Weaknesses of Esther and Plath Exposed in The Bell Jar
The glass of which a bell jar is constructed is thick and suffocating, intending to preserve its ornamental contents but instead traps in it stale air. The thickness of the bell jar glass prevents the prisoner from clearly seeing through distortion. Sylvia Plath writes with extreme conviction, as The Bell Jar is essentially her autobiography. The fitting title symbolizes not only her suffocation and mental illness, but also the internal struggle of Plath's alter ego and novel protagonist Esther Greenwood. The novel illustrates the theme confinement by highlighting the weaknesses of both Esther and Plath.
Esther's first statement, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs" (1) sets the tone for the novel and establishes her preoccupation with death. She alludes to no remorse at the loss of life but rather concentrates on the wonder of execution. This style allows the reader to see the development of confinement; that is, Esther's preoccupation with death entraps her within herself.
It is perhaps her over-analysis of situations that causes the manifestations of her psyche; she consistently volleys between multiple possibilities, searching for the most fruitful option. The novel's theme is consistently shown as a mental battle of Esther versus herself, a direct result of her mental illness.
It is obvious that Esther is at a crossroads and feels torn by life. She best describes her feelings with the following passage: "I saw myself in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each a...
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... her a strong person.
Works Cited and Consulted:
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Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. 1963. London: Faber, 1966.
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Van Staal, C.R., Whalen, J.B., Valverde-Vaquero, P., Zagorevski, A., and Rogers, N. (2009) Pre-Carboniferous, Episodic Accretion-Related, Orogenesis along the Laurentian Margin of the Northern Appalachians. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, vol. 327, p. 271-316.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- This essay will compare the ways in which the novels "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath and "Quicksand" by Nella Larsen deal with relationships, paying particular attention to how this aids the characterisation of Esther Greenwood and Helga Crane, the central characters respectively. It will explore their relationships with other characters in the novel, especially how the authors use relationships to fulfil their writing aims. It will also discuss the relationship between the protagonist and the reader, and how successfully this is achieved through the novel's language. Finally, it will attempt to compare the ways in which they relate to the world around them, which is particularly fascinating as although both novels could pass as fiction, they are largely autobiographical, raising the question of why the author's chose to tell their own life stories in this relatively detached way.
The women's movement was in full swing in America in the sixties. These were the women who were escaping from their kitchens, burning their bras, and working in careers that were traditionally male-oriented, while at the same time demanding payment equal to men's salaries. In her essay: What Would It Be Like if Women Win, Gloria Steinem has many thoughts on the ways feminism could change this country and what the society would be like if her changes were made. An interesting change she is looking to make involves sexual hypocrisy: "No more sex arranged on the barter system, with women pretending interest, and men never sure whether they are loved for themselves or for the security few women can get any other way" (Steinem, Takin' it to the Streets, 476). This new attitude can be found in much of the literature of the sixties. Specifically, in two of the books we have read, women authors have projected this concept of a "new sexual women" into their characters.
...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.
The character of Esther is widely criticized for her perfection as a character, both receiving positive acclaims and negative feedback. Esther’s reserved, quiet character illustrates the role of women during the Victorian period and what little impact on society women played. Critics of Bleak House generally praise the narration and Dickens’s use of Esther’s character, which gives direction to the novel.
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 novel, Esther Greenwood, the main character, is a young woman, from a small town, who wins a writing competition, and is sent to New York for a month to work for a magazine. Esther struggles throughout the story to discover who she truly is. She is very pessimistic about life and has many insecurities about how people perceive her. Esther is never genuinely happy about anything that goes on through the course of the novel. When she first arrives at her hotel in New York, the first thing she thinks people will assume about her is, “Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a
"The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head…” For most people, when the name Sylvia Plath comes to mind, the word “psychotic” is the word that follows; however, there was more to Plath than her demented works. Throughout her shortened life, Plath had a variety of titles bestowed upon her: daughter, sister, student, wife, mother, teacher, author, and poetess However, Sylvia Plath was a haunted soul, as she also had the labels of “manic depressive” and “bipolar.” Her constant struggles with her mental illnesses are evident in her writing, especially her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar.
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.
At the end of the novel, Esther finally see’s a light at the end of the tunnel. She finally realizes that there is hope for her to become healthy again. Once Esther realizes that she will not always feel as bad as she does, she also comes to the conclusion that all the negativity and questioning in her life have made her into the person she has become. Esther finally realizes what her true identity is and she is okay with who she has become.
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” ( http://thinkexist.com/quotes/sylvia_plath/)
In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, gender roles are presented as barriers that stop female characters from reaching their full potential and from being in control of their own lives. The novel relates to the Feminist Phase of Second Wave Feminism which is focused on the oppression of women and the roles of women within a society.
Esther’s psychological transformation from a perfectly healthy person ends up suffering from depression. Her influences around her have negatively shown Esther a negative path to take. The events during the 1950s such as the Rosenbergs executions have only made the transformation even powerful. Sylvia Plath’s life could be compared to the Bell Jar because she was in the same situation as Esther. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and psycho dynamic has addressed depression through the main character Esther.
She claims that she has `always wanted to learn German` although `the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam`. Esther associates the language with her `German-speaking father`, who `cane from some manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia'. I think that Esther`s stunt in progress is directly linked to the death of her father, and the little that she knows about him, and that a major factor contributing to her eventual suicide attempt is the fact that she used to be the best and no longer can be.
On the eve of her freedom from the asylum, Esther laments, “I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead- after all, I had been ‘analyzed.’ Instead, all I could see were question marks” (243). The novel is left open-ended, with a slightly optimistic tone but no details to help the reader fully understand the final step of her healing process. Esther desired to be free of social conventions and double standards, but consistently imposed them upon herself and on the people around her. Her evolution in understanding never reaches a satisfying conclusion, and the reader is also left with nothing but question marks.