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Illustrated portrait of Buddy Willard

A character in The Bell Jar

Buddy Willard

The clean-cut medical student whose assumptions about sex, marriage, and women alienate Esther.

What they want

To build the respectable medical career and conventional marriage he assumes should satisfy both partners.

The book

Cover of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Bell JarSylvia Plath, 1963

Sylvia Plath’s darkly funny 1963 novel about a gifted young woman looking skeptically at the adult future she is expected to want.

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At a glance

Work
Medical student
Connection
Esther’s former romantic interest
Function
Embodies the conventional husband-and-wife future

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Buddy is Esther’s former romantic interest and a representative of the conventional future others expect her to accept. He assumes that marriage and motherhood should organize her ambitions.

His sexual hypocrisy matters as much as his career. He presents himself as an authority on adult life while applying different standards to men and women.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • Clean-cut studentHis conservative clothes support his image of respectable certainty.
  • Earnest authorityMedical training encourages him to explain experience to Esther.
  • Slight self-satisfactionHe rarely doubts that his model of adulthood is the reasonable one.
  • Sexual hypocrisyHis conduct does not match the purity he expects from women.
What happens to Buddy WillardHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Esther rejects Buddy as a model for her future. He does not become her husband or the person who guides her recovery.

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