Death and Electricity

 Esther has a troubled relationship with death. From the outset, she is seemingly most lucid, most poetic, when she discusses death, and the ancillary matters contained therein, seemingly contradictory with the intrinsic stopping, the intrinsic ending, lack of thought and reason, which comes with death. She also has a troubled relationship with electricity, a relationship which manifests itself inversely: electricity drives all lucidity from her mind. Death riding on the electric current- it is the very first thing she relates to us. Isn't it awful about the Rosenbergs?  

The Death Electric bears down on Esther in one other significant instance: Dr. Gordon’s electroshock. Esther’s first experience with electroshock is one of the most immediately traumatic experiences for her in the book. It pushes her torture beyond the stifling psychological confinement of the bell jar, of New York, suburbia, womanhood, and into the dimension of raw flesh. Gordon’s electroshock tears Esther apart; as much is indicated in the text.   

Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant.

I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done.

She is shattered- very nearly, as well as she can tell, literally. It is at this point that Esther begins to harm herself. This is the manifestation of the killing harm of the electrical therapy. Her forced exodus into the realm of induced, realized pain is thus catalyzed.    

Ultimately, Esther’s relationship with electricity, much like her broader relationship with the world- with, most notably, her womanhood, is reversed, in large part by her experiences with Dr. Nolan.

darkness wiped me out like chalk on a blackboard.

The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.

Esther is a living thing. She is, now, not only alive, but living- seeing, breathing, beyond the confines of the bell jar. This is the work of the good Doctor Nolan. We see Nolan as the messianic proxy in more ways than one- she is the healer of the sick- of Esther- and she brings merciful relief from the crushing confines of society in her psychiatric and therapeutic ministrations. She is also the one to bring Esther back from the dead. Nolan’s electric therapy tears the lid off Esther’s bell jar coffin; it removes from her resting cave the heavy stone, and permits her to come forth, Lazarus, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and face bound about with a napkin. She pulls Esther, new Esther, red-haired, man-eater, from the ash. Esther’s aspect as the man-eater is specifically notable, representative of her growth. The clear instance of this aspect is her interaction with Irwin, the math professor, wherein she quickly takes control: she is the seductress rather than the seduced, and she is the one to cut off their relationship.

Esther and electricity pound a troubled path through The Bell Jar: in the end, however, parallel to the ultimate realization, reification, of her Self, electricity, much like the myriad other facets of Esther Greenwood, becomes a tool that she alone wields, for her self and her good. 

 

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