Crafting Readers

Items

• "A terrible newspaper headline" / "The Bell Jar"
  This artificial newspaper reconstructs the clippings that recount Esther Greenwood’s suicide attempt in Plath’s novel. For the collages, I took the newspaper images described alongside the headlines in the text and portrayed them in a conceptual manner that incorporated the novel’s central themes. I typeset the headlines by hand, printed them on UVic Libraries’ Vandercook printing press, and then scanned everything to arrange it digitally into the form of a 1950s newspaper’s front page. Crafting this newspaper urged me to meditate on the symbolism of print media in The Bell Jar, as Esther struggles with her ambitions for the future, her mental health treatment options, and the social demands on young women to be modest and domestic as well as sexually enticing. This newspaper represents Esther’s metaphorical bell jar and the media’s reality-distorting role in producing and maintaining that bell jar. BECKY TURNER ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: Using methods of collage, typesetting, and digital arrangement, I crafted this 1950’s newspaper that recreates the clippings recounting Esther Greenwood’s suicide attempt in Plath’s novel (The Bell Jar 198–99). The crafting process reminded me of the subjectivity of media; every decision I made—about type font, which magazines to use, and which images looked best together—influenced the overall presentation and its perception by viewers. Typesetting was very enjoyable, but it brought to mind the invisible decisions that go into the production of a text. To Esther, her portrayal in the magazines told her she was nothing more than a “scholarship girl” in fancy clothing (198). Much of Esther’s sense of self is tied to the magazines, newspapers, and tabloids she reads, which contributes to her distorted perspective of reality. In collaging the images, I had the opportunity to think about the pressure on women to be attractive, healthy, happy, and maternal—or, in other words, to be the perfect housewife. By synthesizing these demands into the collages, I created a newspaper that represents the reality-distorting, metaphorical bell jar over Esther’s head. Through my crafting journey, I explored the history of printing, the origins of collage, and the connections of these crafts to The Bell Jar and Sylvia Plath’s own life. Historically, printing was a field dominated by men. Women were told that their “professional incompetence,” both physically and intellectually, barred them from being able to compose lines of type or operate a letterpress (Betts 21). This rationale was completely false, as the records we have of women in printing prove that they had no such problems (21); however, because women were rarely allowed to be in official unions or have their printing recognized, there is a historical lack of these records documenting women’s work (Battershill 13). When women were allowed into the occupation, it was often because their husband or father had died, and someone was needed to replace them (12–13). Moreover, women were rarely paid fair wages (Betts 23). As printing became more automated, it developed a reputation as an artisanal craft (141) for the women “who were denied access to [it] for centuries” (13). The modern letterpress community relies heavily on group support and sharing to preserve the knowledge needed to restore and operate machines. Today, we can learn how to engage with this historically masculinized craft in a feminist, amateur way (Battershill 10). Through engaging in the generative printer-press relationship that is inherent in the use of a letterpress (Betts), we can honour our own participation in the process and the legacy of women forgotten by history. A collage is “a work made by assembling various forms to create a new whole” (Adibi 1). It was invented alongside paper itself, but since then has utilized many crafting forms beyond paper, including painting, wood work, architecture, and music (2–5). Nowadays, most collage work is conducted by hobbyists. Collaging requires its creator to trust the process and take risks as they paste images together. It is a messy, imaginative, and inspiring process that opens up pathways to think about images and themes in texts and the ways in which they can be portrayed. This form of invention boosts self-confidence and creativity (7), and allows for the creator to develop a more critical view of spaces (13). It also led to the art of décollage, in which layers are torn away to reveal something underneath. In décollage, the artist must trust themselves to rip and tear the paper to reveal a better final image. The idea of stripping away parts of oneself can be either toxic or empowering, in the same way that pasting layer upon layer can create either a beautiful culmination of art or a mess of secrets. In this way, collage becomes a metaphor for growth, development, and the formation of identity. Sylvia Plath was a talented American poet who struggled with her mental health, and one month after releasing her first novel, The Bell Jar, she killed herself (Poetry Fndn 4). The novel was originally published in 1963 in England under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas.” Plath’s mother fought the publication of The Bell Jar in the United States until 1971, fearing that it would upset those who had inspired characters, and some accounts say that even Plath did not think of the novel as serious work (Smith 92). Once it did become available in the US, the novel quickly rose on the New York Times best-seller list and has remained popular since then, although the initial reception in England was only modest (93–94). Plath discusses gender roles and social expectations for a young woman’s career, relationships, and sexuality through a realist lens that accounts for the sociopolitical world of the 1950s. As feminist reviews of these concepts became more popular, Plath’s own life was conflated with that of her protagonist (95). Her suicide greatly influenced this reception of her book (Poetry Fndn 6). Feminist interpretations of the novel as a biography, as well as psychoanalytical readings, were not without merit, as Plath’s writing illustrates her struggle with depression. At the age of 20, she attempted to kill herself by swallowing sleeping pills (4). She survived and was treated with electroshock therapy, just like Esther in the novel. Mental health aspects aside, the novel expertly describes the pressures of “the mutually exclusive options of career and marriage/motherhood” in the 1950s and ‘60s (Smith 99). Plath likely experienced many of the same internal and social conflicts as Esther. There are four collages included in my mock newspaper. The first, under the headline “SCHOLARSHIP GIRL MISSING. MOTHER WORRIED,” is described as a “tarty” photo of Esther in her scholarship-money clothes, looking false and extravagant (The Bell Jar 198). The deconstructed face represents the lack of clarity and connection Esther feels with herself. Each of her idealized features is the epitome of beauty on its own, but together they form a monstrosity. The subtitles allude to her dissatisfaction in striving towards the unattainable ideals of womanhood. In another magazine from her time in New York, Esther looks as glamorous as the other girls in the program as she wears an evening dress and drinks a fancy cocktail (207). However, the image is posed and false, for she comments earlier that it is the sort of photo that would make everyone think she “must be having a real whirl” (2). The other collages employ ransom note-esque qualities with their cut-up letters. This technique draws attention to the demands that society makes of young women, and their harsh, threatening quality, such as the emphasis on marriage as the ultimate goal in the second collage. Esther worries that “maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave,” for this is the image of marriage that surrounds her (85). The third collage contributes to Esther’s glorified perception of her disappearance with its storybook image of a search party in the woods, and the last collage deals with her suicidal tendencies, using the motifs of inadequate healthcare and escapism. “Crazy,” with a giant question mark, embodies the question marks that are “all [Esther] could see” at the end of the novel (243). She is healed, but will she stay that way? Her body is represented by a mummy that is interlaced with features of the ambulance; in this way, Esther becomes her own saviour. “I am, I am, I am,” declares “the old brag of [her] heart,” illuminating Esther’s resolution to continue despite everything (243). In creating this newspaper, I was able to understand the influence of the media on how mental health, social ideals, and stereotypical demands are depicted to the public. I came to appreciate the invisible efforts required to produce print media and the rich legacy behind such media. The precise order and organization of typesetting juxtaposed with the chaos and ongoing process of collaging reveal the different ways that form can relate to content. As Caroline Levine suggests in “The Affordances of Form,” we can understand the unpredictable consequences and reader interpretations of different forms colliding (8). I hope that in my exploration of media and social themes in The Bell Jar, I have guided readers to an understanding of issues from the 1950s that are still present today. Returning to the question of The Bell Jar as an autobiography, we might now consider Levine’s idea of treating “fictional narratives as productive thought experiments that allow us to imagine the subtle unfolding activity of multiple social forms” (19) and imagine Plath’s novel as the experimental representation of social conventions that she observed in her own life.