I am taking an online refresher course in Gregg shorthand to prepare for my week in the Sylvia Plath archive, seeking and transcribing Aurelia Plath's shorthand notations on Sylvia's books and correspondence. I did Lesson 2 today. Gregg shorthand is a unique and graceful written language, with parallels to, and a learning curve similar to, cursive writing. But it'd be hard to convince two generations of Plath scholars that shorthand has any value, because Sylvia, in her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, wrote dismissively about it. Her stand-in character Esther Greenwood, age 19, decides against learning shorthand from her mother, a business-college teacher, during the lowest point of her young life, the summer of 1953.
For the record, The Bell Jar's mentions of shorthand are quoted here. Page numbers correspond to the Bantam paperback edition, published in the U.S. in 1972:
My mother had taught shorthand and typing to support us ever since my father died. . . .She was always on to me to learn shorthand after college, so I'd have a practical skill as well as a college degree. [32]
I started adding up all the things I couldn't do.
I began with cooking. . . .
I didn't know shorthand either.
This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand was something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter.
The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equal time and let s equal the total distance. [61-62]
My mother was teaching shorthand and typing to a lot of city college girls and wouldn't be home till the middle of the afternoon. [94]
By the end of supper my mother had convinced me I should study shorthand in the evenings. Then I would be killing two birds with one stone, writing a novel and learning something practical as well. I would also be saving a whole lot of money.
That same evening, my mother unearthed an old blackboard from the cellar and set it up on the breezeway. Then she stood at the blackboard and scribbled little curlicues in white chalk while I sat in a chair and watched.
At first I felt hopeful.
I thought I might learn shorthand in no time, and when the freckled lady in the Scholarships office asked me why I hadn't worked to earn money in July and August, the way you were supposed to if you were a scholarship girl, I could tell her I had taken a free shorthand course instead, so I could support myself right after college.
The only thing was, when I tried to picture myself in some job, briskly jotting down line after line of shorthand, my mind went blank. There wasn't one job I felt like doing where you used shorthand. And, as I sat there and watched, the white chalk curlicues blurred into senselessness.
I told my mother I had a terrible headache, and went to bed.
An hour later the door inched open, and as she crept into the room I heard the whisper of her clothes as she undressed. She climbed into bed. Then her breathing grew slow and regular.
In the dim light of the streetlamp that filtered through the drawn blinds, I could see the pin curls on her head glittering like a row of little bayonets.
I decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover, and that I would never learn a word of shorthand. If I never learned shorthand I would never have to use it. [99-100].
I thought I'd better go to work for a year and think things over. Maybe I could study the eighteenth century in secret.
But I didn't know shorthand, so what could I do?
I could be a waitress or a typist.
But I couldn't stand the idea of being either one. [103]