One of the most prominent characters in The Bell Jar is Buddy Willard. A good looking Yale graduate in medical school, he checks off most (if not all) of the boxes for being a “catch” husband of the time. However, despite all of these seemingly positive attributes, Esther actively despises him for the majority of the novel. She describes him as a hypocrite multiple times. Furthermore, she dreads meeting him to the point that when she does visit him with Mr. Willard, Buddy’s father, she considers getting out of the car and hitchhiking back.
The reason for Esther’s disdain for Buddy is because he is an embodiment of the sexist double standards in that time period. He wants total control of his future wife, indicated when Esther broke her leg and Buddy had a grim satisfaction at knowing she would be limited by her injury. He even tells Esther that once she gets married, she won’t feel the desire to write again. Furthermore, despite Buddy fooling around with a waitress, Esther is held to a different standard as she would lose face if she did the same, while his actions are considered normal. Lastly, he is a medical student and as such, is part of a male-dominated system which Esther hates because it dismisses the real concerns of women.
Unlike many other characters, Esther is able to recognize how the status quo unfairly treats women. Throughout the novel, she questions why men can sleep around while women must maintain their purity. Indeed, a large contributor to her mental illness is trying to handle this double standard: as her mental health worsens, she gets more and more affected by it. This is why during her worst days, Esther has such a negative perception of Buddy in comparison to others - he embodies this system that she rightfully despises.
In order to “get even” with the status quo, Esther decides to lose her virginity. After doing so, Buddy becomes peripheral in her life. When she meets him for the last time, her thoughts are mainly focused on the weather. When she speaks to him about shoveling snow, she is not tense and is able to chat freely. That is because in her mind, by sleeping with someone, she has successfully overthrown the double standard that women should be chaste before marriage. Thus, ultimately, Buddy, who had represented this standard, has become irrelevant in her life.
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