An Analysis Of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

Plath’s novel gives a unique account the hypocrisy women faced in terms of their sexual experience. Through the eyes of the main character, Ester Greenwood, the novel focuses on the struggle between what women were beginning to gain and the antiquated notions of female purity and innocence. Ultimately, The Bell Jar critiques the gendered double standard women faced regarding sex in the mid-twenty-first century in its exploration of purity, equality, and freedom.

Plath uses Esther’s point of view to reveal the internal struggle felt by many women, including herself, due to the restraints of contemporary society. She holds herself to impossible

As Plath’s novel demonstrates, people often fall victim to their environments. In her article “The Separative Self in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar” Diane S. Bonds explains how The Bell Jar offers a brilliant evocation of "the oppressive atmosphere of the 1950s and the soul-destroying effect this atmosphere could have on ambitious, high-minded young women like Plath" (Bonds). Bonds psychologically analyzes Esther’s thoughts and actions to understand her mental decline. She makes the claim that “Esther is haunted by images suggesting the self-mutilations of marriage and motherhood” (Bonds). She proves her assertion with the evidence that Esther sees the world as a series of dismembered body parts. Esther cites the “goggle-eyed headlines” (1) staring up at her while walking through New York. She details her friend Doreen’s physical characteristics: “[she] had bright white hair standing out in cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible” (4). When she returns home to Massachusetts, she describes her neighbor, Dodo Conway: “Not five feet tall, with a grotesque, protruding stomach” (116). In all of these instances, Esther describes human beings through highlighting their body parts; however, she largely compares those parts to inanimate objects. She uses the word eyes to describe a headline, which is lifeless.

Living without control of your life and being powerless is especially difficult for anyone to cope with. In the novel The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, a unique individual is struggling to find her way in life as she is living as a powerless individual. The lack of control, guidance, and power, leads to her downfall battling with reality. Plath gives the perspective of a young woman’s madness as a reaction of the social pressure that the 1950’s attributed.

In the Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood struggles to find an identity within a male dominated society. From her mother’s expectations to her career’s expectation, Esther is unable to to distinguish the correct societal and personal ways to achieving her desired result. She is lost. Her continual journey down into the most repressive times of her life reveals past experiences that ultimately changed her path to becoming someone new.

The accounting of where Esther is staying shows the normalcy and what the woman's role was in this era. For instance while Esther is describing her hotel she explains, “This hotel--the Amazon--was for women only, and they were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents...and they were all going to posh secretarial schools...where they had to wear hats and

The Bell Jar: Women Dissociated from the Norm In the modern world, women are leaders; they are entrepreneurs, CEO's, and astronauts, and anything else they want to be, but in the 1950's they were seen in a very different light. They were thought of as simple-minded people who needed to be protected. They had to dress and act a certain way, but it was during this time where women everywhere tried to change that. Looking back, many novels have ties to fighting for gender equality, one of them is The Bell Jar.

Another common aspect of both the women’s lives is that they both dated Buddy Willard. When Esther began to have a relationship with Buddy, she thought that her relationship with him could go somewhere, that he could possibly be her husband one day. When she is in his room one night, they are talking and having wine, and Esther asks Buddy if he has ever had an “affair”. She expects him to say “no”, but he says, “Well, yes I have” (70). This is shocking to Esther. She thought Buddy was innocent, but he had been pretending the whole time. She tells Buddy to tell her about it, so he doesn’t think it bothered her that he said “yes”. He tells her that while working at this hotel in Cape Cod for the summer, one of the waitresses seduced him, and that’s how he lost his virginity. Esther and Buddy eventually part, but she doesn’t break up with him because he had slept with the waitress, it was the fact that he didn’t

“Esther’s frustration is not unreasonable given the societal constrictions regarding women’s roles in mid-century America…the problem lies in her desire to have what society tells her is impossible… Esther is told again and again that her choices, while hers to make, will have repercussions she cannot control”(Badia, 2008: 133).

One is often enticed to read a novel because of the way in which the characters are viewed and the way in which characters view their surroundings. In the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Esther Greenwood is a character whose "heightened and highly emotional response to events, actions and sentiments" (Assignment sheet) intrigue the reader. One of her character traits is extreme paranoia that is shown in different situations throughout the novel. As a result of this, she allows herself to be easily let down, as she believes that all events that are unsatisfactory are directed towards her. Finally, it is clear that she attempts to escape this notion by imagining an idyllic yet impossible life that she

Esther’s constant struggle to follow the cultural expectations of women, leads her down a path of insanity when she finds herself outcasted because of her desire to be a self-sufficient woman (Plath,

Cahalan explains the complexity and unpredictability of the brain and its disorders in another part of the book, by comparing it to Christmas lights. Just like in the seizure examples, this metaphor more effectively explains a hard to comprehend topic with figurative language. Cahanlan writes, “The mind is like a circuit of Christmas tree lights. When the brain works. Well, all of the lights twinkle brilliantly, and it’s adaptable enough that often even if one bulb goes out the rest will still shine one.”

This simple sentence indicates that Esther’s has a strong hatred towards the expectations of women having to bear children. The idea of becoming a mother is daunting to Esther because it means she will lose some control in her life; you can only control other people to an extent. Esther could tell her children and husband what to do, however, it is up to them to do it. She does not know if she wants to conform or rebel against society and if she is ready to sacrifice her

Throughout the story “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, Esther’s mental health deteriorates overtime due to various factors in her social environment such as double standards. The novel begins with Esther’s internship at the Ladies’ Day magazine in New York City. Despite living the life every girl wishes to live, Esther is dejected and feels disengaged with the environment around her; thus resulting in the beginning of an identity crisis. Through the events of the story, gender double roles in the areas of education, careers, virginity and marriage affect Esther’s life significantly and it consequently leading to Esther’s confusion with her identity within the society. During the 50s, women were seen to be inferior to and dependent on men as

Sylvia Plath uses many literary devices to convey her purpose in The Bell Jar such as symbolism. The Bell Jar itself is used as symbolic representation of the emotional state Esther is in. The glass jar distorts her image of the world as she feels trapped under the glass. It represents mental illness; a confining jar that descends over her mind and doesn’t allow her to live and think freely. Symbols of life and death pervade The Bell Jar. Esther experiences psychological distress which is a major motif in the novel. The death of Esther’s father and the relationship with her mother is a possible reason for her illness. Sylvia Plath expresses the difficulties Esther faces and parallels her struggle with depression and illustrates it using various symbols such as a fig tree, mirrors, beating heart and a bell jar throughout the novel.