The Bell Jar
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.
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 manic-depressive hamlet in the Prussia." (Sylvia Plath page 27.) Esther's father's death had showed that she was in need of a father figure for love, support and to act as a model for her life. Esther grew up with only the one influence of a parent, her
mother.
Often times the loss of a friendship can be a great loss of support and confidence within our lives because we can lose them forever. This is demonstrated when Buddy Willard Esther's boyfriend break up. "He told me that his annual fall chest x-ray showed he had caught tuberculosis...in the Adirondacks" (Sylvia Plath pg. 58.) Buddy and
Esther break up due to the fact that he was not very honest with her in many ways.
He did not have the courage to admit to a certain side of his character and not only that Buddy was diagnosed with an illness but he had other relationships aside from Esther. Therefore Esther experienced another loss of a loved one. Within life, we gain the support from someone that helps us get through life but often times leaves us when we need them most. This is proven when Doreen; Esthers co-worker at the modeling magazine begins to lose contact with Esther through life "Doreen is dissolving... none of them mean anything anymore" (Sylvia Plath pg.17) Doreen begins to lose contact with Esther throughout life, just when Doreen had opened new doors to her. Esther was coming through a very difficult time in life, when Doreen started drifting away from Esther. Once again, Esther experienced the loss and support of a great friend and advocate.
Ones' life is made up by framework. You gather friends and folks together and ...
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...a Plath page 93) After finding out that she had not made the writing course, Esther thought to herself; that even before entering the essay, she knew she would not make the course. Proving that even before entering her essay for the college, she had no confidence in being accepted.
After building confidence within herself, Esther decided to write an autobiography using herself as the heroine but she felt that she could not write a novel based on life because she felt she had not experienced it. "How could I write about life...baby or even seen anybody die." (Sylvia Plath pg. 99) Thus, this proves that Esther did not even have the self confidence within herself to follow through with her own ambition of becoming a writer.
During a journey through life one starts with a foundation to build on and decide on framework of ones life. In order to sustain and maintain life one needs a basis of love, support, food for thought and life to breath, expression and experience. If an individuals life is shaped and directed by the successes or failures of human relationship, without substance, one might as well seal up their life with a vacuum lid and live in a glass jar.
In fact, Ishmael, and the other boys, made it their goal to make the staff miserable. Life as a soldier made Ishmael broken and distrustful. In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael stated “People like the lieutenant, whom I obeyed and trusted, had made me question trusting any one, especially adults” (153). Ultimately, he learned to depend on himself. He felt like he did not need any help. In fact, Ishmael felt like the staff at the rehabilitation center did not have the right to know his story because they would never understand. It always enraged him when the staff told the former child soldiers that it was not their fault they were in that position. Along the way, Ishmael met Esther, a caring nurse. Esther was one of the first people who Ishmael relied on. For a while, Ishmael ignored her kind gestures and her friendly words. However, Esther was persistent when it came to Ishmael. She was always willing to see him, to tend to his wounds, and to listen to his stories. In addition, she never judged him for the actions he carried out during his time as a soldier. Through patients, Esther was able to befriend
The listing plath uses builds detail but also creates a long rambling effect, the repetition of the connective “and” emphasises the endless opportunities that are available to Esther. While many women would dive at the opportunities that are available, esther’s response to the dilemma of choosing is negative. She feels burdened with the dilemma and feels “dreadfully inadequate” therefore due to esther’s negative perception of self makes esther belief that she is unqualified to make a decision. But why does esther feel this way? What is the cause of the hesitation? - is it because of her mental illness?
...which were dead in mothers’ belly, were placed in the bottle. To Esther, this image always linked to abnormal growth, suffocation and death: “The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn’t sir” (p.178). The latter part in the novel, Esther experienced a serious of symbolic events, and she began all over again and was ready to new life. However, what waited for her was still the contradiction that the society put on women, and the value of women could not be totally reflected as before. It could be predicted that in such society-value was distorted like the bell jar, Esther would be probable to fall into the “crisis of roles” and lost the courage for living again. The novel did not describe Esther’s “new born”, anyhow, the “new born” of the author-Sylvia Plath did not last for a long time.
Sylvia Plath wrote the semi autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in which the main character, Esther, struggles with depression as she attempts to make herself known as a writer in the 1950’s. She is getting the opportunity to apprentice under a well-known fashion magazine editor, but still cannot find true happiness. She crumbles under her depression due to feeling that she doesn’t fit in, and eventually ends up being put into a mental hospital undergoing electroshock therapy. Still, she describes the depth of her depression as “Wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street a cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (Plath 178). The pressure to assimilate to society’s standards from her mother, friends, and romantic interests, almost pushes her over the edge and causes her to attempt suicide multiple times throughout her life. Buddy Willard, Esther’s boyfriend at a time, asks her to marry him repeatedly in which she declines. Her mother tries to get her to marry and makes her go to therapy eventually, which leads to the mental hospital. Esther resents the way of settling down and making a family, as well as going out and partying all night. She just wants to work to become a journalist or publisher. Though, part of her longs for these other lives that she imagines livings, if she were a different person or if different things happened in her life. That’s how Elly Higgenbottom came about. Elly is Esther when Esther doesn’t want to be herself to new people. Esther’s story portrays the role of women in society in the 1950’s through Esther’s family and friends pushing her to conform to the gender roles of the time.
...she would end up if she didn’t change her ways. By losing Joan, Esther was able to release her old self and be reborn again.
Bernard, Lauren. "TAKING ON A MOURNING HER MOTHER NEVER BOTHERED WITH: ESTHER’S ANGUISHED MEMORY AND HER RESISTANCE TO A DOMESTIC LIFE IN SYLVIA PLATH’S THE BELL JAR." Ed. Steven Axelrod.Department of English University of California, Riverside, 2009. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
Dr. Nolan is the only role model character in the novel in which Esther shows love to. Dr. Nolan supports Esther in a way that she wishes her mother could support her. She encourages Esther’s unusual thinking and doesn’t tell her it’s wrong to think the way she does. She puts great trust into Dr. Nolan because she promised her that nothing would go wrong during her shock treatment, and Esther accepted her proposal.
Esther is having a hard time accepting the person that she is trying to become. She views herself as an outlier and has little confidence. The loss of identity that she has created has a negative impact on who she is as a person. In another example, while Esther is in the elevator, she looks at herself in the mirror and does not recognize her reflection, “A big, smudgy-eyed Chinese women staring idiotically into my face. It was only me, of course. I was appalled to see how wrinkled and used up I looked,” (Plath 18). In her reflection, she views herself as someone she no longer recognizes. She has lost her identity of who she once was and now identifies herself as a
Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised as a Unitarian Christian by her German father and Austrian mother. Because of her father’s European culture, there was a constant cultural gap that got in the way of their communication and paternal connection, which led to a distant relationship between them. When Plath was only eight years old, her father died because of his untreated diabetes. After which, Plath experienced a loss of faith and remained equivocal about religion throughout her life. In 1950’s, Plath attended Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts, which was an all-girls college. Plath excelled in her studies; however, she found college life stressful and tedious because of the social and academic rigors. In 1953, Plath won a Guest Editorship at Mademoiselle in New York City. Her experiences in New York began a downward spiral in her life because of her competitively harsh environment. It is said that many events during her New York experience influenced her writing of The Bell Jar, which is arguably a semi-autobiographical novel that parallels Plath’s own depression to Esther’s fall into mental illness. After returning from New York, Plath made numerous suicide attempts and was later checked into a psychiatric hospital where she met doctors who would help her recover. Plath’s cold and clinical environment greatly influenced her writing of The Bell Jar, which explores the
“My heroine would be myself, only in disguise…There were six letters in Esther, too. It seemed a lucky thing.” In Sylvia Plath’s, The Bell Jar, there were many examples of things that correlated between Esther Greenwood and Sylvia Plath’s lives. For example, the characters were drawn together by the intention they both had of killing themselves, their risk factors, the events that pushed them to suicidal thoughts, and the once–and–for–all decision of life or death.
The fact that Esther couldn't really accept her father's death contributed to career problems: she had no idea of what to do with her life, she `thought that if my father hadn't died he would have taught me....`
Whenever a new character is introduced, the reader is immediately subjected to Esther’s painstaking physical description of them, which leads to her ultimate judgment of their character. For instance, when Esther introduces one of her fellow interns, Doreen, in chapter one, she says, “ Doreen . . . had bright white hair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual sneer . . . as if all the people around her were pretty silly and she could tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to” (Plath 4). It is clear that she admires Dore...
All and all, Esther’s depression is arguably the main character in the story but is dependent on Esther to perform actions. Esther is completely bound to her depression, and that creates Ether’s movement to different places. This edits the Setting in such a way, that the only thing Esther can do is be uncooperative as we see in the book. Esther’s depression is not only a part of the setting, but it is a character that is affecting Esther’s train of
Even from a very young age, children and people alike are encouraged to have an idea for a plan for their lives. Often times what an individual chooses has a major impact on that person’s physical life as well as he or she’s emotional stability. In the Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, using the characterization of Esther and her mother, exposes the how women during the 1950s can often spiral into depression as a result of the harsh expectations that encompass them.
Esther distinctly begins to fall into her depression when realizing how trapped she is as a woman when it comes to career: she bursts into tears when asked what she wants to be at the photoshoot (Plath, 53) distraught with not knowing how her life will turn out. “At the close of the war, employers reestablished the prewar sexual division of labor. To justify the discriminatory practices against women, popular culture began to create the concept of the proper role for women” (Holt, 2). Gender roles were heavily enforced and Esther feels as if she had no power, and that only one career could be chosen which she could not come to terms with. Even if she had been able to choose just one to focus on, she would have to be an expert, and fight