payment page
“I still have the make-up kit they gave me, fitted out for a person with brown eyes and brown hair: an oblong of brown mascara with a tiny brush, and a round basin of blue eyeshadow just big enough to dab the tip of your finger in, and three lipsticks ranging from red to pink, all cased in the same little gilt box with a mirror on one side. I also have a white plastic sunglasses case with colored shells and sequins and a green plastic starfish sewed onto it. I realized we kept piling up these presents because it was as good as free advertising for the firms involved, but I couldn't be cynical. I got such a kick out of all those free gifts showering on to us. For a long time afterward I hid them away, but later, when I was all right again, I brought them out, and I still have them around the house.”
This line is located at the very start of the novel. Here, Esther explains that she used to not be able to look at the memorabilia from her time in New York but that she eventually was able to after she was “right again.” This is an optimistic line; it tells the reader that Esther eventually reaches safety and stability. At this point in her life, she has endured horrors such as a suicide attempt and painful electroshock therapy, events the reader will learn about over the course of the novel, but putting this line in the beginning confirms Esther is eventually able to reclaim her own life. Here, her reclamation is symbolized by her ability to look at and use items that used to bring her immense pain.
“I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near onto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water. I said to myself: ‘Doreen is dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is dissolving, Frankie is dissolving, New York is dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none of them matter any more. I don't know them, I have never known them and I am very pure. All that liquor and those sticky kisses I saw and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way back is turning into something pure’. The longer I lay there in the clear hot water the purer I felt, and when I stepped out at last and wrapped myself in one of the big, soft white hotel bath towels I felt pure and sweet as a new baby.”
Here, Esther explains that she feels purified and reborn whenever she takes a bath because she imagines the hot water cleansing away all of her troubles. Esther’s serenity after her bath foreshadows the eventual rebirth that Esther will experience after she learns to manage her mental illness. Plath’s evocation of bathing as a purifying ritual also anticipates the moment when Esther is unable to kill herself while swimming in the ocean because she becomes aware of her own heartbeat—her body’s life-source. That moment in the ocean is one of many steps taken towards Esther’s recovery.
“I had missed a perfectly good chance. The river water passed me by like an untouched drink. I suspected that even if my mother and brother had not been there I would have made no move to jump.”
Esther recalls how her mother and brother each subtly positioned themselves against the car doors while they drove over a bridge which prevented Esther from jumping out of the car. However, Esther reveals that she would have likely made “no move to jump” even if her mother and brother were not blocking her escape. This moment is crucial to our understanding of Esther’s recovery journey because, even at some of her lowest moments, she still has a desire to stay alive in spite of so much pain and suffering.
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
Esther has this thought while she attends Joan’s funeral after Joan hangs herself. The language recalls the episode in the ocean in which Esther was unable to drown herself because she could hear her heartbeat saying “I am I am I am.” In both of these instances, Esther’s heartbeat reminds her that she is alive and inspires her to keep living. It is especially poignant that Esther’s heartbeat reminds her that she is alive at this precise moment because Joan’s tragic fate was so nearly her own. This is a moment of personal growth for Esther because she has learned to value her own life.
“I kept shooting impatient glances at the closed boardroom door. My stocking seams were straight, my black shoes cracked, but polished, and my red wool suit flamboyant as my plans. Something old, something new…But I wasn't getting married. There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice -- patched, retreaded and approved for the road, I was trying to think of an appropriate one when Doctor Nolan appeared from nowhere and touched me on the shoulder.”
This quote is located on the novel’s final page. Here, Esther is waiting to go in for her interview which will determine whether she can leave the mental health facility or not. Esther is nervous but optimistic about her future. She characterizes herself as a woman reborn who has been “patched, retreaded and approved” for the real world. This line serves as a celebration of Esther’s resilience because she was able to work through her own pain to reach a point of stability.
