Not P but Plath: The fight against the crushing weight of the impossible demands and expectations of patriarchal society.

[Allan Balliett]

Kathryn Williams – Hypoxia (2015)

Back in 2013, singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams was commissioned to write
something for the Durham Book Festival’s celebration of the life and work
of Sylvia Plath, the American poet and writer, whose only novel – The Bell
Jar – was published fifty years previously. Anyone who’s ever experienced
anxiety or depression – and that’s as many as one in five of us, according
to the Office for National Statistics’ Measuring National Wellbeing
programme – may well have somewhat mixed feelings about The Bell Jar:
there’s no denying its sheer power or its deserved reputation as one of the
classics of modern literature, but its semi-autobiographical descriptions
of aspects of some of Plath’s experiences with clinical depression and
suicidal ideation often make for harrowing reading.

Nevertheless, Kathryn’s re-reading of the book inspired her to develop the
Book Festival project further until, a year or so later, she was ready to
go into the studio with friend and collaborator Ed Harcourt, to record her
new album Hypoxia.

The listener finds herself thrown in at the proverbial deep end with the
first track, Electric, a reference to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). It’s
a method which is still in use today, albeit as a last resort, to induce
seizures in the hope of providing some relief from major depressive states
and, like many forms of medical intervention, has supporters and opponents.
While Plath, through the novel’s protagonist Esther Greenwood, was highly
critical of psychiatric medicine, Kathryn’s lyric manages to avoid becoming
drawn into that debate and settles for an atmospheric and descriptive
composition where time and space seem slowed down and drawn out, eerily
conveying a sense of woozy detachment to a distant backing of treated
electric guitar over a gentle acoustic guitar.

Second track Mirrors examines one of the recurring motifs of the novel;
more often than not Esther believes her own reflection to be that of
someone else. This is generally taken to be a cipher for her own internal
struggle for self-identity in a world from which she feels increasingly
alienated. The looped vocals and colliding, fragmentary guitars,
interspersed with short phrases on piano and bass, mixed way upfront, mesh
and combine to produce a piece which is a dramatic if unsettling listen.

Battleships seems to be an oblique reference to Plath’s poem Epitaph In
Three Parts which shares with The Bell Jar certain imagery and metaphor:
mirrors, fickle lovers, blood, isolation and so on, but may also draw
inspiration from the well-known guessing game. Kathryn’s lyric seems to
refer as much to the novel’s recounting of the failed relationship between
Esther and Buddy Willard as it does to Esther’s own relationship with the
world and the mind games we all, to some extent, play; trying to
second-guess each other as well as ourselves and the events of our lives.
The tension is almost palpable, due in no small part to the use of the slow
‘tick tock’ of a mechanical clock in the arrangement.

Cuckoo is one of the record’s highlights. A simple keyboard part grounds
the gorgeous harmonies of Kathryn and co-writer Ed Harcourt in this song,
written from the point of view of Esther’s mother who, despite her almost
invisible part in the novel, still plays a hugely important part in
Esther’s life. Kathryn’s lyric brings the character to life in a way that
gives the listener pause for refelection on the effect that the
unconditional love of a parent may have on a child.

Another of the record’s highlights, Beating Heart takes a retrospective,
first person look at how Esther’s numerous attempts to end her life have
always been foiled by her body. The will to survive that invariably proves
stronger than the wish to die calls to mind Antonio Gramsci’s quote,
“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”, which seems oddly
pertinent here, albeit out of context. It’s a reflective composition whose
lush, mulitracked vocal hook – “I am, I am, I am” – comprises the words
that Esther imagines her heart to be speaking during her attempt to drown
herself. There’s a huge sense of space in the song which, combined with the
distant piano, creates some very evocative mental pictures of the hospitals
in which the character of Esther spent so much time.

A key catalyst in Esther’s mental illness is her struggle to survive in
circumstances which are unbearably oppressive, and her relationships with
others, particularly men, seem to play a major part in this. One of the
most powerful passages in The Bell Jar describes Esther’s horrific
experience on a blind date with a violent misogynist called Marco who,
having forced her to tango then attempts to rape her; an episode which
Esther’s detached recounting makes all the more frightening. Tango with
Marco captures the suffocating mood of menace through a combination of Jon
Thorne’s rattling, echoey bass and various treated sounds swirling around
the edges of the mix like the encroaching darkness.

The confessional When Nothing Meant Less is a comparison between Esther and
Joan, her acquaintance in hospital, of the similarities in the ways their
illnesses have affected them and a recognition of how the process of
healing, of learning to manage severe mental illness, is never a simple
open and shut case. Rather, it’s ongoing, and the negotiations and
compromises we make affect the course of our lives in different ways at
different times. Certainly there are commonalities: in The Bell Jar, the
difference between Esther’s expectations in life and its harsher realities
are crucial to gaining an understanding of the origin of her illness; this
dissonance still exists in the world today and is felt no less keenly by
many mentally ill people. Kathryn brings a hugely empathic approach to the
subject in When Nothing Meant Less and the sparse arrangement – Kathryn’s
vocals are high in the mix, over acoustic guitar and a distant, glittering,
treated electric guitar – is judged to perfection.

With a more upbeat, major key arrangement, The Mind Has Its Own Place sends
out a supportive message to any woman who finds herself on the receiving
end of the inherently sexist and implicitly violent values of patriarchal
society. This is something that informed the 1950s America of The Bell Jar
and which still persists today. Then, as now, women are bombarded with
conflicting messages: be a good student (as Esther was) and you’ll face
ridicule for not dating handsome boys; but if you date too many, then
you’re clearly a slut. The fight against these entrenched double standards,
and the countless others that women experience each and every day, was
undeniably a key factor in Esther’s (and Plath’s) illness and Kathryn’s
lyric is a timely reminder that if we truly seek liberation then we all,
regardless of gender, need to support each other in the fight against the
crushing weight of the impossible demands and expectations of patriarchal
society.
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