So far through the first eleven chapters in Bell Jar Esther hasn't done anything productive. She has pretty much realized that writing in a magazine may not be her future, as it seems she didn't end things with Jay Cee too well and gets turned down for the writing course (Plath 114). She starts writing a book but then there's the whole issue with her not sleeping for weeks and being sent to a psych clinic. But there's one more key area where Esther seems to be floundering: relationships. There's Buddy, Doreen, Betsy, and then Jody. With Doreen and Betsy there's the obvious reason why Esther left them, because their one month adventure in New York was up. Buddy not only unzips his pants in the middle of a conversation, later he sends Esther a letter saying he is in love with a nurse but, "If I came along with her, he might well find his feeling for the nurse was a mere infatuation" (Plath 119). Jody, the friend Esther was supposed to live with while they are all in summer programs at Harvard, would probably be too hard for Esther to see on a daily basis as she has succeeded in doing what Esther couldn't. On the surface all of these failed relationships seem to make sense, but I think there's something inside Esther which is at least contributing to the failed relationships.
It's pretty obvious that Esther doesn't want to be a typical housewife. She doesn't want to just wait around until someone comes to marry her. She doesn't want to be the typical 1950s woman. Unfortunately for Esther though, it seems everyone around her is content with the status quo. Buddy wants a wife who will only raise their kids and not have a career, so Esther comes up with other reasons to tell herself she should forget Buddy. Doreen, who is wild now, at 19 or 20, doesn't seem to want to work, after all, "The only thing Doreen ever bawled me out about was bothering to get my assignments in by a deadline" (Plath 5). In a few years she'll probably settle down with someone who can support the way she likes to live. Betsy, as Esther tells us on page 6, was brought straight out of a cornfield, about as all-american as you can get, so in all likelihood she's going to end up becoming a housewife. Jody, the girl who Esther met at college, the girl that out of all the characters could think most like Esther, doesn't. She's working in Cambridge and taking a sociology class. Esther doesn't seem to find anything wrong with that, but at the same time Jody is going to be living in an apartment with three girls, working and going to school. It's not that I think Esther is consciously deciding that these people will not be different, therefore she shouldn't be with them, it seems more like Esther uses other characteristics or situations to hide herself from why she really doesn't want to stay with them, which is their conservative view on life.
