The Bell Jar Mental Illness

It is exceedingly common for humans to use fictional writing in order to express their hardships in life. It is clear to researchers that Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar for this sole purpose. Plath faced many struggles in her short life, all of which were explained in her novel. There are a plethora of studies that easily show the similarities between The Bell Jar’s Esther Greenwood and Sylvia Plath. They both faced trauma, depression, and issues with self worth.

Esther Greenwood compares her mental illness to a bell jar. When she becomes insane, Esther feels herself trapped in an airtight jar which unable her to make a connection between her real world experiences and her perceptions. She feels paralyzed and sick. For example, she says: “To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.” (Plath, 1963, p. 124). Esther feels that madness equals to being trapped in a bad dream, from which one cannot awake. At the end of the novel, the bell jar, that is her madness, is lifted. But she still feels that it may descent again and take a grip of her: “How did I know that someday—at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere—the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?” (Plath, 1963, p. 126). Now Esther can function more or less normally. But somewhere she stills feels that madness may one day again strike her and she feels terrified at this prospect in the

The Bell Jar, Essay Test A. Pick six (6) of the following themes and give an example of an incident from the book that BEST illustrates that theme. (30 points) In the introduction of the novel, the reader is introduced to society’s high expectations for the female gender. The main character, Esther Greenwood, is undergoing the leisurely lifestyle of a New York City woman. One day in particular, Ladies’ Day, serves as a prime example of the conformity that occurred during this era of women’s history.

Sylvia Plath was a troubled writer to say the least, not only did she endure the loss of her father a young age but she later on “attempted suicide at her home and was hospitalized, where she underwent psychiatric treatment” for her depression (Dunn). Writing primarily as a poet, she only ever wrote a single novel, The Bell Jar. This fictional autobiography “[chronicles] the circumstances of her mental collapse and subsequent suicide attempt” but from the viewpoint of the fictional protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who suffers the same loss and challenges as Plath (Allen 890). Due to the novel’s strong resemblance to Plath’s own history it was published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath expresses the

Sylvia Plath is known as a profound writer, depicted by her lasting works of literature and her suicide which put her poems and novel of debilitating depression into a new perspective. In her poem “Lady Lazarus,” written in 1962, her mental illness is portrayed in a means to convey to her readers the everyday struggle of depression, and how it affects her view of her world, herself, and even those who attempt to tackle her battle with her. This poem, among other poetry pieces and her novel The Bell Jar, identify her multiple suicide attempts, and how the art of dying is something she has become a master of. Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” about her trap of depression and suicide attempts, is effective and thought provoking because of her allusions to WWII Nazi Germany and the feelings of oppression and Nazism that the recurring images evoke.

Sylvia Plath is the author of the Bell Jar and was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer (JRSM. June, 2003). The Bell Jar book was published in London a month before Plath’s death in January, 1963. The book was first published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, and then later published in Plath’s own name. Esther Greenwood is the main character in the Bell Jar. Esther suffered from mental illness and struggled against depressive environment and continuously aggravated madness that led to her suicide and death (JRSM. June, 2003). I ague that Esther’s mental illness was aggravated by her internal pressure and depressive environment in which she lived.

Sylvia prided herself as an amazing poet while not receiving the acclaim she wanted. The Colossus was the only major collection of poems before her death. It didn’t receive too much praise until after her death. Most of her poems dealt with her personal life like those of Daddy and Ariel. She wrote most of these poems when she was depressed, so she coped with her depression the only way she knew: writing poems. She wrote about her father, where she claimed to hate her father due to him walking out on her when she was eight. He didn’t actually leave her on purpose, as he died of complications with his diabetes. However, it made for great writing as it was critically acclaimed for it being a magnificent poem. Ariel is also series of poems known for being known as her best work in terms of poetry. The Bell Jar is

Esther Greenwood suffered through multiple difficult times that wore down on her mental state. She fell sick from food poisoning, was electrocuted through shock therapy, and underwent dangerous suicidal thoughts. Each time when she persevered through the pain, she emerged a stronger, newly-born person. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath uses plot development and characterization to illustrate that often times, painful experiences are necessary for a person to progress in life.

For most adolescents, the coming-of-age period can challenging and painful. For Esther Greenwood in “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, however, coming-of-age is literally life-threatening. As she notices the differences between herself and her friends and attempts to find meaning in her life, Esther regresses into madness, and then makes several unsuccessful attempts to end her life using various means. The source of Esther’s discontent, however, is never entirely clear. In, “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, the author expresses that Esther’s journey and events are that of a coming-to-age realization or story for her.

The Bell Jar is a novel about Esther Greenwood, a nineteen-year-old girl, who experiences a breakdown and her path to recovery. The novel starts off with Esther working at Ladies Day magazine in New York City as an editorial intern because she had won the paid internship for the summer. She and elven other girls stay in a women’s only hotel, get fancy dinners and gifts from the sponsors and get to have a good time exploring New York City. Buddy Willard, Esther college boyfriend, ask her to marry him but he does not understand Esther and is not pure so she decides she will not marry him and comes to realize she does not want to marry ever. While still in the city Esther goes on many dates but no guy interest her enough to marry. As the internship

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a novel that follows Esther around while she deals with issues that would not be seen in the media. In the novel The Bell Jar, Plath presents a different perspective of women from the norm during the 1950's.

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston. Some say that The Bell Jar is a semi- autobiographical novel because Esther and Sylvia share many of the

Annotated Bibliography Bonds, Diane S. “The Separate Self in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.” from “Women’s Studies”, Vol 18, No. 1, (May 1990), pp 49-64. Gale Research, 1999.

Sylvia Plath, the author of The Bell Jar, writes in a very simple and ordinary but exceptionally unique way. She put her whole young genuine heart and soul into this semi-autobiography. Her first person point of view allows the reader to really engage with the characters thoughts, specifically Esther Greenwood and her perspective on everything. In The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood encounters the coming of many things, including age and mental illness. While the coming of age is normal for the majority of society, the coming of mental illness is abnormal. With that being said, many may classify Esther Greenwood as abnormal and deviant but in all reality,

Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath, is cast under the spell of her own depression and the story of being released from the spell follows the structure of one of the 7 plot types Christopher Booker created. These 7 plot archetypes include the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, and lastly the archetype of Rebirth. The novel The Bell Jar is classified as the Rebirth plot, in accordance with the 5 stages that make up said archetype: The Falling Stage, Recession Stage, Imprisonment Stage, Nightmare Stage, and The Rebirth Stage. Readers follow Esther as she pulls herself through the stages, through the falling, the rising, and the falling once more, until she reaches