Thesis For 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

Early in the novel, Esther expresses her dissatisfaction with the nature of mentoring, observing that "all the old ladies I ever knew wanted to teach me something, but I suddenly didn't think they had anything to teach me" (5). Added to the list of problematic mentors and mothers could be Mrs. Willard, with all of her negative associations as potential mother-in-law. She, like those mentioned specifically by Esther, represent conformity to others' expectations. Esther's problem with mentoring and modeling is not limited to older women. It extends as well as Doreen and Betsy, who represent conflicting images of Esther. Doreen is referred to by the narrator as "one of my troubles" rather than one of her friends (4). Esther perceives Betsy as an attempted rescuer, saying she behaved "as if she were trying to save me in some way" (5). This resentment toward those women who try to help her can be read as a reflection of Esther's fear of conformity.

During this time of turmoil, Esther encounters a homosexual moment. When she approaches DeeDee's room for music, she finds that Joan and DeeDee are together in bed. This moment brings back her past memory of another homosexual couple in her college days. Esther questions why a women would seek another woman, and it reveals her curiosity in terms of her own sexuality. She seems to despise the power men have over her, but she is uncertain about exploring about other spectrums of sexuality. Furthermore, Esther decides to get birth control as a way to gain her independence: “I was my own women. The next step was to find the proper sort of man.” She later develops a sense of her sexuality, and she builds her own self-esteem of an independent women. Since she was young, she has believed that the ideal marriage is of a man and a women. She hooks up with Irwin, and she finds that he doesn't actually care about her. This is similar to how she felt with Buddy because she felt like men were using her rather than understanding her as a person. All her past experiences led her to become more independent and proud of herself; Esther leaves all the men in her life to continue on her path to become sane once

The Bell Jar, a coming of age, semi-autobiographical novel, by Sylvia Plath follows the life of a troubled young girl named Esther Greenwood, her slow descent into mental illness and then her subsequent recovery. The second half of the book details Esther's mental breakdown, her incarceration and stumbling recovery whilst the first half uncovers the protagonists, narrators day to day struggles which go on to contribute to her eventual breakdown . Throughout the novel, the reader comes to understand that Esther feels there are few choices; in character a woman must be either the virgin or the whore, both of which are demonstrated by Esther's friends, Betsy and Doreen. This presents one of the key internal conflicts the protagonist, Esther battles.

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.

Essential and effective rhetorical strategies, used repetitively throughout by Plath, was simile and metaphor. With the use of these strategies, the reader was able to sincerely understand the complexity and obscurity of Esther’s mindset. For example, Plath creates a very straightforward statement in the form of a simile to capture Esther’s emotions in that exact moment in time “I felt like a hole in the ground”. This certain sentence was meant to express Esther’s feelings, which during this point of the book, was as if she literally did not exist, as if she was inferior to her surroundings, the largest of holes. Gradually as a reader continues on, it’s apparent Plath constructs similes to match with Esther’s negative feelings, especially on her

While at home, Esther becomes into a deep depression when thinking about her experience in New York. She doesn’t want to read, write, or sleep and she stops bathing herself. Her mother sends her to see Dr. Gordon who is her first psychiatrist whom she doesn’t like and doesn’t trust. He is the man with a good looking family, and to Esther he is conceited. He doesn’t help Esther, but only hurts her more. He prescribes her with shock treatment. After this horrifying experience, she decides to kill herself. She tries to slit her wrists, but can only bring herself to slicing her calf. She tries to hang herself but can’t find a place to tie the rope, she tries to drown herself at the beach, but cannot keep herself under water, and then she crawls into a space in the basement and takes a lot of sleeping pills. “Wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” (Plath pg. 117) This quote shows how she felt trapped in the bell jar, and her suicidal urges began. She awakes in the hospital to find that her attempt at suicide wasn’t successful. She is sent to another psychological ward where she still wants to end her life. Esther becomes very paranoid and uncooperative. She gets moves to a private hospital paid for by Philomena Guinea a famous novelist. Esther improves and gets a new

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.

Through life, we often lose someone we loved and cared deeply for and supported us through life. This is demonstrated by the loss of a loved one when Esther's father died when she was nine. "My German speaking father, dead since I was nine came from some

One main theme in The Bell Jar is growth through pain. Esther experiences many painful events that deeply affected her life. For example, Esther stated,” I felt happier than I had been since I was nine and running along the hot white beaches with my father the summer before he died” (p.74). Esther’s inability to move past her father’s death added to her increasing mental illness. Esther had trouble growing up and dealing with normal events that everyone experiences. She takes an entirely different path and decides that she will not act the way society wants. Instead of finding a new meaning in life, she decides to committee suicide instead. Luckily, she is able to fight through these urges, and recover. Her time in the mental hospital was difficult, but she was able to move past her mad thoughts, and start a new life. Esther’s refusal to follow society’s path seems heroic, but her ability to recovery after all her pain was an incredibly dignified act.

Sylvia Plath’s novel, “The Bell Jar”, tells a story of a young woman’s descent into mental illness. Esther Greenwood, a 19 year old girl, struggles to find meaning within her life as she sees a distorted version of the world. In Plath’s novel, different elements and themes of symbolism are used to explain the mental downfall of the book’s main character and narrator such as cutting her off from others, forcing her to delve further into her own mind, and casting an air of negativity around her. Plath uses images of rotting fig trees and veils of mist to convey the desperation she feels when confronted with issues of her future. Esther Greenwood feels that she is trapped under a bell jar, which distorts her view of the world around her.

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 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

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.

Esther was constantly pushed around by men, which was a stereotype in the 1950’s that men controlled the women and were always in charge. Esther had a relationship with a man named Buddy Willard who was expecting that she was just going to marry him. Men believed that they had everything a woman may desire, but actually they did not. Women were forced to marry men because of their fortune or family relations.