[On October 16,
1916, Margaret
Sanger opened her first birth control clinic in New York City. So this
week, on the 100th anniversary of that moment, I’ll AmericanStudy
Sanger and other histories and images connected to this still-controversial
subject, leading up a special weekend post highlighting a great scholarly book
on the topic!]
On two vital
lessons from a unique and intimate fictional sequence.
Three chapters
from the end of Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical
novel The Bell-Jar (1963), its
protagonist Esther Greenwood has an appointment at the doctor’s office. That’s
hardly unexpected, as a significant percentage of the novel focuses on Esther’s
relationships with doctors, from the kind and supportive therapist Dr. Nolan to
the more domineering and destructive (he prescribes her electroconvulsive
therapy, better known as shock treatment) psychiatrist Dr. Gordon. But this
particular sequence portrays something quite different: the female, progressive
Dr. Nolan has convinced Esther that her fears about sex and purity (passed down
from Esther’s mother) are “propaganda” for certain visions of gender and
identity, and so Esther visits a primary care physician in order to receive her
first prescription birth control, a diaphragm. The doctor does so with sympathy
and kindness, and, in perhaps the novel’s last moment of happiness, Esther
leaves his office feeling that she has gained some measure of control over not
only her sexuality but also her relationships with men.
While the
sequence thus represents an important culminating moment in Plath’s novel (if
one immediately complicated by the darker sequences of the book’s final two
chapters), it also offers an interesting window into American society in the
early 1950s (the book is set about 10 years before its release). Of course
women in 2016 still can and do go to the doctor to receive prescriptions for
one form of birth control or another, including diaphragms.
But at the same time, there are now numerous birth control methods available
over the counter, including a wide variety of condoms, all of which (I hope and
believe) single women can and do purchase with no more consistent hesitation or
shame than do single men. Plath’s sequence reminds us of how different things
were in the 1950s—in the absence of stores like CVS, condoms and other
over-the-counter birth control items had to be purchased in more intimate
settings like the neighborhood drug store; and societal
and cultural narratives for those items tended to focus on men, both
married and single, as their accepted purchasers. It’s telling that Esther does
not (as far as we know) ever consider buying condoms or other OTC options,
going directly to the doctor when she decides to acquire and use birth control.
Esther’s
experience with that doctor is, again, a smooth and positive one—but I can’t imagine
that was always or even generally the case for single women seeking prescription
birth control in the 1950s, nor that those women would have made such
appointments without a great deal of trepidation (even the headstrong Esther
might never have done so without the vital encouragement of Dr. Nolan). Our
contemporary debates over women’s bodies often focus on the procedure and issue
of abortion specifically, but Plath’s sequence helps us better remember a broader
and even more significant reality: that as of mid-century women had far
less access to birth control, and thus far less control over their sexuality
and reproduction, than did men. When we read in the opening chapter of Betty
Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963,
the same year Plath’s novel appeared) about the suburban housewives struggling
with “The
Problem That Has No Name,” we would do well to remember that even married
women in the era faced the same lack of control—if their husbands wanted
multiple children, on a certain timeline, and so on, those me were in a position
to dictate the couple’s use of birth control, and thus to control the arc and
stages of their wives’ lives as well. One more historical lesson that Plath’s
sequence helps us remember and understand.
Next post
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other histories or images you’d highlight?
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