Analyzing Joan's Existence in the Bell Jar

Joan is possibly the most covertly hated character in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. At first, she's a somewhat distant friend that appears in Esther's asylum, which she takes as a joke. As time goes on, she gets more and more annoyed and begins to compare herself to Joan. This begins because Joan has also dated Buddy Willard and has a direct connection to Esther's life in society, and she hates Joan because she seems better than Esther. More specifically, she's jealous because "Joan had walk privileges, Joan had shopping privileges, Joan had town privileges. I gathered all my news of Joan into a little, bitter heap, though I received it with surface gladness. Joan was the beaming double of my old best self, specially designed to follow and torment me" (108). She also hates her because she's part of the crowd that, in Esther's head, singles her out-- she's sure they're talking about "how awful it was to have people like me in Belsize and that I should be in Wymark instead" (109). It's another reason why Joan is better than she is, causing petty dislike on Esther's part that Esther bottles up close to herself.

 Joan is also initially hated because of her tendency to be a "double image" of Esther. She reminds her of her own personal experiences in society, being a smart woman who dated Buddy. She describes Joan as fascinating because "her thoughts were not my thoughts, nor her feelings my feelings, but we were close enough so that her thoughts and feelings seemed a wry, black image of my own" (115). Esther seems to think Joan is a copy of Esther, because of her experiences and her emotions. This adds to Joan's surrealism as a character in the asylum, and someone that is interesting and enticing to Esther. 

She also finds Joan to be kind of intrusive in her life and fluctuates between being annoyed with her and jealous of her, but for the most part doesn't say anything directly to her about it. She also says that "Sometimes I wondered if I had made Joan up. Other times I wondered if she would continue to pop in at every crisis of my life to remind me of what I had been, and what I had been through, and carry on in her own separate but similar crisis under my nose" (115). Joan represents a physical and tangible part of her experiences, which makes Esther think of her as a kind of ghost sometimes. However, Esther does not completely cut her out, no matter how annoying she finds her. She remains connected to Joan and spends time with her in the asylum.

The difference between their societal experiences is that Joan likes women romantically, in a way that Esther finds really creepy and does not respond well to. This is also because of the fact that they "mirror" each other, so she attempts to separate herself from Joan. When Esther finds Joan and DeeDee together, she forcibly and angrily rejects Joan and her invitation to join her, saying she makes her want to puke. For most of the novel, she takes lesbians to be very creepy but intruiging, most likely because the novel takes place in the 1950s. She is very curious about Joan and maybe what made her feel that way, and asks Dr. Nolan to learn more about it. 

She remembers an older lesbian woman asks her about herself, and encourages her to follow her career-- a problem she is very much still at a crossroads about. She begins to question why she attracts older women who "all wanted to adopt me in some way, and, for the price of their care and influence, have me resemble them" (115). She gets irritated by the way everyone seems to have a path, or a stereotype to them, and the way society makes its way into everything. Because these women have a stereotype too, to follow your career and be a strong woman, it implies more strongly that in her experience, lesbians are overbearing. In addition, she wonders if "all women did with other women was lie and hug" (115), looking at lesbianism with disgust because she holds the concept of having sex in higher regard than not having sex, even if it has been pretty unenjoyable in her experience. With this avid homophobia, she automatically and kind of sarcastically stereotypes Joan, assuming that "my going to bed with Irwin was utterly incomprehensible to her, and his appearance a mere prick to her pleasure at my arrival" (121). In this moment, she shuts Joan out and assumes she's still desperately in love, letting the stereotypes take over.

 

At the end of the book, Joan takes her to the hospital and leaves the next morning, where she is found to have died of suicide a couple days later. At the funeral, Esther is kind of standoffish and homophobic, and says she "wondered what she thought she was burying (126)". This burial would represent Plath's-- and society's-- homophobic rejection of lesbianism. It would also represent the idea that Joan could never have a happy life in the first place as a lesbian, and reaffirms the stereotype of lesbians being mentally ill and unstable. Joan is a character that represents a lot of stereotypes in the 1950s about lesbians, and likely part of Plath's own ideas about lesbianism. While there may be some uncertainty around how Esther perceives Joan, these scenes also cut out the idea of lesbianism from Esther's potential sexuality options by having her die and giving it a sense of finality. Overall, Joan is a character with a lot of ambiguousness and uncertainty to her.