is simple running away from places.

The Catcher is dominated by frequent changes of location, caused by Holden‟s inability

to find peace in the places he stays at. By constantly running away, he attempts to put

distance between himself and the experience encountered in these places – or, in

Baumbach‟s words, to “escape evil” (64). The series of flights begins with his decision

to “get the hell out of Pencey” (Salinger 45) the educational institution whose corrupt

initiatory knowledge makes him feel “too sad and lonesome” to stay (45). Having left

the school, Holden decides to spend a few days at a hotel in Manhattan to “take it easy”

(45). However, the evil soon follows, and so do the feelings of loneliness and

45
depression: his unfortunate encounter with the young prostitute Sunny and her dealer

Maurice ends up driving him to suicidal thoughts: “What I really felt like, though, was

committing suicide” (Salinger 94). The run-and-chase scenario is repeated throughout

the narrative as Holden meets with old friends in bars and pubs, returns to their family

apartment or visits his former teacher, Mr Antollini. Each time, he is driven away by

fear, disgust or disappointment with people who could have been his catchers. Indeed,

the most dramatically portrayed escapes – from Pencey, the Caulfields‟s apartment and

Mr Antollini‟s place – are provoked by Holden‟s inability to find acceptable guidance in

the places of supposed security and wisdom.

Although he keeps running away throughout the whole book, Holden seems to

realize that physical escape from a place is temporary and therefore limited.

Subconsciously, he begins to search for a more permanent detachment from the world

around him, such as one found in a monastic life. Lying in his schoolmate Ackley‟s

room, feeling “lonesome and rotten,” he admits to have been “toying with the idea of

joining [a monastery]” (44). Holden checks with Ackley if it is necessary to be a

Catholic to be allowed in, suggesting that it is not the religion itself that draws him in

(44). What is more, Holden openly admits to his reservations about Christian teachings:

“I‟m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all but I don‟t care too much for most of the

other stuff in the Bible” (89). Rather than from religious belief, Holden‟s wish to join a

monastery seems to stem from his understanding that friary members live in physical

and spiritual separation, that is, in a way, outside the realm of everyday life. As Walter

Allen observes, the nuns Holden meets at the Grand Central Station and immediately

develops fondness for, are also “obviously not of the world” (331). Raising charity

money into an “old straw basket” while having very little to spend themselves, the nuns

differ strikingly from the most adults Holden knows: “I kept trying to picture [...] Sally

46
Hayes‟s crazy mother, standing outside some department store and collecting dough for

poor people. […] She‟d get bored. She‟d hand in her basket and then go some place

swanky for lunch. That‟s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing,

that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch” (Salinger 103). Holden is clearly

intrigued by the poverty аssociated with religious life because it opposes the

materialistic orientation of the society he lives in.

During Esther‟s excruciating stay at home, as her feelings of imprisonment

escalate, she also begins to think about joining the church despite her obvious lack of

religious belief: “Lately, I considered going into the Catholic Church myself. […] Of

course, I didn‟t believe in life after death or the virgin birth […] but I didn‟t have to let

the priest see this” (Plath 158). Esther is quite straightforward in admitting that the

Church itself is only means to an end, her primary motivation being the chance to cut

the strings to the world. “The only trouble was Church, even the Catholic Church, didn‟t

take up the whole of her life. No matter how much you knelt and prayed, you still had to

eat three meals a day, go to work and live in the world” (Plath 158). As ordinary Church

membership does not cut the strings to the reality properly, Esther decides to “see how

long [she] had to be a Catholic before [she could] become a nun” and leave her old life

behind completely. However, she soon realizes the path is closed to her as “the

Catholics wouldn‟t take in any crazy nuns” (Plath 158). Clearly, convents are not

“otherworldly” enough to completely ignore the categories of proper and improper, and

Esther once again turns out to be too deviant to belong.

A more permanent escape strategy is Esther‟s construction of Elly

Higginbottom, initially a cover name that later develops into a sort of alternative

identity. Esther first introduces herself as Elly while visiting a night club in New York,

claiming that she comes from Chicago – it is an attempt to separate her real self from

47
the possibly dangerous experience she might be about to encounter: “I felt safer after

that. I didn‟t want anything I said or did that night to be associated with me and my real

name and coming from Boston” (Plath 11). Later, as she becomes increasingly

disappointed with the course of her own life, Esther decides that she might erase all of it

by taking up Elly‟s identity instead: “I thought if I ever get to Chicago, I might change

my name to Elly Higginbottom for good. Then nobody would know I had thrown up

a scholarship at big eastern woman‟s college and mucked up a month in new York and

refused a perfectly solid medical student for a husband” (127). Significantly, Esther

decides to make her new self an orphan, as if denying the lethal connection to her

mother and, at the same time, deepening the spasm between her and her old life

experience. According to Rowe, orphanhood in American literature “represents a

liberation from the past that is a totalizing condition of existence” (n.pag.). The identity

Esther constructs for herself is not only different from the old one but also substantially

simpler – reduced to character traits only, not assessed at all in terms of social

performances: “In Chicago, people would take me for what I was. I would be simple

Elly Higginbottom, the orphan. People would love me for my sweet, quiet nature”

(Plath 127). But the simplicity that makes Elly so attractive to Esther also makes her

unrealistic and impossible to live out – that is, in the end, unable to help effectively.

A vision of a simpler life is also at the core of Holden‟s fantasy about a “little

cabin somewhere” in a “pretty and sunny” place, where he claims to want to live for the

rest of his life (Salinger 179). Disappointed by the experience of the world around him,

Holden finally decides to leave New York for good: “I decided I‟d never go home again

and I‟d never go away to another school again. [...] I‟d start hitchhiking my way out

West [...] where nobody‟d know me” (179). By heading for the legendary West, Holden

wants to pursue his vision of freedom and simple life, to get away from the highly

48
sophisticated but morally decayed world on the East Coast. Resisting the conventional

identity of a successful man defined by his own expensive car and a prestigious career,

Holden intents to “get a job on a filing station somewhere,” build a cabin himself (179)

and “chop all [his] own wood in wintertime” (119). But, beside envisioning a clearly

alternative lifestyle, Holden also wishes to be separated from the rest of humanity: “I‟d

pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn‟t have to have any goddam

stupid useless conversations with anybody […]. Everybody‟d think I was just poor deaf-

mute bastard and leave me alone” (Salinger 179). Holden seems to desire what

Baumbach calls “а spiritual retirement” (64), suggesting that the world Holden has lived

in so far has become too tiring and no longer bearable. The point of the retirement is to

get rid of the socio-cultural burden, to live a life more simple, primordial, free of all the

cultural constructs and conventions that bear down on Holden and keep him from being

happy.

A similar appeal can be found in Holden‟s most pervasive escape strategy, one

that is traceable throughout the whole novel. It is his obvious attachment to childhood,

the “time [in life] when self and world seem […] to exist in an enchanted unity” (Rowe

n.pag.). In more than one way, children‟s world represents the reversal of social

tendencies and behavioral patterns that Holden resists. Closer than any other life stage

to the initial state of tabula rasa, childhood is free of the burden of socio-cultural

knowledge and social roles that Holden finds so hard to cope with. It is, for one thing,

not so strictly defined in terms of gender: the term “kid,” which has very positive

connotations in Holden‟s narrative, is used alternately for both little girls and boys.

Reflecting on his childhood visits in the Museum of National History, Holden reveals

that the primary school he went to educated boys and girls together: “you‟d be two rows

of kids, and you‟d have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named

49
Gertrude Levine” (Salinger 108). As pointed out above, gender-divided education and

strictly defined gender roles are a source of distress for Holden; childhood represents a

more integrated world, one where gender is not so determining in relation to expected

behavior.

Not yet shaped by education or by the requirements of the employment market,

children‟s actions are usually spontaneous, self-motivated, independent of any

prescribed patterns or social and financial rewards. Watching a small boy humming a

song on the street, Holden cheerfully comments: “Тhe kid was swell. He was just

singing for the hell of it, you could tell. [...] It made me feel better. It made me feel not

so depressed anymore” (Salinger 104). A similar principle underlies his eagerness to

read his younger sister‟s notebooks, presumably a random collection of a child‟s

thoughts and commentaries: “I can read […] some kid‟s notebook, Phoebe‟s or

anybody‟s, all day and all night long. Kids‟ notebooks kill me” (Salinger 145). The

delight Holden derives from reading authentic, though immature and by literally

standards worthless texts, contrasts with the contempt he holds for his older brother

D.B.‟s latest literary production that has obviously lost some of its original essence

since he started working in Hollywood and conforming to the audience‟s expectations.

Having heard about his brother‟s latest project, Holden exclaims: “What‟s D.B. know

about Annapolis, for God‟s sake? What‟s that got to do with the kind of stories he

writes?‟” (Salinger 148). Here, Holden once again suggests that he lives in “a world in

which the child is the spiritual father of the man” (Baumbach 59), superior to an adult

on account of its spontaneity and purity of purpose.

The unavoidable passing of his own childhood years is therefore a tragedy to

Holden, a dark, threatening forecast of his own future. He repeatedly voices a desire for

things to stay still, changeless, as to preserve the innocence inherent in childhood. He

50
claims to love the Museum of National History he used to visit frequently as a child,

adding that “the best thing [in it] was that everything stayed right the way it was”

(Salinger 109). Later, he claims explicitly that “certain things should stay the way they

are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave

them alone” (Salinger 110). A seeming fulfillment of this desire is the source of

Holden‟s happiness in one of the closing scenes of the narrative: “in watching Phoebe

go round and round on the carousel, in effect going nowhere, he sees her in the timeless

continuum of art, on the verge of changing, yet unchanging, forever safe, forever

loving, forever innocent” (Baumbach 62). However, Holden‟s comfort is only

momentary – he knows that Phoebe eventually has to get off the carrousel and, as time

will pass, grow up. As Rowe observes, Holden […] is committed to a hopeless vision

that makes all the more acute his disgust with the actual” (n.pag.). Holden‟s memories

of his own childhood, his beloved dead brother Allie, as well as the attachment to

Phoebe may provide him with momentary relief but cannot resolve his problems

ultimately; the potential of childhood as an escape strategy is therefore limited.

In The Bell Jar, childhood as an escape strategy is limited to Esther‟s visit of her

father‟s grave that she undertakes during her bleakest period at home. The site brings

back the memories of the father and provokes fantasies about how things could have

been different if he had not died (Plath 159). As pointed out in the previous chapter,

Esther‟s father symbolizes a potential but lost way out of the claustrophobically female

world that Esther has been raised in after his death. However, Esther‟s attempt to find

refuge and comfort with her dead father remains an unrealized wish. Wandering among

the gravestones, Esther states grimly: “A fine drizzle started drifting down from the

grey sky and I grew very depressed. I couldn‟t find my father anywhere (Plath 160). In

the end, Esther does find her father‟s gravestone, but the discovery serves merely as a

51
confirmation of her abandonment and despair: the scene closes with Esther “la[ying] her

face to the smooth face of the marble and howl[ing] her loss to the cold salt rain” (Plath

161).

Although hardly concerned with childhood in her narrative, Esther, too, seems

intrigued by returning to the tabula rasa state – that is, erasing the social knowledge she

has been given (and preventing herself from gaining more of it). As her feelings of

disappointment and fear of the world grow, she displays a growing disregard for putting

on the “social skin,” such as clothes or make up, that her society considers a vital part of

human, and particularly female, essence. On her last day in New York, she performs

what Martin calls a process of “shedding” – throwing all her expensive, luxurious

clothes out of the window (n.pag.), like a snake shedding its old skin that no longer suits

its body. From then on, the tendency only escalates: Esther stops changing her clothes

and taking care of her appearance altogether. Three weeks after returning home, she is

“still wearing Betsy‟s white blouse and dirndl skirt,” the clothes she borrowed on the

last day in New York after throwing out all of hers (Plath 122). Esther admits that “they

drooped a bit now, as [she] hadn‟t washed them in [her] three weeks at home,” adding

that she “hadn‟t washed [her] hair for three weeks either” (122). Eventually, Esther

begins to have trouble reading, as this is also a learnt (that is, cultural) skill: “Words,

dimly familiar, but twisted all awry, like faces in a funhouse mirror, fled past, leaving

no impression on the glassy surface if my brain” (Plath 119-120). It almost seems like

she is going back in the process of basic socialization, forgetting all the cultural habits

she has been given, escaping to a sort of initial, newborn-like state. This backward

tendency culminates in Esther‟s final, most desperate attempt to escape the world she

lives in – the suicide scene, when she “crawls into the dark, womb-like corner of the

basement and swallows quantities of sleeping pills” (Martin n.pag.). Martin stresses the

52
“literal attempt to crawl back into the womb” as a motive indicating death and rebirth

(n.pag.): in death, Esther can reach a perfect tabula rasa, erasing all her experience with

the malign world out there.

At this point, Esther‟s escapism has clearly assumed pathological character and

grown into a mental disorder. Swallowing the pills that finally endanger her life is only

the very top of her – until then mostly half-hearted – attempts to take her own life. After

she unsuccessfully tries to strangle herself with a silk cord, she complains: “I saw 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, whearas if I had the whole say, I would be

dead in a flash” (Plath 153). Esther perceives her survival instinct to be an enemy that

keeps her from the freedom she imagines is inherent in death. Similarly, Holden

repeatedly reaches states of mind when he considers death to be the better option.

Overwhelmed by the torturing experience of the world, he “almost wish[es] [he] was

dead” (42) and even feels like “committing a suicide” (94), thus driving his escapism

into extreme, pathological positions.

The mental illness in The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye – having arisen

from the protagonists‟s desperate attempt to detach themselves from her experience of

the world – can be seen as an escape strategy itself, a subconsciously developed method

of dealing with reality that one finds impossible to bear. According to Laurie Ahern,

psychosis commonly serves as a coping mechanism people develop to “survive

situations that are intolerable” (n.pag). Ahern argues:

What better way [is there] to leave behind a reality that is too cumulatively

painful than to create one of our own... as in psychosis? What better way to feel

like we can accomplish and do anything when we are feeling insecure and

overwhelmed than becoming manic...where we can do anything and everything?

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 And what better coping mechanism can we find than to wash our hands fifty

times a day when we are feeling so unsafe? (n.pag.)

What she seems to suggest here is that mental illness can be “utilized” by a

suffering individual to help overcome a major fear, pain or anxiety they cannot deal

with in other ways. As I have pointed out throughout the chapter, both Esther and

Holden feel substantially threatened by the world they live in and frequently display a

strong desire – if not a need – to separate themselves from it. The alienation inherent in

mental illness, though exhausting to live out, does provide them with the liberation they

seek, serving as the desired escape from the world. Those who are mentally ill – just

like children, monks or nuns – are not “full-time members” of the society, they stand on

its edges, guarded by different rules, not completely belonging. Reflecting on the final

scene of The Catcher, where Holden refuses to betray the freedom of spontaneous

decision by promising the doctor to “apply [him]self” (Salinger 192), Joyce Rowe

claims: “The kind of inner resistance [Holden clings to] keeps exiles and isolates alive.

[...] If the cost of this shed of freedom is the continuing anxiety which alienation and

disaffection bring [..], so be it” (n.pag.) The illness makes Holden alone in his suffering,

but it allows him to preserve his spiritual freedom and the integrity of mind he could

never fit to the society‟s definition of normality. Similarly, the “apogee of recklessness”

that underlies Esther‟s suicide attempt “can […] be seen as the final effort to save

[her]self” (Martin n.pag.), to prevent her individuality from being subdued and shaped

into whatever society wants her to be. Mental illness in The Bell Jar and The Catcher in

the Rye thus seems to serve as a means of defense, as an alternative space created by an

exceptional, prolific mind that refuses to diminish itself in order to fit the prescribed

patterns of thinking and behavior.

54
 While the illness serves the protagonists as a refuge, it also has a significant

potential to serve the society they live in – as a critical mirror, a poignant commentary

on its basic principles and philosophy. In their narratives, both Esther and Holden are

repeatedly shown to be exceptionally mature, intelligent and perceptive individuals –

and yet, they both end up being labelled insane and put in a mental hospital for

normalization. As shown throughout the thesis, it is exactly this intellectual and moral

maturity of the protagonists that shapes their problematic relationship to the world and

eventually forces them to alienation and illness. They literally have to become sick in

order to protect their exceptional selves from the malign influence of the world. The

notions of reason and insanity thus appear to be somewhat reversed in The Bell Jar and

The Catcher in the Rye: а world that not only fails to appreciate Esther and Holden‟s

qualities but also insists on supressing and punishing them, must be in a way wrong,

abnormal and sick itself.

As it appears, then, Esther and Holden do not simply have a problem, they also

represent one, and along with it an acute need of the society to critically reflect on its

rigid values and restrictive ways, and perhaps begin to change them. The fact that both

novels have open endings – Esther before her release interview from the hospital, not

sure at all if her anxieties are gone for good; Holden in a sanatorium, refusing to

promise the doctors to behave – suggests that their problems can be solved neither

within the walls of a mental institution nor within the boundaries of their individual

lifespans. It could be argued that there is a shred of prophecy in their insanity, their

inner rebellion a harbinger of the upcoming social changes, of the counterculture that

rised against the restrictions of the early postwar period in the following generations.

55
Conclusion

The thesis has attempted to explain the connection between the social

surroundings and the mental illness in two coming-of-age novels, Sylvia Plath‟s The

Bell Jar and Jerome David Salinger‟s The Catcher in the Rye. As shown throughout the

analysis, the novels are remarkably similar in portraying an exceptionally bright,

creative and perceptive young person trying to grow up in a world that sabotages most

attempts at genuine spiritual growing. Living their adolescent years in the restricting,

comformist climate of the early postwar America, Esther Greenwood and Holden

Caulfield find themselves pushed into conventional social roles that cannot provide

them with intellectual or artistic satisfaction.

In its analysis of the protagonists‟ conflict with the world, the thesis has focused

on the question of gender, a determining social category of the period. Esther is

frightened of having to abandon her literary ambitions for the sake of fulfilling the

conventional role of a mother and a housewife – jobless or doomed to a a dreary,

subservient position at best. Likewise, Holden senses that he is being raised towards a

fate that he finds spiritually empty: a lifetime with a prosperous job that brings material

well-being and increases a man‟s social prestige as a successful breadwinner, but has no

connection to true art, and does not appreciate originality or authenticity of expression.

There seem to be no other obvious paths for Esther and Holden to take, and to

insist on making one‟s own is a distressing, anxiety-evoking task. The thesis observes

that the two young people are left alone in their desperate decision to hold on to their

ideals. Their parents, the most obvious possible mentors, are a disappointment as they

both represent and reinforce the stereotypical roles their children are so eager to avoid.

In both novels, the parents are portrayed to be perfectly attuned to the rhetorics of the

society, which has a disastrous effect on their relationship with their rebellious children.

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The alienation between the children and the parents assumes a form of chasm, up to a

point where the parents are either treated like an enemy (The Bell Jar) or virtually

absent in the child‟s emotional life (The Catcher). The analysis further stresses the

significance of the educational institutions responsible for the initiation of young

people. These give the protagonists instructions to shape themselves to the image of

what the society considers to be a perfect fe/male, one that Esther and Holden cannot

reconcile to. Instead of providing genuine help, the institutions prove to be one more

voice telling the protagonists to conform to the expectations they find limiting.

In response to this overwhelming pressure, the young people‟s inner worlds

become dominated by feelings of disillusion, loneliness, anxiety and fright that force

them to search for a way out. As discussed in the final chapter, both Esther and Holden

frequently invent peculiar escape strategies – mental patterns such as fantasies, unlikely

scenarios or visions of alternative lifestyles – in order to detach themselves from the

unbearable reality. The thesis argues that mental illness can also be seen as a type of

escape strategy, perhaps the most extreme one Esther and Holden undertake in order to

separate themselves from the world and thus preserve their individuality, ideals and the

integrity of their being. Mental illness assumes a function of a coping mechanism,

a means of survival in a world where meaningful existence is too narrowly defined for

Esther and Holden to participate in.

Finally, while approaching the mental illness from a prevailingly personal point

of view – as a defence strategy invented by young people tormented by their experience

of the world – the thesis has also stressed that it remains a social problem through and

through. The illness emerges from the larger social context of Esther and Holden‟s

existence and symbolically returns to the society with a message, one about a necessity

to take a critical look at its values and principles, and attempt to change them.

57
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59
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60
 English Résumé

The aim of this work is to analyse the main protagonists of two coming-of-age

novels, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and The Catcher in the Rye by Jerome David

Salinger, as young people growing up in the early postwar America. The analysis is to

define the connection between the restricting social atmosphere of the era and the young

people‟s unsuccessful initiation that eventually results in mental illness.

In the first part of the work, the focus is on the harshly reinforced gender

stereotypes of the period that prove very problematic in the process of Esther‟s and

Holden‟s indentity formation. As particularly imaginative and perceptive young people,

they find the expectations stifling and often conflicting with their personal aspirations

and desires. But while they refuse to assume the stereotypical roles, the society does not

seem to provide any alternatives, putting them into an unresolvable position and causing

feelings of anxiety and despair.

The following part is concerned with the protagonists‟ inability to find effective

help and guidance in the social instututions that are meant to guide adolescents into

adult life, namely educational institutions and family. In both novels, the parents serve

as threatening examples of their children‟s future identities and, along with the

educational institutions, act as reinforcers of the social values Esther and Holden resent.

The final part of the work stresses that the young people are left alone in this

overwhelming conflict of self against the world. They begin to engage in a series of

escapist behaviour designed to detach themselves from the unbearable reality they face.

The thesis argues that the mental illness they eventually develop can be seen as

an escape strategy itself, a way of coping with the social restrictions. At the same time,

their anxieties serve as an acute social commentary on the restrictive atmosphere of

their historical era.

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 České resumé

Cílem této práce je analýza hlavních postav buildungsrománů Pod skleněným

zvonem (The Bell Jar) Sylvie Plathové a Kdo chytá v žitě (The Catcher in the Rye)

J. D. Salingera jako mladých lidí vyrůstajících v poválečných Spojených státech

amerických. Práce má definovat spojení mezi restriktivní společenskou atmosférou té

doby a neúspěšným procesem iniciace těchto mladých lidí, který časem vyústí do

duševní nemoci.

První část práce klade důraz na silně prosazované gendrové stereotypy, které oba

protagonisté v procesu utváření své identity vnímají jako značně problematické. Jako

obzvláště tvořiví, vynalézaví a vnímaví mladí lidé, Esther a Holden považují očekávání

své společnosti za omezující a často odporující jejich osobním cílům a touhám. Zatímco

oba tyto stereotypní role odmítají, zdá se, že společnost jim nenabízí žádné alternativy,

čímž je staví do neřešitelné pozice a vyvolává v nich pocity úzkosti a zoufalství.

Následující kapitola poukazuje na to, že tyto pocity jsou zesíleny neschopností

protagonistů najít skutečnou pomoc a radu u institucí odpovídajících za iniciaci

mladých lidí do společnosti, zejména vzdělávacích institucí a rodiny. Rodiče vystupují

jako odstrašující verze jejich vlastní budoucnosti a navíc, společně s vzdělávacími

institucemi, prosazují přesně ty společenské hodnoty, které jejich děti odmítají.

Závěreční část práce pak zdůrazňuje, že oba mladí lidé jsou v tomto zdrcujícím

konfliktu svého já se světem zcela opuštěny. Brzo začnou vykazovat únikové chování

a myšlenkové postupy určené k tomu, aby se izolovali od nesnesitelné reality, které čelí.

Práce se snaží dokázet, že duševní choroba, která se u Esther a Holden časem

rozvine, může být také chápána jako úniková strategie, způsob, jak se vyrovnat se

společenskými restrikcemi. Úzkost, kterou Esther a Holden pociťují, zároveň slouží

jako palčivá společenská kritika restriktivní atmosféry jejich historické doby.

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