The mood of the story, The Bell Jar is very gloomy and depressing. Throughout the book, the main character Esther struggles with her mental stability. She can't quite get a grip on what her role is as a woman in society during the late 40’s and early 50’s. She struggles with the fact that she is most likely going to end up as a stay at home mom or house wife. She doesn’t like this idea. During the beginning of the book Esther is doing an internship over the summer for a magazine in New York. She stays at a hotel while she is there. The book takes the reader through the slow process of spiralling depression as Esther gets more and more unstable. The book shadows Plath’s own descent into depression but gives an inside look into her thought process. A month after the book was published, Plath committed suicide. She said the book was semi-autobiographical and that the people and events in the story happened but she changed the names. Its obvious while reading the book that Esther is already very unstable to begin with.
If I were an editor I would change the ending. The book ends with E...
The relationship between the reader and the central character is directly affected by the style of the narration, and is fundamental in understanding the author's intentions. "The Bell Jar" is written in the first person, providing the reader with intimate access to Esther's every feeling, using past tense and speaking in a reflective, conversational tone. Although "Quicksand" ... ... middle of paper ... ... oo can be said of "Quicksand", although the effect on the reader is perhaps not as definitive, as the character is arguably less rounded, less developed and less realistic as she we do not delve as deeply into her psyche as we do that of Esther Greenwood's.
In the novel, The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath the protagonist is named Esther Greenwood. Through the book Esther wonders if she should marry and live a conventional domestic life, or attempt to satisfy her ambition. Esther is from Massachusetts who goes to New York as a college student who is working for a month to be a guest editor for a magazine. She and the other eleven girls are pampered all the time. She has two friends who worry her, Betsey is very perky, but Doreen is very rebellious. Esther once goes on a date with a man named Marco who tries to rape her, but doesn’t succeed. This is something that can have an emotional, psychological, physical, personal, and social effect on someone and their day to day living. After having all of this happen to her with Marco and her two friends she says “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 magazine, and the...
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.
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 ...
What is in the spring of your life if the spring of a life refers to your first twenty years in your life? The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel by Silvia Plath, describes Esther Greenwood’s harsh spring of her life. Narrating in the first person, Esther tells her experience of a mental breakdown in a descriptive language, helping the readers visualize what she sees and feel her emotions. The novel takes place in New York City and Boston during the early 1950s when women’s roles were limited to domesticity. The repression of women’s roles in the American society during the 1950s and other influences such as her lack of confidence, her hesitance, her mother, and her feminist point of view seem to affect her mental breakdown.
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.
...e. As with many book-to-žlm adaptions, a desire to change the ending is the žlm's undoing.
Throughout The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath explores a number of themes, particularly regarding the gender roles, and subsequently, the mental health care system for women. Her 19-year-old protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is the vessel through which Plath poses many probing questions about these topics to the reader. In the 1950s when the novel was set, women were held to a high standard: to be attractive but pure, intelligent but submissive, and to generally accept the notion of bettering oneself only in order to make life more comfortable for the significant male in her life. Esther not only deals with the typical problems faced by women in her time, but she has to experience those things through the lens of mental illness though it is up for debate whether or not it was those same issues that caused her “madness” in the first place. In particular, Esther finds herself both struggling against and succumbing to the 1950s feminine ideal- a conflict made evident in her judgments of other women, her relationships with Buddy Willard, and her tenuous goals for the future.
Plath uses metaphors to describe the protagonists entrapment, suffocation and torture. Bill Gibson (2000) clearly defines the purpose of the metaphorical bell jar, stating that the “bell jar is a entrapment, and a way of placing one on a display of sorts, behind a glass”. Hence, Plath uses the bell jar to describe how she feels- an object, to be stared and looked upon. - mom low ideas of mental illness- So plath uses the imagery of the bell jar to convey the suffocation and isolation that is felt by all women. Also, the unlimited expectations that society creates for women and esther’s failure to achieve the expectations leads to her sorrow and disillusionment. Hence, esther
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.
Life is full of endless amounts of beautiful encounters for every character in the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, except for Esther. She suffers from a severe and complex mental illness that impacts her life greatly. Although it is clear that Esther suffers strongly from depression in the novel, Sylvia Plath chooses to tell her life abstractly through countless symbols and ironies to prove that Esther depression completely consumes her. Everything that Esther sees is through a lens of depression, which scews her outlook on life.
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.
The Bell Jar is an autobiography of a female sophomore. The girl-Esther, who is 19 years old, came from suburban area of Boston. As she had talent writing skills, she was invited to New York to serve as guest editor in a national fashion magazine office. In her one-month stay in New York, on one hand, Esther was cautious and conscientious to learn from an able and efficient female editor-Jay Cee, and she dreamt to follow Jay Cee’s successful step. On the other hand, she met various men and women in her colorful social life. These experiences reminded her of her life in women’s university, especially her relationship with her boyfriend- Buddy Willard. As the recollection often interweaved with reality, they brought Esther perplexity, discouragement and lost. Esther could not even more figure out the significance of reality as well as the goal of her own life. When her life in New York came to an end, Esther came back her hometown to spend the summer vacation with her mother. However, a new incident hard hit Esther- she was rejected by the writing course that she was given high expectation by professors in her university. The conservative atmosphere in the town made Esther feel days wear on like years. Esther denied completely that all achievements she got in past 19 years, and she even felt doubtful and terrified toward the future. Facing such heavy pressure, she was broken down totally. Since she was lost at that time, she tried to put an end to her life. After she was saved, she received psychological consultation in a psychiatric hospital. In this period, she rethought and relocated her position, and she rebuilt confidence step by step. At the end of the novel, Esther waited to leave hospital and she looked forward to starting a...
One’s identity is the most important lesson to be learned. It is vital part of life knowing who you are in order to live a fulfilled life. Without knowing your identity, and the way you perceive life, it is difficult for others to understand you, along with a struggle to live a happy life. In Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” Esther Greenwood struggles to find her own identity, and in the process, she develops a mental illness which helps her discover the person she is on the inside.
The Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath, starts of in the summer of the mid-1950s. Esther Greenwood, the main character, is a 19 year full of ambition and creativity that works at a popular magazine company. Esther mainly has two “best friends”, Betsy and Doreen. Having a pretty decent life in New York she feels as though she is missing something and that she isn’t experiencing life as some of the other ladies her age are. Esther is faced with the thought of not being what she should be. Which is, what the other women of her age are expected to be, by society’s views. The night before Esther is supposed to go back to her mother, who lives in the suburbs outside of Boston, she goes to a country club dance with Doreen and Doreen’s boyfriend and