Inside "The Bell Jar"

I don’t know how one makes it through two Women in Literature courses, The American Novel 307, and English 211 without having read a single poem or novel by Sylvia Plath. It seems an author so central to the discourse about confessions of the mind and self reflection during the movements of the 1950-60s would warrant more precedence. But nevertheless, I escaped my Alma mater and graduated as an English major never having read any of Plath’s work until one year later when I was—eerily—facing the same doubts and possible claustrophobia of expectations that Plath’s protagonist, Esther faced in The Bell Jar.

Due to the extensive exposition that can be written about The Bell Jar I will keep my comments focused sharply on themes or subject matters that I felt either most connected to or most disturbed by throughout the reading.

Well into the first chapter I found myself immediately slipping into Plath’s rhetoric. Inside larger themes of sex, motherhood, and isolation were these imaginative metaphors that gave a sense of what Esther thought while managing to rarely reveal any of her actual emotion. An example of this rarity is a scene in which Esther is called into her boss’ office. Her boss, a magazine editor named Jay Cee, more or less confronts Esther about her passion for writing and any future goals she has. This is perhaps the first time Esther recognizes she possesses neither a plan nor a resounding passion for anything. She’s unsure about the direction of her life despite having convinced herself that being a writer or editor is what she has been working towards. After this realization, Esther is sitting at a banquet hosted by Ladies Day, the magazine she is working with for the duration of one month, and admits to feeling very “low”. She states, “After nineteen years of running after good marks and grants of some sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race.” For me it’s a wonderful analogy that expresses a similar sentiment most young adults share. I hate to generalize, so please forgive me. For overachieving students, college is very much about a certain grind that you have to be on in order to maintain high grades while networking and creating opportunities for yourself as opposed to simply enjoying the ride and trusting that doors will open for you. After you reach this goal of graduation you face exhaustion because you realize you are more vulnerable outside the confines of a structured institution and your choices about the direction of your life are not simplified but have increased.

Another of my favorite lines from the novel comes when Esther has just finished her shock treatment session with Dr. Gordon and she is sitting in the car between her mother and Dodo Conway. Esther states: "Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently."

I’ve highlighted and recited this line because it’s a simple yet wonderfully stated description of how the overworked mind works when it becomes void of energy and its accompanying thoughts become dim.

The last quarter of the novel seemed to produce a coarser Esther using very calculated language to convey her annoyance with particular people and things around her. Her tolerance for being tested or patronized is almost nil by the end of the novel. In front of Dr. Nolan she boldly threatens suicide if she is jolted one more time by blue rays during her shock therapy treatment with Dr. Gordon. There is another scene in which she is in the hospital bed receiving her daily meal from a black attendant. The attendant brings her two helpings of beans and she clearly feels that two helpings of the same dish are never served at once. Believing the attendant did this to intentionally to test her, Esther gives him a kick in the leg and exclaims, “That’s what you get.” She's honest about everything! From calling someone "sweet" and saying they "look terrible" in the same breath, to revealing an idiosyncrasy as small as her dislike for speaking in front of a group of people and being able to address one at a time. It is unnerving to feel other sets of eyes that you are not able to meet sizing you up, "taking unfair advantage". Who hasn't felt awkward in this situation at one point or another?

I had a feeling throughout the novel that Esther believed undergoing a physical transformation would help her regain her sense of being. The Bell Jar references incidents of birthing and rebirths several times, some incidents are more literal than others. Esther submits her body to physical acts hoping that a tangible change will occur; a new feeling will wash over and save her. For example, she loses her virginity to a boy named Irwin not because she really cares for him but to belong to a collective group or tradition of already sexually experience individuals; the pleasure of sex is irrelevant to committing the act itself. The only change is that Esther bleeds so much that she hemorrhages and has to be hospitalized.

Another example is through her many suicide attempts: she slits her wrists, tries to drown herself, and tries to kill herself by swallowing an entire bottle of pills while blocking her air supply inside a wall of fireplace logs. Notice the attempts all bring about a slow almost noble death, the way a philosopher or tortured soul might die, but what is underestimated is the will of the body over the mind to survive. All of these attempts fail because the body—the heart, specifically—refuses to die.

As readers we teeter on the point of Esther’s inevitable fall, and wait along with her for this great “change” that is supposed to take place. But the pull downward does not cease. Fairy tales are rare, and perhaps that is Plath’s intention with The Bell Jar: to show that the bottom does come out from under people’s lives. She dares to show what this looks like from a woman’s perspective, especially at a time in history when female studies were just being explored.

Question: Despite the novel being written in first person, does anyone feel they know Esther?

Question: I'm curious on your thoughts about Esther's relationship with her mother. Esther seems to have no intentions to be associated with her other than to use her (specifically playing up her emotion to help get Esther out of the occupational therapy treatments.) I may have missed the story behind this reasoning, so I'm curious as to every one's take on it. Does Esther blame her mother for anything? Does she pity her? Is she afraid of becoming like her?

-Nicole