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Essay on sylvia plath
Analysis of Sylvia Plath
How sylvia plath helps us understand the darker aspects of her life through her effective personal naritive and language
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Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1971) is a thinly veiled autobiography. Having been riddled by depression herself, Plath has us follow her protagonist Esther’s journey of self-discovery in order to assert her views on the intersection of mental illness and traditional femininity. In the novel, blood serves to mark transitions in Esther’s life. Time after time, blood intersects with largely feminine milestones and the shifts in her mental health as she witnesses births, is sexually exploited, and must confront her own sexuality. Esther struggles to fit in to the narrow feminine role and views the world through a predisposition for depressive thoughts. The “traditional” era in which she exists enforces very binary gender roles and places her purity …show more content…
The woman is given an episiotomy and begins to bleed heavily, and so the connection between birth and blood is created. “I heard the scissors close on the woman’s skin like cloth and the blood began to run down – a fierce, bright red. Then all at once the baby seemed to pop out…” (66). Though Esther isn’t supremely off-put by this gory scene, it does seem to draw the relationship between birth and transformation with blood and pain. The woman in labor is more or less disregarded by her male doctors, and Buddy even goes so far as to say that “the woman was on a drug that would make her forget she’d had any pain and that when she swore and groaned she really didn’t know what she was doing because she was in a kind of twilight sleep” (66). This happenstance is also significant because it represents the lack of empathy that traditional (patriarchal) values hold for the female experience. Later this same chapter, Buddy exposes himself to Esther and she expresses feeling depressed about it, asking him about his virginity immediately afterward. He reveals that he slept with a woman multiple times, and Esther feels that he is a hypocrite. This entire chapter begins a turning point for Esther’s views on traditional womanhood and her position in the gender
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.
In the end of the novel, Esther at last, comes to terms with reality. She has got to stop living her life according to what others expect of her. She needs to start living her life for “her”. After Joan commits suicide, Esther believes that unless she turns her life around, she will also commit suicide. Esther saw so much of herself in Joan, that when Joan ended her life she was frightened that she would follow in her footsteps, due to the fact that she had throughout the entire novel. Once Joan was gone, Esther was truly free. The part of Joan that was reflected in Esther vanished. The “bell jar” that had been suffocating her was finally lifted.
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.
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.
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” ( http://thinkexist.com/quotes/sylvia_plath/)
Literature is the superlative resource when one is attempting to comprehend or fathom how society has transformed over the centuries. Many written works—whether fictional or nonfictional—express the views of gender roles and societies’ expectations. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is an exemplary novel that explores these issues. Ester Greenwood was portrayed the superficial and oppressive values of the mid-twentieth century American society through her experiences of gender inequalities and social conformities. Plath’s own life was correspondingly mirrored in this novel; which in turn left the reader aware of the issues in her time period.
However, Esther begins to think negatively of Buddy when she finds out that he has slept with another woman and is no longer a virgin. Esther claims that “he had been pretending… to be so innocent,” and that Buddy’s illness was “a punishment for living… [a] double life.” Esther is understandable angry because she as a female is expected to be pure and innocent whereas men can sleep with many other women without consequences. According to Kirsty Grocott of The Telegraph, Plath creates a double standard between men and women “by littering the book with brutal, ignorant or ineffectual males, men that enjoy freedoms that women can only dream of.”# Plath may have included this to demonstrate how damaging this double standard can have on young women.
Their similar slow progressions into mental breakdowns have already been established. However, another strong similarity between the two works is their titles. The yellow wallpaper in Gilman’s essay creates symbolizes the narrator’s feelings of being trapped by her overbearing husband and the idealized the stay at home wife stereotype. Further, the image of a bell jar, as both the title of the novel and an important metaphor used by Esther herself, symbolizes the feeling of being cut-off from the world, protected from the outside due to one’s innocence. Another important connection is the author’s use of their works to critique psychiatric medicine, a field historically dominated by men. John has complete authority over his wife’s medical care and recovery. From his professional diagnosis as a doctor, he declares, “there is really nothing the matter with her but temporary nervous depression” and she is “absolutely forbidden to write” until she gets better. He confines her to the room and discourages her from writing or talking about her condition by waving it off as a basic depression. Esther encounters something similar with her male doctors. Dr. Gordon, a psychiatrist, displays the same lack of empathy as John when seeing Esther and she fails to make any progress. John and Dr. Gordon, both doctors, represent the pervasive presence of patriarchy in society, where men dominate the public sphere and women’s voices are silenced. It is not until Esther sees a woman doctor, Dr. Nolan, that her voice is actually heard and the treatment options allow for self-expression and growth. Esther throughout her life had been held back by men. Dr. Gordon would use the shock treatment and would not be able to understand what was thinking.
The theme to this book is identity, all Esther really wanted to do was fit in. She figured that there was something wrong with her, with others, with society, that she didn’t want what other’s wanted. She didn’t want to get married unlike every other girl that got married because it was the norm. Esther didn’t find it fun nor got the reason why she would have to. The quote connect to identity because Esther wanted to be the same as everyone but she wasn’t she worked hard throughout school and work in order to succeed in life with or without a man. Ester’s identity was being a hard worker, an overachiever, someone who has high ambitions. So when she started to slowly distance from that identity she pretty much ended up in the unknown for her. With the pressures to fit in and be like everyone else with the fact that she was somewhat losing her identity she panicked and tried to go everywhere which eventually took a toll on her mind and body.
The young narrator is not rescued by another male figure, but by her mother instead. Carter signifies that woman can be strong and independent: “Now, without a moment’s hesitation, she raised my father’s gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband’s head” (Carter 45). The narrator’s mother shows how she is independent and did not rely on a man to save her daughter; thus, embracing how Carter breaks the gender norm. The mother’s qualities are found in the narrator, as the narrator learns to become a woman like her mother: “Although Carter does not explicitly mention curiosity as a trait the mother has and might have modeled, the mother’s active, devil-may-care life indicates she may possess this trait” (Manley 76). The narrator is very curious, and her curiosity helps her towards becoming a woman. The narrator is curious about the locked door, but also about the femininity she posses about marriage and sex. The narrator searches for an identity in the transition of becoming a married woman. The narrator experiences being a true woman by losing her virginity to the Marquis, as she partakes in sex for the first time. The narrator learns how to appease her husband as she learns how to utilize the act of sex to her advantage. As seen later in the short story, when the keys to the chambers are given to her by the Marquis, she is able to explore the forbidden room where she
Sylvia Plath was a well known poet who published only one novel before her tragic death in 1963. The Bell Jar is a first person account from a young woman named Esther Greenwood who suffers a psychological meltdown. Throughout the novel, she moves back and forth through time as she remembers the events that lead to her being released from a psychiatric hospital. Through research, one may infer that the novel is written from events in Plath’s past. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar coveys Plath’s last attempt to reconcile with her demons.
Throughout the entirety of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, a central idea is raised that proves to be an essential part of who Esther Greenwood’s character really is. She constantly speaks of how, in her day and age, they live in such a patriarchal society where women are seen as having little to no importance. This idea of being completely submissive to a man is something that severely bothers Esther, but there is no doubt that she does want someone to love her. That is especially prevalent in the subject of marriage and starting a family. During this time, you didn’t get married because you were in love with someone, you got married because it was what you were expected to do; you didn’t have a choice. A minor character who personifies the
Mental illness and madness is a theme often explored in literature and the range of texts exploring these is tremendously varied. Various factors can threaten a character's sanity, ranging from traumatic events which trigger a decline to pressure from more vast, impersonal sources. Generally speaking, writers have tried to show that most threats to sanity comprise a combination of long-term and short-term factors - the burning of the library in Mervyn Peake's novel 'Titus Groan' precipitated Lord Sepulchrave's descent into madness, but a longer term problem can be discerned in the weight of tradition which caused him to worry 'that with him the line of Groan should perish'. Such interplay between the acute and the chronic is, it would seem, a matter of agreement between authors who explored this issue. The manner in which characters respond to these threats is not. In some works the threatened character succeeds in becoming empowered - they find a way to maintain themselves and emerge from the ordeal undefeated, if not unbowed. Esther Greenwood as portrayed in Sylvia Plath's autobiographical novel 'The Bell Jar' is one such character, although the question always remains whether such a victory is a permanent solution. In many other works the only option for the characters is escape. This may be an escape from reality as described in Roald Dahl's short story 'Georgy Porgy'. It may be an escape from self-awareness as shown in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novella 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. The ultimate escape is self-destruction - Sepulchrave's death in 'Titus Groan' and Sylvia Plath's real-life suicide in 1963 (barely three weeks after 'The Bell Jar' was published) can both be seen as a last recourse when the pressures which threatened their sanity proved too all-pervasive and powerful to overcome.