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The Bell Jar Research Paper
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Sylvia Plath as Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath was a well known poet who published only one novel before her tragic death in 1963. The Bell Jar is a first person account from a young woman named Esther Greenwood who suffers a psychological meltdown. Throughout the novel, she moves back and forth through time as she remembers the events that lead to her being released from a psychiatric hospital. Through research, one may infer that the novel is written from events in Plath’s past. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar coveys Plath’s last attempt to reconcile with her demons.
“Esther Greenwood, the narrator of The Bell Jar, encounters many of the problems Plath examined in her verse: her attempts to establish her identity are undermined, she projects an ambivalent attitude toward men, society remains indifferent to her sensitivity, vulnerability, and artistic ambitions, and she is haunted by events from her past, particularly the death of her father” (Explanation of The Bell Jar). Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts to parents Otto Plath and Aurelia Schober. Plath’s father died in 1940, when she was eight years old, from complications with diabetes. The death of Esther’s father in The Bell Jar is mentioned to have happened when she was about nine or ten years old. “...and I felt
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Should a woman work or should be at stay at home mother? Should she be single or the perfect wife? At one point she reads an article called “In Defense of Chastity” that talks about women practicing chastity in order to please their future husband. Esther feels that the article doesn’t consider a woman’s point of view on sex and marriage (Plath 81). It is said “...she (Plath) became increasingly conscious of herself as a woman, the conflict between the lifestyle of a poet/intellectual and that of a wife and mother…” (Plath, About the Book
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The Characterisation of the Heroines in The Bell Jar and Quicksand
2358 Words | 5 Pages--------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Plath, Sylvia, The Bell Jar, William Heinemann Limited, 1966, p230 [2] Plath, Sylvia, The Bell Jar, William Heinemann Limited, 1966, p93 [3] Plath, Sylvia, The Bell Jar, William Heinemann Limited, 1966, p93 [4] Plath, Sylvia, The Bell Jar, William Heinemann Limited, 1966, p1-2 [5] Plath, Sylvia, The Bell Jar, William Heinemann Limited, 1966, p76 [6] Larsen, Nella, Quicksand, 1928, Alfred A. Knopf, p8 [7] Larsen, Nella, Quicksand, 1928, Alfred A. Knopf, p43 [8] Larsen, Nella, Quicksand, 1928, Alfred A. Knopf, p64
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.
Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
945 Words | 2 PagesSylvia 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.
Symbolism Within the Bell Jar Novel
1662 Words | 4 PagesBernard, Lauren. "TAKING ON A MOURNING HER MOTHER NEVER BOTHERED WITH: ESTHER’S ANGUISHED MEMORY AND HER RESISTANCE TO A DOMESTIC LIFE IN SYLVIA PLATH’S THE BELL JAR." Ed. Steven Axelrod.Department of English University of California, Riverside, 2009. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
The Feminine Ideal in The Bell Jar
1397 Words | 3 PagesThroughout 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.
The American Dream Gone Wrong in the Works of Sylvia Plath
2068 Words | 5 PagesMuch of Sylvia Plath's poetry and her only novel, The Bell Jar, reflect her feelings of mental instability. Plath grew up in Massachusetts and was an intelligent and successful writer at a young age. She was living an American dream. However, her idyllic life was more like a nightmare for Sylvia Plath. She drove herself hard; it was important to her to succeed. When she began to doubt herself and the world around her she became mentally ill.
The Bell Jar Rhetorical Analysis
750 Words | 2 PagesThe 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?
Mental Health In The Bell Jar
666 Words | 2 PagesIn the low-spirited novel, The Bell Jar, Silvia Plath skillfully cultivates various themes, such as the concept of mental health. Plath enriches the reader's understanding of key themes through characterization and symbols, such as the bell jar. Furthermore, The Bell Jar, packed with traumatic, disturbing events, is rich with a range of motifs and symbols to aid the development of the theme. Essentially, Silvia Plath allows the reader to explore mental health. Plath begins unfolding the theme of mental illness through protagonist, Ester Greenwood, who gradually develops depression, triggered by numerous factors and events. As the story progresses, Esther experiences progressively losing control over her mental health, which contributes to the
The Dark Side of Sylvia Plath's Poetry
1587 Words | 4 Pagesinstead of starting with plath's poetry I decided to start off with her only novel, the bel jar. "the bell jar is a novel about the events of sylvia plath's twentieth year; about how she tried to die, and how they stuck her together with glue. it is a fine novel, as bitter and remorseless as her last poems--the kind of book salinger's franny might have written about herself ten years later, if she had spent those ten years in hell" (scholes). i want to explain the imagery in the title of plath's autobiography. i stated the definition earlier. a bell jar is basically like a regular jar that has been turned upside down. it is glass and transparent. unlike a jar, a bell jar is often used to display something fragile. in her novel, plath was fragile and her bell jar was her environment. in her novel she spent five weeks in a mental institution. there, she was on display to many counselors, nurses, physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists. they watched Pplath regain stability from the day of her arrival to the day of her dismissal. also, "controlled atmosphere" can be seen as the environment of the institute. now on to the poetry of sylvia plath. just a little note... before i read her work i thought poetry sucked. anyway, in the poem "lady lazarus" plath speaks of her own suicide and she even takes some pride in her knowledge of death. in a reading prepared for bbc radio, plath introduced this poem: "the speaker is a woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn. the only trouble is, she has to die first. she is the phoenix, the libertarian spirit, what you will. she is also just a good, plain, very resourceful woman" (Plath 294).
Theme Of Depression In The Bell Jar
1229 Words | 3 PagesLife 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.
Depression in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
1110 Words | 3 PagesEsther’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.
Did Esther Trap Herself in "The Bell Jar"?
1590 Words | 4 Pages...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.
The Bell Jar Analysis
1438 Words | 3 PagesEsther Greenwood, the protagonist of The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath, is cast under the spell of her own depression and the story of being released from the spell follows the structure of one of the 7 plot types Christopher Booker created. These 7 plot archetypes include the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, and lastly the archetype of Rebirth. The novel The Bell Jar is classified as the Rebirth plot, in accordance with the 5 stages that make up said archetype: The Falling Stage, Recession Stage, Imprisonment Stage, Nightmare Stage, and The Rebirth Stage. Readers follow Esther as she pulls herself through the stages, through the falling, the rising, and the falling once more, until she reaches the goal of being freed from the spell of her depression and has been reborn.
Esther Greenwood's Search for Identity in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
1059 Words | 3 PagesOne’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 Nature of Reality
2150 Words | 5 PagesThe novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is an example of one of the many famous works that chronicle paradigm-shifting psychological journeys. Plath’s main character, Esther Greenwood, begins the book by facing her disenchantment with the cosmopolitan life that she once admired. After such disconcertion, Esther falls into a deep depression, eventually attempting suicide. She faces her physical and mental symptoms while being kept in a mental institution. Esther eventually comes to terms with her life, recovers from her depression, and battles her demons in order to face the world anew, ready to proceed with her uncertain future.
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