The Bell Jar Society

Sylvia Plath’s poor mental health, which subsequently lead to her suicide on February 11th 1963, may be seen to be reflected in her novel, ‘The Bell Jar’. Death may be deemed to have a lack of meaning throughout her novel due to the casual manner in which the protagonist and narrator, Esther Greenwood, deals with death. Esther’s father passed away when she was nine years old, and she feels that his death marked the point at which she changed, resulting in her mental health becoming unstable. However, along with her mother, she ‘had never cried for [her] father’s death’ (p.159). This clearly demonstrates how Esther deals with death; it is a necessary part of life, and to Esther, as aforementioned, her mental health has caused her to view death as more desirable than ‘sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in [her] own sour air’ (p. 178). Moreover, Esther’s numerous attempts at suicide remind the reader that Esther believes the only ‘way out’ is death. For example, in Chapter Thirteen, Esther asks her friend Cal, how he would kill

Slowly declining from the mental strain of school and work and relationships, Esther begins to question her reason for being here, introducing a more obvious form of her mental state, “How could I write about life when I’d never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die?” (Plath 121). Esther realizes that she hasn’t really lived life. During her downfall into depression, she begins to realize that she doesn’t have control over herself and that the future that she envisioned for herself isn’t the future she will in fact

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

In The Bell Jar, Esther finds it extremely difficult to put her thoughts into words. She loses friends as she is unable to communicate with them. She lacks relationships due to her silent behaviour. “The silence depresses me. It isn’t the silence of silence. It’s my own silence,” (Plath 18) she says. Although at first Esther feels upset by the lack of connections she has, she loses motivation to even try and explain herself to others. Unlike Mr. Chance in The Cloud Chamber, and Deborah in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Esther’s mental state does not improve, and she is unable to resolve lost connections. Esther’s mother tells her, “the cure for thinking too much about yourself is helping somebody who is worse off than you” (Plath 161). However, in her case, she’s so disconnected from the people who were once a big part of her life, that she doesn’t know who to reach out to. She doesn’t see herself being capable of maintaining stable and happy relationships with others when she can’t even maintain her own happiness.

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.

Throughout the novel, Esther struggled with what she felt how a woman in her society should act. At times, she feels as if there is no point to college because most women only become secretaries anyway. She feels as if she should be learning short hand and other techniques she should be learning for the secretary roll, however she does not want to. Esther wants to be a writer, however, during the time of the novel, society gave women the role as housewife. Esther felt pressure to settle down and start a family. No matter what accomplishments Esther achieves in her life, it doesn’t matter too much because they will not do her much in her later life. Everyone expects Esther to marry buddy and start a family. Once she becomes a mother, it would be assumed that she would give up her passion for writing. This discourages Esther because she is not sure that is what she wants with her life.

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.

Esther may have gotten a generous scholarship to live in New York interning as a fashion magazine editor for a month, but everything only gets worse afterwards. According to Janet McCann, “Repeatedly, Plath uses the imagery of enclosure to show unhealthy patriarchal social systems that are harmful to Esther, the other female characters, and also the landscape/natural world” (38). Esther’s self-esteem first starts to goes down when she frequently compares herself to the other sophisticated, elegant women of New York. When Esther throws all of her high-end clothes away from the top of the Amazon Hotel, it gives the reader the first glimpse of how disillusioned and despaired she is about herself. Continuing down Esther’s path to eventual insanity, Esther comments that “every time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam” (Plath 33). Esther’s mind is starting to shut down, literally, and becomes unable to comprehend even the simplest things, which will only get worse as other stress factors will start to negatively affect her mental state. Furthermore, the relationship between Esther and her boss Jay Cee displays another example where “Esther embraces relations with most of the women in the novel only to cast them off” (Bonds, “The Separative Self in Sylvia Plath's The

People's lives are shaped through their success and failure in their personal relationships with each other. The author Sylvia Plath demonstrates this in the novel, The Bell Jar. This is the direct result of the loss of support from a loved one, the lack of support and encouragement, and lack of self confidence and insecurity in Esther's life in the The Bell Jar. It was shaped through her success and failures in her personal relationships between others and herself.

Esther refuses to allow society to control her life. Esther has a completely different approach to life than the rest of her peers do. The average woman during this time is supposed to be happy and full of joy. Esther, on the other hand, attempts to repress her natural gloom, cynicism, and dark humor. This eventually becomes too hard for her and causes her emotions to go crazy. She begins to have ideas

Esther’s mother and society’s expectation as a woman, which is to be a good wife and a mother, suffocate and demoralize Esther’s dream as a professional writer. Esther’s mother wants her to “...learn shorthand after college, so I’d have a practical skill as well as a college degree” (Plath 40). Her mother believes that Esther cannot further advance her education as a writer and simply wants her to be a secretary since professional career for women was uncommon and discouraged because it disturbs the role as a married woman. These pressures often obliged her to fall into the societal expectations, to give up her higher education, and to marry somebody. However, she knew that the marriage and the babies were not for her, “because cook and clean and wash were just about

The Bell Jar is a novel written in, 1963 written by Sylvia Plath. It is a story about a girl who under goes many traumatic life events that had the destiny to make or break her. The things she used to enjoy in life are no longer bringing joy to her life. She can’t find anything that gives her the will to go on. The Bell Jar is a story that will take reader on a journey with a girl who lets the gender roles of 1950s get the best of her. She lets people tell her what she can and cannot do and loses what it means to become your own person. The Bell Jar teaches the audience about the expectations, opportunities or restrictions on American Women in the 1950’s. As gender roles have become more diverse between a man and a woman, it is still more

Perhaps the most famous work of Sylvia Plath’s is The Bell Jar -- a book that follows the mental deterioration of a nineteen-year-old girl named Esther through the narration of Esther herself. Although Sylvia Plath hated life in general and committed suicide at the age of 32 after her husband left her, the myriad autobiographical elements, metaphors, and motifs that appear throughout her works produce a beautifully vivid representation of people, the world, and life itself (“Sylvia Plath”).

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,