Esther begins to disregard people’s opinions of her.
She wears Marco’s blood on the train home to the suburbs as if it
is a medal of honor, and cannot understand why people look at her
with curiosity. At home, she does not bother to get dressed, and
she has trouble sleeping. She starts to feel detached from herself,
as evidenced by the fact that she listens with surprise to her own
voice telling Jody she will not come to Cambridge. Her uncertainty
about her future, understandably intensified after her rejection
from the writing class, begins to pummel her. She frantically runs
through a list of possible paths, and rejects all of them.
Plath suggests that Esther’s troubles originate in her
mind, but are exacerbated by the circumstances surrounding her.
Marco attempts to rape Esther, a horror she deals with on her own.
She bears her pain and shock silently, which surely intensifies
these feelings. She must return from New York City, a city that
Esther may have found unpleasant, but that forced her to keep busy
and keep the company of girls her age. She must now live in isolation
in the suburbs. She does not get into her writing course, a staggering
blow because writing and prizes and academic laurels have come to
seem like the sole achievements defining Esther’s character. Events
and brain chemistry conspire to loosen Esther’s grasp on sanity.
