Lizanne de Beer, 2014120162 Essays (2552 words) - Literature

Lizanne de Beer, 2014120162 ENGL 3718 SEMINAR: Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar Dr Mariza Brooks 6 April 2017 Esther's struggle with depression reveals itsel f in the novel in two independent segments of the book . In the first "segment" of her life, Esther is perceivably sane: she is a brilliant student and writer working for a glitzy ladies magazine in New York. S he battles with artificial friendships and an overbearing mother while juggling her numerous passions and talents, dogged with the realization that women in her era are hardly ever able to accomplish all that she desires. The second section of the book showcases her trail into psychosis, as she is admitted to mental hospitals and is forced to receive electros hock treatments - a horrifying look at mental facilities in the 1950s . It is Esther's attempted suicide, the result of immense inner torment that lands her in psychiatric hosp ital. She is feeling overwhelmed by the social pressures of the female sex. Esther begins to demonstrate a feeling of heaviness at the choices that lie ahead of her as a woman and she is unable to be released from underneath "the bell jar" of her depression and bitterness - "because wherever I saton the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or BangkokI would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air." (Plath, 2013: 178). Yet, even as Esther describes h er own depressive thoughts, the reader is still able to follow her struggles. She conveys her struggles so painfully accurate that she does not seem "mad" by the clinical definition, although those around her in the novel would entirely disagree. A bell jar is a bell-shaped glass cover used in biology and science to protect and display delicate objects and to cover scientific apparatus. It is such an apt title. It represents mental illness itself: a heavy, confining jar that slopes over one's very mind and handicaps the ability to fully, freely live. "It's quite amazing how I've gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar." (Plath, 2013: 250). Although expressed by Sylvia Plath, this statement fully applies to the protagonist Esther Greenwood in Plath's novel The Bell Jar. Whilst most people believe the title refers to her suffocating clinical depression, it is also essential to remember that it also illustrates her feelings of imprisonment in a patriarchal world and society she can neither accept nor reject. Both Sylvia and Esther suffer from living under this sort of glass bell jar which makes it hard for them to breathe and to break free from the regulations of contemporary society (Huf, 1991). She confesses that her trip to New York is the " envy of thousands of other college girls just like me all over America " (Plath, 2013: 2). But what was expected to be a " real whirl " "turns out to make her feel " numb " ; "I felt very still and very empty " (Plath, 2013: 2) . These feelings are not limited to Esther, as she observes that her eleven other female companions "looked awfully bored" (Plath, 2013: 4) in their attempts to play their socially ascr ibed roles, painting their nails while living it up in America ' s centre of culture , of finance and fashion. Esther's companion in New York is a blond, beautiful southern girl with a sharp tongue. Esther envies Doreen's nonchalance in social situations and the two shares a witty, cynical perspective on their position as guest editors for a fashi on magazine. Doreen rebels against the normal convention s that Esther admires but cannot ent irely embrace. Throughout the novel there is a very contradicting stance on women, as women were only allowed to explore their career options up to a certain extent (Ames, 1999). We see this when Esther takes an internship in a fashion newspaper, however when it came to men and marriage , they had to forget about their aspiration s and fall back to the conventional , "white picket fence" expectations of tending to their husbands and children . One of Esther's problems is