Series: Esther’s Escape
Initially, I was planning on writing this reflection about how completing assignment despite my concussion helped me grow some empathy for the character of Esther and how this impacted my formatting of the ADE. I too, was momentarily confined by an external force muddling my mind for an undeterminable amount of time. However, In creating the series of images for this project I realized I had so much more knowledge, and so many more experiences that founded my connection to Esther. And that truly these experiences— as represented through these images— better reflected the choices I made regarding this project and what I learned from it.
The series of images included above is entitle “Esther’s Escape”. In drawing them, I initially wanted to draw a person quickly, without much regard for what they looked like (I’m not particularly fond of my own drawing). However, as I began, I made certain creative choices that I couldn’t ignore.
For instance, Initially, I was just going to make the same image in various different tones. This would have been easy, and would have taken substantially less time. However, I quickly realized that the images should mirror Esther’s journey throughout the book. This was a simple choice any English major and proclaimed poet could have come to— paralleling narratives across two different creative mediums. So, I decided to draw seven images, demonstrating Esther’s descent and ascension to and from ‘madness’. I’d like to think that Esther, as a talented young poet would have had the same thought before coming up with something far more creative.
Next, I made the decision to put Esther in dance shoes. Partially because I think they are the easiest shoes to draw, but also because I think they represent the experience of mental illness: you are always working, tryin to move around in the world gracefully despite the sheer weight of existence weighing down on you. This is also an homage to my own personal history, which was both negatively and positively impacted by my participation in dance. Most importantly dance gave me my first experiences with a variety of talented people living with mental illnesses to varying degrees of functionality.
Finally, I made the decision to change Esther’s size in the Bell Jar. With each image she gets smaller and smaller, until the final two where she regains some size but not all. I believe that this represents how the experience of mental illness (as represented by the Bell Jar) changes who you are in a fundamental way. While recovery is always the goal, and healing is imperative to survival, it is not without cost. In some ways, you leave the experience much more aware of the pain you have experienced, as well as the causes of it.
Ultimately, I made the choice to inform my analysis of this novel with my own experiences with mental illness as well as the creation of the images for this project. I think this helped me realize that Esther’s experience is not only a Roman à Clef into Sylvia Plath’s life, but perhaps a representation of the life of artistic womanhood. This is an experience I feel I have some insight into as a woman artist and, ultimately, the one I found most meaningful when creating this project.
