payment page
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s only novel, is a semi-autobiographical text that centers on Esther Greenwood, a young woman who struggles with her identity and mental health as she navigates her community’s gender expectations and her own career aspirations. The Bell Jar is a bildungsroman—that is, a coming-of-age narrative—as well as an exploration and condemnation of 1950s America. Since its publication, The Bell Jar has been celebrated as a pioneering piece of feminist literature as well as an honest, raw depiction of mental health.
Like most coming-of-age narratives, The Bell Jar opens with the protagonist being removed from the safety and familiarity of home. Esther is an English major who won a competition to work as a guest editor for a New York magazine for a month. Interestingly, the novel does not open with Esther’s journey from her home in Boston to New York. This is a departure from the bildungsroman genre because most coming-of-age narratives begin with an inciting incident that results in a journey into the unknown. Instead, Plath choses to begin her novel in media res, or in the middle of things, with Esther already living in New York. Plath’s decision to open the text in the middle of the action disorients the reader, reflecting Esther’s confused and unfocused mental state.
The first phase of the rising action takes place in New York City as Esther works at the magazine along with eleven other contest winners. While in New York City, Esther has a difficult time connecting with her fellow guest editors. Readers initially believe that Esther feels so detached from her surroundings because she comes from a poor family and does not know how to fit into a world of luxury products and lavish parties. However, as the New York portion of the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Esther is struggling more than she initially lets on. For example, there are many instances in which Esther chooses to stay in her hotel bed instead of participating in the various activities that she is invited to. This section of the novel is important because the narrative keeps flashing back to interactions with Buddy Willard (Esther’s on-again, off-again boyfriend), Mrs. Willard (Buddy’s mother), and Esther’s own mother, interactions that highlight the restricted role of women in 1950s America as well as Esther’s desire to live beyond it. Esther, impressed with her own intelligence and reeling from the success of working at an actual magazine, has ambitious dreams of becoming a writer. She has no interest in becoming a simple housewife and she frequently contemplates the unfair social mores that keep women out of the spotlight.
The rising action continues once Esther returns home to Boston for the rest of the summer after her stint in New York City has ended. She learns that she did not make it into a special writing course that is being taught in the fall, and is deeply distressed by this news because she was depending on her writing to save her from a housewife’s fate. Esther’s threatened career aspirations trigger a depressive episode. Her mental health continues to decline and she finds herself unable to read, write, or sleep. In this section of the novel, Plath uses an intentionally detached, vague, and nonlinear writing style, forcing the reader to enter the same oppressive fog that Esther is struggling through. Concerned for her daughter, Esther’s mother takes Esther to see Dr. Gordon—an arrogant and dismissive psychiatric doctor who ultimately does more harm than good. Dr. Gordon does not listen to Esther and “treats” her with painful and barbaric electroshock therapy, causing Esther to wonder what “terrible thing” she had done in her life to deserve such torture. Here, Plath is likely expanding upon her own traumatic experiences in a mental hospital to highlight the perilous nature of 1950s psychiatric medicine.
Esther’s mental health continues to decline as she contemplates various suicide methods and fixates on news clippings about people who have killed themselves. In the climax of the novel, Esther attempts to take her own life. Fortunately, she is discovered and revived in a hospital. The falling action consists of Esther’s rocky road to recovery. Likely reeling from her traumatic experience with Dr. Gordon, she is resistant to treatment but eventually begins to make progress after she meets Dr. Nolan, a female psychiatric doctor who actually listens to Esther and builds trust with her until Esther is amenable to rehabilitation. Dr. Nolan understands that Esther is terrified of becoming a mother and losing her sense of self in the process, so she suggests that Esther get fitted for a diaphragm (a popular 1950s birth control method), which enables Esther to feel a sense of “freedom” and contentment for the first time in her life.
The novel concludes with Esther waiting for her interview to be released from the mental health facility. She is largely optimistic about her future; she feels “[re]born” by Dr. Nolan’s care and liberated by the contraceptive device she was fitted for, through which Plath is able to comment on the necessity of women’s bodily autonomy as it relates to their mental health. Plath ends her novel on a hopeful note, arguing that growth can be achieved through pain and rebirth, though Esther maintains that she is still worried that the “bell jar,” her repeated metaphor for mental illness, will imprison her again someday.
