Main Characters in The Bell Jar
Understanding the People in Sylvia Plath’s Only Novel
In addition to the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, there are four important characters in Plath’s first novel. Two of the character’s in Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, are destructive for Esther: her mother and her boyfriend Buddy Willard. One character, Dr. Nolan is constructive and helps Esther to rebuild her life. A fourth character, Joan Gilling, is a foil (a contrasting character) for Esther.
Mrs. Greenwood
Mrs. Greenwood is Esther’s widowed mother. Esther’s history with her Mom is vague. However, it is clear that their relationship is very destructive for Esther. A turning point in Esther’s treatment comes when Dr. Nolan tells her that she won’t have to have any visits from her Mom for a while. At which time, Esther tells her doctor that “I hate her.” Dr Nolan responds with a smile and by saying “I suppose you do.”
Buddy Willard
Buddy Willard is the boy that Esther is expected to marry. Buddy is medical student who comes from a relatively prominent family. At first, Esther enjoys their relationship and feels she has sexual power over Buddy until he reveals that he had an affair with a waitress while they were dating.
Esther was more upset that Buddy has more experience than her, leaving her at a disadvantage, than she is by his unfaithfulness. It is as if Buddy scored one more point on the score sheet tacitly labeled ‘Who Knows the Most.’ While they never openly play the know-it-all game, Buddy clearly has issues with always being superior. Even Joan Willard realizes it and says of Buddy "He thought he knew everything. He thought he knew everything about women."
The know-it-all attitude of Buddy is only one symptom of what a complete jerk he is. The finally brick in the façade of superiority that Buddy builds around himself comes when Buddy learns of Esther’s time in the mental hospital his demeaning and unsupportive response is to say “I wonder who you'll marry now, Esther."
Esther’s distaste for Buddy is evident by the relief she feels when she discovers he has tuberculosis and will spend a year in a sanatorium.
Dr. Nolan
Dr. Nolan is a positive force in Esther’s life. While most of the people in Esther’s life seem bent on destroying her faith in people, Dr. Nolan is supportive and realistic. She helps Esther to understand her feelings of anger without judging her for having inappropriate feelings. She helps Esther through the potentially dangerous time after Joan Gilling’s suicide and encourages her when she goes before the board of doctors who will release her from the hospital.
Joan Gilling
Joan Gilling is Esther’s competition for Buddy Willard. In many ways, it seems that the two women that hold Buddy’s interest are very much the same. They are both extremely intelligent and accomplished women who seem driven to succeed. They both attend prestigious women’s colleges and both come from the same hometown and same church as Buddy. And most interestingly, they both have a nervous breakdown and have suicidal tendencies.
However, two major differences separate the women. The first is a matter of wealth. Joan comes from a rich family and has always enjoyed the privileges that come with it, horseback riding, quality clothes, and private lessons. Esther’s comes from a working middle class family that struggles to make ends meet and to acquire some of the benefits that flow naturally to Joan.
The second is the issue of identity. Throughout the novel, Esther struggles to understand who she is. Indecision characterizes her actions and her ambivalence toward people around her. Esther sometimes finds a particular person interesting and later finds that same person completely distasteful. Her attitude to those around her follows this pattern again and again. In addition, Esther doesn’t really know what she wants to do with her life. Esther’s plans keep unraveling and she becomes less and less able to reformulate any sort of plan at all.
Joan on the other-hand is defiantly anti-establishment. Joan majors in physics, which, in the 1950’s, was typically a man’s field. She is athletic and doesn’t apologize for it by acting weak when with men. During a bike ride with Buddy, she bikes independently without assistance from Buddy when going up steep hills. She is unattractive and appears to be a lesbian or perhaps bi-sexual.
Perhaps it is because of their similarities that Esther feels a strange attraction towards Joan “Joan fascinated me. It was like observing a Martian, or a particularly warty toad. Her thoughts were not my thoughts nor her feelings my feelings, but we were close enough so that her thoughts and feelings seemed a wry, black image of my own.” She goes on to wonder who Joan really is. “Sometimes I wondered if I had made Joan up. Other times I wondered if she would continue to pop in at every crisis of my life to remind me of what I had been, and what I had been through, and carry her own separate, but similar crisis under my nose.” (244)
Clearly Esther wonders if Joan is some ‘other’ part of herself; a separate external part that would always be in her life.
Joan ultimately commits suicide by hanging herself. Dr Nolan assures Esther that there is no reason for her to feel responsible for Joan’s death.
Characters as Portraits
The four main characters that relate to the protagonist Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar are more like caricatures than humans will feelings and motivations. They do not effect change in Esther’s life. Esther’s response to them is based on the caricatures of them she has in her mind more than to who and what they are in reality.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Harper and Row, Publishers Inc. 1996.
Read more about Sylvia Plath and her work at Suite101.
Cover of Plath's Book The Bell Jar
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