Esther's almost obsession with purity and cleanliness can be connected with her mental health progress throughout the book. It's also linked to the concept of starting off with a clean slate, and how she ends the book determined to remember, rather than forget, everything she has went to because it is a part of her now.
In the beginning, after she goes out with Doreen and witnesses her experience with Lenny Shephard, she goes back to the hotel and describes herself as feeling dirty, despite the fact that she didn't actually do anything except watch. She then takes a nice long bath and describes it as a sort of cleansing ritual she does semi-regularly. The baths not only cleanse her of the actual dirt from the city but of what she saw - she treats it as her starting off with a clean slate, and tells herself everything else is disappearing until she's "pure" again.
She describes in one section of the book that at this point in her life she sees everybody as "pure" or "unpure". It's a huge issue for her that Buddy Willard isn't pure like he pretended to be, and she absolutely hates the double standard for her to be expected to stay pure for him while he's not expected to stay pure for her.
Later in the book when she's in the suburbs, we see a huge contrast between the cleanliness we saw in New York. She almost never washes and describes herself as practically sitting in her own stink. Meanwhile, her mental health is declining with her cleanliness. Meanwhile, while the dirt layers up, life piles up too, horrible situation after another and ones she can't just clear away.
At the end of the novel, after she spends all the time in the hospital and everything she sees and experiences, her mother tries to tell her to forget it all and pretend it's a bad dream, but she refuses to. She won't keep trying to start with a clean slate, like she did in the very beginning with her baths, but she also won't let it all pile up. At this point, Esther is also no longer a virgin, and no longer as concentrated on purity, having been shown the perspective that all the emphasis placed on it for women is propoganda.
I thought you made a good analysis on Esther and her obsession with purity. The image at the end of the novel where Esther describes how the snow covers everything but the topography still remains underneath could be connected to Esther's new views on purity. Like you said, Esther no longer tries to cleanse herself of everything dirty but acknowledges the topography underneath and her time in the mental hospital.
ReplyDeleteYou make a really interesting point about the progression of Esther's obsession with purity. I think her progress towards eventually relinquishing her obsession makes a good case for Esther's coming of age throughout the novel.
ReplyDeleteYou hit on a few interesting points. On one hand her purity can be seen in her physical hygiene which is related to her mental health. Secondly she has notions about purity and sex which affect her mental health. I think her views on sex become much more nuanced especially after talking to nolan
ReplyDeleteA big part of coming of age is dealing with these "impurities" that make up the adult world, and I think the way you described Esther's acceptance of these impurities sums it up amazingly.
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