Esther says that after hanging up on Irwin, she feels "perfectly free." But free of what? Her virginity? Men? Irwin? Her past? Remember that when her mother tells her, again denying any unplesantness in life, that they will put "all this" behind them, Esther knows that all these experiences are part of her, "part of [her] landscape," she calls it. Yet where is the landscape of escape? Where is solace?
Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, has said that the Ariel poems that Plath wrote during the last two years of her life have an authentic voice and reveal "a real self." We cannot doubt this. Even The Bell Jar proves this. But this real self, revealed in the novel as evidence of some very good writing, was written by a woman who never found a real life, who was never able to sustain herself in the real world.
Part of the answer to this tragedy lies in Esther's experiences and observations. She talks about Dr. Quinn, Joan's psychiatrist, as being too abstract. Yet Esther, in characteristic style, having the same defects as those whom she so bitterly criticizes, is certainly very abstract about the big event of her coming to womanhood — the loss of her virginity. She abstractly chooses the man who will go to bed with her — not for emotional reasons, but for made-up, clever, bright-girl reasons. And her desire to never see him again is quite abstract. Why? If Esther's mother wants to treat all experiences as though they were only "bad dreams," Esther also tries to brush aside that which was a mistake, that which she finds distasteful.
Clearly, Esther feels renewed at the end of the novel, for she wishes there were a ritual for being born twice. But she thinks of this in terms of marriage. She is not on new ground yet. Furthermore, in feeling so renewed, she seems to have accepted society's notion that she has been cured. Esther is still so young, so lacking in wisdom, so immersed in abstract ideas. She is still clever, still well-dressed, but not much more prepared for her future than she was at the beginning of the book.
