Mental Illness In The Bell Jar

Throughout The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath explores a number of themes, particularly regarding the gender roles, and subsequently, the mental health care system for women. Her 19-year-old protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is the vessel through which Plath poses many probing questions about these topics to the reader. In the 1950s when the novel was set, women were held to a high standard: to be attractive but pure, intelligent but submissive, and to generally accept the notion of bettering oneself only in order to make life more comfortable for the significant male in her life. Esther not only deals with the typical problems faced by women in her time, but she has to experience those things through the lens of mental illness though it is up for

Illness is one of the few experiences that all humans have in common and generally is met with empathy. However, people who suffer from mental illness are not privy to this treatment. For centuries, mental disorders have been demonized and stigmatized even in the modern era where humans have a much better understand of the mechanisms of the mind. Before the advent of psychiatry in the eighteenth-century people believed that mental illness was actually demonic possession resulting in the ostracization and murder of the mentally ill in the name of God. The Victorian era was met with a different view of mental illness, in that it was understood that it was a malady of the mind and people needed constant medical treatment, thus federally mandated asylums were created. Since mental illness was not understood there was a lot of misconceptions and fear surrounding the field. It is no surprise that the master of macabre and the creator of Horror, Edgar Allen Poe, decided to explore themes of mental illness in his stories. Poe’s most famous story about mental illness was The Fall of the House of Usher, where the main characters are plagued with an undisclosed mental malady. Through Poe’s use of point of view, style, tone, and tropes, he painted a perfect picture of the Victorian view of the mentally ill and the mind of the artist which was believed to be different faces of the same coin.

The short documentary Crooked Beauty, directed by Ken Paul Rosenthal, narrates Jacks Ashley McNamara’s experience in a psychiatric ward and how her time in the facility shapes her new appreciation for her mental illness. One controversial issue has been trying to identify the true cause of mental illness. On the one hand, most people may think mental illness is simply a biological disorder that can be cured with a combination of medication and doctors demanding appropriate behavior until it sticks in the patient’s mind. On the other, McNamara contends that mental illness is a misconception with a patient’s oversensitivity, where it is harder for the patient to ignore certain events than “normal” people, and their doctor’s textbook knowledge. In McNamara’s mental institution, the psychiatrists simply trap her in a padded room and prescribe many different pills to suppress her mental illness instead of embracing her differences or showing her how to use those differences to her advantage. In attempt to prevent those who are mentally ill from feeling the same anger and frustration she felt, she demands a change in the line psychiatric treatment when she says:

Mid-twentieth century American society is and always has been notorious for its discrimination of select groups of people. Misjusdged and mistreated because of characteristics such as race, gender, and religion, it is no surprise that change was desired by those who did not belong in the apex of society. Amongst those angered by cultural stereotypes was author Sylvia Plath, whose writings focused on both women’s gender roles and the treatment of the mentally ill in the 1950s. By American society’s definition, a woman’s role in the 1950s was to firstly put themselves forward as intellectuals and being successful within their careers, but then to accept that as a former life of theirs, and redirect their focus on getting married and tending to their family. These young girls were expected to go to universities and compete for jobs requiring impressive resumes, and then drop everything to become the domestic servant and child bearer of her husband. Many women remained silent or indifferent on this issue, but groups such as NOW, National Organization for Women, and other activists sought to find a solution to gender inequality (“National Organization … ”). A similar battle was fought by those who exhibited any signs of mental illness -- People were unable to empathize with the mentally ill, and therefore subjected them to harsh and inefficient methods of treatment. Using electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), lobotomies, and a myriad of medications (the effectiveness of which had not

The portrayal of people being sickly creatures has been used in Hollywood film for a very long time. This has been in the endeavor of putting the viewing public in the shoes of the patient and entertain them with over the top portrayals of disease. For patients that are women in particular this has been achieved by defining them along the lines of vague terms such as them being over emotional and unstable. Despite the advancement experienced by the society, women have not yet fully seen the goal of equality realize fruition. With the expansion of the psychiatric and psychological terminologies, there now additional ways via which mental illness can be ascribed as a weakness for men and women portrayed in Hollywood film. This is best

Sylvia Plath’s work is marked with her trademark style, one full of enigmatic analogies and ambiguous metaphors. Sadly though, the life of Sylvia Plath was indeed shorter than anyone expected. Nevertheless, in the thirty years Plath meandered through the world, she left an everlasting impact. Remembered as one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the twentieth century, Plath cultivated a literary community unlike any predecessor. Additionally, since a sizable portion of Plath’s work was read posthumously, her suicide brought the much needed attention to physiological illnesses. Unfortunately though, Sylvia Plath will never know the perennial impact she left from her distinguished works that have touched numerous lives.

What does mental illness really feel like, and how does it affect people? This is a question Sylvia Plath explores in her novel The Bell Jar. In The Bell Jar, the main character, Esther Greenwood seems to have it all. She’s in New York City, working as a guest editor for a fashion magazine. Despite her life seeming marvelous on the outside, she can’t escape feelings of gloominess and darkness, clear signs of depression and mental illness.

Mental disorders have been present in literature ever since writing for pleasure/entertainment first emerged. Stories of kings going crazy of their power, fairy tales depicting cannibalism, and even lovers ending their own lives together. Hamlet is a fantastic example of mental illness in classic literature; carefully depicting the seemingly mad Hamlet avenging his father's murder, Shakespeare carefully and subtly tells the story in a way as to leave the reader to decide whether Hamlet is truly mad. An example of mental illness in modern Literature could be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. The novel tells the story of Esther Greenwood struggling through depression and exploration of her sexuality.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar focuses on Esther Greenwood’s life with depression and the social factors that have caused it, one of these being her mother. Mrs. Greenwood does not think she is actually sick and mildly supports her treatment. Her true opinion becomes apparent when she mentions how this will all pass like “a bad dream.” Moreover, it will most likely be part of her entire adult life and influence her life-choices for many years to come. Esther has spent the hardest months of her life without her mother’s support, and it is highlighted at this point in the

Near the onset of Esther’s issues, she continues remind herself that she “[is] a scholarship girl,” and, as one, she feels that she should not suffer with depression, anxiety, and so on (136). Here, her view of herself demonstrates her struggle with truly recognizing the problem; she sees it as temporary and impermanent, while, without addressing the issue, the illness will only continue to plague her. Secondly, this view portrays that Esther molds her self-image and self-worth from others’ opinions. This serves as a further indicator of the distorted view she holds because, since she finds herself through others’ opinions, she sees faults within society and not her actions or mental state. The title of the book itself depicts Esther’s general attitude towards herself; by definition, a bell jar exists as a sort of container that keeps items or specimens in a vacuum and separate from others. These characteristics come about in Esther by way of her time in mental institutions, away from the rest of society. Her idea of existing inside a bell jar distorts her view of society: she can only observe and not partake in it. This unclear view of the outside world only reflects back to her distorted view of self in that she does not fully grasp that, despite her illness, she can improve and still function in society.

and she ends up at the psychiatric ward. At the psychiatric ward, Esther ponders about her current status and how she got there, she says, “What was there about us, in Belsize, so different from the girls playing bridge and studying in the college to which I would return? Those girls, too, sat under bell jars of a sort” (Plath 237-238). In this comment, Plath’s voice is more directly heard, as she makes the generalization that all women live under a bell jar, in the sense that social conventions do not allow for individual expression and reduce women to have a supporting role (specifically toward men) rather

First, let me start off by saying I loved what this book tries to shed light on. Mental Illness and Social Behavior. This book could be a trigger for those who deal with suicidal tendencies. Reading The Bell Jar, I felt the pathos that was heavily inlaid into the story of this semi-autobiographical novel and it melted my heart.

Both Orwell and Plath have taken the liberty to express their feelings, their griefs and their experiences through works that create a realistic image of a problem or of what could be the consequences of a situation that we are facing now. Towards the middle of Down and Out In Paris and London, our protagonist is in the midst of poverty and has taken a routine in his new penniless life. He was so accustomed to this cycle of getting up early in the morning, not eating anything, going to work for eighteen hours and come back home to sleep for two to five hours that when a murder occurred in front of his house, his reaction was emotionless as seen in this quote from the novel “We were working people, and where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder?” (Orwell 107) This quote relates well to the world we live in; most people living in modernized countries don’t realize the severity of certain problems such as mental health, homelessness, racism, rape and abuse, instead we focus on capitalism. We have become selfish in the sense that we prioritize ourselves over others despite what most religions teach us. Plath has also explored this alarming growth in this problem as described in several of her poems, particularly The Applicant, where an individual is being given everything by society to conform to it’s expectations and eventually becomes “A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk.” (33-35), which demonstrates how an individual can be controlled to the point where it will be commanded to move, talk and perform tasks as it becomes part of his or her daily life. This realistic image of people following a pattern and not being able to escape is a motif in literature

Depression is like drowning in a pool of water and there is absolutely no escape from it. In The Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath, the main character, Esther Greenwood goes through the awful troubling depths of depression. The Bell Jar goes back in time beginning in the summer of 1953 and follows the story of Esther Greenwood. Esther should be having the time of her life having won an internship in New York City, but the unfortunate truth is that she is slowly falling further into a deep depression. Sylvia Plath strongly incorporates metaphors, internal conflict, and symbolism to reveal the theme that despite the hardships and awful drowning thoughts that plague people’s mind, life does get better, if only people don’t lose hope.

Jo Gill writes that women were “faced with contradictory and seemingly irreconcilable demands to be both clever and attractive, confident and submissive” (Gill, 2008: 5). According to Betty Friedan, women were expected to be fulfill themselves by devoting their lives to being housewives and mothers (Friedan, 1969: 18). More importantly, as Linda Wagner-Martin notes, “the non-married life-style was as suspected as deviant sexual behaviors, and pressure on women to marry – no matter how carrier oriented, how ambitious, how intelligent – was inescapable (Wagner-Martin, 1992: 3). Women who accepted the prescribed social roles were praised by society, whereas women who went against social norms were regarded as deviant (Friedan, 1969: 16). Jo Gill notes that Sylvia Plath “wrestles with these societal expectations again and again directed at women in her Journals and in The Bell Jar where impossibility of the choices available to women such as her heroine Esther Greenwood are exposed to dreadful effect” (Gill, 2008: 5). Similarly, Linda Martin-Wagner holds that The Bell Jar is filled with protagonist’s fear of never finding a suitable career, husband, and mental health (Martin-Wagner, 2003: 9). It may be argued that Sylvia Plath pictured her own fears in The Bell Jar. The fears that resulted from the 1950s