Bell Jar Metaphor

At Belsize she is treated like an invalid and most of the patients there are women who were in hospital for very strange reasons and not because they had an illness. One lady was there because her “husband knows [she] can’t stand her [mother-in-law]” this confirms the oppressiveness of the McCarthyite period and how women who did not conform to the ways of society will get punished in severe ways (179). However, Esther does try and make friends with the other people, but the hospital staff treats her poorly because she is labelled as being mad. Esther is rejected of being given a mirror by the nurse who pretended that they cannot hear her, when she asks the reason they reply by saying it is because she “don’t look very pretty”(168). So when …show more content…
The technique of metaphor itself is one of repression as it is an imposition of a particular constraint as it is as way of saying something to mean something else without saying it directly. Thus, this metaphor could be a way of Plath critiquing society because of the way it represses women. It portrays how stifling society is for women to try and pursue what they want and Esther seems to be thankful that she has been able to escape the bell jar around society and start a new life that is not dictated by others. The bell jar is also symbolic of the madness and insanity she is trying to escape as her perspective on the world is being, stifled preventing her from connecting with other people and sharing her views with others in the world. Although at the end the bell jar is lifted and she can resist the oppression of society and the mental institutions she is still tainted by the fear that someday the bell jar will drop again, and she will descend into madness because of the control she may face again by others. Also, this could be a critique of psychiatry and how people are diagnosed and treated in mental institutions. Susan Bassnett