The Bell Jar, like so much of Plath’s writing, is loosely based on her own experiences; the novel was, in fact, originally published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas because Plath feared it might anger or hurt the people in her life on whom she modeled her characters. As with much of her poetic work, though it is based in part on her life, The Bell Jar is a complex social critique moving far beyond the conventions of memoir.
In The Bell Jar, Plath uses her own experiences as a way to explore, in part, the tremendous challenges and difficulties faced by smart, ambitious young women in the social culture of America in the 1950s, a culture in which there were few, if any, roles available to women beyond those of dutiful wife and mother. A metaphor for the main character’s emotional state as she attempts to develop and define a fulfilling identity amid rigid societal restrictions, the bell jar of the novel’s title refers both to a bell-shaped glass used to protect delicate objects and to a similarly shaped glass used in scientific experiments to create a vacuum. The Bell Jar is an example of bildungsroman, and as such it has been favorably compared to other major works of the genre including The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
The novel’s main character, Esther Greenwood, is an extremely intelligent 19-year-old who wants to be a poet. Her mother and other figures of authority encourage her to adopt more “socially appropriate” ambitions. Esther’s deep internal conflict and fractured identity lead ultimately to an emotional breakdown and suicide attempt, and finally to Esther’s hospitalization and fraught recovery. Throughout the novel, Esther struggles to piece together an identity from all the conflicting roles she feels she must adopt—those of perfect daughter, virginal sweetheart/future wife and homemaker, savvy and sexually experienced woman—as well as those she personally strives for, such as poet, artist, and intellectual.
When Esther wins a writing contest held by Ladies’ Day magazine, and she, along with several other winners from around the country, is awarded a summer job with the magazine as a guest editor, these conflicting identities become increasingly unmanageable. Esther and the other guest editors are brought to New York City, where they are endlessly photographed and treated to fancy meals by the magazine. Among the other guest editors, Esther encounters Doreen, the sexy and sexually assertive girl with whom she shares a room. She finds Doreen’s opposite in Betty, another guest editor whose sweet manner and air of innocence stand in stark contrast to Doreen’s personality and behavior.
These two extremes reflect two of the possible identities Esther feels pressured to take on, although she can see no way to assume and balance the desirable traits from each. She agrees to go on illicit (and ultimately disastrous) double dates with Doreen, but she hides behind a fake name (Elly Higginbottom) when she does so. At other moments, she assumes a Betty-like naive and virginal persona. As the summer in New York progresses, Esther feels increasingly anxious and troubled. After enduring an attempted rape on one of the dates set up by Doreen, she leaves New York feeling more alienated and conflicted than ever.
When she returns from New York, Esther is again bombarded by pressure to conform to the social and sexual models those around her deem suitable for her. She is increasingly aware of the societal double standard that values sexual experience for young men but insists on purity for young women. When she learns that she has not been accepted into an important writing class at Harvard, Esther falls more deeply into depression. She agrees to see a psychiatrist, but it is soon clear to Esther that he will merely try to make her give up her intellectual and artistic ambitions and conform to a conventional ideal of womanhood. After suffering a botched electro-shock treatment at the doctor’s hands, Esther stops her treatment with him.
Feeling increasingly helpless, Esther contemplates suicide. After considering several methods (and trying and failing in several darkly comic scenes), she takes an overdose of sleeping pills and hides in the basement. She is found and revived three days later. (It is noteworthy that this suicide attempt replicates Plath’s own suicide attempt as a young woman.) Esther is hospitalized and begins to receive psychological treatment from a sympathetic female psychiatrist, Dr. Nolan. Under Dr. Nolan’s treatment, Esther finally begins to achieve a complete sense of self and her future begins to seem brighter. Nevertheless, she faces still more challenges, including the suicide of a fellow patient and her disastrous first sexual experience.
The Bell Jar provides a startling portrait of the repressive social environment of the 1950s and, in Esther Greenwood, demonstrates the fracture of identity and stifled growth that were often the result of living within such rigid societal rules, especially for a woman of intellect and ambition. The novel has also been widely praised for its fine writing and for Plath’s lyrical and imagistic prose style.
Sources
Alexander, Paul. Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath. New York: Viking, 1991.
Macpherson, Pat. Reflecting on The Bell Jar. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. (Victoria Lucas, pseud.). London: Heinemann, 1963.
———. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950–1962, edited by Karen V. Kukil. London: Faber & Faber, 2000.
Rose, Jacqueline. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. London: Virago, 1991.
Stevenson, Anne. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
Categories: Literature, Novel Analysis
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