#class and classism in the bell jar

[oneofmytroubles]

The section of Chapter 1 where Esther first mentions and interacts with Doreen:

“These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sunroof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell. I talked with one of them, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in airplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil.

Girls like that make me sick. I'm so jealous I can't speak. Nineteen years, and I hadn't been out of New England except for this trip to New York. It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.

I guess one of my troubles was Doreen.

I'd never known a girl like Doreen before. Doreen came from a society girls' college down South and had bright white hair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual sneer. I don't mean a nasty sneer, but an amused, mysterious sneer, as if all the people around her were pretty silly and she could tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to.

Doreen singled me out right away. She made me feel I was that much sharper than the others, and she really was wonderfully funny. She used to sit next to me at the conference table, and when the visiting celebrities were talking she'd whisper witty sarcastic remarks to me under her breath.

Her college was so fashion conscious, she said, that all the girls had pocketbook covers made out of the same material as their dresses, so each time they changed their clothes they had a matching pocketbook. This kind of detail impressed me. It suggested a whole life of marvelous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet.

The only thing Doreen ever bawled me out about was bothering to get my assignments in by a deadline.

"What are you sweating over that for?" Doreen lounged on my bed in a peach silk dressing gown, filing her long, nicotine-yellow nails with an emery board, while I typed up the draft of an interview with a best-selling novelist.

That was another thing -- the rest of us had starched cotton summer nighties and quilted housecoats, or maybe terrycloth robes that doubled as beachcoats, but Doreen wore these full-length nylon and lace jobs you could half see through, and dressing gowns the color of skin, that stuck to her by some kind of electricity. She had an interesting, slightly sweaty smell that reminded me of those scallopy leaves of sweet fern you break off and crush between your fingers for the musk of them.

"You know old Jay Cee won't give a damn if that story's in tomorrow or Monday." Doreen lit a cigarette and let the smoke flare slowly from her nostrils so her eyes were veiled. "Jay Cee's ugly as sin," Doreen went on coolly. "I bet that old husband of hers turns out all the lights before he gets near her or he'd puke otherwise."

Jay Cee was my boss, and I liked her a lot, in spite of what Doreen said. She wasn't one of the fashion magazine gushers with fake eyelashes and giddy jewelry. Jay Cee had brains, so her plug-ugly looks didn't seem to matter. She read a couple of languages and knew all the quality writers in the business.

I tried to imagine Jay Cee out of her strict office suit and luncheon-duty hat and in bed with her fat husband, but I just couldn't do it. I always had a terribly hard time trying to imagine people in bed together.

Jay Cee wanted to teach me something, all the old ladies I ever knew wanted to teach me something, but I suddenly didn't think they had anything to teach me. I fitted the lid on my typewriter and clicked it shut.

Doreen grinned. "Smart girl."”

#the bell jar quotes #lounged on my bed in a peach silk dressing gown #esther crushing on doreen #sex and sexism in the bell jar #Jay Cee #class and classism in the bell jar #bisexual esther greenwood quotes #She had an interesting slightly sweaty smell #like girl?? #doreen and esther #Doreen Lucas #Esther Greenwood #Sylvia Plath #Doreen The Bell Jar

[hyacinthyne]

too bloody lowborn to be kin to m’lady high.

The Peach through Gendry’s eyes. 

(Gendry’s perspective on their class differences is really hard to nail. I straight up cannot find the balance between Gendry’s pride and awareness and the shame that comes from internalized classism. So like... be gentle on me. CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM IS NEEDED SO PLS GIVE IT.)

"I bet this is a brothel," Arya whispered to him.

"You don't even know what a brothel is."

"I do so," she insisted. "It's like an inn, with girls."

Across the room, a girl was baring her chest, advancing on a jolly Tom Sevenstrings. A few feet away, Anguy had another giggling on his lap. They were in a brothel.

"What are you doing here, then?" He wanted to shake her. "A brothel's no fit place for no bloody highborn lady, everybody knows that."

Before Gendry could get her to go back to their room, one of the girls sat down on the bench beside him. "Who's a highborn lady? The little skinny one?" She looked at Arya and laughed. "I'm a king's daughter myself."

She had wound Arya up. “You are not.”

"Well, I might be."  As the girl shrugged, her flimsy gown slipped from one shoulder. "They say King Robert fucked my mother when he hid here, back before the battle. Not that he didn't have all the other girls too, but Leslyn says he liked my ma the best."

"I'm named Bella," she turned on him. "For the battle. I bet I could ring your bell, too. You want to?"

"No.”

"I bet you do." Her hand snaked along his arm.  A warm, dry hand that stopped at the juncture by his wrist. His stomach hurtled and dropped. You don’t want this. Her grip was light, coy and it made him want to throw it off.

Gendry had never been more aware of Arya, who was right beside him. But why should you feel shame for this? Arya knows what you are. Bastard, the same as the black-haired girl.

The room blared and stuttered around them, the light failing and fuzzing. But was it just shame he felt? If he wiped the dew from his upper lip and the stickiness from palms, he felt no heat stirring. You don’t want this, you don’t. And it’s not just your spine saying that, not just your pride. 

"I don't cost nothing to friends of Thoros and the lightning lord,” her voice was far away. Arya’s legs were swinging slightly under the table. Lady Smallwood’s lace, lilac and mother of pearl.

"No, I said."  He gripped the edge of the table and rose to his feet.

Outside it was already pitch black, and the cold was biting. Winter must be coming, Peacetime and Summer ending as one. The laughter and the bawdy song  of the Peach could be heard even out here. 

His hand raked through his hair. What would Arya think of him leaving, or of the black haired girl’s touches? What’s it to her?   He kicked the ground. What’s it to you what she makes of it?

Would she mull it over and conclude that he was just another… another what exactly? Him and that black-haired girl were the same; born because their mother fucked some man that she would never see again. Born low. If she were with her family, they’d bid her wash her hands if he so much as touched her.

 He needed a walk. The night’s cold was jarring, sobering. But, upon coming back through the door of the Peach, Gendry felt no less unmoored.

He half expected to see the black-haired girl eyeing him, half expected for her to exchange a glance with one of the other girls as she whispered about him. About how he hadn’t a drop of hot blood, how he was frigid, unresponsive, green. But if they'd so much as noticed his leaving, they hadn't let on. She and the rest of the girls and the Brotherhood were...preoccupied.

 Arya had stayed put just where she’d been when he’d left. She was looking towards where a ginger girl was speaking with Lem and Harwin. Her head cocked to the side, listening in on them. The girl said something and Arya shrunk away from it. He wondered what they spoke of. Those whispers of her mother and the Kingslayer, I’d wager. Whatever it was the girl had said to Lem and Harwin, it had made Arya look sick.

An old man was walking towards her, eyeing her. A seedy, scummy, old... he sat and Gendry jumped to his feet. He didn’t like the look in the man’s eyes, and they were in a brothel.

“Well, aren't you a pretty little peach. Does my sweet peach have a name?"

"I'm . . . ""

“She’s my sister.” He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed it hard. “Leave her be.”

The man moved to size Gendry up. His head spun around, put out, but he faltered when he saw Gendry. If I hadn’t been here, maybe nobody would have noticed him creeping on her. And then he wanted the man to pick a fight so that he could pound him into the table.

"Your sister, is she? What kind of brother are you? I'd never bring no sister of mine to the Peach, that I wouldn't." the man got up, in search of another sweet little peach. The mangy, lurking, ungodly-

"Why did you say that? You're not my brother."

Hot white anger shot down into his stomach. And there it was again, that scraping feeling in his stomach. He was angry at it too. “That’s right. I’m too bloody lowborn to be kin to m’lady high.”

Arya’s eyes widened. She was shocked by his anger, she’d given no thought to any of this, why would she?  “That’s not the way I meant it.” But it’s true isn’t it? What is it that you even want from me Arya? To not be alone until your proper family comes? Surely not what-

“Yes, it is. Go away. I want to drink this wine in peace. Then maybe I’ll go find that black-haired girl and ring her bell for her.” 

 Why had he said that bit about the girl?  Why had he bloody stupidly hoped it would leave her green-eyed? It was all the more likely she’d just come to remember how lowborn bastards are said to be, warnings she’d no doubt received from her Lady Mother or Septa, and then she wouldn’t bother with him no more.

“But…”

“I said go away. M’lady.”  And so she left. Regret set in as soon as the door shut behind her. She’d be in a foul temper tomorrow. Or that dead stony silence. He could brave the first, but he didn’t know how she’d react to being upset, to being set upon, without any seeming rhyme or reason. She wouldn’t understand. 

Too bloody lowborn… maybe this was the place for him. His mother had been like these girls, he knew, spending the night in a man’s lap for a few coins. The Brotherhood were his people, not Arya, and didn’t that sting? 

The wine was thick, dewy, bitter in his mouth. If he was another boy, a girl in an inn would be enough. Gendry swallowed the red dregs of his goblet. Then stood up and left again into the cold. If he waited it out, she’d be asleep when he got back to their room.

#gendrya #gendry x arya #the peach #gendrya fanfic #arya stark #gendry #asoiaf #asos #a storm of swords #book!gendry #book!arya