Isolation Of Women In English Literature Essay

How do authors portray the isolation of the female protagonists in ‘The Bell Jar’, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, ‘Ariel’ and ‘Look Back in Anger’?

Female emancipation and the struggle for women of existing within a predominately patriarchal society is a prevalent topic in literature. Female heroines are portrayed variably across all eras and genres of literature and yet the use of a melancholic and isolated female protagonist is arguably inescapable as writers continually refer back to a critical portrayal of women in their work. From Chaucer’s presentment of the Wife of Bath as an old hag to John Donne’s plea in his poem ‘Loves Alchemy’ that one should “Hope not for mind in women”1; or one of Shakespeare’s female protagonists, Ophelia driven mad arguably due to her unrequited love for Hamlet. There is a tendency in literature, with particular reference to Shakespeare’s
plays, of having strong, influential female protagonists that are perceived by the male characters as being insignificant and their presence almost forgotten entirely. I found it fascinating how my four chosen texts The Bell Jar, The Handmaid’s Tale, Ariel and Look Back in Anger are twentieth century works and yet, even in an era where women are considered of having greater rights than ever, writers are still returning to the topic of isolated women.

In The Bell Jar, it would seem as though Plath is not trying to convey any type of message through her narrative voice nor is she writing in order to teach or distribute knowledge to her readers. Plath explains in an interview with the BBC in 1961 that “I certainly didn’t have a happy adolescence — and, perhaps, that’s partly why I turned specially to writing”2. Evidentially, it can be concluded that Plath used the medium of writing as a purgative device. From 1944 onwards she kept journals in order to satisfy her need of self-expression which she developed from a young age. These journals ‘became her most trusted friend and confidant’3 and she relied greatly upon them for ‘inspiration and documentation’4. It would seem that writing also helps her attain that state of purity by which she is forever fascinated. For instance, after an aggressive bout of food poisoning, she ‘felt purged and holy and ready for a new life’ (The Bell Jar, p 44) and she ‘feels about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water’ (The Bell Jar, p 19). (Mention the Unbridged journals)

Throughout The Bell Jar we see Esther showing an obsession with self and identity. In one of her journals, Plath once wrote “I am a victim of introspection”5 and this is clearly shown in The Bell Jar through the extremity of Plath’s self-analytical metaphors and similes. They suggest a cathartic and persistent need for Esther to express her feelings, for example, she feels ‘still and empty’ (The Bell Jar, p. 2), ‘like a hole in the ground’ (The Bell Jar, p. 15) or ‘like the eye of a tornado’ (The Bell Jar, p. 2.). These sentiments of Esther have unmistakable echoes in Plath’s collection of poems Ariel and we are told she is ‘terrified by this dark thing/That sleeps in me’ (Elm p 26) and is ‘inhabited by a cry.’ (Elm p 26). Due to the vast amounts of Esther’s self-reflection, Plath is able to express an extremely personal story which gives irrefutable evidence of her isolated state. However, as the novel unfolds we see Esther self-analysing to an excessive degree showing her decline into advanced mental instability. The reader can see clearly the mental workings of an intrinsically disturbed woman as she is slowly being enveloped into a psychological darkness resulting in her being completely isolated from life’s normality. This distorted sense of her own value is shown particularly in Chapter Seven where she creates a list in her head of all the things she is incapable of doing. She begins with ‘cooking’ (The Bell Jar, p 71) and ‘shorthand’ (The Bell Jar, p 72) and then progresses onto ‘I was a terrible dancer’, ‘no sense of balance’, ‘I couldn’t ride a horse or ski’, ‘I couldn’t speak German or read Hebrew or write Chinese’ (The Bell Jar, p72). Plath does not portray any other character in The Bell Jar in this analytical way thus solely highlighting Esther’s character in the novel.

Although it is true that The Handmaid’s Tale, as with The Bell Jar, uses the autobiographical style of first person narrative which results in the reader’s ability to have sympathy with the protagonist Offred just as with Esther, the two novels differ immensely in their portrayal of isolation. The Handmaid’s Tale is a work of dystopian fiction which looks at external forces being responsible for the protagonist’s isolation, whereas The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiographical novel, whose protagonist arguably demands her own state of isolation. Atwood’s narrative voice alters between the present tense and the past tense which results . Her use of the latter to relay flashbacks and the lack of speech marks represent a freedom of thought that Offred had in the past and which now in present is denied her, particularly concerning her relationship with her husband Luke and her daughter. In these flashbacks we see Offred feeling in control of her life, something which she lacks in reality. She describes the night as ‘mine, my own time, to do as I will’ (The Handmaid’s Tale, p 47) and has the ability and most importantly the freedom to ask herself ‘where should I go?’ (The Handmaid’s Tale, p 47). These moments are the only ones where she can do as she pleases and live how she wants and yet are simply a fantasy. This results in an enormous amount of sympathy from the reader towards the protagonist. (explain why this is relevant) Through this narrative voice, we see how alive Offred feels in her nightly flashbacks in comparison with her reality of oppression and isolation during her waking hours. The way that Atwood intersperses her chapters headed ‘Night’, which is normally associated with sleep and shut down of the mind, amongst Offred’s waking experiences where she actually feels the most detached and powerless, is both enormously ironic and sad. The nature in which each isolated female protagonist refers to themselves differs between the two novels. With regard to Esther, she analyses herself in a disturbing and self-destructive way, whereas with Offred it is much more speculative and there is a strong sense of Offred questioning her current existence in Gilead. Atwood’s use of rhetorical questions facilitates the reader’s understanding of her plight, for example ‘Can I be blamed for wanting a real body to put my arms around?’ (The Handmaid’s Tale, p. 113) and ‘How can I keep on living?’ (The Handmaid’s Tale, p. 205). Here the reader can contemplate Offred’s situation and how she struggles to exist in such an isolating and controlling society like Gilead which is a place of a ‘totalitarian theocracy’ that has come about ‘after a period of extreme liberalism’ . We learn that Offred is at the age where she has experienced the time of anarchy before Gilead was formed and she never truly lets go of her past. This is shown both via her flashbacks and through her narration where she corrects herself to maintain the hope of her husband’s survival - ‘Luke wasn’t a doctor. Isn’t.’ (The Handmaid’s Tale, p 43).

It is clear that there is a feminist agency in Offred which Atwood portrays in The Handmaid’s Tale through the narrative. This is shown in such moments as ‘I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely’ (The Handmaid’s Tale, p 73) which she says whilst regarding her naked body and ‘I want to be valued… I repeat my former name, remind myself of what I once could do.’ (The Handmaid’s Tale, p 108). This strength of the female protagonist is arguably mimicked in The Bell Jar as Esther expresses her desire to be self-sufficient, independent and avoid becoming a mundane house wife – ‘The last thing I wanted was infinite security’ she wants to be ‘like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.’ (The Bell Jar, p 79). An explanation for this strength and hints of protest behind the female voice in The Handmaid’s Tale can be found from Atwood herself – ‘I’m an artist…They don’t fit. They make squawking noises. They protest.’6 Offred’s inability to be an individual in Gilead results in frustration and anger towards those who have extracted her basic human rights. ‘They force you to kill within yourself’ (The Handmaid’s Tale, p. 203) clearly shows a powerful distain towards the government in Gilead. Margaret Atwood was a noted humanist winning Humanist of the Year in 1987 and an active member of Amnesty International, an organisation which seeks to obliterate the abuse of human rights. The infringement of human rights plays a key role in driving the emotional power of The Handmaid’s Tale and with consideration being held to the context in which the novel was written we can see Atwood inserting her very personal beliefs about social injustice into The Handmaid’s Tale. For example, Atwood believes ‘the voice is a human gift’7 and the Handmaid’s are denied their freedom of speech thus proving how Atwood wants the Handmaid’s life in Gilead to be presented as unjustly as possible; ‘Powerlessness and silence go together’8.

It is evident (from the examples given above) that Sylvia Plath was in an advanced state of mental self-obsession and instability which could have either contributed to her isolation from normality or was a result of it. For example, her inability to deal with the realities of living in such a vibrant and challenging city as New York, ‘The city hung in my window flat as a poster’ and she ‘wasn’t steering anything, not even myself’ and that she felt ‘like a numb trolley bus’ suggests that reality is too much for her too bear, thereby strongly suggesting she actively seeks isolation in order to retain the comfort and familiarity of her internal world. This form of isolation is in direct opposition to that portrayed in both The Handmaid’s Tale and Look Back in Anger where each female protagonist is feeling isolated due to an external, predominately male force over which they have no control.

The reader can see from the opening of the novel, Offred being unable to live in the present moment as she is describing her current surroundings: ‘what had once been the gymnasium’, ‘games that were formerly played there’ and ‘Dances would have been held there’. Throughout the novel we see Offred feeling a sense of detachment to her life in Gilead and this is shown through Atwood’s language. The Bell Jar is an account of Plath’s summer after her junior year at Smith College. She worked for Madmoiselle magazine in New York during the summer.

From the very beginning of Look Back in Anger John Osborne describes, in his stage directions, the female protagonist Alison Porter as being the ‘most elusive character’ and how she is ‘often drowned in the robust orchestration of the other two’ (Look Back in Anger, p. 2). There are two principle male roles against one female principle which presents the only female character, for the majority of the play, in an isolated state and also aids to the potentiality of there being conflict between the two genders. Osborne reveals a lot about how he envisions each character to be portrayed through his stage directions, many of which isolate Alison using proxemics on stage. For example, the opening image where Cliff is seated stage right and Jimmy stage left clearly becoming the centred focal point for the audience. Here, Alison is ‘standing’ stage left ‘below the food cupboard’ and ‘leaning over an ironing board’ (Look Back in Anger, p 2). In being the first time the audience sees any of these characters, Alison’s role is arguably being defined and contained by the food cupboard and her ironing board. The contrast presented in this powerful opening image between the seated male characters reading their newspapers and Alison highlights her perceived domestic status by her husband even before any dialogue has been spoken. Indeed, Osborne uses the symbolic prop of the ironing board a number of times during Look Back in Anger to symbolise Alison’s solitude, particularly when she is being verbally attacked by Jimmy. After insulting Alison’s brother saying that ‘the only thing he can do’ is ‘seek sanctuary in his own stupidity’ (Look Back in Anger, p 15) Osborne creates a chilling moment where ‘there is no sound, only the plod of Alison’s iron’.

Osborne’s “Angry Young Man”, Jimmy Porter, holds attitudes which are typical of the working class’s chippy response to the upper classes of 1950s Britain. Jimmy’s treatment of Alison portrays what he truly feels about their discrepancy of class and Alison’s lack of verbal response to him only serves to exacerbate the differences of upbringing between their differing class backgrounds. Indeed, it could be argued that, as opposed to being weak, Alison’s decision to maintain so many prolonged silences as a continued response to Jimmy’s rages is due to inner strength brought about by her stoic upper class upbringing. Clearly she decides that these continued silences are more effective as a defence mechanism than verbal response and as a result, considers the inevitable resulting personal isolation is preferable to engagement with her extremely volatile husband, clearly knowing that ‘silence speaks volumes, but you don’t hear me though’ – Anonymous. Jimmy’s incessant tirades aimed in particular towards Alison’s childhood and education only serve to display his lower class vulgarity. At numerous moments during the play he belittles her and mocks her upbringing; he calls certain newspapers the ‘posh papers’ and asks whether they make Alison feel she is ‘not so brilliant after all’. The sarcastic tone which he uses when speaking both of Alison’s family and of Alison herself – ‘She’s educated. That’s right isn’t it?’ (Look Back in Anger, p 3) - is apparent throughout the play. He constantly refers to them as ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’ and how ‘they will kick you in the groin while they’re handing your hat to the maid.’ He refers to her brother as a man who is ‘as vague as you can get without actually being invisible’. Alison’s isolation is also an echo of the forced silence brought about by the theocracy in The Handmaid’s Tale.

(However), her association of purity with the colour white is tainted and examples of this can be found throughout both The Bell Jar and the poems in Ariel. For example, babies ‘through their white swaddlings’ are ‘awful’ (Tulips p 21) and despite having ‘white teeth’ (The Bell Jar, p 52) and ‘a white turtle neck’ her first boyfriend Buddy Willard turns out to be a ‘hypocrite’ (The Bell Jar, p 49) in Esther’s eyes - ‘what I couldn’t stand was Buddy’s pretending… he was so pure’ (The Bell Jar p 67) and when she first sees him naked the only thing she can think of is ‘turkey neck and turkey gizzards’ (The Bell Jar p 64) and she felt ‘very depressed’ (The Bell Jar p 64).

Further evidence of her advanced state of mental instability can be found in both texts as an obsession with death increases in the progression of The Bell Jar and is often present throughout Ariel. For instance, my interpretation of the poem Contusion and most definitely Edge, is that these poems are about corpses and Plath’s view is that death is the ultimate state to be attained; ‘The woman is perfected./Her dead/Body wears the smile of accomplishment’ (Edge p 85). This mimics the sentiment expressed in The Bell Jar that whilst she threatened her life in aiming ‘straight down’ a ski slope, she thought ‘This is what it is to be happy’ (The Bell Jar p 93) and ‘the thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower’ (The Bell Jar p 92). Plath’s links between death and water in The Bell Jar are oblique but unmistakable as in ‘I swam up from the bottom of a black sleep.’ (The Bell Jar p 47), ‘drowning must be the kindest way to die’ (The Bell Jar p 151), ‘I thought I would swim out until I was too tired to swim back’ (The Bell Jar p 153) because ‘the water looked amiable and welcoming’ (The Bell Jar p 151).

Plath’s poetry resembles the tone of her prose. In Ariel we can acknowledge the presence of a distressed mind behind the writing of her poems, arguably due to Plath’s infamous depressive state in which she endured towards the end of her life. In The Handmaid’s Tale the female protagonist is isolated due to being denied a number of her intrinsic human rights and forced into a dystopian society where men and women must adhere to certain roles.

As a highly creative individual, who often reiterated Einstein’s sentiment that “imagination is more important that knowledge”9, it could be argued that either Sylvia Plath demanded her own isolation for artistic purposes or perhaps her isolationist tendencies were reinforced by her passionate yet destructive relationship with Ted Hughes.
Hughes’ alleged misogynistic tendencies towards his partner could be said to echo Jimmy Porter’s attitude towards his wife in Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, resulting in both the female protagonists of Esther Greenwood and Alison Porter experiencing supreme female isolation. The first person narrative voice of The Bell Jar creates a profound introspection for Esther, which drives the emotional power of the novel. This is also true of the first person narrative highlighting the isolation depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale, although the latter is a work of fiction and the former is a semi-autobiographical novel. With regard to Ariel, even without a specific narrative voice, being poetry it still condenses and crystallises the internal effects of Plath’s isolation and
solitude.

Bibliography
‘The Bell Jar’ – Sylvia Plath. Published in 2005 by Faber and Faber Limited.
‘Look Back in Anger’ – John Osborne. Published in 1996 by Faber and Faber Limited.
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ – Margaret Atwood. Published in 2010 by Vintage.
‘Ariel’ – Sylvia Plath. Published in 1968 by Faber and Faber Limited, printed in 1990.
Earl G. Ingersoll. Margaret Atwood ‘Conversations’. Virago Press Limited, 1992.
Jo Gill. ‘The Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath’. Published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press.
‘The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath’ – Sylvia Plath. Edited by Karen V. Kukil. Published in 2000 by Faber and Faber Limited.

Webography http://crossref-it.info/textguide/the-handmaids-tale/31/0 http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/ariel.htm http://www.biography.com/people/sylvia-plath-9442550 http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds http://lhsp125fall11.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/image-of-purity-and-whiteness-in-bell.html http://www.sylviaplath.info/biography.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05/reviews/001105.05oatest.html https://soundcloud.com/search?q=Two%20of%20a%20kind%3A%20poets%20in%20partnership http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/16/sylvia-plath-ted-hughes-bbc-interview-1961/ http://www.articlemyriad.com/analysis-shakespeares-women/