New York in the 1950’s is bustling with people. Everyday there’s an event to attend, new places to see, and parties to follow. On the outside, it’s a lively atmosphere everyone would love, but even New York has its secrets. The Rosenbergs have just been electrocuted and their story is quickly circling the city. When the news reaches a girl named Esther, her outlook on life begins to change. At first it’s a slight change, but throughout the book it spirals into the immense problem depresion. In The Bell Jar, electrocution represents Esther’s three stages of depression: pain, death, and treatment. Esther’s first stage of depression is in the form of pain, shown by her incident with the lamp. Esther remembers an occurrence when she was younger where she was trying to move a lamp and instead it severely shocked her. Whenever she tries to move something or change an aspect in her life, it just ends up causing her more pain than before. She describes her pain and says, “I screamed… I didn’t recognize it, but heard it soar and quaver in the air like a violently disembodied spirit” (144). Her scream is like her inner struggle with herself. She doesn’t know where its coming from and it doesn’t seem like it’s her pain, but it’s there and it’s slowly tearing her apart. Although some parts of her pain are in her head, she has …show more content…
It’s ironic how one shock is meant to kill and the other is meant to cure. The doctors decision to electrocute Esther in order to help her mental state is both disturbing and unsettling. Esther’s discomfort is shown when the nurse says “don’t worry” and grins down at her. In response, Esther tries “to smile, but [her] skin had gone stiff, like parchment” (143). Although her views on death have changed, her original fear of death is shown again during this treatment. Slowly Esther begins to heal as she is treated. This treatment is the final stage in Esther’s
...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.
and denies it an outlet, Esther conjures a great love for years that dissolves in
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.
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 ...
Esther is cared for by two other woman, inferring she is a person of goodwill and people care for her. Ahsauerus is viewed as a man who is wrong, and immoral based on his clothing, posture, and facial expression. The relationship between the two leaves the viewer sympathizing for Esther as she is seen in a fragile state. Gentileschi is able to capture the agony of Esther by using different techniques and elements of art and constructs a painting that shows a
In this chapter, Esther talks about the bell jar. She says that the sour air from her life is trapped in a bell jar. The sour air is all of the bad things that have happened, all of the things that have ever hurt her. She says that she breathes the sour air that is trapped in the jar, which causes problems in her life. I believe that she means she cannot get away from the sour things because she is constantly near them. You cannot escape air, and Esther cannot escape the sour parts of
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.
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?
Esther reads a poem about the life of a fig tree, which includes details of the love and prosperous life of the tree, and the heavenly life of the characters in the poem. Once she is finished reading, her thoughts trail off onto the comparison of the fig tree to her own life. She describes the aspect of having a husband and kids as one fig, and her favorite editor on another and so on and so forth. However, later on in the story Esther describes these figs, “... they began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet,” (Plath 77). Once she came to the realization that none of these aspects would ever be a part of her life, because of her depression, she vastly loses more and more hope, from the little hope that she did have before. Not only was the loss of hope about love and her passion for writing, but her hope for her own life lasting any longer.
The events in New York introduce us to the beginning of Esther’s psychological transformation. The story first inaugurates with the executions of the Rosenbergs, where the Rosenbergs were electrocuted to death. They were believed to be supporting communism. The executions of the Rosenbergs deeply affected Esther’s mental state because of the way that they were executed. She believed that electrocution was unconstitutional and should have not been applied to them. According to Esther in chapter one, “I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I’d been to buy those uncomfortable, expensive clothes”(Plath 2). This quote emphasizes how Esther is becoming unable to control her mind mainly because of the events surrounding her. Based on Freud’s theory, a person’s mind is composed of both unconscious and conscious thoughts. When these thoughts interact they create a state of repression, where the person becomes unaware of conflicting problems that they be having. According to Rashmi Nemade author of “Psychology of Depression- Psychodynamic Theories Esther”, repress...
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.
...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.
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.
...eginning to end. For a king such as Xerxes that could have all he desired and saw himself as a god, to love and want to give half of his kingdom to this woman of no noble birth could only be done through God’s power. For it was for such a time as this that Esther was called upon, and she executed all that God wanted for her.