Alright, I'll confess: I've never actually read The Bell Jar (it's on my list, I promise!). But like any good thought daughter, I am well-acquainted with the fig tree analogy that everyone online seems to have something to say about.
In our modern world, you’d be hard-pressed to find a girl who hasn’t experienced Esther Greenwood’s debacle for herself. With one passage, Plath managed to capture an experience unique to young womanhood, deeply specific yet widely relatable. Thus, the green fig tree has endured as one of the most iconic images of 20th century literature and is now, more than ever, shaping the way readers understand agency and the fine line that exists between sacrifice and choice within a society that upholds the one-track mind.
We are allotted only so many years, this voice argues, shouldn’t we know — concretely — what to do with them? But committing to one thing and wrapping my existence around it seems insurmountable. The buffet of life offers far too many tantalizing selections. How do I go about choosing? And not just making the correct choice but finding the courage to make any choice at all.
I want to see everything, do everything, be everything. “I want to have it all!” I shout into the universe. Like Esther, I see the paths of potential lives spread out endlessly before me, each fig ripe for the taking. In my mind, I reach for one and bite…
Suddenly, I am whisked away to rainy Amsterdam, down cobbled streets and up the steps of a cozy canal house, brown as gingerbread. Inside, the light is warm and easy; the air smells of vanilla and tattered paper. Rows upon rows of books, both antique and freshly printed, rise in a great spiral toward the ceiling. Citygoers wander among the shelves, running their fingers down the spines, unable to resist the adventure promised by each. Downstairs, I hover over the counter of my bookstore café, smiling dreamily and dusting flour onto my apron as I make small talk with customers. Sometimes, the dream alters slightly, and I am a florist in Seoul, a chocolatier in Vienna, the keeper of a quaint teahouse on the Isle of Skye. But regardless of where I land, the fantasy is always at the back of my mind, brightly burning.
I choose another path and return to Los Angeles, which is only a paradise in my mind. I live in a chic apartment I can hardly afford and survive by writing for the magazines, my prose bold enough to sustain my addiction to green juice and vintage clothes. I’m a wannabe Eve Babitz, closing my eyes to the heat and grotesque reality that swarms up around me, creating magic in a starving desert. I dress like a 50s starlet in black and white and red and polkadots. On weekends, I eat cherries on the beach and daydream of marrying rich, if only for the dinner parties and white balconies and tiny gloves.
At other times, I fantasize about the academic life. I am a historian and an expert in a little of everything — of medieval history and ancient languages and classical literature — and I ignite this passion in my students. I lecture at a fine university back East where I am known as the kindly but reserved professor who buries herself in plaid skirts and takes her lunch in the library. Off campus, however, I am an impetuous traveler, whirling off to exotic places in the name of research. I wade through sand and jungles, collecting artifacts from Morocco and Cambodia and Peru to be put up in museums across the globe.
I reach for another bite and all at once my mouth fills with the taste of foreign spice, of hot frying oil and sun-ripened oranges. In this life, I spend my summer days in a little studio in the south of Spain, sketching and painting and sculpting works of art to peddle at the local market. By night, I laugh with strangers and drink wine; on weekends I cruise the streets of Seville by scooter and take trips to the seaside. My lips are sherry red and I wear scarves in my hair. Every hour is filled with passion and creation and being. I am the artist and the city is my muse.
In another life, I live alone on an island. A modern-day Calypso, I am self-contained but ripe for love. I stretch in the mornings, laze on white beaches, weave hibiscus blooms into my hair. I eat fruit off the tree and drink the milk right from the coconut. My hair falls to my thighs in waves, crusted with salt and sand and sea spray. I am friendly with everyone in town. There, I tend a little tiki bar that sells smoothies and sushi and cocktails, made from only the freshest ingredients. Mine is a serene existence, unburdened by troubles of the larger world.
My fondest daydream, I must admit, is set in an English village bordering a sleepy wood. I reside in a thatched roof cottage crawling with vines: a domicile fit for a fairytale. My mornings are slow and golden. I wake early, have tea with milk, recite Keats at the breakfast table. The bulk of my days are spent at the writing desk below my bedroom window, spinning my latest novel as I look out over the wild green hills. When I’m not working, I’m dabbling in watercolors, baking blueberry scones, or tending to the rabbit hutch in the back garden. On Saturdays, I take the train into town for groceries, or to faraway and unexpected places. I grow old this way, living plainly and taking the years as they come, allowing myself to be unapologetically happy.
I am standing beneath the tree of life, wanting, so desperately, to find my way, but reluctant to commit to any one thing in spite of everything society says. I have been standing here a while.
Two years ago, “What will I do with my life?” was the perpetual, monstrous question on my mind that seemed to inflate each night as I slept. Now, I greet my indecision like an old friend. I know the essence of what I want: a creative life, steeped in joy and solitude, and now and again, a dash of adventure. There was a time I was as starved as Esther Greenwood, but that time is no longer. I have drawn the outline of my life and will leave the rest to shape itself as it will, even if I lose a few figs in the process.
Deep down, I believe that in every timeline I would choose to be a writer; that is the solid, most unchanging part of me. It is a comfort to know who I am at my core, even if the rest is all shadows. But sometimes, dreaming is good for the soul. The vivid lives I imagine for myself are fantasies for a reason. They are the overblown projections of my subconscious that keep me from becoming stoic about the future, from narrowing myself into a single thread.
Because I wouldn’t want to live just one kind of way. It is my belief that we are each intended for a certain purpose (call me childish or spiritual), but there is more than one road to fulfilling it. I want to take bites from many different figs, understanding that some will taste a little sweeter than others and some will call out to me in different seasons. I am a woman with options and I refuse not to take advantage of them. I love you, Sylvia Plath but please don’t make me choose. I’ll keep my dreams, however fanciful they may be, and infuse a little of each into this one, beautiful life I own.
So choose one fig or many, or uproot the whole damn tree, only, don’t let them blacken and fester. Grasp at them while they’re ripe and still tasting of sweet earth.
can we have the moment to appreciate how beautiful this substack is??? the work, pictures, and colors? i love this!
love this so much