Commentary on The Bell Jar Essay

The Bell Jar Assignment

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a novel about a young woman battling between societal expectations and sexuality. The main character, Esther Greenwood, sinks into depression during the summer after her third year of college. Esther spends a month interning at a ladies fashion magazine in Manhattan but quickly finds out she is uninterested in the work and unsure of her future career plans.

A major theme in this novel is female sexuality. Many of Esther's problems stem from the conflict female sexuality. Esther is preoccupied with her virginity throughout the novel as she separates the world into two distinct categories, those who have and who have not had sex. She views sexually and violent and dangerous. Plath relates female sexuality to empowerment in the novel and it becomes an important factor to restoring Esthers health. She finally takes control of her own sexuality by getting birth control at the clinic that she gains freedom.

Another major theme in this novel is confinement. The theme of confinement is present throughout Plath's novel. The bell jar symbolizes Esther's suffocation. Esther imagines herself confined, several times, including when she compares herself to a character in a short story and imagines herself trapped up in a tree unable to decide which fig to choose, the figs being career paths. There are different occasions in the novel where she is literally or figuratively trapped. When Esther is found in her basement after she attempted suicide she is physically trapped whereas when she feels like she is in a bell jar at the hospital she is figuratively trapped. The sense that she is trapped is Esthers biggest proponent of her mental illness.

This novel is a critique of the 1950s American, (nuclear), family, with its clearly defined roles for men and women. As Esther describes the societal pressures and expectations she describes how men hold all the interesting jobs, and the women have no choice but to stay at home and cook, clean and have children. They are supposed to provide emotional warmth and security while the men fulfill their ambitions in the world. Esther cannot think about the thought of that kind of life. Esther states, "This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's"(Plath 68). Buddy, who doesnt care for the fact that Esther wants to write poetry tells her that after she is married with children she won't want to write poems any more. This makes Esther think, "Maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state"(Plath 88). Esther fears marriage as a kind death trap, and everywhere she looks she is constantly reminded of it.

This relates to McIntoshs article about the American family and stereotypical roles in society. She discusses the myth of meritocracy and the American Dream. Through a feminist lens, there are different types of social categories that promote inequality towards women. Women have worked hard to move forward from stereotypical roles. The roles expected from a woman fifty years ago have changed drastically from what they are today; however, some things are still expected and have not changed. In class we talked about how our society thinks a woman is supposed to want children and get married, and if she doesnt want to, something must be wrong with her. Socially constructed myths like this are limiting women and promoting inequality. Stereotyping women into one social category allows for social inequality based on expectations for the group as a whole. This expectation of women made Esther feel trapped within herself because she did not feel the same way.

The problem for Esther is the fact that many women have justified the rules that men have made for them, so she is left with no role models to relate to. The few successful career women she knows, like Jay Cee and Philomena Guinea, are not presented as attractive females. Joan's lesbianism presents a possible solution, but Esther initially rejects her. She does not see what women see in other women.

I found The Bell Jar to be an enjoyable read. The first half of the story describes the experiences of a small town girl in glitzy New York and the second half takes on a bleak tone and describes the girl descending a slippery mental slope. There are beautiful passages throughout the book; however, many of my favorite ones are there in the sunny, first half of the book.

The Bell Jar relates to Richs article Claiming an Education because Esther is a female college student in the 1950s. By getting an education, Esther is taking responsibility towards herself and is becoming educated so she can do her own thinking and have her own opinions.

Esthers so called mental illness in this novel can be related to The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. When she goes to see a doctor about insomnia Esther is immediately determined to be mentally ill by her male doctor and ordered to go through shock therapy. Just like in The Yellow Wallpaper, the new mother is immediately ordered to isolation when she is depressed after the birth of her child. I believe that Esther was not crazy and she was misdiagnosed by her doctor. In my opinion, people telling her that she was crazy and being a part of the mentally ill environment is what drove her to be crazy.