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.