The impact of bell Jar on the women of 50s
Introduction
The novel bell jar refers to a semi autobiographical novel that narrates the six months of life of the central character, Esther Greenwood, who is an overachieving college student of Boston, Massachusetts. The mentioned novel is popularly known as an acidic satire on the hypocrisy and orthodox mentality of 1950’s America and has explored the stress and pain of women of living up to the contradictory ideas of womanhood. In spite of the fact that the book since it has been published has been tended to dismiss along the gender lines, as book written merely for women, it has gained high recognition in the American world of literature. The novel concerns eventual breakdown as well as suicide attempt of a young woman (Lunde). It also tells a story of recovery, redeem, rebirth as well as starting over. The novelist, Sylvia Plath, in her novel has clearly examines the hypocrite social expectations of the 50s American society from women along with the toxic culture that makes it highly difficult and even fatal for an women to find a positive identity and respect in the society, often so hard that women were led to self destruction. In the following paragraphs, a detailed analysis of the mentioned novel will be conducted.
Thesis statement
Esther was captivated in the bell jar made by the society that had lead to her mental illness.
Body paragraph
Majority of the critics are found to view Esther, the central character of the novel, primarily through social constraints of the 50s and thus fails to recognize the linage of events within the novel which are deep-rooted in the personal psychological turmoil of Ester. For instance, Esther while reflecting on the novel interpreted the suicide attempt of Esther an act of retaliation against suburbia and the scenario of her final realize from the mental hospital as the stage when she had gained social as well as psychic maturity. According to Plath, while writing the novel, Plath had followed the structure of one of the 7 plots type that was created by Christopher Booker (Gourley). The mentioned novel can be classified as the rebirth plot, since it has kept accordance with the 5 stages of makeup side archetypes namely the falling stage, Recession Stage, Imprisonment Stage, Nightmare Stage, and The Rebirth Stage.
In the opening chapters, the Author introduced the readers with the lifestyle and personality of Ester. This has been done by illustrating Esther’s life, which the author demonstrated to be pretty satisfactory by social standard. In spite of the fact that Esther possessed all things that can be desired by a girl of her age, she had a feeling of hopelessness and dissatisfaction. She had the constant feeling that the community that is grooming her would provide her a docile life in future.
The conflict or falling stage of Esther was introduced by the Author while she went home to Boston. Her emotion of despair as well as alienation got highly increased when her bitter relationship with her mother got coupled with her dismissal from summer writing program. The conflict all falling stage of Esther was highly affected by the social environment and this in turn had imposed negative impact on her mental health in a highly negative way. For instance, the double standard of the society associated with the expectations from men versus from women often made her perplexed and depressed. Besides that Esther had the tendency f selecting on her past. For instance once she had said, ‘it was only in the middle of New York a whole year later that I finally thought of answer to that remark”. From this comment of Esther it can be clearly understood that she had the tendency to remember her past. Her tendency of over thinking a matter had led her to analyse the hypocrite of the contemporary society and how the society wants women to be perfect and abide by unrealistic social standards.
One of the characters that has been admired by Esther was Doreen who was brash and fearless and had never abide by the expectations of the society about women (Swift). Esther, in the novel had described Doreen as “Doreen came from a society girls’ college down South and had bright white hair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual sneer.” Unlike Esther, Doreen was indestructible. To Esther, she was the one who was able to break the bell jar that the society used to put on each and every women of the society.
The failure in serving unrealistic expectation other society and depression had led Esther to mental illness. She mused over this thing that she doesn’t fully understand. According to her, “…wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” According to Esther, the problem that is choking his breathe and reducing her desire to live is not associate with the place, but is associated with the dominance and oppression that is faced by her and other women that feel like a bell jar has fallen over her even in the most exotic location.
When it comes to the treatment phase of Esther, Sylvia described the asylum where she was admitted to as “She stays in an “insane asylum” where she is not so much treated but managed and controlled.” She was given a good number of shock treatments that were highly common during those days and were conducted in a highly reckless manner. Sylvia presented the treatment in a way that makes it clear for the reader that the treatment procedure was brutal and inaccurate (Gill). It seems more as though the doctors are trying what they can to jolt, force, shock, shake Esther back to the world of the sane. The treatment phase of Esther demonstrated how mental illness was a social stigma during the 50s in America (Sabbagh, Ghorban and Bozorgian). Ester’s mother intentionally wanted to hide the fact that her daughter was suffering from mental illness. Another instance that clearly demonstrate how stigmatize mental illness was, when buddy Willard, who had once dated Esther had came to meet her. Buddy had asked Esther “I wonder who you’ll marry now, Esther. Now you’ve been,’ and Buddy’s gesture encompassed the hill, the pines, and the severe, snow-gabled buildings breaking up the rolling landscape, ‘here.”
In chapter 7, Esther said “I saw myself sitting in the crotch of the fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest.’ This comment of hers pointed out the she had started becoming concern and optimistic about her future.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be clearly understood that Esther was an exception in the world of dominance and discrimination against women. In her novel, Sylvia pointed out how the society used to captivate women in a suffocating social environment like bell jar.
Reference List
Gill, J. (Ed.). (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Cambridge University Press.
Gourley, James. “” The same anew”: James Joyce’s Modernism and its Influence on Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.” College Literature 45.4 (2018): 695-723.
Lunde, Kathinka Høiem. Passive Resistance: Paralysis as Social Criticism in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. MS thesis. 2016.
Plath, Sylvia. The bell jar. Faber & Faber, 2008.
Sabbagh, Mahmoud Reza Ghorban, and Fahimeh Bozorgian. “The bell jar: A study in characterization, figure, and ground.” 2nd Conference on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language Teaching, Literature and Translation Studies. 2015.
Swift, Sophie. “A Stylistic Analysis of Transitivity Processes and their Effects in Ted Hughes’‘The Bee Meeting’.” Journal of Innervate 9 (2016): 17.
