The Evil Outside Forces of Depression in the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

1579 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Themes and poetic style of Sylvia Plath

Depression is not only caused by the self induced emotional state of a person. It can also be forced onto someone by external forces that influence depression. These events can sway a person into their depression, and with nothing or no one to catch them when they fall, they could keep going down deeper. The novel The Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath, portrays ways that depression was pushed onto the main character, Esther. People that had once been there for her were not there for her during her fall. Her career choice had been destroyed and she had nothing to work for. Esther was thrown into a depression from many negative events and people that she had no control over, and she had no help to stop or prevent this from happening.
Buddy Willard was a person in Esther’s life that had negative influence on her and caused her to plunge into her depression. He had taken Esther out to teach her how to ski, which she had never done before. He began to teach her the basics of skiing and how to get down small hills. She had just barely learned how to ski straight down and he wanted her to go up a large hill and ski down it. He had told her to only go half way up, but she went all the way up because she could not bring herself to get off of the rope accelerating her up the hill. Since she only knew how to ski down straight, she went down the only way she knew how.
I plummeted down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts, through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise, into my own past… My teeth crunched a gravelly mouthful. Ice water seeped down my throat… ‘You were doing fine,’ a familiar voice informed my ear, ‘until that man stepped into your path.’... ‘I’m going up,’... A queer, satisfied expression came over ...

... middle of paper ...

... to disregard her feelings of living.
The negative exterior forces in Esther’s life caused her to fall into a depression with no help from any other positive exterior force. Buddy Willard was a person who was part of Esther’s life who had let her down and inflicted damage to her mentally and physically. Her college plans were ruined when they had failed her and she was not accepted into what she wanted to work as. Her mother did not make an attempt to comfort or support her when she was going through her crisis. Another man shortly in her life, Marco the woman hater, had set her up for her big fall as she was leaving New York. Esther encountered many obstacles in her life that were set and eventually forced a harsh depression, while the help she had vanished and did not support her throughout her depression, causing a near fatal outcome.

Works Cited

The Bell Jar

Show More
Related

  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: Tangled in Society's Expectations

    1617 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...es these primitive standards, she becomes melancholy because she does not attune into the gender roles of women, which particularly focus on marriage, maternity, and domesticity. Like other nineteen year old women, Esther has many goals and ambitions in her life. Nevertheless, Esther is disparaged by society’s blunt roles created for women. Although she experiences a tremendous psychological journey, she is able to liberate herself from society’s suffocating constraints. Esther is an excellent inspiration for women who are also currently battling with society’s degrading stereotypes. She is a persistent woman who perseveres to accomplish more than being a stay at home mother. Thus, Esther is a voice for women who are trying to abolish the airless conformism that is prevalent in 1950’s society.

    Read More

  • Sylvia Plath and the Bell Jar

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    "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.

    Read More

  • Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • A Comparison of Joan Gilling and Esther Greenwoods in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

    1217 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Symbolism Within the Bell Jar Novel

    1662 Words  | 4 Pages

    While in pursuit of a career in writing or poetry in New York City, she is diagnosed with severe, manic depression, which marks the beginning of the descent of the bell jar. After her internship ends, she attempts to commit suicide multiple times. The bell jar already begins to control her, symbolizing a tyrant in her mind. She feels horrified of what she is slowly turning ...

    Read More

  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

    1154 Words  | 3 Pages

    One is often enticed to read a novel because of the way in which the characters are viewed and the way in which characters view their surroundings. In the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Esther Greenwood is a character whose "heightened and highly emotional response to events, actions and sentiments" (Assignment sheet) intrigue the reader. One of her character traits is extreme paranoia that is shown in different situations throughout the novel. As a result of this, she allows herself to be easily let down, as she believes that all events that are unsatisfactory are directed towards her. Finally, it is clear that she attempts to escape this notion by imagining an idyllic yet impossible life that she envisions in remote circumstances. It is clear that Plath's creation is a Novel of Sensibility as her writing not only possesses all of the qualities associated with this genre, it also effectively takes the reader into the story with the protagonist.

    Read More

  • Envisioning a New Identity in The Bell Jar by Syvia Plath

    1628 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Bell Jar is occupied with several female characters that all represent an assortment of female stereotypes. There are college students who wish to fully experience the city of New York, patients in a mental institution, and psychiatrists who could potentially serve as role models throughout the novel. Esther often finds herself lacking self-confidence due to the fact that she is constantly comparing herself to these individuals. Esther is shown as being stubborn because she rejects the womanhood that is presented to her. Instead, she spends her time worrying about what she thinks it is to be a woman. Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, diagrams the repressed role women endured due to the restrictions and expectations of societal norms.

    Read More

  • The Friendship In The Story 'Shells' By Cynthia Rylant

    687 Words  | 2 Pages

    The characters in the story struggle with getting along,the beginnig they were not getting along. In the middle they started to get along. In the end of the end they were bonding. In some parts they couldn't even talk about why they were mad. When they were angry, they would just walk away. This forced Michael and Aunt Esther to figure it out on themselves. They learn that sometime the best relationships are the ones that takes a little bit to get use

    Read More

  • Comparing Women in The Bell Jar and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    The main character in Sylvia Plath's novel, The Bell Jar, could be the spokesperson for all of Steinem's ideas. Esther Greenwood breaks all of the traditional rules that a female in her time should have been following. Esther is a bold and independent woman. Which makes Buddy Willard, he...

    Read More

  • Depression in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... scolded me, but kept begging me, with a sorrowful face to tell her what she had done was wrong” (226).The reason Esther is in this situation is because of her mom. Esther depression has reached its climax. The result of an unhappy relationship according to Freud has impacted Esther.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

    1418 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Esther`s Suicide Attempts in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

    1129 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Away

    1970 Words  | 4 Pages

    The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.

    Read More

  • Esther Greenwood's Search for Identity in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

    1059 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her search for identity, Esther often compares herself to others. One sign of depression is the feeling the need to compare yourself to others. Throughout the story, Esther questions other’s morals and characteristics and tries to apply them to herself. One example of this is at the beginning of the novel. She wonders if she is more like her friend Betsy, or her friend, Doreen. She describes Betsy as a good girl, and Doreen as more of the bad girl type. Although Betsy is a cheerful and optimistic person, Esther concludes that she can relate more to Betsy. She cannot understand why though, because she feels as if she is not a happy, nor optimistic person.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

    2556 Words  | 6 Pages

    “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” ( http://thinkexist.com/quotes/sylvia_plath/)

    Read More

More about The Evil Outside Forces of Depression in the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Open Document