The Bell Jar is a fiction-based novel about Esther Greenwood, a college student who aspires to be a poet. She is chosen for a month-long summer job as a guest editor at Ladies' Day magazine, but her stay in New York City is unfulfilling as she grapples with identity and societal conventions.
She meets two other interns, the rebellious and sexual Doreen and the wholesome and virginal Betsy, who represent opposing the ideas of femininity as well as Esther's own internal problems. During the internship, Esther feels neither stimulated nor excited by the work, fashion, and big-city lifestyle that her peers in the program seem to adore. She finds herself struggling to feel anything at all aside from anxiety and disorientation.
Esther is thinking about her lover, Buddy Willard, and how angry she was when he acknowledged he wasn't a virgin and claimed to have been seduced. She thinks he's a hypocrite because he pretended to be more sexually experienced than she is. Esther must spend the rest of her summer at home with her mother after being denied for a writing class; Esther's father died when she was a child. She tries to write a novel and gets progressively miserable, attempting suicide on multiple occasions. She eventually overdoses on the sleeping pills but manages to survive.
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The Bell Jar
Overview
The Bell Jar depicts the spiraling deterioration of 19-year-old Esther Greenwood over the course of multiple stays in psychiatric institutions from 1953 to 1954. Brilliant and talented, with a golden future ahead in media, Esther sinks into a suicidal depression fueled by the pressures of gender and society.
Symbols
Mirrors
Mirrors and other reflective images represent a lack of identity as Esther does not recognize herself.
fig tree
The fig tree represents Esther's inability to make decisions or choices for her life.
The Bell Jar
This container seals its contents from the exterior environment and serves as a metaphor for captivity.
Main Characters
Dr. Gordon & Dr. Nolan
Esther's doctors, whose views are exemplary of female stereotypes
Buddy Willard
Esther's chauvinistic would-be boyfriend
Mrs. Greenwood
Esther's mother, in favor of traditional gender roles
Doreen
Esther's uninhibited friend
Joan
Esther's best, and very similar, friend
Esther Greenwood
19-year-old self-critical narrator
Themes
Gender
The novel challenges traditional female gender roles such as virginity, nweisotai end motherhood.
Social Expectation
The parental values of 1950$ America based on tradition and materialism prove confining tor woman such as Esther
Birth and Death
The person in the bell jar and the world itself is the bad dream.
Identity
The struggles to define identality as failure SWUM to depression.
Numbering
2
Names under which The Bell Jar was first published (by Plath and under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas)
9
Plath's age when she published her first poem in the Boston Herald
1982
Year Plath became the first posthumous Pulitzer Prize recipient
Author
SYLVIA PLATH 1932-63
Born in Boston, Plath worked as an editor for Mademoiselle magazine in the summer of 1953. Struggling with depression all her life, she overdosed on sleeping pills and was treated in a psychiatric hospital shortly thereafter. She committed suicide in London the same year the novel was published.
The Bell Jar Book Summary
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The Bell Jar
Overview
Symbols
Main Characters
The Bell Jar depicts the spiraling deterioration of 19-year-old Esther Greenwood over the course of multiple stays in psychiatric institutions from 1953 to 1954. Brilliant and talented, with a golden future ahead in media, Esther sinks into a suicidal depression fueled by the pressures of gender and society.
Mirrors
Mirrors and other reflective images represent a lack of identity as Esther does not recognize herself.
fig tree
The fig tree represents Esther's inability to make decisions or choices for her life.
The Bell Jar
This container seals its contents from the exterior environment and serves as a metaphor for captivity.
Dr. Gordon & Dr. Nolan
Esther's doctors, whose views are exemplary of female stereotypes
Buddy Willard
Esther's chauvinistic would-be boyfriend
Mrs. Greenwood
Esther's mother, in favor of traditional gender roles