BOOK: The Bell Jar

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The Doctor
Falling In Love With The Board
The Doctor
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 8786

Mibba Blog
October 7th, 2006 at 07:45am
I personally think this book is awesome.

How about you?
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; 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 quickly incarcerates her in a mental facility where she receives 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 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. ISBN 1-58648-161-4

Under Dr. Nolan, Esther improves, and eventually, is released from the hospital at the climax of the novel, although Esther's uncertainty about how she improved suggests subconscious awareness of the possibility of relapse, common with mental illness.

(Info from Here.
Peter Petrelli
King For A Couple Of Days
Peter Petrelli
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 4161
October 10th, 2006 at 03:27pm
I love. I just finished reading it, and I'm absolutely in love with it.
Peter Petrelli
King For A Couple Of Days
Peter Petrelli
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 4161
October 12th, 2006 at 02:15pm
No? No one else has read it? Damn you people.
lyrical_mess
Falling In Love With The Board
lyrical_mess
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Posts: 5278

Mibba Blog
October 12th, 2006 at 02:58pm
Well, I've heard of Sylvia Plath, but I've never heard of the Bell Jar. Now that I have, I'm going to read it. Sounds awesome.
The Doctor
Falling In Love With The Board
The Doctor
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 8786

Mibba Blog
October 16th, 2006 at 10:55am
Ginger Nuts:
I love. I just finished reading it, and I'm absolutely in love with it.
I read it constantly. It's quite a baaad habit now.

I can get through it in about 3 hours because I've read it that much Shifty
That's really bad.

I just am obsessed with Esther.
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