Irwin

Ever since Esther first finds out about Buddy, she thinks that is it really important for her to have sex. She separates the world into two categories: those who had had sex, and those who have not. She doesn’t feel better after it’s happened because of her injury, but she definitely feels different. She says that after having sex she waited for the miraculous change to occur. “I wanted to ask him if I was still a virgin… The blood was my answer. I couldn’t possibly be a virgin any more. I smiled into the dark. I felt part of a great tradition.” (pg. 229) Esther has finally crossed the line into the experienced category. It is not the kind of transformation that she expects though. But she feels relieved to get rid of her virginity. She doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.
However, while she is having sex with Irwin she is in a great deal of pain and afterwards she bleeds so much she has to go to the emergency room.
Esther thought that the first man she ever slept with must be intelligent and respectable. She also wanted someone experienced to make up for her lack of experience. Esther says that ever since she found out about Buddy, her virginity “weighed like a millstone around my neck.” Irwin was just a random man who qualified and who also didn’t have any connections to her. He didn’t really mean anything to her.

Bell Jar

The first time that Esther mentions the bell jar she says that even if she were on a cruise or in Paris, “I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” Esther has no way to release all of the sour air. We’ve talked in class about how Esther doesn’t really have any good friends or good relationships with anyone. This bell jar keeps her away from others, or at least connecting with others. Esther says that she hates her mother, when she is just trying to help.
Esther can’t find a way to feel better. She can’t escape from her sour feelings. She has no control of her sickness – it has a mind of it’s own and she can’t do anything about it. She is trapped by her depression and insanity.
One time she talks to a religious man who comes to visit her. She explains how she believes that she has to live hell before she dies, because nothing will happen after she dies and that whatever people believe will happen to them. She thinks that her insanity is her hell on earth and she can’t get out of it because the bell jar keeps it surrounding her. Although, after her first shock treatment at the new asylum, she feels like the bell jar has been lifted. It doesn’t last for that long but this means it may work in the future.

Asylum

The new asylum that Esther goes to is really nice. It is private and is being paid for by some famous writer that takes interest in Esther’s case because she used to be in an asylum herself.
At the new institution, there are no bars on the windows. It seems almost like a country club. None of the patients are never in because they are outside playing sports or something. There is a lot more trust here. Esther’s doctor is a woman, which surprises her. Dr. Nolan starts out trying to gain a lot of trust by Esther. She first asks her about Dr. Gordon and Esther explains how she hated the shock treatments and how it made her feel. Dr. Nolan told her that it should feel like you are sleeping, and many people actually enjoy them. She told her that if Esther were to ever have to go through more shock treatment, she would give her a warning.
After she leaves, Esther finds a box of matches left by Dr. Nolan. I think she left them because she wants Esther to trust her. Why else would she have left fire to a crazy person?
I don’t think that Esther would have been better where she was. Throughout the novel, I feel that she is getting more and more paranoid. She feels that everything is a test and people are testing her. At the old asylum, the nurses and doctors didn’t really treat the patients that well. One time when Esther kicks off some thermometers and states that it was an accident, a nurse yells at her. At the new asylum, she has been cooperating much better and has actually been moved to a better room.

Suicide Attempt

Esther had already tried to kill herself several times. The first time, she tries to slit her wrists. She practices on her leg but she just can’t do it. Other times she tries to hang herself but can’t find someplace to do it, she tries to drown but the ocean keeps spitting her out, and finally she swallows a bottle of pills. When she swallowed the pills, she actually almost died. She took the pills when she was in a crawlspace of her house.
She is found and is rushed to the hospital. She does not die, but is sent to a psychiatric ward.
Esther has been through a lot in just a couple months. In New York, she finally realizes that she doesn’t know what to do with her life, she almost gets raped, she fails to make connections with people – when she gets back she gets rejected from the English program she wanted to get into, she finally mourns for her father, Buddy falls in love with a nurse, she can’t sleep anymore, she can’t read, and finally she can’t write. Everything has just been piling up on her and finally the load was too much for her to bear.
I think one of the reasons she tried to kill herself was because she couldn’t see a future for herself. She already felt like she couldn’t really do anything, like cook or write shorthand, but now she realized that she had no idea what she wanted to do. She imagined herself sitting in the crotch of a tree. Each branch was a different future, and she couldn’t decide which branch to choose. She waited so long that they all crippled and fell off.

Dr. Gordon

Esther doesn’t like Dr. Gordon because she sees him as conceited. The first thing that bothers her about him is how he set the picture of his family on his desk. It is halfway towards his side of the desk, but halfway towards whoever sits in the chair across from him. This way, everyone who came into his office could see his “perfect family.”
Another thing that she doesn’t like about Dr. Gordon is how he talks about himself when they meet. One time he randomly asked what college that she goes to, and then started talking about how he used to be in some WAC program there, even though it has nothing to do with helping Esther. Also, Doctor Gordon always phrases things like, “What do you think is wrong with you?” As if nothing really is wrong. Esther knows something is wrong and it is like Dr. Gordon does not believe her.
Esther is bothered by him and doesn’t think he is even trying to help her. When she first went there, she thought there would be a man who would listen attentively and say, “Ah!” like he made a sudden realization. He would put his fingers in a steeple, tell her what was wrong, and fix her.
However, he said that he should try shock treatment on her. After the shock treatment she endures, Dr. Gordon asks what college she goes to again, and when she replies, he says the same thing about the WAC station. Obviously he hadn’t even been paying attention in their meetings. She probably didn’t even need shock treatment.

Marco

On Esther’s last night in New York, she goes on a double date with a man named Marco to a country club dance. She immediately classifies him as a woman-hater. Marco gives her a diamond stickpin, and says he will do something that it worth the diamond. He grabs her arm so hard that he leaves four bruises and continues to boss her around the whole night. He brings her outside and they start to talk. Esther makes him mad when he says he is in love with his cousin but she is going to be a nun. Marco grabbed Esther, causing her purse to fly into the darkness, and threw her on the ground, ripped her dress, and got on top of her. Esther figured that if she didn’t fight back, he would rape her. He started yelling “Slut” in her ear and she fought back and punched him in the nose. He stopped then, but was still aggressive with her. He demanded to know where his stickpin was and she said it was in her purse that was somewhere in the dark. Esther left right after and she got away from him while he was searching for her purse. When she gets back to the Amazon, she throws every piece of her wardrobe out the window. This is sort of like her defense mechanism. She is trying to get rid of the dirtiness of the night. Just like how she took a bath earlier in the novel.
Esther is becoming more erratic and detached. Buddy writes her a letter that he is falling in love with a nurse and that she should come to see him to win back his affections. She writes back that she is engaged to a simultaneous interpreter. Her biggest disappointment is that she didn’t get into the writing course that she wanted to and she planned her summer around.
She is losing a grip on the real world. Marco had physically hurt her within five minutes of meeting her. She already knew he was a woman hater and the whole night he continued to be rude and forceful, yet she stayed in that situation until it was almost too late.
Also, when she gets back she has trouble sleeping. Esther spends a lot of time thinking about everything she wants to do, but can never settle on something. It is sort of like the story of the tree, and how the longer she waits to pick something, the more options fall off the tree.

Constantin

Esther decides to let Constantin seduce her while on their date. When they go back to his apartment, they sit outside and look up at the sky. During their day together, they held hands in the car and had a good time. He took her to the UN where he is a simultaneous translator. While he is translating, she sits and thinks about all of the things she can’t do. This is when she starts to think about Buddy and how she needs to sleep with someone to even the score with Buddy.
But, at Constantin’s house, he does not seduce her. Esther even pulls the “”Oh, I’m tired, I think I’m going to lie in bed.” But, instead of following her to have sex, he comes inside shortly after that and just lies in bed with her. They fall asleep together, and it’s kind of a beautiful thing.
Earlier Esther talked about a guy named Eric who thought sex was dirty and never wanted the woman he loved to experience it. When in reality, sex is something shared between two people that love each other. In this scene, Esther and Constantin do not have sex, but they lie in bed and fall asleep together. I think this is also something people who love each other can share, because it shows that not everything is based on that physical aspect of love.
I liked his reaction a lot. I’m glad he didn’t try to have sex with Esther or push himself onto her. His reaction makes me respect him, but I’m not sure why he did it yet.

Buddy

Esther had liked Buddy for a while, but never actually talked to him. Instead, she would just have a crush on him from afar. After more time, Buddy tells Esther that he is going to stop at her college sometimes to say hi to her. Esther likes him a lot because when he mentions that he has a date, she lies that she has one too. But what actually ends up happening is that Buddy asks her to the Yale prom. At the beginning, she liked him so much and thought he was very smart and “pure.”
In one of the first mentions of Buddy, Esther mentions that he was stupid enough to have an affair with a waitress from the cape. So, we know that she was upset by this. But what she was really upset by was how Buddy always acted so innocent, when he really wasn’t. Buddy had slept with this waitress for 10 weeks, and Esther had never seen a man naked before Buddy. One day, she asked him if he had ever slept with anyone. Esther thought Buddy was pure that he was going to respond he would wait until marriage. But instead he admitted to sleeping with this woman for months. She was very upset by this because he had never acted in such a way that Esther would have guessed this was the case. She was mad that he had always called her sexy and said she was so good looking, but in fact she had never slept with anyone but he had. She wanted Buddy to think that she was experienced when in reality she was not.

Chemistry

Esther avoids Chemistry in college by talking to the dean. She asked the dean to allow her to take chemistry without getting a grade. Esther said it was to free up space in her schedule for a Shakespeare course, but really she just wanted to avoid Chemistry altogether. So when she went to the class, she pretended to take science notes but just sat and wrote poems all class long. The dean and the Chemistry teacher both admired Esther for this because they believed that she loved Chemistry so much and she as such a good student that she would take the class for no credits or grades. Esther was a good student; she pretty much got straight A’s in every class, even Chemistry when she took it. The dean thought she was a model student, and was touched my Esther’s Chemistry plan.
Esther is obviously a writer. She is into English, rather than science. She talks about how she enjoyed botany, but can’t stand Chemistry. She mentioned how she loved the pictures and the interesting words from botany. Esther hated the ugly abbreviations of words for the elements and the “hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas.” Chemistry is all about method and why things happen. Esther isn’t really sure of what’s going on and what she wants. While she is talking to JayCee, she realizes she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life.

New York

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”

She explains the summer as queer and sultry. This means it’s odd, out of place, sexy, erotic, scandalous, hot, humid, and airless.
The Rosenbergs were the first people to be killed because of treason. They were a couple who were Communist spies. Esther describes hearing about the Rosenbergs as the first time she saw a cadaver. It was everywhere, and she couldn’t keep from thinking about it. It stuck with her. Even though she has no connection with the story, she has some sort of relationship with it.
The first thing in the entire book is about Esther’s uncertainty about her situation.
She talks about how she had no idea why she was in New York. Esther has won a contest and is now living in New York as an intern at a fashion magazine. She has all of her expenses paid, and she gets to get her hair and make-up done, and wear the nicest clothes. She goes to parties and is seen by people. Esther says, “I was supposed to be having the time of my life.” Instead, she worries about how she can’t enjoy all of these things. She feels left out, and out of place. Esther feels lonely and isolated, even around all the people at parties and the fellow girls who try to be her friend.

Betty

Betty is one of the main characters in the movie. I pretty much hate her because she is a b*tch. She’s really touchy and aspires to be the typical “housewife.”
She gets upset when she finds out that the nurse is giving out birth control to girls. So, she complains about it in her newspaper job. However, she seems kind of cowardly because instead of telling the dean, she writes it in the school paper. Maybe she does this because she wants to show off. Betty does the same thing to Katherine.
She calls Katherine subversive because she said that she would fail Betty for not coming to class. Connie said that most teachers turn their heads when the married students don’t come to class or don’t turn in papers. But Katherine expects her to be in class and to do all of the assignments. This makes Betty angry and they have a face-off, which concludes in a few snide comments of each other.
In one of her columns, she writes that Katharine is disrupting their traditions, messing with the women of the school and keeping them from “the role they were born to fill.” The values for women in the 1950s were to get married and have children. The expectations were to clean, cook, and take care of the husband and kids.
In the movie, Katherine challenges these girls to think outside the box. She wants them to think for themselves, and not what a textbook tells them to say and think. Betty just wants to be married and have her children and her laundry washer and dryer. Betty is the epitome of the values in the 1950s.

1953

The film Mona Lisa Smile is about a teacher in 1953 at Wellesley College. This college was an all girls school and back in this time, there were different expectations about woman. Everything was about the man.
In 1953, the women were the housewives. But it had been different earlier. When World War II took hundreds of thousands of men from their homes, there were many jobs available. Women filled these jobs, even if they had previously been “manly jobs.” For example, this was the time period when “Rosie the Riveter” was drawn. After all of the men returned from World War II, women were pushed back into the house to cook, clean, and care for children. Now, if they even had jobs it would be something like a secretary. They did not have any important jobs.
Their role in life was to take care of their husband. In the movie, Joan and Betty want that life. They want to be the good housewife. Even though they are both very intelligent young women, they want a future for themselves that involves them wasting their intelligence at home washing dishes and talking soothingly to their husbands when they get home from work.
In the movie, Joan is a very smart woman who is pre-law. When Katharine asks her what law school she is going to, Joan just says she plans on getting married. She’s deserted this dream to be a housewife.