Think of a woman who finds herself a misfit in the role of the daughter, wife, mother, the nurturer, the care-giver; a woman who has her own aspirations and who can neither comprehend nor adapt to society’s expectations from a woman. Not uncommon today; but what would happen to her if she was born in the early twentieth century. What would happen to a person who found she was painfully different from women around her and was unable to conform to the role that society had earmarked for her?
Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” is an autobiographical novel told through the eyes of Esther Greenwood. Esther is a bright, ambitious student from a modest background, who wins a prize that gives her a chance to work as an intern with a fashion magazine in New York for a month. Once in New York, she tries hard to fit in with the other girls – girls who conform to the educated-and-eligible-ladies-waiting-for-the-right-groom image, and the heady New York high life. That is the time when the bell jar makes its appearance in Esther’s life, trapping her under it, slowly poisoning the air around her.
Once she returns home, she is rejected from a writing course. She drops out of college, since she believes she can no longer write as well as she did. Staying at home, she is faced with the option of ‘settling in’, with the ‘correct job’ and the ‘correct man’, a prospect which adds to her despair. Her depression spirals downwards, until her mother decided to take her to a psychiatrist. Unable to gain confidence in the doctor and after a few unnecessary shock treatments, she decides to commit suicide. The attempt however fails and she is rescued by a rich old lady, who pays for her treatment at a centre where she had herself undergone therapy. From here, Esther slowly starts recovering her health as well as morale.
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Plath paints a vivid picture of madness, a madness that arises from the protagonist’s feeling of being alienated, being different, being in her own bell jar. The madness is not real, not a physical affliction, but purely imposed, perceived; caused by a society that expects. In all other ways Esther is perfectly sane and practical. This is evident in the thoroughness with which she plans her suicide; evident in the perfectly rational argument she provides for never wanting to get married.
Esther Greenwood is a woman many of us can relate to – trapped between the notions society nourishes about womanhood on one side, and by her own ambitions on the other. The harm that a society where women are isolated – for not conforming and for having the desire to create an identity – is capable of wreaking is beautifully brought out in Plath’s writing. It is a book every woman must read; and every man must read at least once.
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