Minor Women in The Bell Jar

Important Female Supporting Characters in Sylvia Plath’s Only Novel

Nov 5, 2009 Melissa Howard

To understand what happens in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath you need to know how all the characters compliment or contrast with the main character Esther Greenwood.

Each woman that makes an appearance in Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, represents some aspect of submissive womanhood, which undermines femininity in the eyes of Esther Greenwood. Often Esther finds herself attracted to the personalities of various women who pass through her life, hoping to find a way to her own identity through them. Ultimately each woman’s unique traits are revealed as weak or submissive and Esther scorns them and once again tries to find a strong, female, role model.

Doreen

Doreen is one of the girls who serves an internship with Esther. She is an experienced bad girl whose wealth, sexiness, and languid display of boredom appeals to Esther. However, Esther soon discovers that Doreen’s façade is a sham. When the two girls are picked up by a disk jockey, Lenny, and his buddy, Doreen gets drunk and becomes a passive sex object.

Later that night when Doreen vomits on the carpet outside Esther’s room, Esther says, “I decided I would watch her and listen to what she said, but deep down I would have nothing at all to do wither her.” (25)

Hilda

Hilda is another girl who is interning with Esther. Esther doesn’t understand her. She seems void of emotion and spends all her time making hats while the other girls write columns. While Esther spends the summer obsessing about the impending death of the Rosenbergs and feeling bad for them, Hilda is glad that they are going to die.

Betsy

Betsy, an intern from Kansas, has a “bouncing blond ponytail and Sweetheart-of-Sigma-Chi smile.” (7) Betsy seems to want to protect Esther from Doreen’s influence. Later Betsy becomes a cover model. Even though Betsy helps Esther by trading clothes with Esther after she throws her wardrobe out over New York City from her hotel window, Esther spitefully refers to her as “Pollyanna cowgirl.

Jay Cee

Jay Cee is Esther’s boss and an editor at Ladies’ Day, which is an unusual attainment in the 1950’s. She is a very masculine woman. After Jay Cee quizzes Esther about her plans for the future, Esther wishes that she had a mother like Jay Cee because then she might know what to do.

Philomena Guinea

Philomena Guinea is a successful writer who provides the scholarship on which Esther attended college. Mrs Guinea wrote potboiler romances, which earned her millions of dollars. However, while Mrs. Guinea is generous to the college, the college doesn’t have any of her books on the shelves. She admits to Esther that she was ‘very stupid’ in college.

Mrs. Ockenden

Mrs. Ockenden is a spiteful old woman who has been married three times. Her first two husbands died under mysterious circumstances. She spies on Esther and then reports Esther’s indiscretions to her mother.

Dodo Conway

Dodo Conway is a type of fertility goddess. Dodo, a devout Catholic, is a college-educated woman. However after college, she marries a Catholic architect and seems to reject her education in favor of raising a large family.

Jody

Jody is a girl with whom Esther plans to room when she returns to college. However, when she has her breakdown Esther tells her to get another roommate. Jody gets her a date with a boy named Cal.

Teresa

Teresa is Esther’s family doctor. Esther liked Teresa’s ‘gentle, intuitive touch.’ When Esther asks her for more sleeping pills because the ones that Teresa gave her weren’t strong enough, Teresa refers her to Doctor Gordon.

Dee Dee

Dee Dee is a patient at the mental asylum. She likes to compose music and play it for the other patients.

Mrs. Savage

Mrs Savage is a patient at the asylum where Esther is being treated. She is a wealthy woman who uses the pretense of insanity to manipulate her family.

Valerie

Valerie is one of the first patients that Esther meets when she goes to the asylum. She has had a lobotomy and hopes to remain in the asylum forever.

Mrs. Willard

Mrs. Willard is the mother of Buddy Willard, Esther’s boyfriend. She is the model of a typical woman from that era. She dotes on her children and lives her life vicariously through her husband.

Emily Ann Offenbach

Emily is a very proper woman with a bun of red hair. She has a husband and three children in Teaneck, New Jersey.

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Harper and Row, Publishers Inc. 1996.

Read more about Sylvia Plath and her work at Suite101.

The copyright of the article Minor Women in The Bell Jar in American Fiction is owned by Melissa Howard. Permission to republish Minor Women in The Bell Jar in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

The Cover of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

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