The Bell Jar
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| Author | Sylvia Plath |
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| Released | 1963 |
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed to avoid causing offense. After Plath's suicide, the novel was published under her real name, and the novel did cause great offense. This resulted in a successful lawsuit by one individual (who is portrayed as "Joan" in the book), where the court ruled that the novel unfairly branded her as homosexual. Sylvia Plath's mother, Aurelia Plath, tried (unsuccessfully) to prevent the book from being published in the United States.
The book is often regarded as a roman à clef, with the protagonist's descent into madness paralleling Plath's own experiences with what is thought to have been clinical depression.
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[edit] Plot summary
The protagonist, Esther Greenwood, gains a scholarship in New York City to work at a prominent magazine under the editor Jay Cee, at the time of the Rosenbergs' execution (Plath's real-life magazine scholarship was at Mademoiselle magazine). Esther is exhilarated by the rush of Manhattan, but her experiences also frighten and disorient her. She appreciates the hedonism of her friend, Doreen, but also identifies with the piety of Betsy (dubbed "Pollyanna Cowgirl" by Doreen, because she's from Kansas), a 'goody-goody' sorority girl who always does the right thing. She has a benefactress in Philomena Guinea (based on Plath's own patron, Olive Higgins Prouty, author of Stella Dallas and Now, Voyager, who funded Plath's scholarship to study at Smith College).
Esther struggles to cope with life in New York, and returns to her home in Boston in low spirits. She's applied and been turned down for a writing course taught by a world-famous author (Plath was rejected from a Harvard course taught by Frank O'Connor); she decides instead to spend the summer writing a novel, but feels she hasn't enough life experience to write convincingly. All of her identity has been centered around doing well academically; she has no idea what to make of her life once she leaves school, and the choices presented to her (motherhood, as exemplified by the prolific and vacuous Dodo Conway, or stereotypical female careers such as stenography) are less than appealing to her.
Esther becomes increasingly depressed, and finds herself unable to sleep. She sees a psychiatrist who hastily diagnoses her with a mental illness and administers electroshock therapy. By this time, Esther is suffering from intense insomnia, and is traumatised by the therapy, which was improperly administered. When she tells her mother she refuses to go back, her mother smugly announces "I knew you'd decide to be all right."
Esther's mental state spirals. She describes her depression as a feeling of being trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. She makes several obscure attempts at suicide (including swimming far out to sea in the hope of being swept away by the current, a method successfully used by the protagonist in the feminist novel The Awakening), before making her most serious attempt at the end of Chapter Thirteen. True to Sylvia Plath's actual suicide attempt, Esther leaves a note saying she is taking a long walk, crawls into the cellar, and swallows almost 50 sleeping pills (part of her medication for insomnia). She survives, and is then sent to a different mental hospital and meets Dr. Nolan, her therapist, who prescribes electroshock therapy and ensures that it is properly administered. Esther describes the ECT as beneficial in that it has a sort of antidepressant effect, lifting the metaphorical bell jar in which she's felt trapped and stifled. Her stay at the private institution is funded by her benefactress, Philomena Guinea.
Dr. Nolan is thought to be based on Plath's own therapist, whom she continued seeing into adulthood, Ruth Beuscher. A good portion of this part of the novel closely resembles the experiences chronicled by Mary Jane Ward in her autobiographical novel The Snake Pit; Plath later stated that she'd seen reviews of The Snake Pit and believed the public wanted to see "mental health stuff", so she deliberately based details of Esther's hospitalization on the procedures and methods outlined in Ward's book. Plath was actually a patient at McLean Hospital, a posh facility which resembled the "snake pit" much less than certain wards in Metropolitan State Hospital, which may have been where Ward was actually incarcerated.
Under Dr. Nolan, Esther improves and various life changing events such as losing her virginity and her final understanding of death through the suicide of her friend Joan help her regain her sanity. The novel ends with her entering the room for her interview which would decide whether she was free from the hospital or not. The reader does not find out the outcome of this interview, and the novel ends with the words "I walked into the room"
[edit] Analysis
The book has feminist connotations; for example, when Esther discovers that her boyfriend, Buddy Willard, had sex with a waitress over the summer, she sees the hypocrisy of the moral code of her generation (in that promiscuity in a man is acceptable, but in a woman it is not). In order to subvert the idealism that Esther recognizes as flawed, she immediately endeavours to lose her virginity as soon as possible. Whilst a resident of the hospital, Esther loses her virginity to Irwin, a professor of mathematics at Harvard (Chapter 19), near the end of the book. After having sex with Irwin, Esther experiences uncontrollable haemorrhaging, and is admitted to a hospital. Plath's attitude here is strangely subvertive. Esther's attempt at losing her virginity is Plath's statement of defiance against the codes of social and moral conduct for women. But Esther is 'punished' for this act of defiance. Plath seems surprisingly regressive here. It is curious as to why Plath would want to make such a statement, when the theme of The Bell Jar is a young girl's claustrophobia and her rebellion against hypocritical social mores and the restrictions that society seems to impose only on women. (Recently added): In fact, this is not a strange, nor "punitive" choice made on the author's part, but refers directly to the autobiographical element of the novel. This happened to Plath herself and is expressed blatantly in her journals. Thus, any attempt at understanding the event as punishment or subversion are dangerous: "Never felt guilty for bedding with one, losing virginity and going to the Emergency Ward in a spurt, spurt of blood, playing with this one and that." (From The Journals of Sylvia Plath, p 438, entry 12 December, 1958).
Some readers have also pointed out the lesbian theme in the latter half of the book, when Esther discovers that her friend Joan is gay, and remembers a story of two women students who were dismissed from her university when they were found in a bedroom together, although they were only caressing each other's hair. Asked by Esther what a woman might look for in another woman, Dr. Nolan replies "tenderness". Plath has become a kind of lesbian icon in some circles for her honest look at what was then believed to be as a serious mental illness whose victims were inclined to violent and criminal behavior.
The book is full of irony, especially in comparison to Plath's life. Esther continually makes reference to her hatred of children and how she would never have any — although very early on in the book, as she is beginning her narration, Esther makes a passing and somewhat enigmatic mention to cutting a plastic star-fish off a sunglasses case 'for the baby to play with.' Sylvia Plath did in fact have children with the English poet Ted Hughes; Nicholas Farr Hughes, and Frieda Rebecca Hughes, who is now a prominent artist and poet. There are also connections between Plath's life and the Rosenbergs. Plath was subjected to electroshock, and the Rosenbergs were executed in the electric chair; when she committed suicide, she left her two children behind, as did the Rosenbergs.
Some critics have likened the book to The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
A film version was made in 1979.
[edit] Pop Culture References
- The song "The Bell Jar" by Showbread, compares the "distorted glass/insanity" theory to the concept of incoherent music.
- The book appeared very briefly in the movies 10 Things I Hate About You and Heathers.
- In the song "The Freest Man" by the popular Omaha based indie-pop band Tilly and the Wall, singer Kianna Aldarid mentions a boy she knows that lives in a "bell jar".
- In the 1994 Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers, a copy of The Bell Jar is briefly seen lying on the bed of the main female character Mallory, shortly before her lover Mickey comes to rescue her from her abusive father.
- In an episode of the popular animated comedy Family Guy, Meg Griffin is shown reading a copy of "The Bell Jar" in her bedroom.
- In an episode of the popular animated comedy American Dad!, Roger tells Haley to read "The Bell Jar" after she insults Roger's choice of movies.
