The Bell Jar by SparkNotes

Author:SparkNotes [SparkNotes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapters 11–12

Summary: Chapter 11

Esther visits Dr. Gordon, a psychiatrist. She has not changed clothes or washed her hair for three weeks, having decided such chores are silly, and she says she has not slept for seven nights. She hopes that Dr. Gordon will help bring her back to herself, but she immediately distrusts him because he is good-looking and seems conceited. On his desk he keeps a picture of his attractive family, which makes Esther furious. She thinks he keeps the picture there to ward off her advances, and assumes such a handsome man with such a lovely family could never help her. Esther tells Dr. Gordon that she cannot sleep, eat, or read, though she does not tell him of her difficulty writing. That morning, she had attempted to write a letter to Doreen, but could not write legibly. He asks her where she goes to college and comments on how pretty the girls were when he worked there during the war. When Esther tells her mother that Dr. Gordon expects to see her the next week, Esther’s mother sighs because Dr. Gordon charges twenty-five dollars an hour.

Esther flirts with a sailor on the Boston Common, pretending she is Elly Higginbottom, an orphan from Chicago. She thinks she sees Mrs. Willard approaching, but is wrong. When the sailor asks what has upset her, she says she thought the woman was from her orphanage in Chicago. The sailor asks if the woman was mean to her. She says yes and cries, momentarily convinced that this horrible woman caused everything unhappy in her life.

During her second visit to Dr. Gordon, Esther tells him that she feels the same and shows him the torn-up letter she tried to write to Doreen. He does not examine the scraps of paper, but asks to see her mother, and tells Mrs. Greenwood that Esther needs shock treatments at his hospital in Walton. Esther starts thinking about suicide while reading a tabloid account of a man prevented from jumping off a ledge. She finds she can read tabloid papers, because their short paragraphs end before the letters start jumping and sliding around. The next day Dodo Conway will drive Esther and her mother to the hospital for the shock treatment. Esther considers running away to Chicago, but realizes the bank will close before she can withdraw bus fare.

Summary: Chapter 12

Esther goes to Dr. Gordon’s hospital for her shock treatment. The hospital waiting room looks like part of a summer hotel, but the inhabitants sit listlessly. They remind Esther of store mannequins. On the way to her treatment, Esther encounters a woman who threatens to jump out of the window, which she cannot do because bars across the windows would prevent her. A nurse wearing thick glasses hooks Esther up to the shock machine, and a jolt shakes Esther “like the end of the world.” She wonders what awful thing she did to deserve this punishment. The treatment reminds her of the time she accidentally electrocuted herself with her father’s lamp.

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