Did The Bell Jar Win?

 Did The Bell Jar Win?

Throughout literature, movies, and stories, a happy ending is one that readers look for. No matter the struggle that the characters go through, in the end, good has to come. Right? Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, at a glance, seems to suggest this, but when the entire story is revealed, the truth ultimately comes out. 

As we all know, The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiography of sorts where Plath draws on her experiences of battling with mental illness, societal expectations/stereotypes, and, in general, knowing what to do with her life. The coming-of-age novel begins in New York City, with the protagonist Esther Greenwood away from the safety of home, and exploring the wonders of being a magazine guest editor for a month. At first, she seems to be optimistic and enthusiastic. She tells herself that she’s good at getting scholarships and job opportunities. But as the novel progresses, quickly the reader is able to tell that Esther is in an unfocused mental state. She tends to depict the people that she meets in a strange, inhuman way. For example, when she describes the fellow guest editors that she has a hard time connecting with, she almost experiments with what it’d be like to be them. She describes her colleague Doreen as having “blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual sneer” (Plath 3). She later explores the city with Doreen, who likes to party with men. But in the end, she decides that she would have nothing to do with Doreen and her ways. 

As the novel continues, the reader can easily see that Esther is not in a good mental state. She tends to stay in bed, vomits in many instances, and doesn’t have much motivation. It’s important to point out that the novel was set in the 50s so the understanding of mental illnesses and conditions was much different. It was typically seen as someone who was simply lazy or unmotivated, when in reality, it is something much deeper. The situation further worsens. In a specific instance, when Esther is asked by her boss Jay Cee if her work interests her, she replies, “‘Oh, it does, it does,’ I said. ‘It interests me very much.’ I felt like yelling the words, as if that might make them more convincing, but I controlled myself” (Plath 12). Later on in the scene, she says that her work interests her, but the words ‘fell with a hollow flatness’ almost as if she is just listening to a voice. 

The novel continues, and the character Buddy Willard is introduced. Esther's on-and-off boyfriend is a big metaphor throughout The Bell Jar, who represents societal standards. Esther had the ambition of becoming a writer, while everything that Buddy stands for seems to represent the societal standards of Esther simply becoming a housewife and mother, doomed to clean a home and raise children for the rest of her life, one of her biggest fears. 

When Esther returns home to Boston for the summer, she finds out that she didn’t get into a prestigious writing course being taught in the fall. After this, she plummets, believing that she is a failure and worth nothing. She enters a deeply depressive episode, where she is unable to sleep, stops taking care of herself, and finds that she can’t write. Her mother takes her to see a Psychiatric doctor, Dr. Gordon, who seems to do more harm than good, and further supports her beliefs that people are just societal entities who do what society designed them for. She plummets even further and, at the climax of the novel, attempts to take her own life. Thankfully, she is found and brought to a sort of psychiatric hospital where she begins her slow recovery. She meets Dr. Nolan, a female doctor whom she can connect with and trust. Dr. Nolan understands that one of Esther's biggest fears is becoming a mother and losing her sense of self, so she suggests that she get a diaphragm (an early birth control method), enabling a sense of freedom that she never had before. Finally, the novel concludes when Esther is waiting for an interview to leave the facility. She is optimistic about her future and has a sense of being reborn. The novel ends on a hopeful note, with the metaphorical ‘bell jar’ not being broken, but clearly lifted. 

This metaphor of the bell jar isn’t clear at the beginning of the novel, but becomes clear later on. It has always been around, and began to cover Esther at the start, almost choking her out at her worst moment. One main point is that she can’t lift the bell jar herself, so she needs to surround herself with people who could, like Dr. Nolan. Of course, it seems as if no one was able to shatter the bell jar completely. Sylvia Plath’s life continues after she is released from the hospital, and she returns to society. She finished college and traveled around Europe. Eventually, she met a man and married him, and then began teaching. After separating from her abusive husband, she went to London with her two children. But the winter of ‘62-’63 was one of the coldest on record; her kids were constantly sick, and the pipes froze. Her depression returned, but she continued writing poetry. As we’ve heard in class, Plath planned on writing a sequel to The Bell Jar, about how she survived depression again. But it wasn’t possible. Plath’s life is one of the most eye-opening for all. Her novel represents hope and survival after depression, but the truth outside of the novel reveals that ultimately, depression can win the battle. New medical advancements can help lift the bell jar, but can it ever truly be shattered? 

Sources: 

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Heinemann, 1963.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath (her general life)