Precis

For my initial research I will explore the roles that women played in the 1950s and how this affected Plath’s personal life, and Plath as a writer. In both The Bell Jar, and an array of Plath’s poems, women live restricted lives in which they are expected to marry and have children early. In the fifties, creating a family was understood to be a woman’s most primary and important goal in their lives, even over education and careers. Plath addresses this issue by showing the misery and alienation Esther Greenwood, protagonist of The Bell Jar, had to endure in order not to have to conform to the average 50s woman. I will further research whether Sylvia Plath herself felt pressured into the 50s housewife expectation during her marriage with Ted Hughes; and whether this ignited Plath’s depression as well as Esther’s.

Secondly, I will research more the events of Plath’s life which caused her to commit suicide, aside from her severe depression. I am interested in whether Plath wrote autobiographically as a result of her own illness, which then created a depressing tone on all her works. Or whether Plath’s autobiographical style of writing was a cry for help, and her intensions were to portray what she was going through.

The sources I will use for my research will be essays criticizing different themes in The Bell Jar and the poems in Ariel, as well as biographical articles about Plath’s life.

E! True Hollywood Story

Poet and novelist, Sylvia Plath, was born during the Great Depression in Massachusetts. Plath and her brother, Warren were raised to be Unitarian Christian, however, Plath was uncertain about her religious views. There are numerous parallels between Plath’s life and her writing, predominantly The Bell Jar. In her novel, the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, suffered from grave depression and lived an unfulfilled life in which she was hospitalized many times. The countless parallels in The Bell Jar, and Plath’s life, classify the novel as semi-autobiographical. Plath attended Smith College and interned at a magazine in New York City, this was also the plot of the beginning of The Bell Jar. Esther Greenwood’s untreated mental illness lead to her suicide at the end of The Bell Jar, this tragically foresaw Plath’s suicide at the early age of 30. Plath’s life parallels were also seen in her other works aside from The Bell Jar. Plath became pregnant with her husband, Ted Hughes, however Plath had a miscarriage. Several of Plath’s poems were about her unbearable miscarriage. Plath’s depression had a deadly grasp on her life which created the tone for most of her writing. Her poems are associated with the literary movement of confessional poetry. Confessional poetry is a style that lays emphasis on the poet’s personal and private lifestyle. There were many other confessional poets during this era in addition to Plath.

Plath Poems- five passages

April 18

“and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight”

“April 18” by Plath, much like her other works, does not end hopefully. Plath’s concept of memory and the future is pessimistic. “a future was lost yesterday” negatively implies that the future can be lost, overcome easily by the past. For the future to easily become “irretrievable” represents a perspective with no hope, or lost hope, on life. Lost hope for the future is a direct result of Esther’s depression in The Bell Jar. Esther’s depression does not allow her to perceive a life of meaning and delight.

The Dead

“They loll forever in colossal sleep;
Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up
From their fond, final, infamous decay”.

This poem reveals insight to Plath’s perception of death; she cynically describes the deceased as in a “final, infamous decay”. Plath’s use of words with negative connotations sets the dismal tone of this poem. Sylvia Plath’s own depression shed a dark, ominous tone over most of her works, including “The Dead”. Plath suggests that even “God’s stern, shocked angels [cannot] cry them up”. This explains that death is irreversible, even in God’s hands. This is possibly the reason for Plath’s suicide later in life, and Esther’s suicide in The Bell Jar.

The Applicant

“First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch”

Plath’s title, “The Applicant”, implies that the poem is about a candidate, or aspirant for something. The first line in the stanza starts with the applicant being questioned about the kind of person they are. By asking are you “our sort of person” entails that the applicant is assumed of being an outsider. The next three lines describe the meaning of “our sort of person” as a superficial person with a false body. In The Bell Jar, Esther as well feels like the outsider compared to everyone around her. She is surrounded by a false lifestyle where everyone and everything appears fake.

The Applicant

“Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand”

The applicant is asked for proof of their falseness, in order to prove likeness to their “sort of person”. Throughout The Bell Jar, Esther repeatedly tries to fit in to the lifestyle she is assumed to want to live. Having to become someone else in order to fit in with society’s model for women ignited Esther’s depression. The next line shows that if the applicant cannot prove that they are one of them, then the applicant will not be provided for. In The Bell Jar, Esther is an unwilling applicant, if she doesn’t conform to the typical American woman, she won’t be granted with the respect of other women. Instead of being comforted, the applicant is told to stop crying. The words “Empty? Empty” confirm the feeling of meaninglessness, The applicant is then presented with help to fill the emptiness by being offered a hand.

Doomsday

"Too late to ask if end was worth the means,
Too late to calculate the toppling stock:
The idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans,
The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens".

In “Doomsday” Plath uses repetition as a rhetorical device. The lines “The idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans” and “The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens” is repeated multiple times throughout. Plath uses repetition as a style to create a fluid poem. “Too late to ask if end was worth the means” implies that life is worthless because immortality is unattainable. Plath’s own depression manipulates her perception of living, making life appear meaningless in her writing. Plath as well creates the protagonist, Esther, in The Bell Jar, to have severe depression, like her own, that alters her consciousness of a meaningful life.

Five Passages

“Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself … I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn’t get myself to react” (2).

Right before this passage, Esther explained how other people viewed her situation: a once poor girl, who won a scholarship to a college in New York, and “ends up steering New York like her own private car” (2). Esther then explains that she wasn’t even steering herself. Esther’s feelings of hopelessness enable her so that she can’t even control her own life. To say that she “should have been excited the way most of the other girls were” proves that she knows that the way she feels is not normal. Theoretically Esther lives an extravagant, glamorous lifestyle, but to her it’s extremely superficial and meaningless. Living a meaningless lifestyle causes Esther to feel meaningless herself which intensifies her depression in the rest of the novel. She is able to identify that her life is miserable, but her sickness (and the idea that the scholarship she won is a great opportunity) doesn’t allow her to change her life.

“I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations…I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all the time” (13).

This passage reveals one of Esther’s insecurities that magnifies later, contributing hugely to her mental illness. Esther admits that she “pretended” she knew more than she did about “crucial situations”. Even though Esther is a brilliant, studious woman, she is too insecure to express to the people around her when she doesn’t know something. When she says “a lot of things” she is referring to social situations. Esther is scared that her peers will see her differently if they knew she had not encountered some of the crucial situations that they have. Ultimately this exposes the vast contrast Esther feels from herself and the people around her throughout the entire novel.

“I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full” (100-101).

Esther had to model in a photo shoot for the magazine when she realized she was about to cry. Esther is unable to recognize why she was on the verge of tears because there is no direct reason. Esther’s depression combined with her miserable way of life caused her to be tremendously mentally unstable. This left her regularly dancing on the edge of a mental breakdown. Plath’s intent is for the reader to truly grasp the state of absolute misery in which Esther was going through. Plath’s vivid language allows the reader to visualize Esther’s outburst. “…tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full”. A full, unsteady glass could be tipped over with great ease, this represents Esther’s emotional state.

“The face that peered back at me seemed to be peering from the grating of a prison cell after a prolonged beating” (102).

This passage directly follows after Esther’s breakdown during the photo shoot. After bursting into tears, Esther is left alone. She then reaches into her pocketbook to fix her makeup to appease the other’s expectations. Aside from her apparent condition, Esther is still expected to carry on with the shoot as if nothing happened. The superficiality is evident, the people working for the magazine don’t care what is wrong with Esther and she explains that she feels betrayed by them. As Esther glances in her mirror, she does not recognize herself. This is reoccurring in the novel, but this particular time she compared her own reflection as a prisoner who suffered a “prolonged beating”. Esther is not referring to her tears and lack of makeup as the reason for her bruised, puffy face. Not recognizing her own face signifies that she is being forced to become someone she does not want to become.

“…[W]herever 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” (185).

This passage is vital to the novel because it is the first time that Esther refers to the “bell jar”. The bell jar symbolizes Esther’s severe depression. When Esther says that wherever she goes she will be “sitting under the same glass bell jar”, it means that no matter where her life goes that her severe depression will always have her trapped under it. Plath conveys Esther’s pessimistic view of her own illness through her diction. “Stewing in my own sour air” implies that Esther feels her depression is bitterly hopeless and she will always be constricted by its tight grasp on her life.

The Bell Jar: Aspects of Theme

Sylvia Plath’s, The Bell Jar, is a first person novel about a young woman’s struggles through life with severe mental illness. Contrary to a classic coming-of-age story, Esther Greenwood, the protagonist, lives her life entirely detached from anyone and anything. Although Esther attends an all women’s college in New York, is a remarkably amazing student, and is surrounded by a wealthy, glamorous lifestyle, she is incapable of having positive emotions towards her life. Many consider The Bell Jar autobiographical because Plath herself was severely depressed; this cast a dark, pessimistic tone over the novel. Like Plath, Esther is unable to find meaning in her -what would seem to be-successful life because of her immense depression. The prominent theme in this novel is Ester’s inability to direct her life with healthy progression. Her helplessness intensifies her feelings of depression and leaves her isolated from her peers and unable to grasp healthy relationships.

In the beginning of the novel Esther is in college by a scholarship through a women’s high fashion magazine program. The setting during this period of her life is very high class and she is expected to act peppy and courteous like the girls she lives with. The setting strengthens the theme of novel, and Ester’s somber, pessimistic life, by showing a dramatic contrast between Esther’s outlook on existence and the outlook of her peers. Esther is entirely uninterested in the fashion magazine and her other courses even though she is at the top of her class. Setting as well as tone are the main devices Plath uses to support the central theme. Plath’s grave tone in the story is dominant due to her own depression. Because of Plath’s choice of a first person perspective, Esther’s constant thoughts of hopelessness create a cynical tone throughout the entirety of the book that supports the theme.

Sylvia Plath Bio Link

Biography about Sylvia Plath:

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=alamco_main&tabID=T002&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=GALE%7CH1200001843&&docId=GALEH1200001843&docType=GALE&role=LitRC

Books Briefly Noted

White Oleander by Janet Finch is a novel about a sickly intimate relationship between a mother and a daughter. Ingrid, a single mother, was a beautiful, poet and wanted an artist lifestyle for herself and her daughter, Astrid. Ingrid's eccentric personality and life rules caused them to live isolated from the rest of society. Suprising Astrid, Ingrid fell in love with a man, Barry, breaking all of her own rules. Barry did not love Ingrid, he was the first man to ever reject her and this made Ingrid snap. She poisioned barry with White Oleander sap leaving her dependent daughter alone with no warning. Astrid is constantly moved from one sick foster home to another. with each move Astrid cchanges herself to fit the new lifestyle of the homes. Each visit with her imprisoned mother, Ingrid poisoned daughter with her words by telling Astrid that she is forgetting who she really is and is becoming someone she is not. Ingrid wanted Astrid to become her. In the final confrontation between Astrid and her mother, Ingrid finally surrenders and lets her daughter go in a way that finally frees Astrid forever.