message in a jar

It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively and fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted.

And I knew that is spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs Willard's kitchen mat.

as i read sylvia plath's words from her novel, the bell jar above, i'm reminded of the irony portrayed in the poem henpecked husband by robert burns (1759-1796), one of scotland's finest poets.

Curs'd be the man, the poorest wretch in life,
The crouching vassal to a tyrant wife!
Who has no will but by her high permission,
Who has not sixpence but in her possession,
Who must to her his dear friend's secrets tell,
Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell.
Were such the wife had fallen to my part,
I'd break her spirit or I'd break her heart;
I'd charm her with the magic of a switch,
I'd kiss her maids, and kick the perverse bitch.

the bell jar is a fascinating account of a woman's descent into mental illness. esther greenwood is an easy character to like and it's not always easy to like overachieving women. they might be smart and highly-talented but some have imperious qualities -- uptight bitches who have the knack to antagonize anyone who falls on their wrong side, it might be a spouse (thus the poem), colleagues or friends or merely people in general. though tyrannical attitudes are not merely limited to overachievers. there are also nonentities who can be such great pain in the ass. but esther, despite her straight A's, was stricken with debilitating feelings of inferiority and in the end you wanted her to conquer her fears and rise above the challenges and sad circumstances that befell her young orbit. sylvia plath, who unlike her heroine's attempts, succeeded in the curtailing her own life at 31, but the bell jar and all her other works are more than enough legacy for her adoring public.