Mother's know best????

Mothers Know Best???

        We've all grown up hearing some version of the same phrase, that mothers know best. It's usually said to get a child to listen, to trust that the person telling them not to pour all the Legos on the floor actually has a reason. But what happens when a mother is doing her best and it still isn't enough? Does she really know best, especially when she can't fully understand her own kids? In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, Mrs. Greenwood is constantly villainized through Esther's narration. Esther resents her mother's career and her lifestyle. Esther wishes for a different mother, someone like Jay Cee. But as the novel unfolds, I started to question whether Mrs. Greenwood truly deserves the blame Esther places on her, or whether we are simply seeing her through the distorted lens of an unreliable narrator.

    When Esther's father died, Mrs. Greenwood was left with two children and no money, and back then there were very few paths offered to women. She did what she could. She learned shorthand and started teaching it at the local college to support her family. I don't think she should be judged for those choices. In the beginning, Esther says, "I wished I had a mother like Jay Cee. Then I'd know what to do. My own mother wasn't much help." (Plath 39). Esther wishes for a mother like Jay Cee, this successful and driven woman, and in doing so she puts down everything her own mother has done. It must have been hard for Mrs. Greenwood. She lost her husband, likely had no job at the time, and had to figure out how to support her family while raising two kids on her own. Esther describes her mom coming home from the funeral as someone who seemed calm and unbothered, but was she really? We never find out, because Esther never goes deeper than that. Instead, Esther becomes this unreliable narrator who assumes her mother secretly hated her father for dying and leaving them with nothing. But we never actually see Mrs. Greenwood be resentful or bitter. Esther constructs that version of her mother in her own mind. I think Esther villainizes her mother partly out of fear of becoming her.

    It's also interesting how Esther talks about her father throughout the novel. She describes his death as something unreal, and mentions this yearning to "pay her father back for all the years of neglect, and start tending his grave"(Plath 165). At first, I wasn't sure who did the neglecting, her father or her? Esther frames it like she owes him something, like leaving his grave untended is a debt she needs to repay. Then she says, "I had always been my father's favourite, and it seemed fitting I should take on a mourning my mother had never bothered with" (Plath 165). We have no way of knowing if she was actually his favorite, but she uses it as a way of saying that her mother might not love her, but her father would have. And the way she completely dismisses whatever emotions her mother may have had about losing her husband is interesting. She basically accuses her mother of not loving her father enough, of moving on too easily, but maybe that was Mrs. Greenwood's way of staying strong for her kids. To me, Mrs. Greenwood moving forward, taking care of her kids, and building a life from nothing is something to admire. Yet Esther still resents her for it and romanticizes her father instead. Esther is constantly comparing herself to her mother, treating the idea of becoming her like it's the worst possible outcome. She wishes for a mother like Jay Cee, this image of success, but honestly I think Mrs. Greenwood is successful and Esther just doesn't see it.

    Mrs. Greenwood's reaction to Esther going to the asylum surprised me. I expected most mothers at that time to disown their children, to stop visiting, to refuse to deal with it. Instead she was supportive. She took her daughter to see a doctor, visited her often, and brought her new clothes, flowers, and came to talk to her. I know Esther gets frustrated with her for the lack of understanding. Especially when Esther’s mother says, "I knew my baby wasn't like that… Those awful dead people at that hospital… I knew you'd decide to be all right again" (Plath 145).  Esther hates that response because it's dismissive. But her mother is coming from a place of hope and optimism, even if she doesn't have the right words. And I think somewhere underneath it all, Esther knows that. She doesn't hate who her mother is. She hates that she can't stop villainizing her.

    Part of the problem is that Esther never really explains to her mother what she's going through, so how could she fully understand? Esther describes her mother as the worst visitor because she doesn't scold her, she just quietly hopes she'll get better. The fact that Mrs. Greenwood feels guilty, wondering what she did wrong, is shocking and makes you sympathize with her. And honestly, Esther knows her mother isn't to blame and seems to feel bad that her own way of thinking led her here. When Mrs. Greenwood visits on her birthday with flowers, I can imagine a lot of mothers being completely over it by that point, but she's not. She's still showing up, still looking for signs that her daughter is okay. And when Esther tells Doctor Nolan "I hate her" and Doctor Nolan smiles, I think that's because Esther is finally feeling something. She hates something, which means she must love something too. That's progress to her depression of not feeling this numbness anymore.

    At the end of the novel, Esther feels some guilt over the burden she placed on her mother. But I do believe that after everything, Esther and her mother eventually have a conversation, about her dislike for society and the role women have to play. And I think, given everything we've seen from Mrs. Greenwood, she would listen and probably relate.