The Theme Of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

Ariel, The Bell Jar, Daddy. Sylvia Plath had an extremely complicated lifestyle, and it very much reflected in these books and poems she published. Each one represented a different hardship Plath experienced, yet one in particular stood out above them all. ‘The Bell Jar’, a novel about a young woman named Esther, living in New York City for a one month internship, who is lost and depressed in her world, feeling like no one understands her. The book’s writing techniques include imitating personal events Plath went through.

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.

The postwar 1950s launched the modernist period in English Literature, which suggested a more pessimistic perception of society through societal nonconformity, decay, and alienation. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, a parallel to her life, expresses Esther Greenwood’s character in pursuit of morality in the reality she faces in the modern society. Esther discovers that the society is not as pure as it seems and has underlying truths behind its deceptive appearance. To emphasize her realization, she mentions the color white two hundred-fourteen times in the novel. Although the color white often symbolizes purity, goodness, and innocence, Esther gives white a negative connotation in the novel. Esther depicts the reality of the society as fabricated through the recurring motif of the color white, which symbolizes hopelessness and a stigma in the optimistic society.

Esther evidently feels as if she is constantly being judged and tested, although in fact she is not. Her magnified sense of distrust is illustrated repeatedly throughout the course of the book, at once involving the reader and developing her own characteristic response to unique situations. Finally, one who views occurrences which can only be categorized as coincidental as being planned often experiences a suspicious response. When she finds out that an acquaintance from high school is at the same hospital, her first reaction is wariness: "It occurred to me that Joan, hearing where I was, had engaged the room at the asylum on pretence, simply as a joke." (Plath 207). Although the reader is incredulous of the protagonist's manner of thought, it is also possible to feel a connection to the situation. Such a

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.

Esther is experiencing repression because she is fighting the two different thoughts in her mind. Her state of repression is leading her to become depress.

Through the character of Esther, Sylvia Plath explains the struggles of women in the male dominated society of the 1900’s in her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. Some of the many problems women faced during this time were marriage, motherhood, and feminism. Throughout the novel, Esther is influenced by many people and struggles to find herself in a patriarchal society. Thus, Plath, through her semi-autobiographical novel, is able to expose problems women faced in the 1900’s.

To begin with, Plath’s father died when she was eight. Even though she did not know him for long, this haunts her and causes her to harbor resentment against her mother, saying that “[she] hate[s] her” (Plath 203). Also, the way Esther talks about her first suicide attempt makes it seem to the reader that she is being “rushed…to sleep” (Plath 169). She wanted to block out the world, so she climbs into a hole in her cellar. She overdoses on sleeping pills; she is not thinking death, she is thinking sleep. Esther wants to escape into somewhere else without losing it all in death. Even as she is crawling into the hole, she gives the earth character by describing it as “friendly” (Plath 169). She creates a fantasy to distract herself from her problems, even as she attempts suicide. Her living, her field of study, is creative writing and literature. At one point, Esther even tries to write a book; she is constantly trying to get away from reality. When she awakens, she finds that she can escape no longer; finally she must confront her demons at the

Both of these large failures in Esther’s career begin to compile the descent of Esther into her state of depression. Not only was her writing a big variable in her depression, her family life also played a big role.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar explores the life of nineteen-year old Esther Greenwood, an English major who is rather disdainful toward the 1950’s society she lives in. Esther does not desire to be controlled by society’s gender-based constraints. To add on, Esther feels greatly oppressed by the patriarchal framework constructed. The existence of the “authentic self” is absent in Esther’s life as she embarks on the search for her identity. Despite her successes in school, Esther slowly begins to descend into a mental breakdown since she cannot come to terms with her authentic self. Throughout The Bell Jar, Esther’s identity is constituted through a series of masks, costumes as well as performances. By the end of the novel, Esther escapes from the bell jar by eradicating abnormal and queer desires and recovers by possessing the performance of conforming to the disciplining structures of heteronormative expectations.

Throughout literature, authors have used stories to tell personal experiences and address public issues. Sylvia Plath conveyed her suicidal thoughts with her poetry and novel The Bell Jar. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle described the gruesome working conditions in the Chicago meat-packing industry. Today, storytelling has expanded to include oral stories and art, using visual cues and sound to convey the author’s emotions. Lynda Barry and Kevin Kling use their novels One Hundred Demons! and The Dog Says How to remediate their internal battles with depression and disabilities.

Feminism is one of the most popular social issues in the novel due to the society’s expectations upon Esther Greenwood as a young woman. She was teased and isolated by the college girls, but when Esther started dating Buddy, she suddenly became a respected person. Buddy discouraged her to live her life as a poet because he said she would eventually drop her aspirations once she became a mother. He also said that she should still be a virgin until they were married, despite the affairs of Buddy with a waitress. Therefore, Esther rejected Buddy for being a hypocrite. This society imposes that women are here just to get married and become a mother. These stressors became some of the factors which contribute to her

In Saliva Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, Plath’s character Ester gains sexual experiences throughout the course of the novel, as her experiences escalate so does her emotional maturity in terms of realizing her self-worth and confidence. Sexual maturity is thought to be correlated with adulthood; while emotional maturity allows the creation of a life that is desired. Esters sexual experiences with different men in the novel reveals the life that she desires for herself, leading her towards a lifestyle that is satisfactory in her eyes.

Sylvia Plath was a writer with mental illnesses and fears. Her feelings of alienation and her depression came from when she was a child. Her father died when she was eight and her emotions spiraled leaving her feeling abandoned (Ghasemi). Sylvia Plath’s life is reflected in her works; in her novel, The Bell Jar, the main character undergoes mental breakdowns and depression. The poem “Daddy” is filled with rage and emotions that are directed at her father and male figures. Her short story “Initiation” is based on coming of age and realization. Plath’s fear of electroshock therapy is shown multiple times in The Bell Jar through her main character Esther.

Altering information and data has been, and will always be practiced by authors for the simple fact that they too, would like to have some sort of control over their what their readers know about them. In “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, the main character, Esther, a girl who is based on Plath herself, finds herself struggling with depression and anxiety and plans to take her own life several times but can never follow through. Plath modified biographical details because she wanted to simplify the material to make it easier to understand, to emphasize any points she wanted to come across to the reader more strongly, and to protect the privacy of not only herself, but other real people whom she might have characterized in the book. To